by Howard Fast
“Will it stop? Will you ever stop it?”
“It’s over now.”
“I didn’t know a thing like this could happen here—in America—in Beverly Hills. How can such a thing happen here?” Mrs. Holtz said.
“I just don’t know what to do,” Elaine said to Masuto. “What do you do? Do we keep the house going? Do we close it up? Who pays the wages of Mrs. Holtz and Lena—yes, and myself. I know it’s selfish and unfeeling to talk about such things, but what am I supposed to do?”
“Did you call McCarthy? Wasn’t he Barton’s lawyer?”
“I called him. He doesn’t return my calls. He isn’t very fond of me.”
Masuto went to her and put his arm around her shoulders. “We’ll finish it soon,” he said softly. “You’ve been through your own hell, but that will end.” Suddenly, her face was pressed into his jacket and she was sobbing uncontrollably. He held her like that for a moment or two, and then he said, “Will you help me? I need your help.”
“Yes.”
He took out his handkerchief and handed it to her, and she dried her eyes.
“Where do you work, Elaine? I mean in what room?” He quite deliberately called her by her first name. Masuto was not unaware of the fact that he was a very good-looking man, that women liked him and trusted him.
“Suppose we go there now. We’ll talk.” He turned to Mrs. Holtz and Lena Jones. “Don’t be afraid. We have a policeman in the front hall. Let him answer the door.”
“Will you be here?” Lena Jones asked desperately.
“For a little while. But the policeman will be here all day.”
“You can’t blame them,” Elaine said as they walked to the library. “They’re frightened. So am I. They live here. Where can they go?”
Dempsy was in the front hall. “Listen,” Masuto said to him. “There are two women in the house, in the kitchen. I want you to look in there every half hour or so, make them feel comfortable. They’re afraid.”
“Sure.”
“And no one else comes into the house—no one. Except Miss Newman here. If she leaves, she can return. But no one else. And if anyone gets nasty about it, call the captain.”
She led Masuto into the library. It was more or less a standard Beverly Hills library or den, with wood-paneled walls, shelves of leather-bound books, tufted leather furniture, and bad pictures. There was a large desk and a typewriter.
“Sit down, please,” Masuto said to her.
She curled up in one corner of the couch. Masuto sat facing her. “I’m all right now,” she said.
“I know. You’re a survivor.”
“A woman alone in this town who isn’t a survivor—well, I don’t have to tell you.”
“No, you don’t. Now, you were here when Mike Barton left with the ransom money?”
“Yes. I told you that.”
“How big was the suitcase?”
“Oh, about this size.” She motioned with her hands. “You know the size you can bring on the plane with you? Well, I’d say it was a size larger.”
“Is it one of a matched set?”
“Yes, it is.”
“Could I see the set? Where would it be?”
“In the closet in Mike’s room. I’ll take you there.” She led the way upstairs. Unlike Angel’s room, this was plain, almost drab. The closet was a large, walk-in affair with, Masuto reflected, enough suits, jackets, and slacks to outfit the entire Beverly Hills police force. The luggage was lined up on a shelf, a space showing where one of the suitcases had been removed. Masuto pulled out the one next to it and studied it. “Just one of each size?”
“Yes, in that design, just one of each size. There are other suitcases in the storeroom.”
“The same design?”
“Oh, no, quite different.”
“Do you know where they came from?”
“They’re from Gucci.”
“The place on Rodeo Drive?”
“Exactly.”
“Do you suppose they’d have another just like it?”
“I’m sure they would. It’s a standard item.”
“Well, that helps. Would you mind coming with me to Gucci to make sure I get the right thing?”
“Sure, if it’s going to end this business.”
“I think it will.”
At Gucci’s, fifteen minutes later, Elaine selected the suitcase.
“How much is it?” Masuto asked.
The clerk, who had been observing Masuto’s creaseless gray flannels, his old tweed jacket, and his tieless shirt, said coldly, “Four hundred and twenty dollars.”
