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

by Howard Fast

  “Oh?”

  “You don’t appear surprised. But of course you knew that.”

  “What else did Mr. Pringle tell you?”

  “That you offered Mrs. Mackenzie fifty thousand dollars not to reveal this and to accept an indictment and trial. And incidentally, if anything happens to Mr. Pringle—well, let me simply say that we will find the perpetrator.”

  “That’s rather dramatic, isn’t it, Sergeant?”

  “Did you know the body was not Robert Mackenzie?”

  “Yes, we knew.”

  “Where was Mr. Mackenzie?”

  “He was in Canada the night his brother was murdered, so he could not have been involved.”

  “Where in Canada?” Masuto demanded.

  “I can’t tell you that.”

  “Why was he in Canada?”

  “I can’t tell you that either. It has nothing to do with this matter.”

  “I think it has.”

  “That’s your privilege, Sergeant.”

  “Did you offer Mrs. Mackenzie fifty thousand dollars to stand trial?”

  “Of course not. Think about it, Sergeant. It’s absolutely absurd.”

  “Then Pringle was lying?”

  Soames leaned back in his chair and stared at Masuto thoughtfully. Then he spread his hands. “All right, but this is confidential, sir, on your honor as a gentleman. Anyway, the poor woman’s dead. Eve Mackenzie was a hopeless alcoholic, but the kind of alcoholic who could go about things and give the appearance of being cold sober. She always moved very slowly, which gave her an appearance of great dignity. Now, she could tell her lawyer or anyone else anything, invent anything. You’re not surprised?”

  “I knew she was an alcoholic.”

  “That answers your question.”

  Masuto shook his head. “Hardly. Tell me, Mr. Soames, did you know that Robert Mackenzie’s name was not Robert Mackenzie and that he was not born in Edinburgh?”

  Soames looked at his watch. “Just one o’clock, Sergeant. Are you sure you won’t break bread with us?”

  “I think not.”

  “Do you know, Sergeant,” Soames said, “a wise man knows when to stop asking questions. A wise man knows when a nuisance becomes an impediment. Don’t press your luck.”

  “That’s not a threat, is it?”

  Soames laughed. “Would I engage in threats? Sergeant, even a man so experienced as yourself falls into the trap of believing the nonsense one sees in films and on television. We don’t eliminate people and we don’t kill people. When I asked you not to press your luck, I simply meant that overreaching could have unpleasant consequences in terms of your employment, pension plan—that sort of thing.”

  “But, you see, I am lucky. In the past three days there have been two attempts to kill me, and I survived both.”

  “Yes, I know about that. I assure you, we had nothing to do with either of those stupid acts. If I should find it necessary to take some action—ah, but why talk that way? Why not let the whole thing drop? What’s done is done. I think that’s a good Zen position—the moment is now, and that is all that matters.”

  “For action,” Masuto said. “Not for memory.”

  “You refuse to lunch with us. In any case, I would like you to stay here this afternoon. There are people coming from Washington whom I would like you to meet.”

  “I’m afraid not this afternoon. I have work to do.”

  “I think you must stay, Sergeant. I was asked to have you here. I don’t think you should make a scene. It’s only for a few hours.”

  The door to his office opened and two armed guards stepped into the room. At the same time, the telephone on Soames’s desk rang. Soames picked up the telephone, listened, and said, “He’s on his way.” Then he turned to Masuto. “You do have a way with you, Sergeant. There’s an oversized man standing at our gate who claims to be a Beverly Hills detective and who is holding his gun to the throat of one of our guards, and who says that if you don’t walk out of here in the next five minutes, he’ll have to shoot the guard. Now, that’s a little outrageous and totally uncalled for. Please get over there and put an end to it.”

  The two guards escorted Masuto out more hurriedly than he had entered. He got into his car without recalling the city mechanic’s advice about the bomb and drove to the gate. The gate was open. On the outside, Beckman was holding a guard by his shirt front, half off the ground, the muzzle of Beckman’s revolver pressing against the underside of the man’s chin. Three other guards, shotguns pointed at Beckman, stood around the two.

