The Case of the Murdered MacKenzie: A Masao Masuto Mystery (Book Seven)

by Howard Fast

  “I’m Alan Soames. I’m general manager at the Fenwick Works.” And nodding to his companion, “This is Mr. Slocum. And if you’re curious about why we’re here, well, the highway patrol informed us immediately.”

  “Was Mrs. Mackenzie with you this evening?”

  “I’m afraid so. Tragically. Otherwise she might not have been driving through the canyon and this awful thing might never have happened.”

  “Could I ask what she was doing at the Fenwick Works?” Masuto said.

  “No, I don’t think so, Sergeant—what did you say your name was?”

  “Masuto.”

  “Masuto? Japanese—or as you say, Nisei. You’re a policeman?”

  “I’m afraid so. My name is Masao Masuto, Beverly Hills police force. And just for the record, Mr. Soames, may I have it that you refuse to answer any questions regarding Eve Mackenzie’s reasons for being at your plant and driving home through the canyon?”

  “No, you may not. You’ve twisted my words out of shape, and I don’t like that, Masuto, not one bit. I did not say I refuse to answer questions. No, sir! I simply said that I deny your right to ask them.”

  “Ah, so. Very plain.”

  With that Soames turned on his heel and walked off, followed by Slocum, who remained unidentified. Delt stared at Geffner and Masuto, his hands on his hips. “What is it you want?” he asked them. “Another murder? Someone tampered with her car and dumped her over the cliff? Or is it just that the California Highway Patrol is too damn stupid to know which side is up—until a Beverly Hills cop decides to tell us?”

  “Come on, Lieutenant,” Masuto said softly. “We have no vendetta going, so let’s not start one. Soames will get into his big limo back there and go off to wherever such people go. You and I, we remain cops. I need a favor, you need a favor.”

  “Okay, we’ll cool it. But how the hell would you feel if we walked into Beverly Hills and told you that you didn’t know what the hell you were doing.”

  “Mostly we don’t.” Masuto grinned. “So any time you feel like, come by. I’ll welcome you with open arms.”

  “Bullshit.”

  “So what do you think?” Masuto asked him. “That little Mercedes down there is one of the best cars in the world. Why did she go through the guardrail?”

  “Because the best cars in the world are no better than who drives them. Maybe she was loaded.”

  “Will there be an autopsy?”

  “Masuto, I can’t ask for an autopsy until I have some indication that a crime was committed. You know that.”

  “But her family can,” Geffner said. “She has a sister in Santa Barbara.”

  “That’s up to them.” Delt turned to Hendricks. “Are you really good with car accidents?”

  “So they say.”

  “All right.” And to Masuto, softly, “I don’t like being pushed around any more than you do, and I don’t work for Soames or Fenwick and I don’t like being told what to do and what not to do. I wasn’t going to stand between you and that car wreck. Hendricks can go over it with a fine-tooth comb, and if he finds something, then sure as hell it was done between here and the Fenwick Works.”

  But Hendricks found nothing—at least nothing in the way of mechanical manipulation of the car. He spent almost an hour going over every inch of it, and he found no severed brake lines, no steering wheel tampering, no loosened wheels—none of a half dozen other possibilities. Nothing that was done, only something that was not done.

  “What was that?” Delt asked him.

  “She was not wearing her seat belt.”

  “How do you know?”

  “On this model Mercedes, there’s no automatic return.”

  “What does that say?”

  “Well, look at the car,” Hendricks said. “This happens once in a while. It hit the guardrail and popped that log right off, which shows how much that guardrail was worth. But the car was hardly damaged from that blow. Then it went right down that face with no obstruction at all until it hit the mesquite, and then the mesquite cushioned it. The steering wheel is still on its mount. If that lady in the car, even without her seat belt, had hung on to the wheel, she could have come through it with no more than a bad scare.”

  “What are you getting at?” Delt asked him.

  “What do you think, Lieutenant? There was nothing wrong with the car. That little car drives like a dream. So why’d she go through the guardrail?”

  “Drugged,” Masuto said.

