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

by Howard Fast

  He had taken three steps in the corridor when he was almost physically assaulted by Wainwright’s bellow. “Masuto, you get your ass back in here!”

  Masuto halted and waited. Doors opened. Heads poked out. Wainwright opened his door and shouted, “You got nothing better to do?” The doors closed. “Masuto, inside!”

  Masuto returned to Wainwright’s office, closing the door behind him as gently as he had before.

  “Sit down!” Wainwright snapped. “What in hell is eating you, Masuto? Haven’t I always treated you decently? Didn’t I fight to get the first Oriental cop on this force? Haven’t I stood behind you and backed you up every time they yelled for your scalp? And then when I get into a situation where I can’t back you up, first thing you do is dump your badge and gun and walk out—which is another part of your phony routine,” he yelled, thrusting a finger at Masuto, “just like that ‘so sorry’ crap that you picked up watching the late show—and you got to be the number-one horse’s ass to walk out on a job like yours in maybe the best police spot in the country, not to mention our pension plan. So will you pick up your gun and badge, and let’s try to talk like two civilized people.”

  “You’re absolutely right about the pension,” Masuto said, picking up the gun and badge. “Never thought of it.”

  “Don’t put me on. Just tell me plain and straight why you can’t leave this thing alone.”

  “No, sir. You tell me, Captain, why, when a murder takes place on your turf, you’re ready to let the killers walk away scot-free.”

  “That’s not fair, Masao.”

  “Why not? We both know Eve Mackenzie didn’t kill her husband. As a matter of fact, no one killed her husband because the dead man was not her husband. She was pushed into a trial because certain forces wanted it that way, and if I had to guess, I’d guess C.I.A. and Fenwick. And then they murdered her because their whole stupid plan couldn’t stand up and they thought she was going to blow the whistle on them, and last night they tried to kill Geffner, Hendricks, and me, and I think that if Hendricks wasn’t with us, they might have pulled it off.”

  “What? Just say that again!”

  “They cut the brake lines on Geffner’s car while we were looking at the car Eve Mackenzie drove, and it was on a spot just before that long slope in Malibu Canyon, and if you think I’m building up an incident to impress you, call Hendricks down at L.A.P.D. and he’ll tell you all about it.”

  “I don’t have to call Hendricks,” Wainwright said quietly. “I believe you. Who did it?”

  “I don’t think there’s much question about that. They had two big black limos parked there and a couple of thugs as drivers. That’s a guess, but I think it’s a damn good guess.”

  Wainwright sat and stared at his desk. Masuto waited. A clock on Wainwright’s desk ticked away the seconds. Finally, Wainwright looked up at Masuto and smiled forlornly. “Well, Masao, we’ve done some good work together.”

  “We’ll do more.”

  “Maybe. Only there’s a lot of muscle on the other side.”

  “If they can get away with it here, in this country, kill anyone who stands in their way, manipulate the police, manipulate the courts—well, we let them, don’t we? It’s our fault. We’re the ones who make murder easy—just by keeping our hands off.”

  “That’s right.”

  “So—what then, Captain? What do we do?”

  “A man was murdered in the Mackenzie house. He may have been Mackenzie. Most likely, he was not. When a homicide occurs here in Beverly Hills, it’s your responsibility and your department. So I expect you to bring in the killer, and I don’t give a damn if the President of the United States calls you down to Washington and stuffs you full of caviar and tells you to lay off. I am sick and tired of being told to keep my nose clean. If Abramson comes down and tells us that we’re both fired—well, okay, we’ll pack it up. But until then—”

  “I’ll stir up a lot of garbage. I have to know who killed Eve Mackenzie, if she actually was murdered, and who tried to kill us, and I might have to do some telephoning.”

  “I don’t have to instruct you.”

  “No, you don’t. Thank you, Captain.”

  “For what?”

  Masuto did not say that it took guts and principle to do what Wainwright was doing. Wainwright would not have taken kindly to such a statement.

