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

by Howard Fast

  “I don’t.”

  “You know, you could do a lot of good for yourself. It’s not that we don’t care about you. We do. But our real interest is in the people who hired you. I’m not saying you’re not in trouble; you are neck-deep in trouble, but wouldn’t it be a nice thing for you if we could go to the district attorney or even to the judge and say, this fellow—what did you say your name was?”

  He didn’t slip. “Hank Dobson.”

  “Okay, we say to them, this fellow Hank Dobson, you know, without him we never would have made the bust, and we really busted somebody. That would help.”

  “Look, Sergeant, I keep a place in San Francisco. I don’t mind telling you because I figure there’s no bail anyway, and anyway I don’t keep a place very long. People in the business know about my place, and you work by recommendation. Three days ago, I got a phone call—”

  “Man or woman?”

  “Man.”

  “Any accent?”

  “Careful, correct talk. He was a foreigner, but that’s just a guess. Asks me if I’m free and can take on a job. I say it depends. He tells me it’s a Beverly Hills cop. I tell him that’s thirty thousand dollars. A half hour later, a messenger comes with the money and your name.”

  “That’s a sleazy story,” Masuto said, “full of loose ends. I don’t buy it. How did you know where to find me? How did you know I’d be up in Malibu Canyon? How did you find out which was my car? Nobody followed me to the Mackenzie house. You were sitting there waiting. And where’s the money?”

  “Shit on all that,” he said, and grinned and shook his head.

  Wainwright went to the door and called for another cop named Sandy, and told the two of them to search Dobson, pile his possessions, and then stay with him. At the same time, a very short-tempered Dr. Baxter entered the room.

  “I’m a medical examiner, not a doctor. Who’s going to pay for this, that miserable chintzy city you work for? And why was I led to believe it was a corpse?”

  “I can take care of that, Doc, if it’s going to make you happy. This is the bag of human garbage murdered Oscar Clint. He’d be a lot prettier as a corpse.”

  “What is this?” Dobson shouted at Wainwright. “You going to leave me with these creeps?”

  “He has a broken wrist, Doc.”

  “And a broken finger.”

  “Then why don’t you take him to the hospital?”

  “He likes it here.” Wainwright drew Baxter out into the corridor. “We have a problem. He doesn’t belong to us. He belongs to the L.A. cops. But we’re pretty certain that he killed Clint by setting that bomb, and he tried to kill Masao here tonight.”

  “Did he?” Baxter asked, smiling evilly. “You don’t have a scratch, Sergeant. He’s a bungler.”

  “That’s very amusing,” Masuto said. “Nevertheless, we have a problem. The captain will have enough explaining to do downtown. We’ve had some run-ins in the past, and they don’t exactly love me, so we have to put our best foot forward—”

  “Did you break his wrist?” Baxter demanded.

  “It was unavoidable.”

  “Patch him up nicely,” Wainwright said. “The cops downtown will jump on anything, and what we don’t need is any charge that we’re torturing that miserable offal in there.”

  Baxter shook his head in disgust. “Cops,” he said. “Cops.”

  “I can’t figure him,” Wainwright said as they went into his office. “All these years he worked for the city and I still can’t figure him.”

  “He’s a complex man,” Masuto said.

  In Wainwright’s office, he telephoned Kati at his Uncle Toda’s house, and she said to him, “We were expecting you, and then when you didn’t come I called the police station. They said that someone had destroyed your car but you were all right.”

  “What idiot told you that?”

  “I don’t know, Masao, because I was too frightened even to ask his name, and all I could think of was how poor Oscar Clint had died in your car—”

  “Please don’t cry,” he said to her. “I’m all right. I don’t have a scratch on me. Please, Kati, don’t cry.”

  “Will you come?” she begged him.

  “If I can find a car—”

  “Take one of the prowl cars,” Wainwright said. “Bring it back in the morning and we’ll find you a rental.”

  “In about an hour,” Masuto said to Kati.

  “Have you eaten?”

  “I’m not hungry.” In his state of tension and excitement, food was the last thing on his mind. “How are the children?”