Masuto responded with stunned silence, and Elaine stepped into the gap and said, “This is Sergeant Masuto of the Beverly Hills police force. We need the suitcase only for a single day, not for travel purposes, but simply as an exhibit.”
Masuto took out his badge. “It will be returned, undamaged, tomorrow.”
“I’ll have to speak to the manager,” the clerk said, and when the manager was apprised of the situation, he told them that he was delighted to be of some service to the Beverly Hills police. “You might mention the name Gucci,” he said, “but only if it’s convenient.”
Outside, Masuto said to Elaine, “You, my dear, are a remarkable young woman.”
“I think you’re a remarkable cop,” she returned.
The Autopsy
Masuto deposited the Gucci suitcase in the trunk of his car and drove Elaine back to the Barton house, explaining on the way about the proceedings scheduled for that evening. “I want things to be as loose and easy as possible. Mrs. Holtz can have cake and coffee for those who want it. Can Miss Jones mix drinks?”
“I’ll help her. But what makes you so sure they’ll come?”
“They’ll come. This is not simply Beverly Hills, it’s the American dream factory. Each one of them has either a starring or a supporting role, and they wouldn’t miss it.”
“And that’s what the suitcase is for?”
“Perhaps. You know, Miss Newman, there is a Zen belief that what one sees is illusion. The reality is what one refuses to see.”
“Yes, and now it’s Miss Newman again.”
“I’m a policeman.”
“And married?”
“And married.”
“They always are.”
Leaving her at the house, Masuto drove to All Saints Hospital and made his way down a flight of steps to the basement and the pathology rooms. Dr. Baxter was waiting to welcome him with a malicious smile.
“Finished, Doctor?” Masuto asked pleasantly.
“I, my Oriental wizard, am finished. You have just begun.”
“I am sure you will make it less difficult for me.”
“Oh, no. No, indeed. I intend to make it damned confusing for you. Not with Mike Barton. A simple case of a bullet in the head, twenty-two caliber. Not with Mr. Kelly, whose skull was blown open with a thirty-eight. But with the Angel—ah, there we have a nest of worms.”
“You know what killed her?”
“You’re damn right I do. I’m a pathologist, not a cop. Would you like to hear what killed her?”
“Very much.”
“Good. Then come over here and have a look at the body of the deceased. Having seen only one puncture hole on the arm of the deceased, you Sherlocks concluded that the Angel was not a user. Nothing of the kind. In her circle it is not fashionable to mark the arm. She used her thighs.”
Masuto turned away, and Baxter covered the body. “Squeamish, huh? Now let me tell you what killed her. It was a combination of three things—Scotch whisky, chloral hydrate, and a large dose of heroin.”
“Chloral hydrate?”
“The venerable Mickey Finn. My guess is that it was mixed into the whisky, which would put her to sleep, and while she was in slumberland, someone not concerned about marking the beautiful arm slipped in and shot her full of heroin.”
Masuto made no response to this, his carefully constructed puzzle tilting and crumbling, an
d Baxter watched him with satisfaction. Then his usually impassive face creased in unhappiness, and he whispered, “Oh, my God, what a fool I was.”
“Not alone, young fellow,” Baxter said cheerfully, “not alone by any means. One among many, because now comes the whammy. Brace yourself.” Silent, Masuto stared at him. “You can’t guess? Come on, throw a wild one at me.”
“I don’t know what the devil you’re talking about,” Masuto said tiredly.
“Kind of upset you with that three-way knockout. By the way, any one of those three, the Mickey, the whisky, or the heroin would probably not be lethal. Put them together, and you have a one-way ticket into the great beyond. Still waiting for the whammy?”
“Yes, my good doctor,” Masuto said coldly.
“Okay, here it is. Your Angel is not a woman. She’s a man.” Pleased with himself, he waited for Masuto’s reaction.