  Beckman was waiting for Masuto, and asked him whether he was still working for the Beverly Hills police force. Masuto repeated his conversation with Wainwright, and Beckman wanted to know what it added up to and where it made any sense.

  “Mackenzie is killed, or someone who looks enough like him to be his twin brother, and then his wife, and then they go after you and Geffner and Hendricks like they’re running a goddamn butcher shop—and why? We don’t even have a smell of a motive.”

  “Just a smell. They wanted Eve Mackenzie dead because she knew too much. But what did she know? She wasn’t there when the man in the tub was killed. Did she know who he was? And how does Fenwick figure? Whatever Mackenzie’s employment card had on it could have been masked out when they Xeroxed it. So why wouldn’t they send you his fingerprints?”

  “They knew it wasn’t Mackenzie?”

  “No question about it. So that wasn’t Mackenzie. But why this strange charade? If they wanted to get rid of the twin, why not a shotgun blast in the face. A prowler, and Mackenzie kills him in self-defense. No questions asked, the way people feel today. Mackenzie would come out a sort of hero, and that Fenwick crowd would hardly be disturbed by blowing away a man’s face. But instead they work out that ridiculous bathtub murder, as described in Eve’s notebook.”

  “And then they kill her,” Beckman said.

  “If we can prove it.”

  “Give it a try, Masao. I know it’s outside our turf, but there has to be some way.”

  Masuto took a deep breath. “All right, first step.” He picked up the telephone and called All Saints Hospital. They gave him the pathology room, and a moment later he heard the rasping voice of Dr. Baxter.

  “Who? Masuto? Yes, I’ll talk to him.” And then, on the phone, he snapped, “No, there won’t be any autopsy.”

  “What?”

  “You calling about an autopsy for Eve Mackenzie? Well, I got her in the icebox, and there she stays until they make some funeral arrangements.”

  “Yes, I was going to ask about an autopsy. I thought I’d get over and see you sometime today.”

  “Save yourself the trip. No crime, no autopsy, unless her sister says so. Her sister doesn’t.”

  “When are they moving the body to a funeral home?”

  “Today, I imagine.”

  “Can you delay it?”

  “Why should I?” Baxter asked sourly.

  “Let’s say the poor woman’s been murdered. We owe her at least that much.”

  “We? I don’t owe her one damn thing.”

  “Would a court order delay it?”

  “I suppose it could. And now you’ve taken up enough of my time with your fancy guesswork—”

  Masuto put down the phone and turned to Beckman. “I took it for granted that Baxter would do an autopsy on Eve Mackenzie. He won’t. He says there’s no evidence that a crime has been committed, and therefore no legal reason for an autopsy. That means I have to hit Wainwright for permission to delay the funeral, which will leave him pretty unhappy. But I’ll get—”

  “He can’t authorize an autopsy, Masao.”

  “I know. But maybe he can order a hold on the body before the lawyers grab it. Meanwhile, you go up to Santa Barbara and find the sister and talk her into ordering the autopsy. All she has to do is write the request on her stationery. You witness it. If you can get her in front of a notary public, even better, but not absolutely necessary. If she’ll come back with you—well, that’s the best way. Her name is Jo Hardin. Talk her into coming back with you or get authorization, and take off now. Let’s move while we can, because sooner or later they’ll go all ou
t to stop us.”

  Wainwright listened unhappily. “If we go to pathology at All Saints and put a hold on the body, it’s like sticking our hand into a nest of wasps. Suppose we find out that Eve Mackenzie was murdered. Think about it: Star on trial for husband’s murder murdered. And you know what we add to that, Masao? She was murdered on the Malibu sheriff’s turf and the crime was investigated by the California Highway Patrol, and neither outfit had the brains to find out what was going on. The murder is solved by the Beverly Hills police. We pin an asshole badge on both outfits. But, Masao, it’s not our murder. We just happen to exist in the State of California. We got to live with the highway patrol and we got to live with the sheriff, but show them to be assholes—well, as I said, we got to live with them.”

  “And with ourselves.”

  “All right, all right.” Wainwright sighed and spread his arms. “All the way. She lived here, and we got a right not to have our citizens murdered.”

