The Case of the Poisoned Eclairs: A Masao Masuto Mystery

by Howard Fast

“I don’t know. I said I think so. I’m dealing with a killer, and I try to put myself into his mind and think the way he thinks. It’s not easy. You get a crime of passion or violence, and you can understand it. They are crimes done by human beings who have momentarily lapsed. But this is something coldly plotted by a man who has stopped being human. So I try to approximate that kind of mind. I have to. It’s all we have, not one damn thing more. If I can find this chemist while he’s alive, it will help, maybe wind the thing up. Even dead, it will help.”

  “Okay,” Bones agreed. “I’ll set things moving in the county. You can line up the San Francisco cops from Beverly Hills.”

  “I don’t think it’s up there. I think it’s right here in L.A.”

  At that moment, a uniformed policeman approached them, looked at Masuto curiously, and then asked, “Are you Sergeant Masuto, Beverly Hills P.D.?”

  Masuto nodded.

  “We got a call for you.”

  Bones picked up his telephone and told them to put through Sergeant Masuto’s call. He handed the phone to Masuto, and Beckman’s voice said, “Masao, is that you?”

  “What’s up, Sy?”

  “Can you get away now?”

  “If it’s important.”

  “It’s important. I’m up on Mulholland Drive, half a mile west of Laurel Canyon. You’ll see my car and a sheriffs car and an L.A.P.D. car. I’m trying to get them not to touch anything or move anything until you get here, and they’re giving me a hard time because it’s their turf, not ours. But I think I can hold them if you get here in half an hour.”

  “What have you got?”

  “I got a body. But get up here and we’ll talk about it.”

  The Chicano Kid

  Mulholland Drive is a narrow, twisting, badly-paved two-lane road that runs across the ridge of the Santa Monica Mountains and the Hollywood Hills, from Cahuenga Canyon in the east to Topanga Canyon in the west. Although it is almost entirely contained within the city limits of Los Angeles, it presents a vista of wild brush and mesquite-covered hills as well as breathtaking views of both the city of Los Angeles and the San Fernando Valley—providing one drives it on a day when the smog is light enough to see anything at all. Nevertheless, its illusion of wilderness, combined with the fact that it bisects one of the most heavily populated cities in the United States, makes it a favorite scenic drive for tourists and a weekend outing place for the local residents.

  At least twice a year, preferably during the winter months when there was little or no smog, Masuto’s wife Kati would pack a picnic lunch, and he would drive her and the two children to one of the lookout points on Mulholland. There they would eat their lunch and marvel at the great vista of valley and mountains spread out before them. He thought of this now as he raced along the Hollywood Freeway, his siren screaming—a sound he disliked intensely—his old Datsun shivering in protest against eighty miles an hour. He had to cut his speed as he turned off for Mulholland. Not quite half an hour, but forty-one minutes from the time he had received Beckman’s phone call in downtown Los Angeles to the cluster of cars on Mulholland was not bad time at all.

  From a group of uniformed officers—there was a sheriff’s deputy and three L.A.P.D. cops, while a fourth uniformed officer waved the traffic on—Masuto heard Beckman’s booming voice: “There’s Masuto now. So you let the body lay there for an extra half hour. The kid’s dead. He’s not going to be any more dead.”

  A white-coated ambulance man said, “You kept us sitting here like this was the only stiff in Los Angeles.”

  “You got a radio. Stop yapping,” Beckman said.

  “Are you Sergeant Masuto?” one of the Los Angeles cops asked him.

  “Yes.”

  “Well, this ain’t Beverly Hills. You can’t interfere like this. I damn near arrested that guy Beckman,” the cop said.

  “It connects with our trouble. He wouldn’t let you move the body, is that it?” Masuto asked.

  “That’s it. So will you go down there and see whatever he wants you to see and let us get out of here?”

  “Down here, Masao,” Beckman said.

  Beckman clambered down the mesquite-covered hillside, Masuto picking his way after him. Another ambulance man, holding a stretcher, stood in a tiny hollow where the body was wedged. It was a young Chicano boy, dressed in tee shirt, jeans, and sneakers.

