The Case of the One-Penny Orange: A Masao Masuto Mystery (Book Two)

by Howard Fast

  “I’m afraid not.”

  “Why?”

  “Because the murderer will probably do precisely as you suggest — take the stamp to Europe or the Middle East and sell it there.”

  “I suppose so. What a pity!”

  “Thank you again, Mrs. Bettner.” Then he left, closing the door behind him.

  12

  ELLEN BRIGGS AGAIN

  It was quarter to eleven when Ellen Briggs opened the door for Masuto, and then she gave a startled exclamation at the sight of his face. “You poor man! What have they done to you?”

  “It’s nothing. I’ll tell you about it. May I come in?”

  “Please.” She closed the door behind him and stared at his face again. She had made no attempt to dress for his coming. She still wore blue jeans and a work shirt, her brown hair pulled back and tied behind her neck, her slender figure almost boylike, her dark eyes filled with compassion. “How awful! What happened to you?”

  “You remember the three men on motorcycles outside of the school?”

  “Yes.”

  “I met up with them in Topanga Canyon.”

  “Oh, no.”

  “Now they’ll never trouble you again.”

  “They robbed my house?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you arrested them.”

  “Yes …”

  “You don’t want to talk about it, do you? I know that whatever happened must have been dreadful. I don’t know how a man like you can be a policeman.”

  “How do you know what kind of man I am, Mrs. Briggs?”

  “I know. Do you think you could call me Ellen? I feel I have known you such a long time. What is your first name?”

  “Masao.”

  “Masao. That’s a nice name. May I call you that?”

  “If you wish.”

  “That’s silly of me, isn’t it? But I can’t think of you as a policeman, only as a friend, and heaven knows, I have few enough friends. Please come inside. I’m in the kitchen again. Do you mind?”

  “I don’t mind, no.”

  He followed her into the kitchen and stood there rather awkwardly. “Do sit down, please,” she said, “and don’t pay any attention to me. You can’t leap up every time I do.” He nodded and sat down at the kitchen table. “You look so tired. Will you have some coffee? Or something to eat?”

  “Do you know,” he said smiling for the first time, “I think I would. That is, if you don’t mind. Suddenly I’m very hungry. I forgot my dinner entirely.” Then he shook his head. “But no. That would be an imposition.”

  “It would not be an imposition. Do you know you have a very nice smile, but you ration it. Please. I’m a good cook.”

  “I don’t want you to cook anything for me.”

  “What would you say to scrambled eggs, ham, brown rice, applesauce, butter, and toast? The rice is cooked. I only have to warm it. The whole thing won’t take ten minutes.”

  “Right now it sounds like a banquet.”

  “Good. Do you want to smoke? Shall I bring you an ashtray?”

  “I don’t smoke, thank you.” He watched her as she beat the eggs, sliced the ham, warmed the rice, and put the bread into the toaster. He felt that one can tell a great deal about a woman simply by watching her prepare a meal. Ellen Briggs was coordinated, alert, efficient. Her competence would flow over into anything she did, and whatever she did she would do well. Yet she had married Jack Briggs. Why? he wondered.

  “What are you thinking, Detective?” she asked him.

  “It would be impolite for me to reveal it.”

  “That’s very Japanese.” She grinned at him. “Tell me.”

  “All right. I was wondering how a woman like you came to marry Jack Briggs.”

  “You like women a great deal, Masao, but you don’t know much about them.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Because if you did, you would know that women like myself very often marry a Jack Briggs, and there’s no way in the world they can explain why. It’s called masochism.”

  “I know what it’s called. That doesn’t explain it.”

  “No, it doesn’t.” She piled his plate with eggs, ham, and brown rice. “Eat and don’t think about such things. You know the story of the little boy who kept hitting his head against the wall. When they asked him why he did it, he explained that it felt so good when he stopped.”

  “Ah so.” The food was delicious. Between mouthfuls, he asked her how her son was.

  “He’s asleep. I’m afraid I frightened him, keeping him locked up in the house all day. I haven’t yet told him about his father.”

  She sat down opposite him at the kitchen table, putting her chin on her clasped hands and watching him, smiling slightly.

  “You’re very happy.”

  “Not very happy, no, Masao. I still have a knot of grief inside me for my mother. But without that — well, I am happier than I have been for a long, long time. I am free. Do you know what that means?”

  “I think so.”

  “I have stopped hating Jack Briggs — well, almost. Hate is very corrosive. Doesn’t it strike you as odd that I am talking to a detective whom I met only yesterday? But I refuse to think of you as a policeman. Are you married, Masao?”

  “Yes.”

  “Happily?”

  “As such things go, yes. My wife is a very simple and rather old-fashioned Japanese woman. She is very much in love with me.”

  “I can understand that. I think I am a little in love with you myself — just a very little, and nothing to trouble you or upset you.”

  Masuto put down his knife and fork and stared at her. She was wearing no makeup. Her fine deep brown eyes met his directly, and to his taste she was as beautiful a woman as he had ever known. Her nose was fine and straight, a slight flare at the nostrils, and her mouth was wide and expressive.