  She was crying again as she told him that the children were fine.

  “You can’t blame her,” Wainwright said. “I never had anyone put a price on me. I don’t know how I’d take it. But maybe since we got that blond turd inside, you can rest easy.”

  “Not until we find out who hired him and why.”

  “Then for God’s sake, be careful.”

  “I’m always careful,” Masuto said.

  Sweeney came into the room with the F.B.I. response to the fingerprints. “They also sent the stuff on your question about the social security card.” He handed two sheets of paper to Wainwright.

  “Well, you were right about his name,” Wainwright said to Masuto. “According to the F.B.I., his name is Albert Dexel, and he’s got a reputation on several continents. They’ve never been able to hang it on him here at home, but they want him for murder in Paris and in Copenhagen, and they think he has some connection with the P.L.O. That’s pretty good for something out of a Saturday Evening Post cover. And it also gives me a shoe-in with the L.A.P.D. We’ll hand the collar over to them, and it’s just classy enough for them to forget that you busted the creep on their turf. Now, this one—” He was reading the report on Feona Scott. “I’ll be damned. Feona Scott was born in Baltimore, Maryland, in 1941. She died in a car crash in Dallas, Texas. So the good Feona’s card was not only a forgery, it was a forgery based on an actual card. How the hell do they do that?”

  “Either steal the original or have access to the records.”

  “Either way, the F.B.I. wants, us to file a report on why we made the inquiry and on anyone using the card. Masao, what in hell are we dealing with?”

  “I intend to find out.”

  “Well, try to stay alive until you do—if that’s not too much to ask.”

  “Its not too much to ask.” The captain handed him the two F.B.I reports, and Masuto glanced through them.

  “What about blue-eyes in there?” Wainwright asked him. “You want to have a shot at him again?”

  Masuto shrugged. “I don’t know. I think that he was telling the truth—at least part of the truth. I don’t think he knows who hired him. I think he may have had contact and taken directions from Feona, but that doesn’t mean he knows any more about her than we do, which isn’t very much. You can work him over, but it’s been a long day for me. I’m tired. I want to see Kati and the kids and then sleep.”

  “Go ahead,” Wainwright said magnanimously. “It’s been three long, lousy days. The city doesn’t pay for twelve- and fourteen-hour days. So take off and get some rest.”

  Masuto broke the speed limits, one of the privileges of being in a prowl car. Kati was waiting for him. Masuto was persuaded to eat a cheese omelet, and he and Kati sat at the kitchen table in the silent, sleeping house, whispering. A hot bath was waiting. And after that, Masuto lay in bed with his wife in his arms, forgetting a world he lived in but had never made.

  The morning was lovely. There was a rumor in southern California that in the San Fernando Valley the months of July, August, and September were hot, smoggy, and unbearable, but all rumors are unreliable, and here was a morning at the end of August as cool as a mountaintop and as sweet as honey. The aroma of oranges lay over Uncle Toda’s place like an olfactory blessing, and the air was full of glistening green hummingbirds, suspended over flowers in the heady joy of a hummingbird’s existence. Masuto had never seen so many hum
mingbirds, and he had a feeling that they lived perpetually in the satori that he dreamed of achieving.

  He was up with the sun, dressed and outside by six o’clock, as were Ana and Uraga, and with one of his children hanging on to each hand, he took a morning walk down to the irrigation canal and back, fending off the stream of questions the children directed at him, and thinking of a kinder day in the past, when children did not watch television news programs.

  “But why should they want to kill you?” Ana pleaded. “You’re good. You’re the best daddy.”

  “No one wants to kill me, darling, believe me.”

  Uraga, taking a defensive and knowing stance, told his sister that it was a lot of hooey. “You think those reporters know what they’re talking about? No, sir. They just think they do. Nobody’s trying to kill Pop. They wouldn’t dare. They couldn’t.”

