The Case of the Angry Actress: A Masao Masuto Mystery

by Howard Fast

  As the spiel droned on, the driver was manipulating the hairpin turns of the studio road, climbing higher and higher, until Masuto could see below him the studio laid out, sound stages like small blocks, and beyond the studio the whole hazy vista of the San Fernando Valley.

  “You will all recollect,” the driver continued, “that unfortunate accident in which an atomic bomb was lost off the coast of Spain. Well, we like to think that Captain Sharkman and his crew of fearless underwater heroes were instrumental in recovering it, and in their dangerous underwater existence, this is only one of their many, many tasks. At the top of the climb, at the Peak of Despondency, there is a souvenir and refreshment counter where you can purchase a small replica of Captain Sharkman, either entirely assembled or in plastic pieces, one dollar—”

  They had slowed almost to a stop to take one of the hairpin turns and Masuto shouted, “Phoebe, drop off!”

  Again, she obeyed. She dropped off the bus onto the edge of the road. Masuto dropped off. It hung in the balance, and then as the bus rounded the curve, Masuto saw that Captain Sharkman had also dropped off.

  It had worked. Masuto faced the murderer. Phoebe ran a few steps, and then she was next to Masuto. “Behind me and down the road,” he snapped at her. He had drawn his pistol, and as Captain Sharkman came toward them, Masuto pointed the gun and said, “Don’t make me kill you.”

  A hundred yards up the road and fifty feet above them, the bus had stopped, the passengers staring at what was happening below. The driver yelled, “What goes on there, old buddy?”

  The passengers giggled self-consciously.

  Phoebe paused a few yards behind Masuto, and now Captain Sharkman leaped toward Masuto.

  Masuto fired twice at Captain Sharkmen’s legs. Either the costume deflected the bullets or Masuto missed, and then Captain Sharkman was upon him, and a blow of the big arm-fin knocked the gun out of Masuto’s hand. As he attempted to lunge past Masuto, the detective caught him with a backhand karate chop, knocking him off balance. Sharkman, slipped, stumbled and then caught himself. The two of them dropped into karate position now, and Masuto realized that his right hand was bleeding from the blow with the fin. The fin was hard as steel and rough to simulate real sharkskin. It would only take a single karate chop with that rocklike fin to stop Masuto, to break a neck or an arm or a shoulder—and Captain Sharkman was determined to have the blow, to bring it in, to finish Masuto and get the girl. He was senseless now, mindless, and he rushed Masuto and screamed as he made his chop.

  It missed. The audience in the bus shouted with excitement and howled with laughter.

  Masuto’s own cry came with the blow he launched. It was the explosive karate sound, and his hand chopped into Sharkman’s neck and hit plastic and foam rubber. He hit again as Sharkman lumbered for his own position. Masuto was quicker, like a mongoose with a cobra, but Sharkman was almost invulnerable in his cacoon of plastic and foam rubber. Again and again, Sharkman swung his lethal fin, and again and again Masuto avoided it—only once not entirely, and it opened his left sleeve and took the surface skin off his left arm, shoulder to elbow.

  It was then that Phoebe was able to dart in and pick up Masuto’s gun, and as the crowd in the bus hooted and yelled and screamed, “Fake! Watch it, Sharkman—they got a gun!”

  Phoebe cried to him, “Masao—here’s your gun!”

  Masuto got the gun, but Phoebe was not quick enough and a glancing blow from the fin sent her sprawling on the road. Masuto fired point-blank at Captain Sharkman’s head. Sharkman wheeled around, and Masuto fired twice into the open mouth—and Sharkman staggered back, back from the edge of the road, fell and rolled down, down the slope, breaking mesquite and cactus and finally coming to a stop in the little drainage culvert that was the edge of the lower turn of the road.

  Masuto helped Phoebe to her feet. She rubbed her shoulder.

  “It’s not broken, is it?”

  “It feels like it’s broken into twenty pieces. Oh—Masao, it hurts like hell.”

  “See if you can move your arm.”

  She moved her arm tentatively. “It hurts, but I can move it.” She pulled off the black wig. “I look rotten as a brunette,” she said.

  “It beats me,” Masuto said softly. “It just beats me.”

  A bus climbing the hill had stopped, and the tourists were crowding around Mr. Sharkman, and the tourists from the bus above were arguing with the driver, who was trying to keep them from pouring down the road.

  Helping Phoebe, Masuto went down the road, and when the bus driver began his protest, Masuto said tiredly, “Damn it, I’m a cop. So why don’t you see if you can back down the road and get Frank Jefferson and tell him there’s been trouble here and he should get to hell up here.”

  “You can’t back down that road.”

  “Then run down it by foot, damn you!”

  Meanwhile, two people in the crowd around Captain Sharkman were easing off his headpiece.

  “What are you doing?” Masuto demanded.

  “I’m a doctor,” a small man with glasses said. “This man is hurt. I don’t know what you did to him with that gun you have in your hand—”

  “Then help him,” Masuto said without feeling.

  Phoebe, next to him, was shivering. She pressed up against him as they removed the headpiece.

