The Case of the Angry Actress: A Masao Masuto Mystery

by Howard Fast

  Her voice trailed away. Masuto was listening with astonishment. This was Phoebe Greenberg, who should have been a senseless blonde who never made it as an actress. He looked at the rabbi, who permitted himself a slight smile.

  “I go home,” Masuto said—“that is, sometimes I go home, and then when I do my wife says to me, tell me about today. What kind of a day was it?”

  “It might surprise you,” the rabbi said, “to find that her day is equally inscrutable.”

  “Perhaps. But we have been talking about this and that, Mrs. Greenberg. You didn’t call me over here to chat. You called me here to tell me who is Samantha, didn’t you?”

  “What a notion!”

  “But you did.”

  “I think you fancy yourself, Mr. Masuto, because you happen to be Japanese. It gives you a sort of racial crystal ball which you can bring out whenever the mood suits you.”

  “I think we both fancy ourselves,” Masuto said flatly. “All people do. All people build their own aura, their own mask that separates them from the world. Perhaps mine is that of the inscrutable Oriental—I imagine the rabbi chose that word deliberately—and Rabbi Gitlin goes through life as a large, confused innocent, as much of a mask as my own Oriental magic kit. And you, Mrs. Greenberg—”

  “And me?”

  “You are the professional Hollywood dumb blonde. Do you mind me being a bit shaken by what is underneath?”

  “And how do you know that I am a professional dumb blonde?” she asked coldly.

  “A word here and a word there. I listen. So why don’t we stop fencing. Who do you think is Samantha?”

  “Shall I tell him?” she asked the rabbi.

  “That’s up to you, Phoebe.”

  “Very well. Samantha is Trade Burke, Sidney’s wife.”

  The Japanese butler brought tea and tiny sandwiches, and he told Phoebe that there had been a call from the funeral chapel and that people were beginning to arrive, and that some relatives of Mr. Greenberg were arriving from the East and would go directly there, that his two sons were expected—his daughter was in Europe and could not be reached—and when would she be there?

  “I should go now,” she said, “but I must talk to Mr. Masuto. Please have some sandwiches, Mr. Masuto.”

  “I’ll go there directly,” said Rabbi Gitlin. “I can arrange for my wife to be there.”

  “The truth is, I am afraid to go there,” she said.

  “Well, that’s natural, Phoebe. Take your time, but come. You must. Meanwhile, my wife and I will constitute ourselves a sort of semifamily committee. There are no other relatives here in Los Angeles, are there?”

  “No, but Murph is the closest friend Al had, and he and Stacy will be there. I’ll try to come within the hour.”

  Masuto, his mouth full of sandwich—eating with the feeling that this would be as close to dinner as circumstances might permit—motioned for the rabbi to wait.

  “Please.” He swallowed quickly.

  “What is it, Sergeant?”

  “Have you spoken about this, Mrs. Greenberg,—about your feeling that Trude Burke is Samantha—to anyone else?”

  “No. Only to you and Rabbi Gitlin.”

  “Good. Now listen to me, Rabbi—you are not to mention this, not even in passing, not even as a nameless suspicion, not to Anderson or Cotter or Burke. And not to their wives—”

  “But surely,” Phoebe broke in, “you don’t—”

  “I damn well do, and I tell you, Rabbi, that one word about this can mean Mrs. Greenberg’s death. No—one word about it will mean Mrs. Greenberg’s death.”

  “‘Damn well,’” the Rabbi repeated. “Slang sits oddly with you, you know. Of course—just as you say.”

  He left them then, and Masuto stuffed another sandwich into his mouth, worked it down quickly, dialed the City Hall, got the Chief and said to him.

  “I want two cops on motorcycles, one in front of the Greenberg place on North Canon and one in the mews behind it, and I want it covered all night.”

  “You know that means I got to put two men on overtime,” the Chief pointed out.

  “With all respect to my esteemed boss,” Masuto said, “I am aware of his financial difficulties. My heart bleeds for the poverty of those who guard the wealthiest city in the world.”

