The Case of the Poisoned Eclairs: A Masao Masuto Mystery

by Howard Fast

  Masuto spoke slowly and chose his words carefully. The last thing in the world he desired at this moment was a feud with the Los Angeles police. “Perhaps Beckman was assertive. It’s the way he works. But he doesn’t push people around, certainly not Los Angeles policemen. No one does. I think Captain Kennedy knows that. It’s quite true that the boy’s body was in Los Angeles, but he wasn’t killed there. His body was dumped out of a car. We think the boy was involved in a murder case, and the killer executed him to get rid of a witness.”

  “What murder case?”

  Masuto spelled out the events of the day, detail for detail. When he had finished, there was a long moment of silence, and then Kennedy said, “And what about the chemist?”

  “We are dealing here,” Masuto said, “with a pure botulism toxin, not with decayed food, but with the toxin that the botulinus produces. Your man at the poison lab assured me that only a trained chemist could produce it. Well, what kind of a chemist would risk his freedom and career to produce a deadly poison—a poison which he would have to surmise would be used to kill people? What kind of a chemist would be vulnerable? Almost certainly a chemist mixed up in the dope rackets. The odds are that he would have a criminal record. My own guess is that we are dealing with a killer who is indifferent to human life and allows nothing to stand in his way. He gets rid of witnesses. That’s why he killed the Chicano kid, so my analysis was not entirely fortuitous. I guessed that sooner or later he would kill the chemist. He tried the botulism, and it failed. Now, something else. Was the chemist killed with a twenty-two pistol?”

  “That’s right,” Bones said grudgingly.

  “Shot behind the ear?”

  “Yes.”

  “No sound of the shot?”

  “No, no sound of a shot,” Kennedy said.

  “Have you got anything?”

  “Not a damn thing. The chemist’s name is Leroy Kender. He served time for refining horse. Then he was picked up for angel dust, but that didn’t stick. He lived alone in a furnished room on Sixth Street. He had almost nine hundred dollars in his pocket, so it wasn’t robbery.”

  “It wasn’t robbery,” Masuto said. “This one doesn’t touch the money in his victims’ pockets.”

  “That’s rich blood,” Kennedy said.

  “Very rich. Fingerprints?”

  “We’ll have plenty of fingerprints. But what the hell good are fingerprints unless you got something to match them with?” Kennedy asked.

  “This one doesn’t leave fingerprints. But you have something to match if you want it,” Masuto said.

  “What’s that?”

  “The bullet that killed the Chicano boy you found on Mulholland and the bullet that killed the chemist. I have a notion they’ll match up.”

  “Okay,” Kennedy said. “I’m glad you leveled with us, Masuto. Maybe we had a reason to be sore, maybe not. If you catch up with this killer—well, we got our own case against him.”

  “I’ll stay in touch,” Masuto said.

  “And keep us informed,” Wainwright said. “We’re in this together.”

  When the two Los Angeles cops had left, Wainwright shook his head and said, “One day, Masao, you’ll get us in deep, and I swear when you do I’ll let you fry in your own juice. Where’s Beckman?”

  “Sitting in his car outside the Crombie place.”

  “On overtime.”

  “Yes.” Then he added, “I have the four women there.”

  “Where?”

  “In the Crombie house. I had Laura Crombie bring them over.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I want to talk to them. Because someone is trying to kill them, and if it happens it won’t do this city’s image one bit of good.”

  “You really think someone’s trying to kill four dames whose only crime is that they live in Beverly Hills?”

  “He’s killed three people already.”

  “I got to call my wife,” Wainwright said.

  Masuto went downstairs. He came out of the building and paused for a moment under the light at the entrance. He never heard the shot, only felt a hot pain at the side of his chin, as if a bee had stung him. As he put his hand up to his face, he heard the roar of a motor, and across the street a dark car shot away.

  There was blood on his hand.

  A prowl car had just parked, and the officer leaped out and ran over to him. “What happened, Sarge?”

  “A bullet nicked me,” Masuto said.