  “Oh, my God, it’s Jack Cotter!” Phoebe said.

  “Didn’t you know?”

  A bullet had gone through his neck, but there was no blood on his face. It was pasty white, puffy; he looked like a pudgy, harmless man with pale blue eyes. The doctor bent over him for a minute or so, and then turned to Masuto and said, “Well, he’s dead.”

  Masuto shrugged.

  “Well, who are you, mister?” the doctor demanded.

  “I’m a cop,” Masuto said, putting the gun away in his jacket pocket.

  “And who is he?”

  Phoebe began to cry, and Masuto put his arm around her.

  “That arm of yours needs attention,” the doctor said to Masuto. “That’s a pretty bad scrape.”

  Still Masuto stared at Cotter, and then he said quietly to Phoebe, “Stop crying. There’s no need to cry now.”

  “He was Al’s friend.”

  “He was nobody’s friend,” Masuto said.

  “There’s a dead man there,” the doctor said. “I’m asking you who he is?”

  “He’s Captain Sharkman,” Masuto said, and then he pulled Phoebe out of the crowd and they began to walk down the road back to the studio.

  The bus driver yelled after them, “Mister, if you’re a cop, what am I supposed to do with this stiff?”

  “Leave it alone,” Masuto said.

  But now Jefferson was on his way, his long black car with its spinning top light of bright red and its screaming siren careening up the mountain road and then pulling to a stop alongside of Phoebe and Masuto. There was a driver, Jefferson and two uniformed guards, and the two guards leaped out of the car and Jefferson put on his best John Wayne manner, looming over Masuto and demanding, “What the hell kind of bad business is this, Masao. I tell you no shooting and you gun a man down.”

  Masuto glanced at his left arm, the blood welling out of the long, ugly scrape, and said that he was sorry.

  “Was it your man?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Was your guess right?”

  “It was right,” Masuto said.

  “Well, I’ll be damned. You just never know, do you?”

  “You never know,” Masuto agreed.

  “That arm looks ugly, bubby,” Jefferson said. “Get it tended to. You know where the studio clinic is.”

  “I know.”

  “I’d ride you down, but we got things up here. Can you walk?”

  “I can walk.”

  “It’s not bleeding very much. Just an ooze.”

  “I’ll walk and I’ll survive.”

  “We stopped the tour for the time being,” Jefferson said. “I guess we’ll lose may
be two hours. You know what that costs the studio.”

  “My heart is breaking,” Masuto said.

  “I can just see that. Look, when you get that arm fixed up, come around to my office. I want a statement from you. Also, I got to call in the LA cops.”

  “I’ll come around,” Masuto said.

  They got back in the car and drove up the road to where the bus was parked and where the crowd of tourists could not pull themselves away from Jack Cotter’s body. Masuto and Phoebe were alone on the road now. They stood there for a moment, and then Phoebe said, “That arm does look awful.”

  “It looks worse than it is. It’s not really bleeding, and unless you’re going to dress one of those bad scrapes, the best thing is to leave it alone.”

  “But doesn’t it hurt terribly?”

  “It hurts.”

  “You’re a strange man,” she said.

  He shrugged and pointed down the road. “It’s a long walk,” he said.

  “They walked on in silence for a while, and then she said, “You knew right along that it was Jack Cotter?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m going to be sick,” she announced suddenly.

  “Try not to be.”

  “I can’t try not to be. I can’t control it.”

  He supported her by the side of the road as she heaved and cried out in pain.

  “Easy, Phoebe—what is it?”

  “My shoulder. It hurts so when I throw up. Oh, I am so miserable.”

  “Do you feel better now?”

  “A little,” she said. “I feel a little better.”

  They began to walk again, slowly, Phoebe hanging onto Masuto’s right arm. Phoebe asked him, “When did you know it was Jack Cotter.”

  “The first night. In the viewing room at your house.”

  “No. How could you?”

  “Because only he heard Samantha’s voice. No one else. Every one took it for granted that it was a woman, but no one else heard the voice.”

  “Then whose voice did Lenore Tulley hear?”

  “Jack Cotter’s. Maybe he was a rotten actor, but how good do you have to be to talk in falsetto?”

  She walked on for a while, and then she shook her head and said, “I don’t understand, Masao. Why? Why did he kill Freddie Saxton? Why did he kill Mike Tulley? Why did he kill Al?”

  “Why does a killer kill? He had a motive—he wanted Northeastern Films. He wanted to be it, the top man, the owner, the boss. But for that he only had to get rid of two men, Murphy Anderson and your husband. But that would point directly to him, wouldn’t it? So he decided that Samantha would do it, and he killed Mike Tulley and Fred Saxton to establish the Samantha-revenge motive.”

  “But that’s insane.”

  “He was insane.”

  “You mean he began this seven weeks ago, and that he then murdered Fred Saxton only to lay the basis for linking Samantha to the other killings?”

  “That’s right. As a matter of fact, I imagine he got the idea a year ago, when your assistant producer, Max Green, died of a heart attack.”

  “It doesn’t seem possible.”

  “Murder never seems possible—and this kind of insane, grotesque murder is even less than possible. Only, it happens.”