“Is this another manifestation of what passes for your sense of humor?”
“Really getting to you today,” Baxter said, rubbing his hands together. “As a matter of fact, it’s pretty damn funny, isn’t it?”
“You are the coldest, most inhuman imitation of a healer I have ever encountered!” Masuto said angrily.
“Healer? Hell, no. I am a pathologist, sonny, and don’t you ever forget that—and a damn good one. And what I said before goes. Your Angel is a man.”
“All right, I’m listening.” His anger passed. Now the last few pieces were falling into place. “Please explain it.”
“Have you ever heard of sexual reassignment?”
“You mean the medical change of a man into a woman?”
“Exactly. There have been half a dozen notorious cases and several thousand that the public never hears about. Now you take our Angel here. A rather small, delicately built man, not a homosexual, decides that he’s a woman in a man’s body. Some authorities feel it’s a fixation. Others that it’s a genetic error at birth. He goes to Denmark or France—or even up her to Stanford—where they’ve been doing it lately.”
“Just what do they do?” Masuto asked.
“You want the whole thing?”
“Yes.”
“All right. It begins with chemotherapy procedure. There are two families of hormones that play a major role in determining who is a man and who is a woman, the androgens and the estrogens. Both are present in both sexes, but in a man the androgens predominate and in a woman the estrogens predominate. The first step in sexual reassignment is to reverse the role and put the man on massive doses of estrogens. That starts a biochemical process of change. The male functions cease. The growth of the beard slows, the hips become rounded, then the entire musculature takes on a feminine aspect. Even the breasts begin to increase.”
“Just from the hormones?”
“You’re damn right, just from the hormones. But that’s just the beginning. Electrolysis takes care of the beard. That’s permanent. Then we go into the operating room. Silicone discs are implanted in the breasts. And then they do something called a bilateral orchiectomy, which, without going into details, mean, the changing of a man into a woman through operative procedure, removal of the testes and the conversion of the penis into an artificial vagina—and that’s what you have lying there on my table, a woman who was once a man. Would you like to have another look?”
Masuto nodded, and once again Baxter removed the rubber sheet that covered Angel Barton’s body. Even after having listened to Baxter’s detailed lecture, Masuto found it hard to believe that he was not looking at the body of a beautiful woman. Watching him, Baxter said, “You start with a very handsome young man, you get a beautiful woman.”
“Could she have intercourse?”
“After a fashion.”
“What does that mean?”
“She’s altered. That doesn’t make her a whole woman. We’re not God.”
“Then eventually Mike Barton would have known.”
“Unless he was a total idiot.”
“Poor fool in a kingdom of fools,” Masuto muttered. “The idol of millions married to a man who became a woman—his terrible secret. What clowns we are. That was his word. The only word. The proper word. How could he let the world know?”
Baxter covered the body. “Not a bad day’s work. As for our movie star. He danced—and he paid the piper.”
“I would appreciate it if you could sit on this for twenty-four hours.”
“I’ll be delighted to cooperate,” Baxter said. His victory had almost mellowed him, but he could not resist adding, “I regret that I haven’t handed you the killers on the same silver platter, but the city does pay you gentlemen for service.”
Masuto departed without replying. His car was parked behind the hospital in the lot, but he felt a need to walk, and as he walked, circling away from the hospital and toward Sunset Boulevard, he once again contemplated the ridiculous anomaly of a Zen Buddhist policeman in Beverly Hills. Why did he go on with it? Why did he continue? What kind of karma brought him to this ultimate barbarism which was also the glittering crown of a monied civilization. These were questions he had proposed a hundred times before. They always remained unanswered.
He walked back to his car and drove to his home in Culver City. It was only one o’clock, and Kati was both alarmed and delighted.
“This is my spiritual and physical nourishment for today. I have eaten wretched food, and tonight I shall not be home before midnight. I have a half hour, dear Kati. Can you prepare something?”
