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

by Howard Fast

  “Why? We live in a world full of lunatics.”

  Masuto shrugged, closed his eyes, and sank back in his seat while Beckman drove over Coldwater Canyon into the Valley below, where the smog lay like a heavy yellow blanket. Masuto finally opened his eyes as they left the Ventura Freeway and turned north on Barham.

  “Got it?” Beckman asked him.

  “Not a glimmer.”

  “You think we can get this done before dark, Masao?”

  “We’ll try. It shouldn’t take more than half an hour or so.”

  “Are you nervous, kid?” Beckman asked Anderson.

  “A little. I never did anything like this before. I asked to work with Officer Sweeney because I heard he’s due to retire next year, but until now I’ve only taken prints off people who are alive.”

  “Nothing to it. They don’t pull away when they’re dead.”

  “But this one’s been dead a long time. You think he’s got a record, Sergeant?” he asked Masuto.

  Masuto smiled and shook his head. “I don’t know what to think. We’ll see.”

  It seemed there was always smog at the eastern side of the San Fernando Valley. Masuto could remember a time when there had been no smog in the Valley—but then so many other things had changed.

  They turned into Forest Lawn Drive, and a few minutes later they were entering the cemetery, halted by a guard and then waved on to a chorus of alto voices singing an obviously specifically composed song about a host of angels welcoming the loved ones into the heavenly gates.

  “Loudspeakers concealed in the ground,” Beckman explained.

  At the cemetery office, which was built in a strange, Romanesque style, the cemetery director was waiting for them. He was appropriately a tall, thin, somber-looking man, and beside him, a man in black with a ministerial collar stood with his hands folded.

  “I’m Detective Sergeant Masuto. This is Detective Beckman and Officer Anderson, who will take the fingerprints. Since it’s almost seven o’clock, I think we should start immediately.”

  “Yes—yes, indeed. You’ll be pleased to know that after your Captain Wainwright telephoned me, I had the gravediggers open the grave.”

  “Have they removed the coffin?” Masuto demanded, annoyed.

  “No, sir—oh, no. No, indeed. But they set up the sacre-lift, our name for the mechanism we use to lower the coffin and the loved one, and that means reeving the canvas straps under the coffin. You can’t just lift the coffin out of the grave—not a large bronze coffin that weighs a quarter of a ton.”

  “Can we get on with it?”

  “Certainly, certainly, Detective Masuto. Only one or two small matters. The gravediggers go off at four o’clock. That’s union rules—nothing I can do about that. Which means double time, fourteen dollars an hour, and I’m afraid you must sign this acknowledgment and order before I let you go to Mr. Mackenzie’s grave.” He held out a clipboard. Masuto scanned the paper, then signed it, wondering how Wainwright would respond to ninety dollars for the two gravediggers.

  Beckman, standing behind Masuto and looking over his shoulder, answered the question. “He’ll take our ass off, Masao.”

  “We don’t get double overtime,” Anderson said.

  The director now removed the top contract from the clipboard and handed it back to Masuto.

  “What’s this?”

  “The Reverend Peterson here,” nodding at the man next to him. “It’s cemetery policy that no grave should be opened or closed without an accredited clergyman present. Reverend Peterson’s fee is only thirty dollars, little enough when you consider he’s been waiting since our normal closing time of four o’clock. And may I remind you that I am taking no fee for my extra hours, but acting out of a devotion to a civilized and law-abiding country.”

  “For which we are grateful,” Masuto said, signing a bill in which the City of Beverly Hills was charged for thirty dollars for the services of Reverend Avril Peterson. “Now, if you would please lead us to the Mackenzie grave, we can get this over with.”

  The director led the way, explaining that ordinarily, even with the judicial order, the close relatives would have to be notified. “We do not play dirty pool with the dearly beloved,” he said, choosing, Masuto decided, a very odd metaphor indeed. “But do you know, Sergeant, Mr. Mackenzie had no relatives—close or otherwise, that is—after the death of his wife. What a pity that a man should live that way. Don’t you think so, Reverend Peterson?”

