The Case of the Angry Actress: A Masao Masuto Mystery

by Howard Fast

  “You can pick one up in a garage. The attendant turns his back and you’re armed. How many things like that are lying around? It could have been a monkey wrench, but the odds are on this. And the money is no mystery either. She had to be paid off in advance.”

  “Then why didn’t the killer take back his roll?”

  “No time, maybe. The killer could hear the kids on their motorbikes. Or maybe the money didn’t mean enough for the killer to try.”

  “Six yards and you toss it away like confetti!” Kelly snorted.

  “Why was she killed?” the Chief asked.

  “The payoff was one thing, but the killer couldn’t take any chances.”

  “OK, Masao—who killed her?” the Chief asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Why don’t you guess,” Kelly said.

  “Tomorrow I’ll guess,” Masuto told him.

  “But you know,” the Chief insisted.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Masao, if you’re playing games with me—”

  “I told you I don’t know.”

  “But you tie this in with Greenberg and Tulley?”

  “Both of them. They were both murdered by the same person.” He hesitated, and the Chief caught it and said, “It was three, before the car went over.”

  “All right—you want me out on a limb, I’ll go there. His name was Fred Saxton. He was 49 years old and he was production manager for Al Greenberg. He was murdered out at the Wide World studios seven weeks ago.”

  “I know the case,” Bones said. “That was an accident. A counterweight came loose and hit him.”

  “It wasn’t an accident,” Masuto said.

  “How the hell do you know?” Kelly demanded. “We don’t have a police force in LA—we just got a bunch of bums, bums who sit around on their asses all day and do nothing. We don’t bother investigating a case. No, sir. A guy gets his head broken with a sandbag, we don’t give it a second thought. It never occurs to us that maybe someone scrags him. We just write it down as an accident. That’s because we’re stupid.”

  “Who’s bugging you?” Bones demanded. “Every accident is an accident only until you know better.”

  “But this joker knows better than anyone.”

  “It happens.”

  “The hell it happens,” Kelly said. “I’m not satisfied—not one bit. And speaking for myself, you haven’t heard the end of this—not by a long shot.”

  He went to the desk and began to wrap the lug wrench in the piece of paper.

  “Fingerprints?” Masuto asked innocently.

  “Fingerprints? You been reading too much Fu Manchu.”

  He put the lug wrench in his pocket and stamped out. Bones stood looking after him hopelessly, and the Chief sat behind his desk, staring moodily at Masuto.

  “Do me a favor, would you, Pete?” Masuto asked Bones.

  Bones looked at the Chief, then at Masuto, and said, “You know, Masao, you could do me a favor. What do I do about this? A car goes over the shoulder on Mulholland Drive, and I got to come back to the boss with Kelly riding me and tell him how it’s a murder, but we can’t tell him who did the murder because you won’t guess no more.”

  “Tomorrow.”

  “And suppose tomorrow you don’t want to guess?”

  “Masao,” the Chief said, “is this the only way you can play it?”

  “I have three of them. One is the killer. They all spin threads, like damned little spiders. Three killers, three motives, three possibilities. I think I could guess. Then I guess wrong, and I have done precisely what the killer desires. This killer is not smart—diabolical but not smart. Every mistake in the book. Blunder after blunder, but because we are dealing with a lunatic, even the blunders work.”

  “Bones, do him his goddamn favor,” the Chief said. “And as for you, Masao—you haven’t even filed a report.”

  “When do I write it? In my sleep?”

  “What do you want, Masao?” Bones asked him.

  “I want to find out what happened to a kid called Samantha Adams. That’s her stage name. Her real name is Gertrude Bestner. She was born in 1936 or 1937, and her last known address was here in Los Angeles on Sixth near Gower. I’ll give you all the facts and details. The last fix I have on her is 1955, a rooming house on Sixth, run then and now by Mrs. Dolly Baker. So you start with 1955 and bring it up to today or as far as it goes. Where is she? Dead or alive? Doing what? Where was she?”

  “You don’t want much, do you?”

  “I want it tonight.”

  “You’re nuts,” Bones said.

  “Well, then how soon? Shave the hours, and maybe you give a life to someone.”