It was a sudden descent and an imposition. She had just fed her two children and sent them back to school, and now she was in the midst of her ironing. The nisei women in her consciousness-raising class, which she had begun to attend a full year ago, would have voted to send Masuto out to a lunch stand. But since none of them were witness, Kati embraced her husband, and after she had assured herself that no injury or other tragedy had sent him home, prepared the tempura from the night before with amazing speed.
She sat opposite him, watching him eat. In spite of her consciousness-raising class, it was her pleasure to watch him eat.
“We live in a wilderness,” he said.
“It’s those terrible murders. I was listening to the news this morning, after the children left for school.”
“Death is always terrible. But this is a sickness.”
“Why do they do it, Masao?”
“Money, hatred, revenge.”
“It frightens me so,” Kati said. “Not because I expect anything to happen to me. I’m not afraid of such things. I wasn’t afraid of that skinny Chicano boy who was such a foolish burglar. But because I lose my faith in the whole world.”
“One should neither have faith nor lose faith. What is faith? This is the way things are.”
“But why? Why are things this way?”
“Because we lose touch with what is real and then we invent what is not real.”
“That’s Zen talk,” Kati said with irritation. “I don’t understand it.”
“Perhaps I don’t understand it myself,” Masuto said gently. “I need a few minutes to myself, a few minutes to sit and meditate.”
But Kati’s food helped more than the meditation, and driving back to Beverly Hills, he felt better, reflecting on what a primitive thing a man is, that a bellyful of good food could color the whole world differently. When he entered the police station, Beckman was waiting for him.
“Bingo,” Beckman said to him. “Do you want to hear about it?”
“In a few minutes. First, where’s Wainwright?”
“In his office. I got something for both of you to hear.”
In Wainwright’s office Masuto closed the door and faced Beckman and Wainwright.
“You’re getting them tonight—all of them,” Wainwright growled. “And so help me, Masao, you’d better come through!”
“Ah, so,” Masuto said. “Would the honorable captain listen and stop shouting at me?”
“Not if you give me that shogun crap.”
> “I am trying to inject a note of lightness into a very miserable affair. I have been to All Saints Hospital, and I have been lectured to by our Dr. Baxter. It would appear that the Angel was a heroin addict. The glass of whisky that was handed to her when she returned was laced with chloral hydrate—”
“A Mickey,” Beckman said.
“Exactly. And when she passed out, someone came into her room and shot her full of heroin.”
“That would do it,” Beckman agreed.
“More to come. The Angel was a man.”
When Masuto had finished giving them every detail of Baxter’s story, they still were unwilling to accept the facts.
“I just don’t buy it,” Wainwright said. “You can’t turn a man into a woman—yeah, maybe into some kind of freak, but the Angel was no freak. She was one of the most beautiful dames I ever saw. She’s been photographed and interviewed.”
“She was stacked,” Beckman said. “Those weren’t falsies. Hell, that dressing gown didn’t half cover her. She was all woman and built like something out of a Playboy centerfold.”
“And she started out as a man. We may hate Baxter, but he’s no fool. I saw the autopsy. So let’s not waste time arguing about it. Now we know what she held over Mike Barton and what she blackmailed him with. As he saw it, if word got out that he had married a man, and that’s the way they would have put it, he was done, finished as a star.”
“No question about that,” Beckman said.
“Perhaps, perhaps not. But that’s the way he saw it.”
“Didn’t he know? I mean, when he married her?”
“Would you know?”
“You mean they could have slept together?” Wainwright asked.
“So Baxter tells me.”
“I’ll be damned.”
“Do you think they knew?” Beckman asked. “I mean, the others.”
“Maybe. If they did, they all lied. But maybe they didn’t know—except—”
“Except who?”
“Kelly,” Masuto said. “Well, we’ll see. You said they’re all coming?”
“That’s right.”
“Sy and I will get there by eight-thirty. We still have a few things to do.”