  The Chief’s “Go to hell!” was audible across the room. Masuto turned back to Phoebe to apologize, and she, in the midst of pouring tea, had stopped and was staring at him bleakly.

  “What have I done!” she said.

  “Oh? What have you done, Mrs. Greenberg?”

  “You believe what I said about Trude.”

  “Don’t you?” he asked.

  “No. No. Of course not! Oh, what a precious Oriental dunce of a detective you are to believe me.”

  “Then why did you tell me what you told me?”

  “Because I believed it. But I didn’t believe it because it was true. I believed it because I detest her, and because Rosie Valero, who does my hair, told me that Trude’s gorgeous strawberry blonde is a bottle job, and that they do her once a week, and they not only do her hair but her eye lashes and her eyebrows and her damned pubic tufts and whatever other hair she has on her body, and Rosie thinks she had some sort of nose job. And why should she go to that kind of trouble for a worm like Sidney unless she was pretending to be a horse of another color. And the thought of Al—of poor, fat, good Al, who was so kind to everyone and who never hurt a soul in his life—the thought of him being murdered by some rotten little slut, well, it was just more than I could stand, and so I told you. But I didn’t believe it. I just had to tell you.”

  “But you told the Rabbi first?”

  “Yes.”

  “And what did he say?”

  “He said that he didn’t put much stock in it and that he didn’t think you would put much stock in it, so it couldn’t do Trude any harm, but that I should go ahead and tell you and get myself a good, deep condition of guilt, which would act as some kind of a psychic purge, and then I would hate myself, and then I would feel better.”

  “He’s a remarkable man,” Masuto answered thoughtfully. “Yes, indeed. And now you hate yourself.”

  “I think I hate you, because you are stupid enough to believe me.”

  “How do you know that I believe you, Mrs. Greenberg?”

  “Because you called for those cops to be around the house all night.”

  “To protect you from a killer. You know, there are a dozen holes in your story, but isn’t one thing absolutely obvious?”

  “What?”

  “That Samantha would have to be diabolically clever, and that the only one of the lot of you clever enough to be her is you—yourself, Mrs. Greenberg.”

  “How dare you!”

  “And that lovely hair of yours—isn’t it what you call a bottle job?”

  “Oh, what a miserable, wretched—oh no. No. You can’t do this, because I am a woman all alone here. Insult me. Accuse me of the murder of my husband.”

  “Dear Mrs. Greenberg,” he sighed. “Have I accused you of anything? I am afraid my deadpan humor is perfectly wretched. I will tell you flatly what you already know—that you are not Samantha and that you are a very clever, and more importantly, a reasonably wise woman. I admire you a great deal. But I think I know people enough to realize that you would weep if you had to kill a mouse.”

  She nodded silently.

  “You know,” he added, “Mr. Burke was the only one who knew Samantha before he got her into that dressing room. So he could hardly blunder into a marriage with her.”

  “I wonder,” she said. “I’ve been beastly, haven’t I? Please do have another cup of tea and some sandwiches.”

  CHAPTER SIX

  Sidney Burke

  MASUTO was surprised to see that Sidney Burke was still in the living room, sitting in a corner silently and listening to one of the friends of the deceased. There were about a dozen people there. Burke was listening and waiting, and when he saw Ma
suto, he jumped to his feet and intercepted the detective—who already, simply because he was a Nisei—was the object of all the eyes in the room.

  “Let’s shake this place,” he said softly to Masuto. “I got to talk to you.”

  “I thought you went to the chapel with the others,” Masuto said.

  “Changed my mind.” They were Outside now. “I don’t have a car here, Sarge. Can we get in yours and drive a little and talk a little? I know a little place up on La Cienega and Sunset, where we can have a quiet corner and I’ll buy you a hamburger.”

  “I’ll buy my own hamburger,” Masuto said.

  “That’s an honest cop for you,” said Burke. “So I won’t corrupt you with a hamburger. Buy your own and I will remember it as the last untarnished hamburger in Hollywood. Can you spare me half an hour? And is the place OK with you?”

  “What do you call it?”

  “The Quiet Cow.”