  “Or drunk.”

  “They couldn’t be sure there won’t be an autopsy. So it would be something simple,” Masuto said. “Something she could have used herself.”

  “Who are they?” Delt asked him. “And with that scenario, why didn’t her head go through the windshield?”

  They turned to Hendricks, who said, “It wouldn’t necessarily. She might have fallen over on the seat while still up here on the road. Then her head would hit the dashboard, where there’s a good deal of blood. Look at it yourselves.”

  There was blood all over the car seat and the dashboard. Delt pressed Masuto. “You’re so goddamn sure she was murdered. They did this and they did that. Who?”

  Masuto shook his head. “It’s a presumption, that’s all.” There was a lot that Geffner might have said, but Masuto could appreciate the position of a district attorney who had been prosecuting a case that was no case, only to have his suspect killed. There were still a couple of reporters hanging around and a photographer from the L.A. Times was snapping pictures of the wrecked car. Anything Geffner said could be flushed back in his face. A D.A. who allows himself to be persuaded by pressure from Washington to take a stupid case that won’t hold is in no position to court publicity.

  Delt’s face was blank.

  “A very good and sound presumption, I think,” Masuto said. “You know what the situation is out here in the canyon, Lieutenant. It’s an unincorporated area, and if you drop that line of inquiry, the Malibu sheriff’s office sure as hell is not going to pick it up.”

  “What’s it to you, Masuto? Just tell me what’s in it for you that you got to push like this. You’re a Beverly Hills cop and you’re thirty miles from home. The woman’s dead.”

  It was not easy to explain, and Masuto was not even certain that he could explain. One’s work took over, the man became the work, and the work became the man. That was not anything Delt would comprehend.

  “She lived in a town I’m supposed to protect.”

  “That’s a load, Masuto, and you know it. I can see Mr. Geffner’s point. He’s involved. But the way I look at it, you’re not involved. Don’t put down the sheriff’s deputies out here in Malibu. They ain’t totally brainless. I never seen a city cop didn’t think the country boy was a working moron.”

  “Time I was getting back home,” Hendricks said.

  “Time we all were,” Geffner agreed. His glance at Masuto said to keep the situation in low key. No use turning Delt into an enemy.

  Masuto nodded. “Things come back home. I’ll return the favor one day, Lieutenant.”

  “You’ve been damn cooperative. I’ll remember,” Geffner said.

  Delt shook hands with the district attorney. “Almost two in the morning,” he said. “I get frayed around the edges when these things push away a man’s sleep. You figure you’ve seen everything and nothing gets to you, but I watched her movies when I was a kid and to see her pulled out of that car like a smashed, bloody bundle of rags was not nice.”

  “I can understand that,” Masuto agreed.

  “Okay, Sergeant. See you at the races.”

  They walked back up the road to where the car was parked. Aside from the police cars, only a few autos were still parked alongside the road. The two big limousines had departed. Hendricks got into the backseat, leaving the front seat next to the driver for Masuto.

  “I’ll go on down into the Valley,” Geffner told them. “Ventura Freeway and then the San Diego Freeway. It’s the quickest way and it takes us right
through Culver. City. You’ll be home by two-thirty,” he said to Masuto. “That’s not too bad.”

  “No, not bad at all. I’m glad you played it straight with Delt. I don’t love him, but he’s an honest cop.”

  “We’re all honest,” Geffner said. “That’s what beats the hell out of me. If we were crooks or takers or on some kind of a pad, we wouldn’t be here in the canyon at a quarter to two in the morning trying to make sense out of something that makes no sense. My mother calls me every day. Tomorrow she’ll call me and ask me where I was last night, and then I’ll try to explain to her why I’m here. Only—”

  He had pulled out into the road and started down toward the Valley, his lights on, picking up speed on the straight downward stretch after the curve where the car went through the guardrail, and now suddenly he broke off what he was saying. There was a long moment of silence.

  “Hendricks?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I have no brakes.”

  The car was picking up speed.

  “The hand brake! Slow, even pressure.”