  “I didn’t hear a shot.”

  “He uses a silencer. Look around a bit, Cowley. See if you can find the bullet. A little slug, a twenty-two. It might be embedded in the door.”

  “I ought to get after him.”

  “We don’t know who he is or where he went,” Masuto said gently. “Look for the bullet.” Then he went back into the building.

  Wainwright was just putting down the phone. “What in hell happened to you?” he demanded.

  “I have been shot.”

  “Let me look at it. Yeah, it just nicked your cheek. Where do they keep the peroxide?”

  “In the john.”

  Wainwright swabbed out the cut and put a Band-Aid across it. “You say he was in his car across the street. That has got to be sixty feet, and with a twenty-two pistol, he is cne hell of a shot, maybe an impossible shot.”

  “He could have had a shoulder brace or it could have been a target gun this time, maybe a rifle. Or maybe just laying the pistol on the door of his car to steady it. Or he might have been aiming for my chest.”

  “Which would still be pretty damn good shooting.”

  “It would.”

  “Why you?” Wainwright asked. “If it’s the same guy?”

  “It is.”

  “How can you be sure?”

  “Because he called and spoke to Polly, and she told him I was handling the case.”

  “That’s stupid!”

  “No—he might have had information. How was she to know? I’m the one who’s stupid. He knows a lot about us. Well, now I know something about him.”

  “What, if I may ask?”

  “He—it—the killer is a man. He’s an expert pistol shot. He drives a Mercedes.”

  “So do half the people in Beverly Hills. But why a Mercedes? You said you couldn’t see the car, just that it was dark.”

  “I know that sound. There’s a particular sound when you gun a Mercedes. Also, he’s rich.”

  “Not uncommon in this town.”

  “And he has an enormous ego and a complicated but childish mind. The botulism, for example. Not brilliant, not even clever, but complicated. Also—and this I think is where I’ll get him—he has killed before.”

  “You mean the chemist and the Chicano kid?”

  “No—no. There’s killing somewhere in his past that we don’t know about.”

  As Masuto was leaving, Wainwright called after him, “Masao, be careful.”

  “I am always careful,” Masuto said.

  Alice Greene

  A curved drive in a half-moon shape swept in from the sidewalk, past the front door of Laura Crombie’s house, and then back to the sidewalk. A low hedge of variegated plantings stretched parallel to the sidewalk, from one end of the driveway to the other. The house was well lit inside, but the driveway was in darkness.

  Masuto parked his car in the street, behind Beckman’s car, and then walked slowly up the driveway where three other cars were parked. At one side, the driveway was intersected by a connection with the garage. The garage doors were closed. Masuto looked closely at the three parked cars. The first in line was a Mercedes two-seater 450 SL. “Twenty-seven thousand dollars,” Masuto said to himself. Beverly Hills was not a place where people hid their wealth under a bushel. Next, a Cadillac Seville, sixteen thousand dollars. The third in line was a Porsche Turbo Carrera, the price of which, Masuto guessed, ranged between forty and forty-five thousand dollars, just about twice what he and Kati had paid for their little house when they first purchased it. Well, h
e thought, his two children were safe at home in their beds and Kati was at a consciousness-raising session, while the four women inside the house were in deadly danger. He made no moral judgment, nor did he place value on a piece of shiny machinery priced at forty thousand dollars. Himself, he was paid to protect these people, and this he would do to the best of his ability.

  Masuto rang the bell. Beckman opened the door for him. “Thank God you’re here, Masao. You’re five minutes late.”

  “You’re counting?”

  “You’re damn right I am. These dames are driving me nuts.” He spoke in a whisper.

  “How’s that?”

  “They been drinking. I tried to lean on them and make them hold back, but they just don’t listen.”

  “Are they drunk?”

  “Not so you can notice, but they put down the stuff like it was going out of style.”

  “Where are they?”

  “In what she calls the library.”

  “Let’s go in.”

  He followed Beckman into the room. The four women sat facing each other, two on easy chairs, two on the couch. Each had a glass in her hand.