  “I’m sorry,” Masuto said.

  “The hell with sorry. We’ll do it the hard way. In this case, everything’s going to be the hard way.”

  “I’m going to see Sweeney. If you can order that hold on the body, I’ll pick up the papers and take them to Judge Simpkins myself, and maybe get him to back us up.”

  Sweeney, the fingerprint man, was skinny, dyspeptic, and slightly paranoid about the fact that Masuto put little stock in fingerprints at the scene of a crime. He was defensive the moment Masuto set foot in the small room he called his laboratory, and he stood silent and suspicious, glaring at Masuto.

  “Just a small favor, Officer Sweeney,” Masuto said in his most beguiling tone. “I’d like to have the Robert Mackenzie fingerprint file.”

  “The what?”

  “The fingerprints of the dead man, Robert Mackenzie.”

  “You mean the one whose wife scragged him?”

  “If you put it that way, yes.”

  “There ain’t no file.”

  “You mean no background information, but you do have the prints?” Masuto said, clinging to hope.

  “No.”

  “No what?”

  “No prints,” Sweeney said.

  “You’re telling me that you have no prints of Robert Mackenzie?”

  “That’s what I’m telling you, Sergeant.”

  “All right,” Masuto said coldly. “Suppose you tell me how it happened.”

  “In the first place, Sergeant, before you jump all over me, you got to remember that it is not procedure to take the prints of murder victims. Sometimes we do it, sometimes we don’t.”

  “Didn’t Detective Beckman tell you that he wanted to match Mackenzie’s prints with a set of prints from the Fenwick Works?”

  “Yes.”

  “And didn’t he tell you to pick up the dead man’s prints?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then where the devil are they?”

  “Now, just wait a minute, Sergeant. I follow procedure. When Detective Beckman told me that he couldn’t get the prints from Fenwick, I destroyed the prints I took from the dead man. We got no procedure for filing prints for murder victims. We don’t even have a file for it.”

  Of all problems that were a part of his work, Masuto was least equipped to deal with stupidity. He had always tried not to hate Sweeney. He tried not to hate him now. He tried to understand him, to sympathize with him, to approach the matter as a sincere Zen Buddhist should. It simply did not work, and after a long moment and several deep breaths, he said quietly, “Sweeney, have you ever taken the prints of a man dead two months?”

  “What?”

  “Didn’t you hear me, Officer Sweeney? Robert Mackenzie has been dead two months.”

  “Then how in hell can I take his fingerprints?”

  “That is up to you, isn’t it? I intend to exhume the body this afternoon, and I expect you to be there with your trusty fingerprint kit.”

  “Dead two months, he won’t have no fingers!” Sweeney shouted.

  “We’ll just have to wait and see, won’t we?” Masuto looked at his watch. “I think about four o’clock this afternoon. I want you to be ready with your equipment.”

  “He’ll be rotten, Masuto, rotten! He will stink!”

  “We’ll manage.”

  Back in Wainwright’s office, Masuto presented his case for exhumation.

  “You have to?” Wainwright asked moodily.

  “I must have the prints. Captain, this whole crazy puzzle rests on a question of identity. I’m convinced the dead man isn’t Mackenzie. Then who is he? When we know that, I think we’ll know who killed him and why.”

  “All right, I can give you a police order for the exhumation, but since the case is still in the court, at least technically, even with Eve Mackenzie dead, you have to get Geffner to countersign it. That puts us on safer ground, and the way this case is moving, I’m not giving up any safe ground unless I have to.”

  At that moment a uniformed patrolman, Oscar Clint by name, put his head into Wainwright’s office and said, “Oh, there you are, Sergeant. Your car is blocking mine.”

  “I’ll move it—”

  “Give him the key,” Wainwright said, “and let’s finish with these requests. I got to fill the city manager in on this, so let’s get both these orders out of the way before I’m canned.”

  Masuto tossed the car keys to Clint, who caught them and closed the door.

