The Case of the Angry Actress: A Masao Masuto Mystery

by Howard Fast

  “Baloney. Why would she wait eleven years?”

  “Then would you mind telling me the gist of your discussion with Mr. Cotter, concerning Samantha?”

  “I would mind. It has no bearing here.”

  “Have you also spoken to Sidney Burke about it?”

  “You know, I don’t like those questions, Sergeant Masuto. Not one goddamn bit. Your job is to protect the citizens of this community, not to harass them. I am no stranger at City Hall—”

  “You know well enough what my job is, Mr. Anderson. You are an officer of the court, so don’t threaten me. I don’t threaten you. This case is as sticky as flypaper, and my hands are full of it and I am trying to walk a tight rope at the same time. I ask you something, and you could blow your top and slug me, and what would that solve?”

  “I don’t blow my top. So if you got any questions, ask them and then get to hell out of here!”

  “Do you believe your wife is Samantha?” Masuto asked flatly.

  Anderson’s face whitened and he clenched his fists. He took a step toward Masuto, and then his telephone rang. He picked it up, shouted into it, “I told you, no calls!” and slammed it back into its cradle. It rang again. He picked it up and listened. The white of his face became whiter.

  “Oh, my God,” he said. “My God—my God.”

  He put the telephone down and stared hopelessly at Masuto.

  “What happened?” Masuto asked him.

  “Mike Tulley has just been murdered. Shot. With his wife’s gun.”

  There were cars all around the Tulley house. This one had not been kept quiet. There were newspapermen at the place and more still arriving. Over a dozen cars were crowded in and around the driveway.

  Officer Frank Seaton supervised the half-dozen uniformed men who were trying to keep the newspaper people and the curious out of the house—and at the same time keep the traffic moving on Benedict Canyon Road. Inside the house, Detective Beckman was in charge. They were waiting for Masuto to arrive before they removed the body, and Beckman immediately led Masuto into the study. Murphy Anderson stayed in the living room. Anderson remained silent. Like so many big, fleshy men, a mood could age him. He had not spoken a word on the way over with Masuto, and he said nothing now as he slumped into a chair in the living room.

  “Why?” asked Detective Beckman, nodding at him.

  “He’s the boss now,” Masuto said. “I want him here. Something’s going on inside him that I don’t know about.”

  Beckman closed the door of the study behind them—the same room Masuto had been in the night before, except that now it was full of smoke from Dr. Sam Baxter’s cigar. There were also the fingerprint man, the photographer and two men from the hospital, Beverly Hills being too small a community to boast its own police autopsy facilities. The mortal remains of Mike Tulley lay on the floor, covered by a thin rubber sheet, which Dr. Baxter callously threw back. Tulley’s body was stripped to the waist. There were three small, ugly bullet holes in his chest.

  “There you are, Masao,” said Baxter. “Close range. Thirty-two lady’s gun. Smith and Wesson automatic. Victim died of heart failure but not of a heart attack.”

  “Your sense of humor leaves something to be desired,” Masuto said. “God help him.”

  “Macabre job, macabre humor. I don’t get too many murders, Masao, but they mash themselves up in cars day in and day out. Half the human race is in a frenzied race to eliminate itself. Can we take him away?”

  Masuto nodded, and the hospital attendants put the body on a stretcher and carried it out.

  “What about them?” Beckman asked, motioning to fingerprints and photography.

  “They should be finished now.”

  Reluctantly, the fingerprint man and the photographer allowed themselves to be ushered out of the room. Dr. Baxter dropped into a chair and relit his cigar. Detective Beckman seated himself on the built-in couch. Masuto remained standing, staring at the blood blot on the carpet. Tall, sliding aluminum doors at one side of the study opened onto planting and swimming pool—that heady badge of status that is almost obligatory in Beverly Hills. The contained vista was very beautiful, and Masuto thought he recognized the work of Hono Asaki, the landscape gardener who was very much in demand at the moment. Standing there, Masuto attempted to feel something of what the dead man had felt. It was not good to die in the face of such beauty—in youth and vigor. But then, it is not good to die, anywhere, anyplace.