  “Oh, yes. The family is the rock of hope,” Reverend Peterson said.

  “All alone. No one. Do you know, I called the Fenwick Works. Lovely people. Such lovely, cooperative people. They put me through to the manager himself. There was no need for that. I simply asked for the personnel department, and they put me through to Mr. Soames.” He turned to Masuto, who had stopped short.

  “You called Fenwick and spoke to Mr. Soames?” Masuto said icily.

  “Oh, yes—yes, indeed.”

  “And you told him why you were calling? That the Beverly Hills police were going to exhume the body?”

  “Oh, yes. I didn’t think it was a secret.”

  “And when did you do this?”

  “After your Captain Wainwright called me. An hour ago?”

  “It would take them almost an hour to drive here,” Beckman said.

  “You spoke to Soames?” Masuto reminded him. “What exactly did you say to him?”

  “What I said, of course.”

  “Would you please repeat what you said as exactly as you can.” They were in sight of the grave now, a metal frame around it, a pile of fresh-dug dirt alongside and two gravediggers waiting. From some hidden loudspeaker, a baritone voice, muted, told anyone listening that “seated one day at the organ, I was weary and ill at ease, and my fingers wandered idly over the noisy keys.”

  “I don’t see what that has to do with anything,” the director protested.

  “Let’s say out of your devotion to civilization, as you put it before. And isn’t there any way to turn off that damned voice?”

  “It will stop automatically, Sergeant Masuto, and I am not surprised that an Oriental does not respond to so intrinsically Western a thing as The Lost Chord.”

  “Of course. We all have limitations. To get back to Mr. Soames.”

  “If you wish. I told him that I was attempting to locate Some relative of Mr. Robert Mackenzie. He asked why—oh, very politely—and I told him that Captain Wainwright of the Beverly Hills police had called me and informed me that Sergeant Masuto would be coming out to exhume the body and take fingerprints and that I might have the grave opened, since it was late in the day.”

  “And what did he say to that?”

  “Mr. Soames?”

  “Yes, Mr. Soames.”

  “Oh, he said that as far as he knew, Mr. Mackenzie had no relatives other than his wife—no blood relatives at all.”

  “And that’s all?”

  “Well, he did say that he was sorry I was being put to so much trouble.”

  “Thoughtful of him,” Beckman said.

  Now a great orange globe of a sun was sinking toward the hills that made the western wall of the San Fernando Valley, and Masuto said to Beckman, “Sy, get the coffin up and opened and get the prints and let’s get out of here before dark.” He didn’t add that Forest Lawn turned his stomach and offended every decent sensibility.

  “Did Mr. Soames appear in any way disturbed?” he asked the cemetery director.

  “I hardly think so.”

  Which, again, made Masuto wonder as he stared at the emerging coffin. They all moved closer to the grave and stood in silence as the coffin rose smoothly, cranked up by a pair of winches, hand operated by the two gravediggers. Finally the coffin hung on a level with the ground, and the gravediggers slid it off the mechanism.

  “I hope your Officer Anderson has a strong stomach. These things can be upsetting.”

  “Open it,” Masuto said to the gravediggers.

  It was a
large, ornate bronze coffin. It had four bolts on each side, and when they were removed and the heavy cover lifted, the men standing around were braced for horror and disgust. But aside from a profusion of quilted white silk and velvet, the coffin was empty.

  Wainwright was so intrigued by the empty coffin that he forgot to complain about overtime for the gravediggers. Abramson, the city manager, had been in to see Wainwright about illegal parking around some of the larger hotels, and when he heard about Masuto’s expedition, he decided to await his return. Like Wainwright, the notion of the big bronze coffin being empty fascinated him.

  “Who ordered the burial and paid for it?” Wainwright asked.

  Masuto shook his head. He had been in Japan. Beckman said, “That was Eve Mackenzie.”

  “But why that coffin? You say it weighed a quarter of a ton.”

  “Because it would still carry heavy, even without the body.”

  “What does one of those things cost?”