  “It does trouble you. I’m sorry I said that.”

  “No, no, Ellen Briggs. It makes me feel warm and good — for the first time today. I thank you.”

  “Finish your food.”

  He ate the last scrap of food on his plate.

  “Do you want more?” she asked him. “It’s no trouble.”

  “No. This is fine. Thank you.”

  She took away his dish and refilled his coffee cup, and then again seated herself opposite him. “Please begin, Detective Masuto.”

  “Begin?”

  “Your coming here tonight. You are my friend, I think, but you didn’t come as a friend. You came as a policeman.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “But you do know.”

  “Ah so.” He nodded.

  “When you say ‘Ah so,’ Masao, is it to remind people that you are Japanese?”

  “It’s a foolish habit.” he sipped his coffee. “Ellen” he said, “when did you discover that your husband had sold the stamp?”

  She was not surprised or perturbed at his question, and answered him directly or plainly. “The day after my mother died. The evening before the funeral.”

  “He told you?”

  “Yes.”

  “How did he tell you? I mean, how much did he tell you or explain to you about the transaction?”

  “Well, he told me that there was a stamp dealer in town who had been tracing this particular stamp, the One-Penny Orange, for years. Apparently a rare stamp is something like a famous painting. The dealers keep track of it as it is sold and resold, and I suppose they found some indication of my father buying it and then found out what had happened to our family. Anyway, this dealer finally traced it to my mother. He called Jack at the office, and they had lunch or something and discussed it. Of course, I’m telling you Jack’s story. Jack said he would have to take the matter up with my mother, because if she had the stamp, even if she didn’t know she had it, it belonged to her. Then Mother died, and since she was dead Jack felt that it was all right to take the stamp and sell it.”

  “To Ivan Gaycheck?”

 
“Yes, to Ivan Gaycheck.”

  “And how much did he say Gaycheck paid him for it?”

  She rose and went to the counter where her purse lay. She brought it back to the table and opened it, saying as she did so, “He told me that Gaycheck paid him a thousand dollars in cash. Tax-free cash. He made a great point of that. He gave me half. He was cutting me in, as he put it.” She took out of her purse five one-hundred-dollar bills and laid them on the table. “There it is — five hundred dollars for my mother’s life.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  She was silent for a while. Then she sighed and shook her head.

  “But you don’t believe your husband’s story?” Masuto said.

  “No, I don’t.”

  “What do you think happened?”

  “I think he went into my mother’s room the day before — the day she died. I think he found the packet of letters and cut the ribbon, as you noticed. I think my mother found him going through the letters. They were very precious to her — the only thing of my father’s that remained to her. I think she struggled with him, and in that struggle her heart gave way. Then Jack placed her body on the bed. She was dead. Who was to know how she died?”

  “But all this is only conjecture, Ellen.”

  “I know.”

  “Why did you lie to me? Why didn’t you tell me this when I saw you this morning?”

  “To what end? As you say, it’s only conjecture.”

  “Did you face your husband with your conjecture?”

  “Yes, last night.” She unbuttoned her cuff and pushed up her sleeve. Half of her arm was black and blue. “He uses his hands when he gets angry.”

  “Yet he agreed to the separation.”

  “Why shouldn’t he have agreed, Masao?”

  “Because he’s a bastard and because we have community property in this state.”

  “I waived that. My mother had an insurance policy of five thousand dollars and I was the beneficiary. It’s all I need and all I want. I signed a property waiver for my husband this afternoon. He will have the house and his money, and in return I get Bernie and his agreement not to contest the divorce.”

  “He’ll give up his son?”

  “Jack never loved anything. He couldn’t. He’s very happy to have the child out of his life.”

  “And what will you do, Ellen?”

  “I’ll go to England and get a divorce there or on the Continent. They still have theater in London, and where there’s theater, I can work. I’m a good actress.”

  “I know that.”

  “And I won’t be unhappy to leave, Beverly Hills is not for me. There’s only one thing here that I regret leaving, and that’s not for me in any case.”

  “And what’s that, if I may ask?”

  “Masao Masuto.”

  “You might find him a lot different than you imagine.”

  “No, I don’t think so.”

  “But, Ellen, Gaycheck is dead. If your husband obtained and sold the stamp without legal right, it might still be recovered. It would belong to you.”

  She met his eyes directly and said, “But, Masao, you know and I know that the stamp willnever be recovered. It is gone. Let that be the end of it.”

  “I told you that it was a stamp of great value. Do you remember? I said three hundred thousand dollars.”

  “I remember. I didn’t believe you.”

  “I have been told that at auction it might well bring more.”

  “Truly? Or are you simply saying that?”

  “I’ve never lied to you. I wouldn’t.”

  “Then what do you suppose Gaycheck actually paid Jack for the stamp?”

  “I could only guess. But since, given time, your husband would eventually discover its true value, I would guess that Gaycheck paid him at least fifty thousand dollars. Now, as I said, if you prove the transaction illegal, you can recover that money.”

  “You know that I can’t, Masao.” She smiled and reached across the table and placed her hand on his. Just a touch. Then she withdrew it. “Anyway, I am sure Jack made a mental inclusion of that in the settlement. Let him have it. Bernie is worth it.” She looked at him — as tenderly, he thought, as any woman had ever looked at him.

