The Case of the Poisoned Eclairs: A Masao Masuto Mystery

by Howard Fast

Masuto put down the phone. Someone knocked at the door to his office.

  “Come in.”

  He knew the face. A smallish man, balding, with protruding blue eyes and a wide mouth. It was a face millions of people knew.

  “You’re Sergeant Masuto?”

  Masuto nodded.

  “I’m Monte Sweet. They told me to see you. They told me you were in charge of the case.”

  “Sit down, Mr. Sweet,” Masuto said.

  “Yeah.” He sat down in the chair next to Masuto’s desk. “Yeah—look at me. I’m ugly as sin. I make a living out of that, out of being ugly and nasty and rotten. They pay me thirty grand a week to insult the yokels in Vegas. An Italian sits down in the front row, I call him a wop. My real name’s Seteloni. I see you sitting there, I say, Hey, Chink, where’s the laundry? Stupid stuff, and they laugh themselves sick. It turns my stomach to watch those muttonheads laughing, but that’s what I do for a living and it stinks. I’m fifty-three years old. You think a guy of fifty-three can’t fall in love? You think Monte Sweet couldn’t love anything? Well, let me tell you different. I loved that woman the way I never loved anyone. And she loved me. God damn it to hell, she loved me! It was real! And now that lousy creep killed her.”

  He was shaking with emotion, tears welling out of the corners of his eyes, his hands trembling. “I’ll get you some water,” Masuto said.

  “I could use a drink.”

  “I’ll try.”

  Masuto went out of the room, closing the door behind him. Three uniformed cops were standing there. “Is that Monte Sweet you got inside?” one of them asked.

  “It is.”

  He went into Wainwright’s office. “This is a police station,” Wainwright said.

  “Come on, I know you keep a bottle in your desk.”

  “For emergencies.”

  “This is an emergency.”

  Wainwright poured into a paper cup. “What the devil goes on in there?”

  “He’s taking Alice Greene’s death very hard. Apparently, he loved her deeply.”

  “You got a soft streak that laps up bullshit, Masao. Men like Monte Sweet don’t love anyone deeply.”

  “All men love something.”

  “Yeah? You tell me who Monte Sweet is going to love when he discovers that his light of love left her fortune to a passel of dogs.”

  “Maybe he knew that. He tells me that they pay him thirty thousand dollars a week in Las Vegas. If that’s the case, he can live without her fortune.”

  “Thirty grand a week? You believe that?”

  “I read such things. He’s very big there and on TV. And Alice Greene was not that rich.”

  “What’s he here for?”

  “He’s mad.”

  “Then he ought to tell you something.”

  Masuto went back to his office, holding a paper cup which he gave to Sweet. “This is vodka. A police station is not a good place to look for a drink.”

  “Okay, okay.” He took it in a single gulp, grimacing.

  “Who killed Mrs. Greene?” Masuto asked him.

  “Don’t you know? What the hell are you—Keystone cops?”

  “We have a case and we’re trying to solve it.”

  “Oh, that’s beautiful. You got a case. A woman is dead, a woman who was the best thing that ever happened to me, and you tell me that you got a case.”

  “You were talking about it before,” Masuto said evenly. “You indicated that you knew. Who do you think killed her?”

  “I don’t think. I know.”

  “Who?”

  “Alan Greene.” And when there was no reaction from Masuto, he went on, “I know what you cookies think. You think because her car was wired, it was a Mafia job, and they been telling you that I’m hooked up with the Mafia. That is a carload of crap. I got no more connection with the Mafia than you have, mister, and maybe less. And who says you got to be a contract man to wire a car? I could wire a car if I had to and so could Greene. Did he tell you that he once ran a garage? No, sir. You bet your sweet patooties he didn’t.”

  “So you think Alan Greene murdered his ex-wife. Why?”

  “Because he hated her guts. He played the big macho game with her and beat her to within an inch of her life. You didn’t know that?”

  “No, I didn’t,” Masuto admitted. “You’re talking about a physical beating?”

  “What other kind is there?”