  Beckman rose, went to the table, and picked up a card-board box. It contained the gun.

  “You want to look at this, Masao?”

  “Her gun?”

  “Right.”

  “She admits it?”

  “Right.”

  “Send it over to ballistics. Where is she?”

  “Upstairs, lying down. She was hysterical. Doc gave her something to quiet her down.”

  “What did you give her?” Masuto asked Baxter.

  “A placebo. Two aspirin. No shock, just lady hysterics. She quieted down almost immediately.”

  “You’re a witch doctor,” Beckman said.

  “Aren’t we all?”

  “Do you want to see her now?” asked Beckman.

  “Later. Tell me about it. It seems I make a practice of coming in after everyone else is seated.”

  “As long as you’re on time for the next one. As far as we can put it together, this is it. According to the wife. She’s the only witness. The lady who did the killing—”

  “Lady?”

  “So it would seem. I am giving you Mrs. Tulley’s version, because it’s the only version we got. This lady killer, who seems to be the coldest dish around this town, evidently parked her car down the road toward Lexington. One of our cops saw it there when he was making his rounds, but he didn’t give it a second glance. It was a cream-colored car, he thinks, but it could be dull yellow, and it could be either a Pontiac, an Olds or a Buick, or maybe just something that looks like one of them. That’s what you train a cop for, to be observant. Well, she walked up to the driveway, and either Tulley let her into the house himself or she came around here and in through the windows. They have a housekeeper, who was in the kitchen. They have a maid, who was upstairs. Maybe Tulley knew she was coming. Anyway from when the cop saw the car, we guess that this killer-type broad arrived here at about noon or thereabouts. Ten or fifteen minutes later, Mrs. Tulley comes down. She is dressed and on her way to make a lunch date at the Beverly Wilshire. The lunch date is a Susie Cohn, and we checked that out because she called here to see what was keeping Lenore. But Mrs. Tulley has to have a word with her husband before she leaves the house and she comes to the study, tries the door, finds it locked. ‘Mike!’ she calls out. ‘Open up.’ Then she hears a woman’s voice, ‘The mills of the gods, you—’”

  At this point, Detective Beckman consulted his notebook.

  “Yeah, this is it, ‘The mills of the gods, you dirty louse!’ Then Tulley yells, ‘What are you talking like that for? Are you nuts? Put away that gun!’ Then three shots, deliberate, one, two, three. Then the sound of Tulley’s body hitting the floor. Then Mrs. Tulley begins to scream. The cook comes running. The maid comes running. There is Mrs. Tulley screaming and pounding on the door. They think they hear a car start—but it doesn’t send any message to them. Then the maid gets the idea to run around to the big sliding windows. As she leaves the house, she sees Tulley’s car swing out of the driveway to the right. It’s parked on Benedict Canyon Road, where the killer picked up her own car and drove off, just as cool as a cucumber. Apparently, she knocked off Tulley and then walked through the sliding doors into the garden, like a lady should, got into Tulley’s car and took off.”

  “Fingerprints on the gun?”

  “Are you kidding?” Beckman said.

  “What do you think?”

  “What should I think? If Mrs. Tulley let him have it, how did she get around to the other side of a locked door in all of ten seconds, and who drove Tulley’s car out and down
almost to Lexington? They all seem to have heard the car start, and the maid saw it swing out of the driveway. Mrs. Tulley left the maid upstairs so that accounts for her. The cook is an old Mexican lady, and Doc had to give her the real thing, not a placebo. So what is left?”

  “Speculation,” Masuto said thoughtfully. “Fascinating speculation.”

  “You put the two broads together?” Beckman asked.

  “At least the two deaths,” Masuto replied. “The poor Chief wanted so desperately not to have a murder in Beverly Hills.”

  “Come in,” Lenore Tulley said in reply to Masuto’s knock. She was not in bed, but sitting by the window, fully dressed and smoking a cigarette. Unlike the rest of the house, Mrs. Tulley’s bedroom was aggressively nonmodern, with a mahagony four-poster bed, a large hooked rug, dotted Swiss curtains, and two very fine and expensive early American chests. While Masuto’s knowledge of furniture and decor was by no means encyclopedic or wholly discriminating, he was possessed of good taste and he recognized that while the room was odd, or at least at odds with the rest of the house, it was neither vulgar nor pretentious.