  Kati made pancakes, and Masuto found himself filling his stomach with a great mound of pancakes soaked with honey. His aunt and uncle had only tea and rice cakes for breakfast. Kati asked when they might go home. Uraga didn’t want to go home, ever. Ana loved both places equally. The aunt and uncle smiled and begged them to stay; it was so wonderful having children and young people around.

  “Tomorrow, I hope,” Masuto said. “School starts next week.”

  “Will it be over tomorrow, truly?” Kati asked him.

  “I hope so.”

  Driving back to Beverly Hills, he tried to work it out in his mind. It was full of imponderables, but his life was always threaded with imponderables. He would create a schematic of many-shaped pieces and hope that they would all fall into place. Sometimes they did; more often they didn’t. Now he felt uneasy as a civilian driving a prowl car, and when he stopped for a light at Ventura Boulevard, an L.A. motorcycle cop pulled up alongside of him and stared suspiciously. Rather than submit to the motorcycle cop tailing him into Beverly Hills and then explaining that the sight of an Oriental in civilian clothes was suspicious, Masuto flashed his badge.

  At the police station, Beckman was waiting for him in full uniform, his oversized bulk bulging at the seams, the brass buttons ready to pop.

  “I’ll just go inside and change,” Masuto said. “We’ll use your car today, if you don’t mind.”

  “Everyone says it’s the end of a very nice Dodge. They got you pegged as a car destroyer. But I’m insured.”

  “Good. We won’t worry about it.”

  “As long as we’re not inside it when it goes.”

  Masuto grinned and went into the station.

  “You put me to shame,” Beckman said when Masuto reappeared in full uniform. “You haven’t gained an ounce.”

  “Japanese food. It’s not fattening. Now, what about tonight, Sy? Did you explain to your wife?”

  “I tried. What a ball my life would be if her suspicions were only true. That’s what burns me up, not that she’s suspicious, but that I don’t measure up.”

  “That’s only because you don’t have the time,” Masuto consoled him. “Not because you’re unattractive. You’re a hard-working cop.”

  “No talent,” Beckman muttered.

  At the Church of Our Lady, the uniformed cops were grouped outside under the direction of one Lieutenant Chester. He instructed Masuto and Beckman to join the four pallbearers already selected. “I think it’s only proper, Sergeant. Don’t you?”

  Masuto nodded.

  “You’ll be sitting at the front of the church. The rear rows are reserved for the honor guard. When the honor guard leaves, we’ll form two rows. Hats off in a civilian salute. No guns or anything like that.”

  “Out of the church and into the funeral car? Is that it?” one of the pallbearers asked.

  “That’s right.”

  “What about the cemetery?”

  “We have a limo for cops. Four men who were close to Clint are signed for it. We can take two more.”

  Two hands went up. Masuto felt a twinge of guilt, but it would have been a pretense if he had volunteered. He had never been friendly with Clint. While they were standing there, Clint’s wife and children went into the church. She looked strangely at Masuto. Well, that was only to be expected. In a way, as unreasonable as it was, she had to hold him at least partly responsible for her husband’s death.

  In the church, Masuto sat uncomfortably, feeling eyes turned toward him, feeling strange in his uniform. In spite of the fact that Buddhism excluded no other faith, Masuto never felt at ease in a church, and in this case, every word of the priest’s remarks appeared to seek him out. Beckman’s whisper into his ear was welcome.

  “Who do you think is sitting seven, eight rows behind us?”

  “I’m not turning around,” Masuto muttered.

  “I’ll fill you in. Mark Geffner and Jo Hardin, namely Eve Mackenzie’s sister.”

  Masuto had the next twenty minutes to brood about that bit of information—until with the other pallbearers, he slid the coffin into the hearse. Then he even managed to say a few necessary words to Mrs. Clint, who was no doubt saying to herself, why not him instead of my husband? But it was managed, and then the funeral cortege pulled away, and Masuto was left there vowing that he would not go through this again, not if it meant resigning from the force. And then he turned around and saw Geffner and Jo Hardin talking to Beckman.

  Masuto joined them. Geffner shook hands with him enthusiastically and remarked that he looked very good in uniform, and then introduced him to Jo Hardin, a tall, remarkably beautiful woman for her age, which was fifty-one.