  They got into Masuto’s car, and he called the station on his phone and told the Chief that he was going to a place called The Quiet Cow with Sidney Burke, and would the Chief have the dispatcher call his wife and tell her he would not be home for dinner.

  “And I have a meeting with Cotter and Anderson and Burke later at Anderson’s house.”

  “Did you ask for it?” the Chief demanded sourly.

  “Anderson asked for it.”

  They drove off, and Burke said, “Great cops have bigger cops upon their backs to bite them, and bigger cops have bigger cops and so ad infinitum.”

  “That’s very good,” Masuto admitted. “What can I do for you, Mr. Burke?”

  “It ain’t original.”

  “I didn’t think so.”

  “OK. So by now you know about Samantha.”

  “A little.”

  “You know more than a little,” Burke said. “Everybody’s crapping in their pants because each and every one of them thinks he is next on Samantha’s little list.”

  “But you’re not worried.”

  “Worried? Jesus God, would I be riding around with a cop if I was not worried? Of course I am worried. It’s the goddamn power complex. Kill one; you know it can be done. With the second, you are riding high; and with the third, she is a lousy little tin god—”

  “Who is?”

  “Samantha Adams—who else.”

  “What do you mean—third?”

  “Don’t put me on, Sarge. You know about Fred Saxton.”

  “An accident, I am told.”

  “Then you are told wrong.”

  “Samantha?”

  “Don’t kid me, Sarge. Don’t put me on. I’m no hero and I don’t intend to live the rest of my life with loose bowels. I am tired of being nervous.”

  They were up on Sunset now, and as they approached the Strip the traffic stopped, and there was a sound like a thousand kids yelling. A half a dozen deputies came running by, carrying riot batons, and across the avenue, a stream of teenagers, shouting taunts and defiance, poured in among the cars.

  “That’s the way it is with those long-hair creeps,” Burke said. “Never taught them any discipline or morality. That’s the way kids are brought up today.”

  Masuto managed a turn into Larrabee and headed for Wilshire. “That’s no place for a Beverly Hills cop,” he said. “I know a little Danish place on Wilshire. Will you settle for that?”

  “Anyway you say. I got no more appetite anyway, and you can’t afford what I consider a place fit to eat in. Just so long as I put it to you.”

  “Go ahead,” Masuto said.

  “You’re running this case? Correct me if I am wrong.”

  “I like to think so,” Masuto said.

  “All right. Now listen—today, only a few hours ago, maybe two o’clock, maybe two-fifteen, I am driving along Mulholland toward Laurel Canyon, and a little red MG zips by me from the opposite direction. I see a strawberry head and I do a double take, and maybe half a mile along, I say to myself, that’s got to be Trude, my wife. But I am not sure, because when a hot car passes you on Mulholland, you are watching the road not the car, but it fits her car and her head. Maybe. Next thing I know, I see prowl cars and an ambulance and kids with motorbikes—those lousy creeps with the beards—and I know there’s some kind of accident, but the sight of blood makes me ill. I throw up when I see a lot of blood. Not good. So I crawl past, and that’s that, except that I do a second double take. I see you. First I see you and I don’t think nothing about it, because where there’s an accident, there should be cops. Period. Then I say to myself, this part of Mulholland is Los Angeles, so what is a Beverly Hills cop doing casing a job in Los Angeles, when he should be sitting with his head in his hands trying to figure out who knocked over Mike Tulley and Al Goldberg?”

  “That’s pretty good.”

  “Well, it’s no Charlie Chan film, but I got cops and murder on my brain, and I get home and there’s Trude’s MG in the carport, and now I am a nervous type, so I feel the hood. It’s hot. So I go into the house and Trude’s doing her nails to go to the chapel tonight, and I say to her, ‘What were you doing up on Mulholland Drive, baby? I thought you were a big girl and grown out of doing tricks with the MG?’ So she says to me, ‘Drop dead. I never went near Mulholland Drive.’”

  In the little Danish restaurant, Masuto sipped coffee and munched pastry and regarded Sidney Burke with interest and a degree of wonder. Burke ate little. He tried to explain to Masuto his distaste for a restaurant that was low-priced.