  “Shot once in the head, behind the ear—small caliber, maybe a twenty-two,” Beckman said.

  “How long has he been dead?” Masuto asked the ambulance man. “Can you make a guess?”

  “At least two days.”

  “Some kids climbed down here and they spotted the body,” Beckman told him. “It doesn’t have to be our kid. This city’s filled with kids who do violence on each other, and maybe ten thousand of them wear blue jeans and tee shirts. But look up there at the broken branches, Masao.”

  Masuto nodded. “Dumped over the side, out of a car.”

  “That’s right. He gets into the car after he buys the pastry. Maybe he delivers it.”

  “No. It had to be injected with the botulin. He didn’t deliver the pastry.” Masuto stared at the body again. “Chicano kids are killed, but not this way. Gang wars, bursts of violence. But not this way.”

  “Can we get him out of here now?” the ambulance man asked.

  Masuto nodded, and he and Beckman climbed back up to the road.

  “Well, thank God that’s over,” the L.A. cop in charge said.

  “What did he have in his pockets?” Masuto asked.

  “We got to hold it for the investigators,” the cop replied.

  “I know. Can we look at it?”

  “Not much to look at. Just some money. Nothing else. No identification.”

  “How much money?”

  “Here,” he said, handing Masuto an envelope. “Count it yourself.”

  Masuto counted it. “Twelve dollars and twenty-five cents,” he told Beckman. “It fits. He gave the kid another ten dollars. I suppose he invented another errand, and that’s how he got the kid into the car.”

  “It could be. He’s one cold-blooded bastard, Masao.”

  “Do you guys know something about this killing?” the L.A. cop asked. “If you do, one of you ought to hang around until the investigators show up.”

  “When will that be?”

  “Any time now. We run a busy city. It’s not Beverly Hills.”

  “We’re getting there,” Beckman said. “Don’t put down Beverly Hills.”

  “You stay with it,” Masuto said to Beckman. “Tail after the investigators. You can tell them what we’ve got, which is nothing. I don’t remember one like this. We have nothing—no lead, no motive, no direction.”

  “We know one thing,” Beckman said.

  “What’s that?”

  “That this son of a bitch kills people the way we kill flies.”

  “He’s insane. So are a thousand others walking around on the streets of this city. It doesn’t help now. Maybe later. See what you can find out about the kid. It’s possible that our killer just picked him up on the street; it’s also possible that they had a previous acquaintance. Maybe the kid had friends and one of them saw something. It’s just barely possible that the money is a coincidence—possible, but not likely. So if you have a chance, poke around the bakery again. Get a death picture. I hate to use them, but someone around the bakery might recognize it.”

  “I can get the bakery lady down to the L.A. morgue.”

  “I wouldn’t put an old lady through that. Get the picture and show it to her. That ought to do it.”

  “Where will you be?”

  “Damned if I know,” Masuto said, shaking his head. “I’ll be at Laura Crombie’s house, but not until ten o’clock tonight.” Then he added, “I’ll call in. You’d better do the same.”

  Masuto went back to his car, sat for a moment or two staring through the windshield, then took out his notebook and called headquarters on his radiophone.

  “Polly,�
� he said to the lady who answered the phone, “this is Masao. Jot down this number.” He gave it to her. “Dial it and patch it through to me.”

  “For you, Masao, it’s a pleasure.”

  He always reacted in surprise at the fact that women liked him. He never thought of himself as likable or lovable, a tall, dour-faced second generation Japanese man, yet nothing pleased him more than this almost consistent response on the part of women. He pardoned himself; he argued to himself that he had a good wife whom he loved, that he was scrupulous in his behavior as a policeman, that he was content. Or was he?

  This was no time to debate it. Laura Crombie’s voice came over the phone.

  “This is Sergeant Masuto, Mrs. Crombie. There was a question I didn’t ask—at least I can’t remember asking it. Who received the pastry when it was delivered?”

  “Didn’t I tell you? Ana did.”

  “And of course she never mentioned who delivered it?”