  “What we would like,” Geffner said, “is to talk to both of you, and if you’re free for lunch, that would be a very good time, since Jo has to get back to Montecito this afternoon.”

  “Nothing would please me more,” Masuto agreed.

  “I got to get out of this uniform,” Beckman said. “I’m choking, and if I bend over too far, everything goes.”

  “We’ll change and meet you at Mario’s at twelve-thirty. You, know the place?” he asked Geffner.

  “On Olympic?”

  “The food’s edible and the prices are within a cop’s budget. You know we got to go dutch.”

  “Wouldn’t have it any other way.”

  Geffner and Jo Hardin were already there and waiting when Masuto and Beckman arrived. They ordered their food and then made some conversation about the funeral, Geffner sympathizing with Masuto’s discomfort.

  “I would have crawled out of it,” Geffner said. “She has to resent you—her husband killed in your car with a bomb intended for you. It must have been a very rough morning.”

  “Very rough, but no use to talk about it. It’s done. When a man’s life is taken, nothing puts it back.”

  “No, of course not. But that isn’t what we want to talk to you about, Sergeant. Let me first put the record straight about Jo and myself. This is a woman I love very much, and we’ll be married in about a month from now. I think I fell in love with Jo the first time I saw her, which was shortly after Mackenzie’s death—or rather after the death of the man in the tub. After her sister’s death followed so soon by the death of Feona Scott, Jo felt that we must talk.”

  “On the wedding,” Masuto said, “congratulations. On your desire to talk to us, well, I’m grateful. We need every bit of help we can get.”

  “First of all,” Jo Hardin said, “you know that my sister was an alcoholic?”

  Masuto nodded.

  “A most peculiar kind of alcoholic. You know there are alcoholics that pass out, that become disgustingly drunk—others who are unable to talk, others who become sick and nasty. My sister was none of those. Drunk, she assumed great dignity, and the drunker she got, the greater the dignity. She spoke slowly with great calm, and she could fool most people. But she was still sodden drunk, her judgment, her mind—well, that was her condition. I loved her very much. I don’t know what drove her to destroy herself, but she killed herself as surely as if she had put a gun to her head. When her car went over the cliff side, it may or may
not have been deliberate, but if it hadn’t happened then, it would have happened sooner or later. When Robert was around, he almost never permitted her to drive.”

  “We heard that he beat her,” Masuto said, “that she hated him.”

  “That’s nonsense. Beat her! Indeed! That’s the stuff that those people at Fenwick put out when they talked her into going on trial. They offered her money, the house—all sorts of things. Robert never beat her. He had such patience—he must have loved her very much, and you would understand that if you knew my sister. Drunk or not, she was a beautiful and charming woman.”

  “I’ll buy that,” Beckman said.

  “Did she know why they wanted to put her on trial?” Masuto asked. “That’s at the crux of this matter, and I can’t make head or tail out of it. I have theories—”

  “So have I,” Geffner cut in. “Let’s hear yours.”

  “There’s really only one explanation that holds water,” Masuto said. “Everything else I’ve thought of breaks down.”

  “Go on,” Geffner said eagerly.

  “Well, there’s no question in my mind that Feona Scott killed the man in the tub, not alone, but I have the feeling that she conked him over the head. So I have to draw the conclusion that they worked out the charade with Eve Mackenzie to cover up Feona’s guilt.”

  “You mean once Simpkins closed the book on her, threw the case out of court, it was over.”

  “Something changed,” Masuto said. “Your sister’s death, the empty coffin. Let’s look at it this way: there are a number of people in Washington who don’t want Feona prosecuted for murder. Why? If she’s one of their agents, if she’s C.I.A., then they surely would try to avoid the scandal and smell of murder. But—” he turned to Jo Hardin—“what do you think? Do you think Feona Scott was a C.I.A. agent?”

  “I don’t know—why? Why would the C.I.A. plant an agent in my sister’s home?”

  “It was also Mackenzie’s home.”