  “And that poor woman, Peggy Groton, who died up on Mulholland Drive—did he kill her too?”

  “Yes.”

  “But why?”

  “Do you remember the phone call from Samantha—the one received in the office?”

  “In the office? Oh, yes—yes, Murph told me about it.”

  “Well, Cotter could imitate a woman’s voice to the extent of a few words through a locked door—but not a whole conversation over the telephone. That had to be a real woman, and any woman who became a part of his lunatic murder scheme was doomed. He couldn’t allow Peggy Groton to live, not for an hour, not for a half hour. He had to kill her and kill her quickly.”

  “Poor Al,” she said. “Poor Al. He never had an enemy. Can you imagine living in this place and not having an enemy? Do you know, Masao, if we walked down the street and a panhandler stopped him, he never said no. He was the industry touch. You were never in the industry, so you don’t know what I mean, but no one ever asked Al and was turned down. And then that fool of a Jack Cotter, that strutting, ridiculous cowboy hero—there’ll never be a day of my life when I won’t think of him killing Al, and Al pleading for that medicine that held his life—”

  “But we’ll never know,” Masuto said. “It’s always possible that he didn’t kill your husband. Mr. Greenberg could have had a heart attack and Cotter could have taken advantage of it.”

  “And we won’t know, will we?”

  “I’m afraid not.”

  “You know, I have a feeling that if you let go of me, I’d be hysterical.”

  “No, you’ll be all right.”

  “Will you come and talk to the others? Do you suppose they’re still there—on Stage 6?”

  “Why not? It’s less than an hour since I left them.”

  “Will you talk to them?”

  “No,” Masuto said.

  “Why not? Do you despise us so?”

  “I don’t despise you.”

  “What do you call it, Masao?”

  “I don’t despise you. I don’t judge you.”

  “And isn’t that a typical statement for those you despise?”

  “No.”

  “It’s so easy for you. You live behind that damned Oriental mask of yours—”

  Masuto felt himself freezing, closing up.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “Dear Masao—I am so terribly sorry. I don’t know why I said that.”

  “You said it because you felt it.”

  “Oh, Christ—no. No. Don’t talk to me like that, Masao.”

  “I don’t know of any other way to talk to you, Mrs. Greenberg.”

  “Sure. There it is. You’ve got that great big goddamn Japanese mask spread all over your face, and lump me and all that I am because I can never get past it, and what am I anyway but a skinny, washed-out Anglo-Saxon blonde bitch who was just hanging on to you and vomiting over the side of the road; and two days after my husband died, here I am trying to make a pass at you—so why don’t you just spit in my face instead of going through this damned Sayonara politeness routine!”

  He stopped and turned to face her. They were almost down at the square now, and he could see that it was filled with tourists from the stopped buses, and an ambulance was squeezing through to come up the road, and behind the ambulance there was a Los Angeles police car, and they would be up next to him in a minute or two and what does one say in a minute or two that can explain the whole world and the way it is?

  “Phoebe,” he cried, “Phoebe, what in hell are you doing to me? I’m a Japanese, and the hell with this Nisei business! I am a cop. I take home one hundred and forty-two dollars each week, and they give me a car. I am married. I have three kids. In all her life my wife never set foot in a home like yours, but she has a sister who works in one as a maid. My wife never used a foul word or ever lifted her voice in anger against me or one of my kids. I am not a Jew or a Christian or a Mormon or anything else that would have any meaning for you, and I love you but I will get over it. So help me God, I will get over it. And that’s it. The end of it. The finish of it. No more.”

  Then the ambulance reached them, and she knew what he said was true and would hold.

  At the studio clinic, while Masuto’s arm was being dressed and while his jacket was being mended by one of the wardrobe tailors, a stream of people passed by to check his credentials and to hear his side of the story. Studio executives, Los Angeles cops, the district attorney, sheriff’s deputies.

  Finally his own Chief listened to what he had to say and then told him, “Good enough, Masao. You can have the rest of the day off.”

  “The redheaded one, Trude Burke, you know what she would say to that?”

  “What would she say, Masao?”

&n
bsp; “You’re all heart. That’s what she would say.”

  “Don’t rate me, Masao. It’s the taxpayers’ money.”

  “Sure, it’s the taxpayers’ money.”

  “Anyone else would drag you down to the office for a full statement. I’m willing to wait a couple of days.”

  “Like I said, you’re all heart.”

  “Yeah. Can you drive or do you want a chauffeur?”

  “I can drive.”

  The arm hurt a bit, but it did not interfere with his driving, but at home, when his wife, Kati, put her hand on his arm, he winced with pain—and then he had to tell her most of what had happened. As she listened, her eyes filled with tears at the thought of the danger he had faced.

  She served him a very simple lunch of tea-rice and green tea, and then he went out to the garden to fuss with his roses. She brought out her basket of mending and she sat quietly by the back door of the house, doing her sewing while he pruned branches, cut roses, loosened soil and sprayed just a bit here and there. There was still an hour before the children returned from school, and an hour like this, with Masao in the garden and herself sitting by quietly with her work, was almost better than anything else in the world.