  “How bad? Was she hospitalized?”

  “You’re damn right she was,” Sweet said.

  “What hospital?”

  “They took her to Cedars-Sinai and she was there three days. After that, he didn’t have a leg to stand on. She agreed to keep it quiet, and he agreed to the divorce and the settlement. He was paying her five thousand a month and he gave her the house on Roxbury Drive. I would have married her in a minute, but Alice and I agreed that we’d never let that bastard off the hook as long as he lived. Well, he got off the hook.”

  “Apparently he was rich enough to afford the alimony. Why should he kill her?”

  “No one is rich enough to afford sixty grand a year.”

  “Do you inherit from Mrs. Greene?” Masuto asked him.

  “Come on, if you haven’t spoken to her lawyers you’re lousier cops than I imagine. Her money goes to dogs. You know that. I never wanted a nickel of her money, and I’m as crazy about dogs as she was.”

  “Yes, of course. I was not trying to trap you. I just wondered whether you knew what was in her will.”

  “All right. That’s your job. Now what are you going to do about Greene?”

  “You make an accusation. That’s not evidence.”

  “You bring him in and put the screws on him, and you’ll get plenty of evidence.”

  “We don’t do things that way,” Masuto said.

  “I just bet you don’t, with your two-bit police force. If it was the L.A. cops—”

  “They don’t go in for torture either. But I can tell you this, Mr. Sweet. We’ll have the evidence and the killer.”

  “When?”

  “Ah, that’s not easy to say.”

  When Monte Sweet had departed, Wainwright said to Masuto, “Well, what did he give you?”

  “He said Greene once owned a garage and that he could wire a car. As a matter of fact, Sweet said he could wire a car himself.”

  “So where are we, Masao?”

  “Closer.”

  “And now?”

  “I think I’ll try Laura Crombie again.”

  The Bar

  Going to the Crombie house, on Beverly Drive, Masuto’s car was almost sideswiped by a tourist bus. It was the second time in a single day that he had narrowly avoided an accident. It was unlike him. He had allowed himself to become submerged completely in a game of chess with an invisible antagonist—and to become absorbed in this manner was dangerous, dangerous for himself and dangerous for the women he was committed to protect.

  He was crowding too much into a single day, and he was being drawn too thin, yet he could not stop. He found himself quietly cursing the tourist bus, and the fact that he could be thus irritated disturbed him. Yet, he reflected, it was ridiculous to allow these huge tourist buses to prowl the streets of Beverly Hills, adding their noxious blasts to the prevailing pollution. People from all over the country and all over the world came here to look at streets not too different from streets in any other wealthy community, content to pay then-money to have the homes of movie stars pointed out to them. Masuto knew it was a swindle. Three quarters of the places pointed to as the tourists rode by in their big buses had been vacated by the stars years ago, sold and resold since then, but still giving the tour guides a reason to sell their tickets—and of course Beverly Drive, the broad main street of the town with its magnificent mansions, was the focus of all the tour buses.

  Driving more carefully, he pulled into the Crombie driveway, parking behind Beckman’s Ford. Beckman let him into the house.

  “Quiet, very quiet, Masao,” Beckman sa
id. “The ladies are driving me crazy. I don’t know if I can hold them tonight. And to make it worse, someone at the station gave my wife this number. She called here three times. Now I stopped answering the phone. I let the ladies do that.”

  They were standing alone in the entrance foyer, and Masuto said to Beckman, speaking softly, “Tell me about Mitzie.”

  “What’s to tell? I’m forty-three years old, Masao. If I was fifteen years younger, I’d leave my wife and marry Mitzie. Except why the hell should she look twice at a cop who makes fifteen thousand a year? I’d have to put away three years of wages to buy that Porsche of hers.”

  “You’ve spent twenty-four hours with those women, and that’s all you’ve got?”

  “What do you want?”

  “Who is she?”

  “You mean where does she come from? I’m not totally a jerk, Masao. She comes from Dallas, Texas. Her mother was a laundress. Her father was a no-good bum and a drunk. Mitzie cut out of there first chance she got and came here like all the other kids do to become a movie star. She worked around as a waitress and for a while she worked in a hair-dressing place.”