  “Go down the road,” Beckman shouted to Masuto.

  Masuto drove down to the access road, stopped, got out of his car, and turned around. Beckman shouted to the shotgun guards, “I’m taking this baby down to the main road. He can walk back from there.” He herded him into his car and then said to him, “You behave while I’m driving or I’ll break your neck. I need only one hand for that.”

  They had lunch at Alice’s Restaurant on the Malibu Pier, two tall men, one heavy and slope-shouldered, the other slender and wiry, each noticing the other’s hand still shook a bit. Beckman had a hamburger. Masuto had cold fish. It was tasteless, but then anything would have been tasteless the way he felt. He had eaten here in the past with Kati and the children. The food had always been very good.

  “It’s me,” he muttered, pushing the plate away.

  “I know,” Beckman said, but he went on eating. “Masao, what was that all about?”

  “I don’t know,” Masuto said slowly. “I just don’t know. I think I’m beginning to get a glimmer, and then it’s turned on its head. We never had anything like this before.”

  “What do you suppose they planned to do with you up there at Fenwick?”

  “Nothing. I think they had some brass coming up from Washington, and they were going to put the heat on me with no holds barred. Nothing physical, but I think they felt that if they had me there, they could talk me into dropping the investigation—or maybe threaten and frighten me into it. But why? Why are they so damned eager to close the case and to make the world forget that a man was killed who was Mackenzie’s twin brother?”

  “Masao, who are they? Who are we up against?”

  “I don’t know that either. I think it’s the C.I.A., and then I have to ask myself, why would the C.I.A. want me dead? I don’t put it past them, but why? No, it’s not that simple, and it’s not just Fenwick and the C.I.A., and where’s Mackenzie, who isn’t Mackenzie, and I don’t think he’s a Scot either.”

  “What makes you say that?”

  “Well, I called Edinburgh this morning and discovered that no Mackenzie twins were born in the possible years. But what intrigues me a lot more is that I spoke to three different Scots, two men and two women, not to mention the local operators. The accent is fascinating. I mean it sounds a bit German, a bit Dutch. First time I ever really listened to—I mean listened from a certain point of view. Didn’t you once tell me that you have a psychiatrist in the family?”

  “Sarah’s side of the family. They’re the intellectuals who regard me as a dumb cop. Her cousin, Alvin Shapiro. Nice guy. Whenever I see him, which is at weddings, bar mitzvahs, and funerals, he’s got a whole list of questions about being a cop.”

  “Do you suppose he’d answer a question or two for me? From what I hear, they keep a ten-minute spot between patients. Where’s his office?”

  “On Camden.”

  “Good. We can hit it on our way over to the Mackenzie house. Suppose you call him now.”

  A few minutes later, Beckman returned to the table and informed Masuto that Dr. Alvin Shapiro would see them at exactly ten minutes to four. “And when he says exactly, he means it.”

  “It’s all right—just about as much time as we need. Give me the address, and I’ll meet you outside the building.”

  Dr. Alvin Shapiro’s office had a couch, leather with a headrest. There were also two armchairs and a desk, and blinds muted the room to soft lamplight, even
though the sun still shone outside. Dr. Shapiro was five feet five inches on top of three-inch heels, an alert birdlike man with the brightest blue eyes Masuto had ever seen. He shook hands with them eagerly. “So you’re Sy’s partner. Heard a great deal about you. You have a fan there. According to Sy, you’re a cross between Sam Spade and Mr. Moto.”

  Masuto burst out laughing. “That is delightful—Sam Spade and Mr. Moto.”

  “Who the hell is Mr. Moto?” Beckman wanted to know.

  “A pre-World War II creation of J. P. Marquand. But let’s get down to your question. A Beverly Hills psychiatrist is a prisoner of time and greed. What can I do for you?”

  “About brothers,” Masuto said, “fratricide, the ancient Cain and Abel syndrome, how common is it?”

  “There’s a name for it. It happens.”