  “Welcome, Oriental sleuth,” Mrs. Crombie said. “Has the stalwart Beckman been telling you we are drunk? We are not—only nicely, warmly lit. Do you want a drink?”

  “No, I don’t want a drink.”

  “He’s very handsome but severe. So severe. So straight,” a pretty red-headed woman said. She was the youngest of the four, and Masuto guessed that this was Mitzie Fuller.

  “Fuzz,” a slender blonde said, shrugging. Alice Greene, Masuto decided.

  The fourth, Nancy Legett, just stared at him. Her eyes were full of fear. She was small and dark. She was in one of the big easy chairs, not just sitting in it but giving the impression of being trapped there, trapped and doomed and afraid.

  Masuto reacted to her. Her fragile, empty world of wealth and possession had come tumbling down around her head. As for the others, they could put on masks. She had no masks. He scarcely heard Laura Crombie introducing the women. For one long moment, he was in a state reached sometimes in his meditation, when he knew things that he did not otherwise know.

  “The whole thing,” said Alice Greene, “is a crock. A well-filled crock. I’m here because Laura pleaded with me to stay. Otherwise, I’d tell you to take your fantasy and stuff it. How dare you do this to us! This is Beverly Hills, not the South Bronx. As for this business of being in danger, another crock! That chocolate was not meant for me. It was delivered to the wrong house.”

  “Alice, for Christ’s sake, shut up,” Laura Crombie said.

  “Give me another drink.”

  “No!”

  “Then I’ll get it myself.”

  “Like hell you will! This is my house!”

  “Great. I’m glad you told me. Now I’m going to get the hell out of here!”

  Both women were on their feet, and Laura said, “No—no, I’m sorry. Please. Please stay.”

  “Not on your life.”

  “Alice, I’m begging you.”

  “Peddle it somewhere else.”

  Laura turned to Masuto. “Stop her. Make her stay here.”

  Facing him, Alice Greene said, “Just try it, buster. Just lay one hand on me.”

  “I’m not going to lay a hand on you,” Masuto said gently. “You are in danger, great danger. Believe me.”

  “I’ll handle it. I’ve handled it for thirty-six years, mister. I’m all grown up. You might not think so to look at me, but I’m all grown up. Now get out of my way.”

  She pushed past him, and Laura pleaded, “Can’t you stop her?”

  “I have no right to stop her.”

  She ran after Alice Greene. Masuto and Beckman followed. Alice was fumbling with the locks on the door.

  “How do you open this stupid thing?”

  Laura Crombie stood back and whispered to Masuto, “She’s in no condition to drive. Can’t you arrest her for drunken driving?”

  “Only if she commits a violation while driving,” Beckman said.

  Alice Greene finally opened the door and walked to her car with long steps. She got into the Mercedes and with the light on from the open car door, the two men and the woman in the doorway could see her fumbling in her purse for the car keys.

  “Sy,” Masuto said to Beckman, “get into your car and follow her. Anything—even a rolling stop at a stop sign—anything. The moment she steps out of line, pull her in for drunk driving.”

  At that moment, just as Beckman took off for his car, Alice slammed her car door, switched on her lights, and turned the ignition key. The explosion rocked the house and the burst of flame lit up the driveway. Laura screamed. Masuto and Beckman rushed toward the car and then were physically repelled by the curtain of heat.

  “Call the fire department!” Masuto shouted at Laura Crombie.

  He and Beckman circled the car, looking for some opening, and then Beckman pulled Masuto back. “Your eyebrows are singed, Masao. It’s no use. She’s dead.”

  “Why didn’t I stop her? Why?”

  “Because you didn’t know.”

  People were beginning to come out of their houses, to stand watching. A prowl car pulled up, then a second one. In the distance the siren of a fire engine sounded.

  “Get inside with the women,” Masuto told Beckman. “Keep them in the house and keep the door closed. They’ll be hysterical by now, so quiet them down.”

  People were crowding onto the driveway, and one of the uniformed policemen was ordering them back. The fire truck screamed its way into the street, and a moment later a fire hose opened up on the burning car.