  “Will you back him up, Chief?” Bones asked.

  The Chief nodded.

  “Tomorrow. Maybe,” Bones said. “But only if she stayed in LA. If she took off, maybe a month, a year—or you can kiss your whole project goodby.”

  “Try?”

  “I said I’d try.”

  “I want it the first moment you have it. I’ll keep my band open in the car. The moment you have it, you can phone here, and the dispatcher will give it to me.”

  “All right. And what do we do with the Peggy Groton thing? Keep it open?”

  “You damn well do. It’s murder, isn’t it?”

  “That’s what you say, Masao.”

  “Tomorrow night I’ll buy you both a drink.”

  “Saki—and take me out for one of your Japanese meals.”

  “If I can fix it with my wife.”

  “I thought you Japanese—”

  “I am a Nisei,” Masuto explained.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Phoebe Greenberg

  ON his way out, the girl at the dispatch desk called after him, “Masao!”

  He came back, and she told him that there was a call for him. “A Mrs. Greenberg.”

  It took him a moment to relate it to a face and a person, and then he took the phone, and a low and pleasant voice said, “Sergeant Masuto, this is Mrs. Greenberg—Phoebe Greenberg. Rabbi Gitlin told me you spoke with him this morning.”

  “Oh, yes—yes, we had a talk.”

  “He was impressed with you.”

  “I was impressed with him,” Masuto said.

  “He said that you were a friend of my—of my husband.”

  “Yes, in a way.”

  “In any way—then I would like you to come to the funeral tomorrow. But that isn’t what I called you about. I would like to speak to you, if I might.”

  “When?”

  “Now. Is that possible?”

  “In ten minutes—or less. I am leaving now.”

  But the Chief intercepted him and said, “What about it, Masao? You’re way out on a limb and I’m with you.”

  “I told you, tomorrow.”

  “I sure as God hope so, Masao.”

  Even with the interruption, Masuto was at the Greenberg home in eight minutes, and now it was a little after four o’clock in the afternoon. The driveway was full and there were cars in front of the house; and in the living room, Murphy Anderson and his plump wife, Stacy, Jack Cotter alone, and Sidney Burke alone.

  They would be off to the chapel later to pay their respects to the deceased. Now they were here to pay their respects to the living.

  “Two chapels.” Sidney Burke said pointedly. He resented the fact that they were on opposite sides of Beverly Hills, as if he could see no reason on earth why two people in dying should not have the thoughtfulness to be of the same faith.

  “Where is Mrs. Greenberg?” Masuto asked.

  They explained that she was in the viewing room with Rabbi Gitlin. “I suppose he’s some comfort to her,” Jack Cotter said, “but the last thing in the world I would have imagined is that Phoebe needed that kind of thing.”

  “Why?”

  “Her relationship with Al—”

  “Oh, why don’t you shut up, Jack,” Anderson interrupted.

  “I don’t like to be talked
to like that,” Cotter said coldly.

  Stacy Anderson burst out, “Have you met Rabbi Gitlin, Sergeant Masuto? He’s absolutely fascinating. He’s—”

  Rising, Murphy Anderson said, “I think we must go, Stacy, if we want to get to both chapels tonight.”

  “Poor Lenore,” Stacy said, as if she only now remembered that Mike Tulley was dead. “What a dreadful thing she went through. Just imagine—to be trapped on one side of a door while your husband is being murdered by some dreadful woman on the other side of the door. It’s perfectly dreadful. Dreadful.” She enjoyed the word.

  “Sergeant Masuto,” Anderson said, “the three of us—Mr. Cotter, Mr. Burke and myself—would like to talk to you tonight. We feel that it’s very important.”

  “Where?”

  “My house. I’m on North Rodeo. Say about nine?”

  “I’ll be there,” Masuto agreed.

  The Japanese houseman came back into the room at that point and speaking in Japanese told Masuto that Mrs. Greenberg would like to see him.

  “Why in hell doesn’t he talk English?” Cotter growled.

  “I am sorry,” Masuto apologized. “He apparently forgot himself with me—there is a natural desire to use one’s own language. He simply told me that Mrs. Greenberg would like to see me.”