  The hand brake was between the front seats. Masuto eased it back and said, “No hand brake!”

  “Now, listen,” Hendricks said quickly. “Into the left lane, Mr. Geffner, and lay the car up against the cliff. Now! But easy, easy, just shave the paint.”

  On the right, the canyon dropped away, fifty, a hundred feet; on their left, the canyon wall rose up above them. They were doing almost fifty miles an hour as Geffner moved into the left lane and let the car touch the canyon wall. The screeching, grinding sound of metal bent and torn by the rock sidewall brought forth a moan of despair from Geffner. The car jerked and rocked under the continuing impact, but the speed was cut, and Hendricks shouted above the noise, “Hang on, Mr. Geffner! I want you to put her into reverse. Do it quickly with a snap motion, and then brace yourself.”

  “You’re going to destroy my car!” Geffner wailed.

  “But we’ll live to see it done. Now, Sergeant!”

  Masuto drove the automatic shift handle into reverse, and the car shuddered to the tearing sound of stripped gears and then came to a stop against the cliff face, the radiator steaming and, behind it, for almost a mile up the road, a trail or torn parts—mirrors, a fender, the rear bumper, the rear left door, bits and pieces of assorted glass and metal. For a long moment the three men sat in silence, not moving. Then Hendricks drew a deep breath and said, “We’d better get out of the car.”

  “What’s left of it.”

  “Can it be repaired?” he asked Hendricks.

  “No, it’s totaled.” He pointed back in the darkness. “There—that’s a wheel. We lost that just as we were stopping. Torn off the axle. We got out of it just in time. Do you have a flashlight, Mr. Geffner?”

  Geffner found a flashlight in his glove compartment and handed it to Hendricks, who crawled under the car.

  Shivering, Geffner shook his head. “I don’t want him to find what he’s looking for.”

  “It’s something we’re not used to,” Masuto said. “In other countries perhaps, but not here. It’s new here. To kill whatever stands in your way, whatever interferes with you. You, me, Hendricks—that’s all we have in common. We interfered.”

  “For God’s sake, Sergeant, I’ve had trouble with the brakes on this car ever since I bought it. Don’t invent anything. Don’t be imaginative. This is not Iran. This is not El Salvador. We live in a country of law. We’ve had a bad accident, and we’ve lived through it.”

  Hendricks crawled out from under the car. “Somebody doesn’t like us,” he said wryly.

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means the brake lines were cut. No foot brake, no hand brake. If it wasn’t for your damn brilliant driving, Mr. Geffner, we’d all be nicely dead.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “About the brakes? Absolutely.”

  The night was cold, but not cold enough to account for the chill that went through Masuto.

  Geffner had a radiophone in his car, and they put him through to Delt. “We’re about a mile or two down the road,” Geffner said. “We have problems.”

  It was four o’clock in the morning when Masuto walked into his cottage in Culver City. There had been a time when Kati, worried sick, would have been waiting up for him. Time had forced her to accept the fact that he could be away half the night yet return in one piece. Tonight, or this morning, depending upon one’s point of view, Masuto was too tired even for his nightly bath, and in the morning he overslept, missing the time he usually set aside for his meditation. He kissed Kati and fled from the house, and drive as he might, it was still nine-twenty when he reached the police station in Beverly Hills. Since he was expected to clock in at eight-thirty, he was almost an hour late. Polly, at Reception, informed him that the boss was steaming.

  He went into the office he shared with Sy Beckman, and Beckman informed him that Wainwright had called his office twice this morning and had appeared in person once—the latter not very difficult since he was directly down the hall.

  “What could you have done between yesterday and today?” Beckman wondered. “That kind of burn takes a lot of doing. I see she’s dead. What in hell does this case add up to, Masao?”

  “Confusion?”

  “Poor dame, first that crazy trial and now this.”

  Captain Wainwright switched to voice contact. Having heard that Masuto was in the building, he stepped into the hall and shouted, “Masuto, get your ass in here!”