  “Twenty-seven grand for that heap,” Masuto heard someone in the crowd say. Evidently no price was put on the human life. The uniformed officer who had come in the second prowl car said, “For Christ’s sake, Sarge, what in hell goes on here?”

  “Get on your radio and patch it through to downtown. I want the L.A. bomb squad up here, and tell them to bring their truck.”

  “Okay.”

  “Are you in charge here?” a fireman asked Masuto. “We’d like to move those two cars,” pointing to the Seville and the Porsche. “You got the keys?”

  “Don’t touch them. They may be wired. Can you get the woman out?”

  The fire was out now, the car a blackened, smoking heap.

  “We’ll try. The ambulance will be here any minute. But she’s dead. No question about that. That heat would kill her in ten seconds if the blast didn’t.”

  Another police car with two more officers pulled up. “I want those people back in their houses,” Masuto said to them. “There’s nothing they can do and there’s nothing for them to see.”

  “Who’s in the car, Sarge?”

  “A woman,” Masuto said shortly. “Does the captain know about this?”

  “They called him from the station. He’ll be here any minute.”

  “Well, get those people back into their homes. If they ask, tell them it was an accident and that’s all you know.”

  “That is all we know,” one of the cops said.

  The firemen had pried open the door of the smoking car, and Masuto walked over and forced himself to look at the charred figure that a few moments ago had been a vital, living woman. The metal of the Mercedes was still hot and the firemen were wetting it down with a soft stream of water. At that moment, the rescue ambulance arrived, and a moment later, Wainwright in his shirtsleeves.

  “My God,” one of the rescue men said, “that poor woman.”

  “Where shall we take her, Sarge?”

  “Take her to the morgue at All Saints,” Masuto said. “We don’t need an autopsy. Tell them to hold the body until we inform the family.”

  Wainwright stood there in silence, his face glum and unhappy. From somewhere inside the house, Beckman remembered to switch on the driveway lights. The sudden blaze of illumination made the scene even more grotesque.

  “It’s over now,” the fire capta
in told Masuto. “Do you want us to call the tow truck?”

  “No, just leave it there. I’ve called the L.A. bomb squad.”

  The rescue people wrapped Alice Greene’s body in a rubber sheet, put it on a stretcher and into the ambulance. The firemen climbed into their truck and drove off. By now, most of the curious had been ushered back into their houses or on their way. The uniformed cops stood around uncertainly, and Beckman came out of the house.

  Still, Wainwright had not said a word.

  “How are they?” Masuto asked Beckman.

  “They got it under control. They were pretty hysterical at first, and I don’t blame them. But we talked.”

  “No more booze?”

  “I was hard about that,” Beckman said.

  “Go back and stay with them,” Masuto told him. “Until I come in. Tell them I must talk to them tonight.”

  “How long?”

  Masuto shrugged, and Beckman went back into the house.

  “All right,” Wainwright finally said, “tell me about it.”

  “I was talking to the women and she wouldn’t have any of it.”

  “Who? I don’t even know who.”

  “Alice Greene.”

  “The one who got the poisoned candy? The dog?”

  “That’s right. She had a few drinks and she said she was going home. I couldn’t stop her.”

  “Did you try?” Wainwright asked.

  “Short of using force. I didn’t want her on the street and I didn’t want her in her house. I told Beckman to follow her, and the moment she did anything that could be called a violation to pull her in for drunk driving. If I had dreamed that the car was wired—”

  “We don’t dream those things. What then?”

  “She turned the key in the ignition, and the car blew.”

  “No chance to get her out?”

  “In two seconds, the car was a ball of flame.”

  “Yes.” Wainwright nodded at the Seville and the Porsche.

  “Nancy Legett and Mitzie Fuller.”

  “They could be wired too.”

  “I thought of that. The men from the bomb squad can look at them. I don’t know what’s in her garage. That could be wired too. This murderous bastard we’re dealing with doesn’t do anything by halves. He’s thorough.”