  Masuto followed the houseman into the viewing room. Pale, deep circles under her eyes, Phoebe Greenberg greeted him with evident relief. Rabbi Gitlin, sprawled in a chair at one side of the room, nodded at him. Phoebe asked him whether he would have a drink. She had a drink in her hand. She wore a pale green at-home that was most becoming and gave her a sort of ethereal appearance.

  “If you wonder why I don’t wear black, Mr. Masuto,” she said, “it is because my husband hated symbols as a substitute for reality. He bought me this dress himself. I have very few abilities and very few ways to pay tribute to him.”

  “You have the only ability that counts,” Masuto answered.

  “And what is that?”

  “To see yourself as a human being.”

  “I don’t really understand that,” she said, frowning. “But I am glad that you came here. I was very troubled about what I should do, and Rabbi Gitlin suggested that I talk to you. He said that you would hear whatever I had to say with understanding.”

  “That’s very kind of you,” Masuto told the rabbi.

  Gitlin rose and said, “Perhaps it would be best if I left you alone—both of you.”

  “No, no,” Phoebe protested. “I want you to remain.”

  “All right.” Gitlin sank back into the chair. Masuto remained standing and Phoebe Greenberg paced nervously as she spoke.

  “I didn’t want to bring this whole thing up. I wasn’t going to. My husband was a very sick man, Mr. Masuto. I knew this, because his physician told me and also instructed me in what to do in an emergency. I can’t talk very well about the relationship between my husband and me. We were only married three years, and his illness precluded any normal relationship. But I think I worshipped the ground he walked on. I never looked at another man after I married him, Mr. Masuto. Well, that’s done, and I cannot weep or carry on. Some can, some can’t. I was going to wash this whole wretched thing out of my mind until Mike was killed today. Tell me, do you think that the same person who murdered Mike Tulley killed my husband?”

  “Let me answer that obliquely, Mrs. Greenberg. No one will ever know, unless there is some sort of a confession, whether or not your husband was murdered. But I do know this—that if he was murdered, it was the same person. And I can tell you that this same person coldbloodedly killed two others.”

  “Oh, no! Who?”

  “Did you know a man called Fred Saxton?”

  “Yes—yes, I knew Fred. He worked for Al—for my husband. But his death—it was one of those awful accidents.”

  “I don’t think so, any more than the death of a woman called Peggy Groton, whose car went over the shoulder up on Mulholland Drive today, was an accident. There is very little doubt in my mind that both of these people were murdered.”

  “That’s a pretty terrifying statement,” Gitlin said. “What are you trying to tell us, Sergeant? That four murders were committed? Then what kind of horror is loose among us?”

  “You’re asking for a philosophical conclusion, rabbi. I am only a policeman.”

  “It’s not fashionable to faint, is it?” Phoebe asked.

  Masuto and the rabbi helped her to a chair. Very pale, she sat there and said, “When I was a little girl, my mother used to tell me about fainting and smelling salts and that sort of thing. It was very fashionable once, but I guess no one faints any more. You never hear about it. I don’t even have smelling salts in the house, whatever they are.” She took a deep breath and went on, “I am going to tell you about this, Mr. Masuto. It may be wrong and vile to speak about it, because it happened a long time ago. But I must tell you about it—I must.”

  Masuto waited. The rabbi glanced from Phoebe to Masuto, opened his mouth to say something, then clamped it shut.

  “A terrible thing happened eleven years ago on a set where my husband was producing a TV segment. A man—well, it was Sidney Burke, because I will have to name names or this whole thing is meaningless. Sidney got some young kid actress to agree to have sex with some men on the set in return for a tiny part in the show. You have to be an actress yourself to know what these crazy kids will do for a part—any part. They all live with some kind of childish, pathetic dream that once they are seen, they will all instantaneously become Natalie Wood. So Sidney arranged this ghastly affair and—oh, it’s so hard for me to speak about it.”

  “I know about it,” Masuto said shortly.

  “You do?” She was genuinely surprised.

  “Who told you about this? Your husband?”

  She nodded.

  “What did he tell you was his role in the affair?”