  “No. It wouldn’t be of any importance.”

  “Yes. And since I left you, anything?”

  “No, nothing out of the ordinary. I called the ladies. They’ll all be here.”

  “I’d like to change that,” Masuto said.

  “Oh, no!”

  “Please. I’d like you to call them again and get them to your house right now. And then I’m going to have a policeman sitting in his car across the street from your house.”

  “But why?”

  “I’ll tell you why very bluntly and plainly—because I’m afraid.”

  “Sergeant Masuto, we don’t live in a jungle. This is Beverly Hills.”

  “I know it is. Will you please do as I say?”

  “I suppose so. When will you be here?”

  “About ten, as I said.”

  “And we just sit here and wait for you? Come on, you can’t be serious!”

  “I am very serious. I know what I ask is a nuisance, but I’m trying to keep you alive—all of you.”

  “Aren’t you being dramatic?”

  “I hope so. Enough to impress you.”

  He finished with Laura Crombie and was talking to Polly again when Beckman came over to the car and stood by the open window. Masuto had just asked her to get a make from L.A.P.D. on Tony Cooper.

  “Who’s Tony Cooper?” Beckman asked him.

  “A hairdresser. You’ve seen his place on Camden Road.”

  “How does he fit into all this?”

  “I don’t know. I look where the light is, because everywhere else it’s dark.”

  “And what’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Not very much. They tell the story of a man crawling around under a lamp post on his hands and knees. Another man stops and asks him why, and the man on his hands and knees says that he lost a gold cufflink. ‘Where did you lose it?’ the man asks, and the man on his hands and knees replies that he lost it a hundred feet down the street. ‘Then why are you looking here?’ the second man asks. And the man who lost the cufflink replies, ‘Because it’s light here.’”

  “That don’t make much sense,” Beckman said.

  “What does in this crazy case? There are your investigators,” Masuto said, pointing to where a car had pulled up. “Give it about an hour, Sy, and then I want you to drive over to Laura Crombie’s place. I asked her to get the other three women over there, and they should be there by then. I don’t want anyone else going into that house without your say-so.”

  “Come on, Masao, you can’t do that. Wainwright would have my scalp if I tried anything like that.”

  “I’m not telling you to pull any rough stuff. We’re putting the house under police protection. There’s nothing illegal about that.”

  “What do you mean, we’re putting it under police protection?”

  “I’ll fix it with Wainwright.”

  “So I see someone going in. Do I stop them?”

  “No. Just find out why. Park near the door. If Mrs. Crombie says it’s okay, let them in. But stay right on top of it, and don’t take your eyes off that door for two minutes.”

  “That’s great. When do you get there?”

  “About ten. Maybe earlier—not later.”

  “And when do I eat?”

  “Get a sandwich on the way. And grab those investigators. They’ve given it their five minutes.”

  “Masao,” Beckman said, “why is L.A.P.D. the only police force in the country that calls its detectives investigators?”

  “Ask them,” Masuto said, and put his car in gear and drove off.

  At Rexford Drive, Captain Wainwright listened bleakly to Masuto’s account of the day’s events.

  “Assumptions,” he said without enthusiasm. “All you got is a series of assumptions. We still don’t know but maybe this Mexican girl died of the damn eclairs, and you link up the kid on Mulholland Drive with a group of wild guesses. You tell me we got a lunatic who’s killed two people already, but all I see that I can put a finger on is a food poisoning and a killing that belongs to L.A.P.D.”

  “I beg to disagree. We have a murderer who is indifferent to human life. He’s killed two people and a dog, and he’ll kill anyone who stands in his way.”

  “What in hell do you mean, stands in his way? What is his way? What is he after?”

  “I think he’s after those four women. I think he’s going to try to kill all four of them.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know. If I knew, we wouldn’t be arguing. All I’m asking is that you give Beckman and me a free hand on this case.”

  “For how long?”

  “As long as it takes—maybe another day, maybe a week. I don’t know.”