  “Wait a minute—not Tony Cooper’s place?”

  “That’s right. She gets a big bang out of the fact that she can go there now and lay down thirty bucks for the same service she used to dish out.”

  “It’s a small world. Did you ever ask her why she and Billy Fuller split up?”

  “There’s a general consensus among all three dames that he’s a son of a bitch.”

  “Okay, Sy. Now I want to talk to Mrs. Crombie. I’ll wait here. Where are they?”

  “Watching TV.”

  “Get her.”

  Laura Crombie came into the foyer with Beckman and said, “I’m sure you’ve solved everything, Sergeant, and we can stop living this nightmare.”

  “Not quite.”

  “Of course it can’t go on, you know that. We can’t continue to live here shut up and away from the world like this.”

  “I know that.”

  “When?”

  “Soon, I hope,” Masuto told her. “I have just a few questions that might help. For one thing, did your ex-husband own a pistol?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you know what kind?”

  “I’m afraid not. To me, one pistol is the same as another.”

  “Did you ever see it?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, you do know what an automatic pistol looks like and how it differs from a revolver. Was his an automatic pistol or a revolver?”

  “I think it was an automatic pistol. I’m hot sure.”

  “And by any chance did he belong to the same pistol club that Alan Greene belonged to?”

  “Yes, I think he did.”

  “Thank you,” Masuto said. “I’ll only ask you to endure this through the rest of this evening. One way or another, it will come to an end.”

  “I hope you’re right,” Beckman said as Masuto was leaving.

  “We’re trying.”

  Masuto got into his car, but instead of driving off, he sat there brooding. He was a meticulus man; that came with his Japanese ancestry and with his Zen training. His Zen training had taught him how elusive the truth is and it had also enabled him to use his insight to capture flashes of the truth. The meticulous quality went along with his distrust of his flashes of insight.

  He released the hood of the car, got out, raised the hood, and stared at the motor. He had never wired a car with dynamite, yet faced with the necessity he felt he could pull it off. Six sticks of dynamite in a confined spot behind the engine, a detonator stuck in place with so simple a device as a couple of Band-Aids, and then a lead from the ignition.

  He closed the hood of his car and sat down behind the wheel. Again he brooded for a while. Then he called the station on his radiophone. “Put me through to the captain,” he told Polly.

  “For a dashing, handsome Zen Buddhist Oriental, you are the most unromantic person I know.”

  “The captain, Polly.”

  “What’s up?” Wainwright asked.

  “I’m troubled and I’m nervous.”

  “Maybe you ought to knock it off. Go home. Give it tomorrow.”

  “That’s no good. If I let this go until tomorrow, something will happen tonight. I feel it in my bones.”

  “You got the three dames boxed up with Beckman. If you want me to go over there and lecture them, I will. I’ll talk them into staying put another night.”

  “That won’t do it. He’s too aggressive, too bold. He’s running for his life now.”

  “Well, damn it, Masao, what do you want me to do?”

  “I want to pick him up.”

  “Are you crazy?” Wainwright exploded. “Maybe you got another career lined up, but I got twenty years in this police force. What are you going to charge him with? Picking his nose in public? You got nothing on him, nothing but that crazy intuition of yours. I believe you because I know you and I seen this happen before, but you got nothing. Bring me something. Bring me the gun, and we’ll pick him up in a minute.”

  “It wouldn’t help. He’s using Billy Fuller’s gun.”

  “What the hell does that mean?”

  “It means that Fuller’s gun was stolen.”

  “Did he report it?”

  “He only discovered the theft today.”

  “And what makes you so sure our man stole it?”

  “I’m not. Just another guess. You can be sure the gun will turn up, and then when the bullets are matched, it leads straight to Fuller.”

  “And it’s also a beautiful alibi for Fuller.”

  “Yes, it works both ways. You won’t pick him up then?”