  She stared at Masuto for a long moment, and then she shook her head. “No. Oh, no. You are not going to tell me that he lied to me—”

  “I didn’t say he lied to you. I only asked you to tell me what he said was his role in the affair.”

  She turned desperately to Rabbi Gitlin, who said, “Tell him, Phoebe. Let’s get this whole filthy business out into the open. There’s no other way.”

  Then she said deliberately, “My husband did not lie to me, Mr. Masuto. He told me that the moment he found out what was happening, he put an end to it. He was sick and angry.”

  “I don’t think he lied,” Masuto said. “That’s essentially the same thing that Murphy Anderson told me—that he came on it and put a stop to it.”

  “Thank you,” she whispered.

  “Still, it is very important that you tell me exactly what your husband told you about this affair—and anything else you ever heard about it.”

  “But if what my husband told me was true, why was he murdered? She must have known—”

  “Who must have known, Mrs. Greenberg?”

  “Samantha.”

  “Oh?”

  “I said Samantha. Do you know who she is?” she cried.

  “As much as anyone knows who she is.”

  “Then why—”

  “That will not help,” Masuto said. “You are piling up premises. You are trying to be logical. But most of the logic we live with is a lie, and most of our attempts to be logical are only attempts to evade the reality. So if we have a puzzle, stop trying to solve it. Don’t cling to thoughts and notions. Let them pass through your mind and then dismiss them—or treat them all with equal indifference. Nothing that will ever happen or become known to you can change anything about your husband’s relationship to you.”

  She turned to the rabbi pathetically. “Is that true?”

  “Quite true,” Gitlin said.

  “But if you will answer my questions, you can help,” Masuto told her.

  “What questions?”

  “As far as you know, who were the men involved in this incident eleven year
s ago?”

  “Must I?”

  “I know their names,” Masuto said. “I am asking for corroboration, which is very important.”

  She took a deep breath and nodded. “Very well. You know about Mike Tulley. Poor Mike. He walked into all these things. He always had to prove that he was a man, and that bitch he was married to never let him believe he was a man for more than five minutes. Oh, I am sorry over poor, silly Mike. Then Jack Cotter.” She made a face.

  “How can you explain about Cotter? Jack is a Hollywood cowboy. Maybe the only time he was actually alive was when he put on his cowboy suit and his six-guns on the back lot. It’s a special spongy kind of brain. They really think they are cowboys. The back lot is the universe. It’s real. Do I make any sense?”

  “You make sense,” Masuto said. “And Murphy Anderson?”

  “Murphy. I could never understand it about Murphy, but then I appear to understand very little about men. Sidney Burke, of course. What can one say about Sidney? Max Green—poor Max. He was such a fool—poor Max died of a heart attack a year ago, and then Freddy Saxton. Of course. That’s why you asked me about him. And it wasn’t an accident?”

  “I am afraid not,” Masuto said.

  “What kind of a devil is she? Freddy has six children. Six kids. So he did something vile eleven years ago. Does that condemn him to death and his six kids—what does this all mean?”

  Masuto turned to the rabbi, who shook his head. “I am past speculation on that point. I don’t know what anything very much means—except that we store up horror. We prepay for it, so to speak, and then we are astonished when it happens.”

  “What can one say about Sidney Burke?” Masuto asked her.

  “What? Really, what?” She sighed. “When I asked Al why he didn’t break Sidney’s back, he said a very peculiar thing—that you cannot make a moral judgement of a person who is utterly without morality. Anyway, Sidney is Hollywood—I mean the place is full of Sidneys. Sidney doesn’t do evil—he is just completely unaware of any difference between good and evil. Sidney is the ultimate amoral. If you asked him about that wretched gangshag he set up eleven years ago, he might be nervous—but not ashamed. He was doing everyone a favor. He was doing Samantha a favor by getting her a job on TV. He was doing the boys a favor by getting them a free lay on the set. And he was being progressive. He was forwarding the whole industry in his own way. That’s the way Sidney is. He comes in dressed in his black silk suit with his pointed shoes and his thirty-dollar white-on-white tab shirt, and he gives you that big grin of his and a big kiss, and he never really gets angry at anything you say to him and he’s also thinking of some kind of favor he can do for you. That’s because he wants so much to be liked—”