  “You sign right here,” Wainwright said to him. “You’re the officer in charge. This one for holding the body goes to Judge Simpkins for his signature. The other one, as I said, gets Geffner’s signature. Masao, I’m pushing you on this one because I feel we’re in some kind of a race. We stop and they—”

  He never finished. The explosion rocked the whole building. Masuto raced outside, Wainwright after him, down a staircase packed with police, office help, frightened people.

  Outside, where the cars were parked, lay the twisted, blasted remains of Masuto’s Datsun. The first flames were licking at the wreck as Masuto, Wainwright, and two other officers fought to get the door open. Then someone passed Masuto a crowbar, which he drove into the door and literally tore it from its frame. They pulled Oscar Clint out of the wreckage, gently, carefully, but it was too late. He was already dead.

  There were things to do. An ambulance had to be summoned to take away the broken remains of what had been Oscar Clint, and Wainwright had to rehearse what he would say to Mrs. Clint, who was the mother of four children. Statements had to be given, newspaper and television people satisfied, and Mr. Abramson, the city manager, spoken to with whatever explanations could be mustered. There had been some minor cuts from flying glass, and around the city hall, of which the police station was part, several cases of hysteria. As one of the newspaper people wrote, “Generally speaking, Beverly Hills is the most peaceful place in the world. This day was an exception.”

  But when Wainwright asked Abramson, “Do you want me to pull everyone off it and let it sit? That’s what they want. That’s why they tried to kill Masuto.” The city manager shook his head.

  “No, sir. If they—whoever they are—can come in here and turn the place into a slaughterhouse, it won’t be worth very much to live here. Let’s just say we’re protecting the price of the property, because I hate classy sentiments.”

  Masuto, in the room by virtue of being the target, said, “They’ll try again.”

  “You could take another month off,” Wainwright said.

  “I had my vacation.”

  “Bring him or them in,” Abramson said. “I’ll back you up to the hilt. We’ll all sleep better when it’s done.”

  With one thing and another it. was almost noontime before Masuto left the station house and drove out to his home in Culver City. His two children were at lunch when he got there. Kati opened the door for him, and he asked angrily, “Is that how you open a door? Someone rings the bell, and you don’t ask who it is—you just open the door?”

  “Masao, why are you shouting at m
e? We live on a quiet street in Culver City, not in some jungle.”

  “No, we live in a jungle,” he said, pushing by her into the house. “Close the door and listen to me. As soon as the children finish eating, pack a bag for each of them and pack a bag for yourself. I’m taking the three of you to Uncle Toda’s place.”

  Uncle Toda, Masao’s mother’s brother, owned an orange grove at the northern end of the San Fernando Valley. He was very fond of Kati and her children, even though, as an old man who had lived through the difficult years of World War II, and had spent two of those years in an internment camp, he looked dubiously upon his nephew’s role as a policeman. Nevertheless there were areas in which he admired Masuto, and when his nephew telephoned him about the possibility of Kati and the two children visiting for a few days, he and his wife received the suggestion with pleasure.

  But now Kati asked, “How? Have I ceased to exist as a person? You don’t ask me—you don’t tell me why you have made this decision. Well, I can’t go. There are only five days before the children must return to school. There is the party at the center downtown, and the Japanese festival in Anaheim, and I promised them—”

  “Stop it!” Masuto interrupted. “I have no time to argue.”

  Kati stared at him in astonishment and not without a little fear. He had never taken such tones with her before, not Masao; other husbands perhaps; but not Masao.

  “You will have them ready in ten minutes, no longer!” Masuto snapped. “Look upon me as an old-fashioned Japanese husband if you must, and obey me. Do you understand?”

  “No,” Kati whispered. She was not very frightened, not of her husband nor of other things, but she was a Japanese woman, for all that she had been born in America, and she did what he told her to do. She packed the suitcases, scrubbed the children’s faces, closed the windows in the little cottage, and followed her husband through the door.

  Outside, Kati and the children stared at the car that the department had provided as a replacement for Masuto’s Datsun.

  “Where is your car?” Kati asked.

  “We’ll talk about it later.”