  “Plenty,” Abramson said. “I just buried my mother-in-law. She was a religious lady and specified a plain wooden box, but I priced a few of the fancy ones. You could be buried in a Cadillac for that kind of money.”

  “Do you suppose we’ll ever turn up the body, Masao?”

  “No. They don’t want the body or the prints found. They probably wrapped it in chains, took it out in a boat, and gave it to the sharks. No, we’ll never see it.”

  “Why?” Abramson demanded. “You keep saying they, Sergeant. Who are they?”

  “I don’t know. I know what they do, and I’m beginning to understand how they think, but who they are—”

  “And now, with the body gone, the murderer goes free?”

  “No, not quite, Mr. Abramson. What they say about the absence of a corpse doesn’t apply here. We know the murder was committed. It doesn’t matter whether the body is buried at Forest Lawn or at the bottom of the Pacific.”

  “Then we can find the killer and convict him?”

  “No, I don’t think so.”

  “Masao,” Wainwright exploded, “is this another one of your damn tricks? Do you know who killed Mackenzie?”

  “Even if I know, it doesn’t help. We have no evidence, and before we’re able to scrape some up, the killer will be dead.”

  There was a long moment of silence while they all stared at Masuto, and then Wainwright said coldly, “What in hell are you talking about?”

  Masuto was tired, close to exhaustion after a day that had been too long and too terrifying, and in no mood to argue or convince. “All things,” he said without enthusiasm, “have a pattern and a rhythm. We live in patterns and think in patterns and act in patterns. They have a pattern. Their minds are lazy but brutal. They kill for solutions. They act hastily. The charade in the bathtub was clumsy and hasty. They felt that the man in the tub was dangerous, so they killed him. Now they will kill the killer, because the killer is dangerous.”

  “Goddamnit, Masao, if you know who it is, bring him in. We’ll cook up a charge.”

  “We can’t do that,” Abramson said. “Not in Beverly Hills, Captain Wainwright. You know that.”

  “It wouldn’t matter,” Masuto said moodily.

  “The hell with it,” Wainwright said. “Let’s call it a day.”

  “The mechanic’s still there,” Abramson told them. “He’ll check your cars.”

  Walking out of the police station with Beckman, Masuto asked him, “About Mackenzie’s birthplace—did you say Glasgow?”

  “Edinburgh.”

  “Where did you get that?”

  “From Mrs. Scott. Fenwick confirmed it.”

  “Ah, so! Very interesting. That they gave you, but not the fingerprints. Did you also get the date he arrived in America?”

  “Nineteen sixty-one. He was thirty-one.”

  “Also from Fenwick?”

  “Oh, yes. They were cooperative.”

  The mechanic informed them that both of their cars were clean.

  “I’ll see you in the morning, Sy,” Masuto said.

  “By the way, I almost forgot. Polly said Doc Baxter would like to see you. He’ll be working late. This late—well, I don’t know.”

  It was enough to prompt Masuto to drive to All Saints Hospital. In any case, he had no place to go. His home was empty; his wife and children were with Uncle Toda in San Fernando. It was a new situation for him. He was very much a householder, and his little cottage in Culver City was his rock. Now, suddenly, he was alone, homeless, for he had no desire to go home and sleep in an empty house—a place at this moment not only empty but very dangerous.

  At the pathology room in the basement of All Saints a lonely figure sat at a laboratory table under a bright light; peering into a microscope. In all the years he had worked with Dr. Baxter, Masuto had never inquired as to whether the small, bitter medical examiner had a wife or a family. That was poor human behavior on his own part, he told himself, and even worse Zen behavior—at which point in Masuto’s thinking, the doctor looked up and said, “It took you long enough to get here, my Oriental Sherlock. Did you expect me to wait all night?”

  “You mean you were actually waiting for me?”