  “But compared to matricide or patricide?”

  “Ah—there you’ve put your finger on an interesting fact. I was just reading a statistical study of this last month. Fratricide is much less common. It would almost appear that the link between brothers, or brother and sister, or sisters is deeper than between parent and child. But that kind of thinking can also be deceptive, since parent and child are separated by a generation gap and very often by a large cultural gap—neither of which would be present in a sibling relationship. Sibling jealousy and rivalry play another kind of a role.”

  “I see. Now tell me about twins, if you would.”

  “Identical twins or fraternal twins?”

  “Identical twins. How likely is the cold-blooded murder—not rage and anger, but cold-blooded murder of one twin by another?”

  “Premeditated and deliberate? I presume you are discussing an actual case, Sergeant, and that you didn’t come here for an instructive dialogue.”

  “An actual case.”

  “How old are these twins?”

  “Fifty-three.”

  “You know, Sergeant, identical twins are one of the great psychological mysteries of our profession. If I were to wax somewhat poetic, I might describe such twins as the appearance of one soul divided between two bodies. The syndrome is absolutely fascinating. Do you know, there have been cases of such twins separated as small children, living their lives a continent apart, never seeing each other, yet choosing identical professions and wives who were enough alike to look like sisters, and even choosing the same type of house to live in. It brings up all sorts of absolutely fascinating speculations, and I think that if I were really loaded, I’d take off two or three years and devote them to the study of identical twins. But you were talking about murder, cold-blooded, deliberate murder.”

  “Yes, murder.”

  Shapiro scratched his head and wrinkled his brow. “Do you know, Sergeant, I’ve never heard of such a case. That doesn’t mean it hasn’t happened. It could have happened any number of times, and my reading is limited. No—if it had happened with any kind of frequency, one of the journals would have written it up. You know, such a murder would be more difficult to undertake than suicide. The murderer would destroy the non-participating self.”

  “But it could happen?”

  “Sergeant, anything can happen. I simply feel that it is very unlikely, very unlikely indeed.”

  Masuto stood up and thanked him.

  “On the other hand,” Dr. Shapiro said, “since I’ve given you at least fifty dollars worth of Beverly Hills shrink time on the cuff, I want in return the privilege of taking both of you to lunch when this is all over and hearing the solution.”

  “Be glad to lunch with you,” Masuto said glumly, “but as to a solution—’

  “There’ll be a solution,” Beckman promised him.

  Downstairs, Masuto said to Beckman, “What makes you think so?”

  “I know you.”

  “I liked your cousin. He’s no fool.”

  “Except,” Beckman said, “that I had Mackenzie absolutely pegged for the killing of his brother.”

  “No, it made no sense. I wanted some way to get him off that mental hook, and your cousin gave it to me. Feona Scott killed the twin, Feona and Mr. X. Why all the Scots? Who helped her? It wasn’t Soames—that makes no sense at all. Sy, you have the search warrants?”

  “Right here in my pocket.”

  “All right. We’ll drive over to the Mackenzie house. If the lovely Feona is there, I’m going to arrest her for the murder of the twin.”

  “Come on, Masao. You told me I had no case against Eve. What kind of a case do you have against Feona?”

  “I’ll put something together. She had access to the notebook. She was there when it happened.”

  “And what was her motive?”

  “When I find Mackenzie—”

  “For God’s sake, Masuto, this thing is getting to you. If you arrest her, they’ll have her out in ten minutes flat. I’ve never seen you like this before.”

  “She’s the key to it. Look at me, Sy, I’ve sent my wife and kids away, I keep looking over my shoulder, Clint died in my car—and right there—there’s your car and there’s mine. Did you get a neat set of instructions on how to look for a bomb in your car?”

  “I got them.”

  “All right. Let’s see if our cars are clean. If they are, I’ll meet you at the Mackenzie place.”