  “Regardless of the quality of the food?” Masuto had asked curiously.

  “My drawing is four thousand dollars a week, Sarge,” Burke said. “Apart from expenses. What I eat in a restaurant is expenses. I can’t explain that to you. It is not simply a matter of screwing the government. I get kicks from that, but that ain’t all. I got the biggest and best PR outfit on the Coast. I got a very important interest in Northeastern Films. I got other interests. So I don’t eat in a place like this. I can’t afford to. Suppose someone says, I seen Burke—see? No good.”

  “How about The Quiet Cow?”

  “That’s a hamburger joint where the hamburgers are three bucks.”

  “I can’t afford three bucks for a hamburger.”

  “I wasn’t going to bribe you,” Burke said. “I was just going to tell them you’re a cop. You don’t think Joey Donsen who runs the place is such a shmuck he’s going to charge a cop.”

  Now, however, Burke was trying to tell Masuto about his wife, and he kept saying that he had to be sincere. “I got to be sincere,” he told Masuto, “otherwise I can’t make you understand about this girl I’m married to. Not that I got anything against Trude—you understand—she’s just a louse. But that doesn’t mean that Sidney Burke is a schmuck. I knew she was a louse when I married her. This is a kid, I just had to look at her and I was off. I want to be sincere. I am not the kind of a guy who flips over a tomato. What was worth banging, I banged—”

  “But just to come back to the problem that confronts us,” Masuto said, “with due deference to your sincerity, how can you believe that your wife is Samantha? You knew Samantha. You brought her to the studio—”

  “I knew Samantha? Listen, Sarge, in the past fifteen years, I knew maybe two, three hundred broads who are maybe enough like Samantha to be her sister. The blonde American way of life, with the little round puss, the turned up nose, the blue eyes, and the shapely ass. You can pick out ten any morning at the counter at Schwab’s. At Central Casting, they decorate the walls with them. You wave a contract out at Santa Monica Beach, and you got a thousand of them. What do I know about Samantha? I picked her up at the counter at the Beverly Wilshire, paid for her hamburgers, gave her a ride and a night of pleasure. I thought the kid was grateful. She wanted a job more than anything in the world, so I got her a job. The boys would have been nice to her if she had just said two words. What’s to get excited about?”

  “Did Anderson tell you about the phone call from her?”

  “That’s right.”r />
  “And you think your wife could be Samantha. Isn’t that a little farfetched? That she married you for revenge?”

  “Farfetched! Sarge, you been spoiled by Japanese girls. This tomato of mine had her revenge in the first thirty days, and I been married to her for two years. I married my first wife when I was twenty-three. We got divorced two years later. She had a lousy disposition, if you know what I mean, the cranky kind. But compared to Trude, she was an angel. Believe me, I am being sincere.”

  “Still, you must remember Samantha.”

  “Absolutely. Just take a good look at Trude. She weighs at least ten-fifteen pounds more than Samantha. Samantha was a skinny kid. Samantha had that kind of pale, yellow-white do-it-yourself blonde hair. She wore it like a kid, combed down straight. Trude’s got a head of strawberry-blonde curls that just sit natural all over her head. It must cost her a hundred dollars a week—all over, every place on her body there’s a hair, it’s dyed. She had a nose job seven years ago, not for looks but for what they call a deviated septum. Would you believe me, she hasn’t got one picture from before that nose job—not one.”

  “That’s understandable,” Masuto said.

  “Understandable? Sarge, on the question of broads, I am maybe an expert—in a small way. Would I want to pin this on my own wife, if I did not have a position? I am trying to be absolutely sincere. It is not understandable. A dame like Trude, she lives by her pictures. She can’t always be looking into a mirror, can she?”

  “When did you first have a suspicion that your wife might be Samantha?”

  “Seven weeks ago—when that sandbag killed Freddie Sax-ton. One of the grips on the set saw a girl beat it out—just got a glimpse of her, and that was right before he found out about Freddie. The cops over there in the Valley talked to him, but he couldn’t describe the girl. He just saw her run past and out of the soundstage, and he caught a glimpse of her.”