  “I wasn’t sitting here whistling Dixie. Now, listen to me. I was letting you and your boss, the brilliant Wainwright, who is possibly brain-damaged according to his behavior, run around in circles, and then my conscience took over and I reminded myself that we’re on the same side. The point is, Masuto, you don’t need an autopsy for what you want. I simply took some blood from Mrs. Mackenzie and I ran a lot of tests. She was not poisoned or drugged, unless you think of alcohol as both of those things, which it is. Eve Mackenzie was drunk—sodden, stinking drunk. She was absolutely loaded—with nothing but alcohol. Now, if you’re going to ask me whether she could drive a car in her condition—well, I would have to know what kind of a drunk she was.”

  “You just told me that,” Masuto protested.

  “No, sir. I told you how much alcohol there was in her blood. What kind of a drunk she was is something else. There are folks who have that kind of alcohol level in their blood, and they would get up out of a chair and fall flat on their face. Someone else walks away and you don’t even know he’s loaded. Tell me, did her sister approve the autopsy?”

  “No.”

  “Now you know why.”

  “You mean her sister knew she was an alcoholic, and she figured now that Eve is dead there’s no need for the world to know.”

  “That would be my guess.”

  “And you think she could get in her car, start the motor, drive two or three miles, and then pass out?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “And you feel nothing more could be gained by an autopsy?”

  Baxter shrugged. “What more do you want? Conceivable but not likely. I don’t think she had any drugs. The liquor did it.”

  Masuto thanked him. “I’m very grateful.”

  “Tell that to Abramson. Remind him that what I’m paid by the richest city in America is a national disgrace.”

  Back in his car, Masuto sat and brooded. He reminded himself of an ancient Zen story. The student comes to the Zen master and says to him, “Master, my father sends me here to study Zen, but why should I study Zen?” To which the Roshi replies, “So that when the times comes, you will not be afraid to die.”

  Masuto did not know whether or not he was afraid to die. The times when he faced death left no moments for reflection, and he had always considered himself a very poor Zen Buddhist; but he was also a practical person, and he felt that to go home to his house in Culver City tonight would be foolhardy indeed. Instead, he drove downtown, taking precautions to see that he was not followed.

  It was almost eleven o’clock when he reached the Zendo in downtown Los Angeles. The door to the meditation hall was always open, and he went in there, taking off his shoes first. The meditation hall was thirty feet long and twelve feet wide. Running the length of the room on either side, there was a section five feet wi
de and raised six inches from the ground. A single lamp lit the polished wood of the hall with a soft, flickering radiance.

  Masuto took a pillow and mat from where they were piled at the end of the hall, set the small round pillow on the mat, took off his jacket, loosened his belt, and then settled himself into the lotus position. He began his meditation, and then found himself falling asleep. The soft light in the long empty hall had a hypnotic effect, and it had been an endless day since the bomb planted in his car blew Officer Clint into eternity. He fought to stay awake. Another Zen tale told of the monk who, having slept through his meditation, cut his eyelids off in remorse. A story Masuto hated, but which came to his mind now as he fought to remain awake—even resorting to the device of counting each breath.

  It did not help, and a voice speaking in Japanese reached into his consciousness, saying, “Masao, Masao, what must I think to see a man pretending to meditate and sound asleep, with a gun under his arm in this place where no weapon is permitted?”

  It was always difficult for Masuto to understand Japanese, and coming out of sleep even more difficult; and now he could only mumble, “Roshi, I slept in my meditation.”

  “It is past midnight,” the old man who was the Roshi there told him. “Go home and sleep, Masao.”

  “I sent my wife and children away. My home is a dangerous place.”

  The old man shook his head unhappily. “Why must you earn a living this way, Masao?”

  “It is my karma.”

  “Don’t talk nonsense to me!” he snapped. “It is your choice. Now, come to my house and I’ll spread a mat on the floor for you. Sleep is not meditation, and I think you need sleep more.”

  Masuto slept well on the floor of the little house behind the Zendo hall, and in the morning, after a bowl of rice and several cups of tea, he looked upon the world more cheerfully. He put through a call to Kati, who informed him that Uraga and Ana were already swimming in the holding pond and very happy, and Uncle Toda and his wife were darling to them, but that she, Kati, wanted to be home with her husband where she properly belonged.