  Masuto walked down the corridor, nodding to the sympathetic glances of various patrolmen, and went into Wainwright’s office. Wainwright was standing there, room center, awaiting him, and for a long moment they stood face to face. Then Wainwright wheeled and took his seat behind his desk.

  “Sit down,” he told Masuto.

  Masuto sat.

  “All right. Tell me about it. I try to be a reasonable person. I have been known to get angry at times but with good cause. So just explain it, and let me see it your way.”

  “Explain?” Masuto smiled. “If I could comprehend and explain anything in this world, I would be an enlightened person, which I am not.”

  “No, sir.” Wainwright’s voice dropped. “Don’t give me any of that Charlie Chan bullshit, Masao. I want to know what in hell you were doing up in Malibu Canyon last night with Geffner and that high-class grease monkey from the L.A.P.D.”

  “I can tell you that. Mr. Geffner was disturbed. He appears to have been more or less disturbed since this crazy trial started. Last night, after court, Judge Simpkins told Mr. Geffner that he intended to throw the Mackenzie case out of court the following day. Then Geffner heard that Eve Mackenzie was dead. He suspected murder, and he asked me to drive out to Malibu Canyon with him.”

  “You’re a Beverly Hills cop.”

  “I’m aware of that.”

  “Then what in God’s name were you doing out there in Malibu Canyon? Whatever happened there, it’s out of our jurisdiction.”

  “Eve Mackenzie was a resident of Beverly Hills.”

  “And if she was shot in Paris, would you tell that to the Sûreté?”

  “Malibu’s closer.”

  “Masao,” Wainwright said more gently, “you and me go back a long time and I’ve cussed you out plenty for bending the rules and maybe breaking them now and then. But I’ve apologized too, and I’ve never said that you weren’t the smartest cop that ever worked for me. Well, eight o’clock this morning the city manager walks in and he says to me, ‘What would you say, Captain, if I told you to fire Masuto?’ Just like that.”

  “What did you say?”

  “I asked him what he was doing—was he telling me to fire you, and if so, just why? Or was he just posing the question?”

  Masuto waited, smiling slightly.

  “No comment?”

  “I could go to Hawaii,” Masuto said. “I think the children would be happy there, and they don’t mind hiring Nisei cops, and if you put the kiss of dea
th on me, I can always work as a security guard or something of the sort—”

  “Will you cut out that goddamn crap and be serious for one cotton-picking minute. I told the city manager that if he instructed me to fire you, he could find someone else to run his police department.”

  “Thank you,” Masuto said. “I appreciate that.”

  “He said he felt the same way. The city manager.”

  “Then what was it? An exercise in rhetoric?”

  “You can bet your sweet life it was not. A guy from the C.I.A. woke him up at two o’clock in the morning—”

  “Name of Slocum?”

  “I think so, Slocum. Made it important enough to get our city manager out of bed and give him a lecture on what in hell you were doing up in Malibu Canyon in the middle of the night, and this same C.I.A. character informed Abramson that you were impertinent, destructive, and given to dropping dangerous innuendos, and very likely a man engaged in something dirtier than being a cop. Now what in hell gave him that notion, Masao?”

  “I might have said that I suspected Eve Mackenzie’s death was no accident.”

  “You had to. You couldn’t keep your nose out of it. They have a highway patrol and a sheriff’s department, but that don’t cut no ice with you. No, sir. You’re damn lucky that Abramson doesn’t frighten. He told this Slocum guy that the C.I.A. doesn’t do the hiring and firing on this police force, and that until he was ready to bring some concrete charges against you, he, Abramson, would take no action. So much for the city manager. Now comes my part of it. Stay out of the Mackenzie case. The book is closed. His wife was charged with the murder, and she’s dead. As far as we’re concerned, it’s over.”

  “You have to be kidding.”

  “Like hell I am!”

  They sat silently facing each other for about thirty seconds. Then Masuto reached into his pocket, took out his wallet, and opened it to reveal his badge. He unpinned it carefully and placed it on Wainwright’s desk. Then he took his gun and placed it on the badge. Then he stood up and said, “So sorry, Captain, so very sorry.” He left the office, closing the door gently behind him.