  “Masao, we can’t. All we’ll have is one beautiful lawsuit, and if he hits the city for a million bucks, we can pack up and go.”

  “All right.”

  “Where are you off to now?”

  “Maybe to find the missing piece.”

  Masuto started his car and pulled out of the driveway. It was only about a mile to Tony Cooper’s hairdressing establishment on Camden Drive. It was past six o’clock, and the streets of the business section were empty. Masuto wondered whether he had delayed too long.

  He parked his car in front of the beauty shop, and through the glass window, it appeared to be a repeat of the night before. Cooper stood over a single customer, combing and shaping a head of black hair. He glanced at Masuto as the detective entered, raising an eyebrow. Masuto nodded, took a seat at the side of the room, and then sat silently and thoughtfully, watching Cooper. Cooper, he decided, was quick, skilled, and meticulous. He recognized the quality. Whatever Cooper did, he decided, he would do well. Why then had he come to hairdressing? Why does any man come to what he gives his life to? Why had Masao Masuto become a policeman?

  Questions were easier than answers. The woman whose hair was being cut had fingernails as long as a Mandarin’s; they were painted bright red. They were claws on the ends of her long fingers, and above the hands, the wrists were encased in jeweled bracelets.

  Cooper finsished. The woman signed the pad he held out to her. Masuto wondered what the monthly bill of a woman who used Tony Cooper’s hair-dressing shop amounted to.

  Cooper took her to the door, and then closed and locked the door behind her. “Do you wait until you see me with my last customer?” he asked Masuto.

  “Just a coincidence.”

  He dropped into the chair next to Masuto and stretched out his legs. “Have you caught your killer yet?”

  “I’m close.”

  “But not close enough.”

  “That’s right. Not close enough. It’s like putting a jigsaw puzzle together. You solve the puzzle, and then when you’ve finished, you discover that two or three pieces are missing.”

  “I noticed you were looking at that woman’s fingernails,” Cooper said.

  “You notice things. That’s a rare gift.”

  “To a great many men, those long, painted re
d fingernails are pretty disgusting. I’ve had men tell me it’s a complete turnoff. Yet the women do it. I guess they feel it’s a sex symbol.”

  “Or a class symbol. You don’t mop floors or play a piano with those fingernails,” Masuto said. “You know, the missing pieces can be the most important.”

  “Missing pieces?”

  “There’s no time left,” Masuto said. “There’s no time to play games. Anyway, I don’t like to play games. Not when someone’s life is at stake.”

  “Don’t you tend to dramatize, Sergeant?”

  “Now look,” Masuto said, “don’t be deceived by the fact that I don’t act the role of a TV cop. I’m not joking and I’m not playing games. I told you yesterday that I didn’t give a damn whether you were a homosexual or not. I don’t. But if you keep on lying to me, I’ll make you wish you were never born. I’ll slap more violations on you than you can carry. I’ll hound you right out of this town, and don’t think I’m making empty threats. So if you want me to walk out of here and forget that we ever met, just answer my questions and answer them truthfully.”

  “You got one hell of a nerve! You can’t come in here—”

  “I can and I am! Now why didn’t you tell me that Mitzie Fuller worked here?”

  “You didn’t ask me.” He took a deep breath. “Anyway, she was only here a week and she only worked mornings.”

  “Did the other women know her then?”

  “No. That was before they became my customers.”

  “Why did she leave?”

  Cooper hesitated, and Masuto said, “I want it all. All—and quickly.”

  “Because I wanted to marry her.”

  “You’re gay.”

  “And what you don’t know about gay, Mr. Detective, would fill a book. Sure I’m gay. That doesn’t mean I can’t fall in love with a woman. That doesn’t mean I can’t stop being gay.”

  “But she didn’t marry you?”

  “She would have. She just said that she saw too much of that kind of marriage end up as tragedy. She didn’t want to do it to me or to herself.”

  “So she married Billy Fuller.”

  “Yes.”

  “They were married six months. What broke up that marriage after six months?”

  “Why don’t you ask Mitzie? Why don’t you ask Fuller?”