  “Poor Masao,” she said gently. “What a quandary for an honorable man!”

  “Perhaps less than you imagine. Did I tell you that I am a Zen Buddhist?”

  “No. I don’t know what that means.”

  “It’s a very ancient thing in Japan, a way of life, a religion, a way of being — a way of watching and listening. But it precludes judgment. We don’t judge.”

  “Ever?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then how can you be a policeman?”

  “With some agony, I suppose. It’s my thing, as the kids say, my karma, my fate. It’s the way I experience mankind. Others do it differently. But a policeman is not called upon to judge. He is given a set of rules and disciplines, and he obeys them.”

  “I see.”

  “Shall I tell you a story, Ellen?”

  “If you wish. If it will keep you here. I dread your going away, because I know that when you do, I will never see you again.”

  “It’s the story of a little girl, a child of great beauty and great sensitivity. A child who had to face the horrors of this life before any child should be called upon to do so.”

  “Has the child a name, Masao?”

  “We’ll call her Ellen.”

  “Yes, I imagined you would.”

  “When Ellen was very young, her father was taken away. Perhaps she remembered the incident, the brutality and savagery of it. Perhaps she knew it only from her mother telling her, and possibly she did not remember her father at all. But wisely or unwisely, her mother kept nothing from her. Her mother told her that her father had been taken to a place called Buchenwald, and that there he had been executed by a firing squad under the command of a man called Gaylord Schwartzman. Possibly Ellen’s mother learned somehow that this Captain Schwartzman delivered the final killing shot himself. It was something he enjoyed doing.”

  Masuto paused, watching her. “You want me to continue?”

  “Yes, Masao.”

  “I think it was less what happened to her father than what happened to her mother.”

  “Yes, Masao, you are probably right.”

  “The poverty, the indignity, the shame that her mother endured. When I look at the child, it seems to me that the mother must have been very beautiful once.”

  “But not when she died, Masao.”

  “I don’t know when the child decided to become an actress, but the decision was inevitable.”

  “Why, Masao?” she asked him softly. “Why was the decision inevitable?”

  “Because very early in life she prepared a role for herself.”

  “What role?”

  “The role of one who brings justice, as she saw it, to an unjust world. The role of a debt collector — a debt owed to her mother and father. A very strange role for such a child.”

  “But a time must have come when the child became a woman. You know, Masao, you really don’t understand women at all. You think you do, and I imagine you have loved many women in your own time and you respect them, but you don’t understand them. I imagine that’s the Japanese part of you.”

  “Perhaps you are right.”

  “Because when the child became a woman, she put aside childish things.”

  “If you say so.”

  “I don’t say so. You are telling me a story. I simply adjust one of your characters.”

  “If you wish to,” he said slowly, “you can continue the story.”

  “But that’s impossible. It’s your story. How could I possibly continue it?”

  “Very well. Then I will go on. The child became a woman and the woman became an actress. She played many roles, but never abandoned the single, central role she had chosen for herself.”

  “She was very consistent.”

  “
Oh, yes. I grant that. But she had a problem. While she had chosen her role, a part of the script was missing.”

  “What part, Masao?”

  “Gaylord Schwartzman. You see, not only did she have no idea where he was or even whether he was alive or dead, but she had no notion of what he looked like.”

  “But, Masao, if this woman was as consistent as you say, she must have had a kind of faith.”

  “Yes, I suppose so. A kind of faith.”

  “And this faith would have assured her that Gaylord Schwartzman was alive. You see, Masao, if you make her a consistent character, then your story must be equally consistent.”

  “Yes,” he agreed. “I see that I must make her an even more remarkable person than I had considered her to be.”

  “And what happened then?”

  “Of course, it’s not so strange.”

  “What is not so strange?”

  “Each one has his karma. I must give her hers. She waited patiently, and then some years ago her patience was rewarded.”

  “How, Masao?”

  “I’m not too sure of this part of the story, so I must guess. Her mother must have taught her to read German. Perhaps her mother was a subscriber to Der Spiegel …”

  “Der Spiegel?”

  “The German news magazine. Their Time magazine, so to speak.”

  “I see. Yes, go on.”

  “Or possibly she read the magazine herself. And then, one day, she was going through the September 1972 issue of Der Spiegel and there on page twenty-two she found a picture of Captain Gaylord Schwartzman.”

  “Bravo!” Ellen smiled and clapped her hands. “How precise you are, Masao, the date, the page — well, that is how a story should be told, precisely with all the facts. And what did your character do then?”

  “She tore out the page and kept it with her. Oh, I imagine she looked at it until it fell to pieces, but the face of Captain Schwartzman was engraved on her memory. It no longer mattered whether she had the picture or not.”

  “But why? To what end?”

  “Can’t you guess?”

  “I don’t want to guess, Masao. I want to hear it from you. I want to hear your story.”

  “The answer is simple enough. Her faith told her that someday she would find Captain Schwartzman, and she had decided that when she did find him, she would kill him.”