  Wainwright sighed and nodded. “Okay, but don’t talk to the press. Not a word. You want to make a murder case out of this, you can have the time. But keep it quiet.” He stared intently at Masuto. “You keeping anything back?”

  “Would I?”

  “You damn well would. All right, it’s yours.”

  Polly intercepted Masuto on his way out. She was small and blonde and blue-eyed. “What do I have to do,” she asked him, “to get a reaction from Detective Sergeant Masuto?”

  “You get it all the time. I hide it behind Oriental inscrutability.”

  “Which means?”

  “That I adore you but don’t dare show it.”

  “Bull. You are married. Every decent man is married. Try a singles bar some night and you’ll see what I mean. Don’t you want to know what downtown has to say about your Tony Cooper?”

  “That’s what I asked.”

  “Well, here it is.” She read from a slip of paper. “Three arrests, homosexual practice, no convictions, all of it ten years ago. You know, it should be the women who do the resenting, not the cops. We suffer when the men leave the market place, and as far as I’m concerned the cops have got better things to do than to pull people in for being gay. You know how they do it?”

  “I have heard,” Masuto said.

  “They entice them into porno movie houses and then arrest them. I think it stinks. Our boys wouldn’t do that, would they, Masao?”

  “No, we’re too short on cops. Thanks, Polly.”

  It was almost six o’clock when Masuto parked on Camden Drive across the street from the beauty parlor, but the shop was still open. Only a single customer remained, a brown head being trimmed by a slender, dark man in a white jacket with pink stripes. Masuto crossed the street and entered the shop.

  “We don’t do men and we’re closed,” the man in the striped blazer told him.

  “Tony Cooper?” Masuto stood just inside the door.

  “That’s right.” He stared at Masuto thoughtfully, and then said to the woman in the chair, “Don’t move, baby. I’ll be with you in a minute.” Then he walked over to Masuto and whispered, “Fuzz?”

  Masuto nodded.

  “Oriental fuzz. I’ll be damned.” Still in a whisper, “Can you come back? She’s the end of the line.”

  “I’ll wait.”

&nbs
p; Masuto sat down and picked up a copy of Architectural Digest and leafed through the pages. You could gauge the prices at a hairdressing establishment by the kind of magazines they left around. Architectural Digest probably indicated a twenty-five or thirty dollar haircut. It was part of the trivia that went into Masuto’s store of facts. A policeman living very simply in a small house in Culver City—which is to Beverly Hills what Brooklyn is to Fifth Avenue—he did his daily work in one of the wealthiest communities on the face of the earth. It called for a certain kind of balance and a special kind of perspective, and he thought of this as he leafed through the magazine, looking at photographs of the homes of millionaires. He had never envied wealth, although often enough he pitied those who possessed it; but then, he was a Zen Buddhist, and that gave him his own unique handle on things. Sy Beckman handled it by ignoring it; it just happened to be the shop where he worked.

  Cooper finished with the lady whose hair he had been cutting and saw her to the door. Then he turned to Masuto and shook his head. “You guys never give up, do you?”

  “I try not to, but if you’re thinking about your record, I couldn’t care less.” He showed his badge. “Masuto, Beverly Hills police.”

  “Okay, but what can I do for you? Is it a violation or tickets to the annual ball?”

  “Neither. I want to pick your brains, and I want whatever I pick to stay with you, because if any of it gets out, I will come back and lean on you very heavily.”

  “Now?” he demanded indignantly. “It’s a quarter after six. I’m closing. I’ve had a hard, lousy day. The help goes home at five, but if some broad wants a haircut at six, I stay.”

  “Now.”

  “I got a date.”

  “Call them and tell them you’ll be late.”

  “I don’t have to answer any questions.”

  “I don’t have to be nice,” Masuto said gently.

  “All right. You win. You want coffee?”

  “Yes, thank you.”

  Cooper regarded him curiously. “You’re a damn funny cop. I never knew they had a Jap on the police force here.”

  “You live and you learn.”

  “I shouldn’t have said that—Jap,” Cooper said. “I meant Japanese. What the hell, you pick it up. I’ll get the coffee. Maybe you want a drink?”