  “My hair used to be brown,” Lenore Tulley said evenly. “I graduated Smith, class of ’56. I am not a bona fide California product, and the furniture in this room was in my room in Connecticut when I was a kid. I am frightened but not grief-stricken, Sergeant. Let me make that plain. It is an ugly thing—and very upsetting too—to have your husband murdered while you are forced to stand on the wrong side of a locked door and do nothing about it. Believe me, if it were possible, I would have saved my husband’s life. I disliked him intensely, but I had no desire to see him murdered. If I do any weeping, it is only for myself. One never really recovers from a murder, does one?”

  “That all depends,” Masuto said, smiling slightly. “The victim never recovers, does he? The murderer sometimes recovers, I suppose. The innocent bystander—well—tell me, if you disliked Mike Tulley so, why did you remain married to him?”

  She shrugged. “That’s almost too complex to unravel. We separated twice. I am very wealthy—much more than he—but more recently. My father died last year, and I inherited a great deal. There’s a community property law in this state. I was not in love with anyone else. I am neurotic as hell and I see an analyst five times a week, and in this rotten social blister called Los Angeles, there’s a certain value in being married to a TV star. There’s no other status out here. Also, Mike made divorce a rough thing—”

  “Then generally speaking, his death benefits and liberates you,” Masuto said softly, not knowing what reaction this would evoke from her.

  But she only shrugged and nodded. “If you want to look at it that way. I suppose poor Mike made it a little easier for me. I don’t know.”

  “And the murder—can you talk about it now?”

  “Why not?”

  “Dr. Baxter said you were hysterical.”

  “So I was upset. That idiot doctor of yours gave me a couple of aspirin. He partakes of a general Beverly Hills belief in the stupidity of women. I’m all right now.”

  “As I understand it, you were on your way out to make a luncheon date and you knocked at the door of the study. You were coming from upstairs?”

  “That’s right.”

  “From this room?”

  “Yes.”

  “How long had you been here in this room?”

  “About an hour—dressing, makeup. My maid, Binnie, was with me—not to help me dress. I can dress perfectly well by myself and I prefer to. But Binnie had a fight yesterday with some stupid kid she’s dating, and she was crying on my shoulder.”

  “You left her in the room when you went out?”

  “No, she followed me out on the landing and began to whine about what should she do.”

  “Giving you an absolutely perfect alibi,” Masuto reflected.

  “Well, don’t hate me for that, Sergeant. No one will believe it. By tonight, everyone will have made up his or her mind that I killed poor Mike.”

  “I don’t think so. Now, you knocked on the door. Did you hear the woman’s voice immediately?”

  “No. there was an interval of silence. I suppose you could count ten. Then that crazy voice.”

  “Crazy? Why crazy?

  “That’s it. I don’t know.”

  “But you said crazy voice. Why?”

  “Because it was different, I suppose. A high, hysterical voice. It shook and trembled. I just never heard a voice like that before.”

  “Then it did not remind you of anyone you know?”

  “Maybe. I am not sure.”

  “Look, Mrs. Tulley, either it did remind you or it did not. Which is it?”

  “It reminded me. It reminded me of someone’s voice.”

  “Who’s?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Dear lady, please. Be reasonable. If it reminded you of a voice, you must know who it reminded you of.”

  “I don’t.”

  “All right. Was the voice mocking? Hateful?”

  “Mocking, I would say.”

  “And your husband’s voice?”

  “Afraid. Oh, my God, he was so afraid—you know, I can’t feel any real grief and yet it breaks my heart. He was so afraid.” She began to cry and went over to one of the chests for a fresh handkerchief.

  “Are you all right?” Masuto asked.

  “Quite. Go on, please. I want to see the bitch who did this drawn and quartered. Why? What gave her the right? Because a man’s a louse? If you go around killing every man who is a louse to some dame, then you’ll end the male population, period! I hate her. Tulley—Tulley was just a permanent adolescent, an all-American boy who never grew up, just like every other all-American boy. Why did she kill him? He wasn’t even a real, high-class louse. He was only a slob, a good-looking TV slob.”