  Lexington Road, about a mile in length, begins at Sunset Boulevard, goes north, and then curves west to end at a street called Whittier, and in this rather short distance displays some of the most expensive real estate in the world. There is probably no house on Lexington Road that could be bought for less than a million dollars, and there are a good many houses that would fetch well over two million dollars. The Mackenzie house was somewhere in between, a big two-story white house in what was loosely called the Mediterranean style.

  Beckman had just gotten out of his car when Masuto’s car pulled up and parked next to his. A large curving driveway in front of the house bent in the middle to provide an area where a dozen cars could be comfortably parked, and from this point a wide path led into the house. Beckman wondered by what virtue Feona Scott continued to occupy the premises, and Masuto thought it was simply a matter of not allowing the house to stay empty.

  “Even here in Beverly Hills, an empty house is a provocation.”

  “But she was here while Eve was still alive.”

  “Eve Mackenzie was not very alive. She was a drunk, Sy. She couldn’t be alone.”

  “And who owns the house now?”

  “That’s hard to say. It may be Eve’s sister, if Mackenzie made a will to favor Eve. Maybe when we have enough time to breathe and can stop running, I’ll explain the whole thing. Meanwhile, let’s face the good Feona.”

  “Are you really going to bust her?”

  “I am.”

  “And you’re sure she killed the twin?”

  “She and someone else, so ring the bell and let’s get on with it.”

  Beckman pressed the bell button. It was one of those electric chime affairs, and the chimes sounded simultaneously all over the house. It was a strange arrangement, but logical where the occupant was an alcoholic, and standing in front of the house, Masuto could hear the tinkling sound behind every window. But there was no sound of anyone stirring inside the house.

  “Try again,” he told Beckman. The tinkling sounded once more.

  “Looks like she’s out.”

  “Let’s have a shot at the lock,” Masuto said.

  “Breaking and entering?”

  “There’s a Westinghouse alarm system, but it’s turned off. Either she’s careless or she doesn’t give a damn. As far as this lock is concerned, a hungry wolf could blow his way through it.” Masuto took out of his pocket a key ring without keys. Instead, four oddly shaped pieces of metal were hooked on to it. He selected one of the metal probes, worked it into the lock, and then worked the door handle. The door opened.

  “We could have waited,” Beckman said uneasily.

  “Maybe not.”

  “What does that mean?”r />
  “We’ll see. Go upstairs, Sy. I’ll take the downstairs.”

  “What am I looking for?”

  “I don’t know exactly—photographs, papers, passports, a wall safe, books that don’t fit—shake the books. A book can have a lot in it that isn’t printed.”

  “I’m with you.”

  “See if there’s an attic entrance.”

  “Right.”

  Beckman started up the stairs and Masuto went into the library, a room facing him on his left. Unlike Beckman, he had never been in the Mackenzie house before. There were many Japanese—Niseis too—who believed, as the Chinese did, that the ghosts of those who died in a house were trapped there for years after. Of course, there are Westerners who believe the same thing, but Masuto heard many stories of rich Hong Kong Chinese, eager for a foothold in Los Angeles, who would buy only new houses. Himself, he deplored superstition, but from the moment he had set foot in this house, he had sensed a miasma that made his skin prickle and tightened his muscles. He went into the library with the same tense alertness with which a hunter might step into the jungle, and as he studied the wall of books, he heard Beckman’s shout.

  “Masao! Up here!”

  He took the steps three at a time. A man who shouts like that could be in desperate trouble, but it was with more muted tones that Beckman called him into the big master bedroom.

  “I’m here—in the bathroom, Masao.”

  He joined Beckman in the bathroom. In the bathtub, which was empty of water, Feona Scott was sitting. She was stark naked, and two thin streams of dried blood ran down her face from a bullet hole square in the middle of her forehead.

  “It is now four forty-five P.M.,” Dr. Baxter, who enjoyed being specific, announced. “I make it some time this morning—anywhere from eight to ten hours ago.”

  “I found her clothes,” Beckman announced from his position under the bed. Somehow he had squeezed himself under there. Now he was trying to work his way out.

  For the third time, Brody, the firearms expert, asked Baxter when he could have the bullet.