  “What bitch?” Masuto asked. “Samantha?”

  She studied him narrowly for a moment. “What do you know about Samantha?”

  “A bit here. A bit there. What do you know about her?”

  She cried a bit again, and then she dried her eyes and said, “I wish I was like you, Sergeant.”

  “How is that?”

  “Japanese. Out of it. So I could stand back and look at it. You must get some kind of special kick out of looking at a sewer.”

  “I live in the same sewer,” Masuto said. “Also, I’m a Nisei. Here I am and here I live. I would like to talk about Samantha.”

  “Oh, I just bet you would!”

  “Will you?”

  “You are damn right I will. Talk and anything else that will put a rope around that bitch’s neck. Shall I tell you something, Mr. Detective? I had not seen my father for two years, but when he died it was the worst thing that ever happened to me until now. Maybe worse, because I loved him and I could never break down the wall between us. Do you know who I ran to the day he died?”

  “Al Greenberg?”

  “That’s right, Al Greenberg. And that rotten bitch murdered Al Greenberg and now she murdered Mike.”

  “When did you find out about Samantha?”

  “Last night. After you left. It was a stinking, dirty mess, just the way this whole thing is. I don’t know how to tell it to you.”

  “Any way. Try. I’m not a human being. I’m a cop.”

  “He accused me of being Samantha, Sergeant. Can you imagine? He accused me of being Samantha.”

  “Well, that’s not so strange. He was overwrought, terrified, filled with guilt. Did you know about Samantha at that point? When he accused you?”

  “No. I did not. Furthermore, I made him understand that when he and his anthropoid buddies were having their gangshag, I was in Smith College in western Massachusetts. And then that fool—that poor fool had the nerve to ask me whether I could prove it.”

  “Then you knew what had happened to Samantha?”

  “No. Not then. I’m mixing up the sequence last night—that’s because I’m upset.”

  “I understa
nd,” Masuto said. “He accused you of being Samantha, but you did not know what he meant?”

  “Exactly. I said to him, ‘Mike, are you nuts?’ Oh, I was no joy. I hate myself. But I did not know he was going to be killed. I said, ‘Mike, I always knew you were a louse, but I always figured you for a louse with marbles. Do I have to tell you that I am your own miserable, everloving wife, Lenore? Smith College, class of ’56. Have you really flipped? Haven’t you looked at my yearbook? What kind of a nut are you? And who is this Samantha?’ Then he wanted out of the whole thing, but I wouldn’t let go. Then he told me. I think he enjoyed telling me.”

  “The dressing room, the part in a TV show, the arrangements that Sidney Burke made?”

  “Right down the line. Oh, he was a daisy, my Mike—right down the line. Do you mind if I have a drink?”

  “Go ahead.”

  “Will you join me?”

  Masuto shook his head. Lenore Tulley went to a cedar chest, opened it and by that motion caused a small but well-equipped bar to rise out of its depths. She poured herself a straight vodka and threw it down her throat.

  “You’re sure you won’t join me?” she asked Masuto again. “You know—you’re a good-looking cop. How old are you?”

  “Old enough not to drink in a lady’s bedroom while I am on duty.”

  “How about that? Shouldn’t you have a stenographer in here taking notes and all that?”

  “No. You’re not a suspect—”

  Detective Sy Beckman knocked on the door, and then entered. “Masao,” he said, “what about the news boys talking to Mrs. Tulley? Also the CBS and ABC and NBC trucks are outside. They all want Mrs. Tulley.”

  Masuto looked inquiringly at Lenore Tulley, who shook her head and said, “I have had it. They can drop dead, the lot of them. Los Angeles, farewell. They can get lost in the smog.”

  “You’ll have to talk to them sooner or later,” Beckman said.

  “Then later.”

  “Tell them she is prostrated and unable to talk to anyone.”

  “No!” she exclaimed.

  “Tell them that,” Masuto said.