Howard Fast - The Case of the Poisoned Eclairs

Cooper finished with the lady whose hair he had been cutting and saw her to the door. Then he turned to Masuto and shook his head. “You guys never give up, do you?”

“I try not to, but if you’re thinking about your record, I couldn’t care less.” He showed his badge. “Masuto, Beverly Hills police.”

“Okay, but what can I do for you? Is it a violation or tickets to the annual ball?”

“Neither. I want to pick your brains, and I want whatever I pick to stay with you, because if any of it gets out, I will come back and lean on you very heavily.”

“Now?” he demanded indignantly. “It’s a quarter after six. I’m closing. I’ve had a hard, lousy day. The help goes home at five, but if some broad wants a haircut at six, I stay.”

“Now.”

“I got a date.”

“Call them and tell them you’ll be late.”

“I don’t have to answer any questions.”

“I don’t have to be nice,” Masuto said gently.

“All right. You win. You want coffee?”

“Yes, thank you.”

Cooper regarded him curiously. “You’re a damn funny cop. I never knew they had a Jap on the police force here.”

“You live and you learn.”

“I shouldn’t have said that-Jap,” Cooper said. “I meant Japanese. What the hell, you pick it up. I’ll get the coffee. Maybe you want a drink?”

Masuto shook his head, and Cooper went to the back of the place and then emerged with two cups.

“Sugar and cream?”

“Just straight.”

He handed Masuto the coffee and sat down beside him. “Since that lousy film came out, everyone thinks this business has class and glamour. It doesn’t. You work your ass off and take crud all day. I been on my feet nine hours.”

“A man should enjoy his work,” Masuto said.

“Do you enjoy yours?”

“At times, yes. Right now, no.”

“Where do I fit in?”

“Here are four names: Laura Crombie, Alice Greene, Nancy Legett, and Mitzie Fuller. How many of these women do you know?”

“I know all of them.”

“Oh? And how is that?”

“They’re customers.”

“I’d like to know about them.”

“I don’t talk about my customers. I got maybe two or three principles. That’s one of them.”

Masuto smiled. “That’s admirable. But I’m a cop, and these four women are in great danger. So in this instance, I suggest you put your principles aside.”

“What kind of danger?”

“Someone is trying to kill them. I’m telling you this because I think it’s the only way I’ll get you to open up, but it stops with you.”

The hairdresser stared at Masuto. “Are you putting me on?”

“No. I’m telling you the truth.”

“Who? Who’s trying to kill them?”

“I don’t know. It could even be you.”

Cooper shook his head slowly. “Not likely. Oh, I hate some of these biddies enough to want to kill them, but it’s not my style. I couldn’t kill a mouse. Anyway, I’m a vegetarian.”

Masuto did not regard it as a non sequitur. “You’re not a likely suspect, but you do know all four of them.”

“Customers. I know maybe two or three hundred dames in this town. Mostly they don’t bother me. I take them for what they are. They take me for what I am. It doesn’t drive them out of their minds to have their hair cut by a guy who’s gay. It’s only the cops and Anita Bryant who climb walls at the thought that somebody maybe don’t have the same sexual preference.”

“How well do you know them?”

“The way a hairdresser knows his customers. Some more, some less.”

“Start with Laura Crombie.”

“She doesn’t talk much. I don’t know whether I like her or not but she’s straight on. She doesn’t dye her hair.”

“Who would want to kill her?”

“You’re asking me? She doesn’t even take alimony from the son of a bitch she was married to.”

“How do you know that?”

“The women talk.”

“Do you know her husband?”

“Just by reputation. Crombie and Hawkes, real estate.”. “Who is Hawkes?”

“Nobody. He’s been dead for years.”

“Alice Greene?”

“Tall willowy blonde. Not real, but a great head of hair. She’s the type I’d go for if I were straight. Real class, except that a buck is a buck. No other reason why she married that creep Alan Greene-you can’t turn on the tube without seeing his ads for his string of stores. Since I’m talking, I’ll talk. Her alimony is five grand a month. I know some guys who’d murder their own mothers to save sixty thousand a year, and to add insult to injury she’s been having an affair with Monte Sweet, the comic. But they’ll never get married. They’d have to be crazy to kill the goose that laid the golden egg.”

“Meaning her alimony.”

“You bet your ass. The best investment there is. You put in a couple of years, and not only have you got the community property law going for you, but you got a fat check coming in every month.”

“And is that the case with Nancy Legett?”

“Now there’s something else. She’s a quiet little mouse-the one in ten in Beverly Hills who just lets her hair go gray. I don’t know what to make of her-quiet, polite, no gossip. She was married twenty-two years to Fulton Legett, the producer. He’s a big swinger, and for a long time he was up on top. But the past few years, he’s had one bomb on top of another, and today they say he’s broke. That don’t mean he’s poor, but maybe he’s tired of keeping her in that big house up on Lexington Road. She’s got three kids. They’re away at school, the way I hear it, two of them in swanky Eastern colleges and one in a prep school back east. That don’t come cheap.”

“And Mitzie Fuller?”

Tony Cooper leaned back and grinned. “Mitzie. She’s a doll-she’s an absolute doll. Red hair-real, not from the bottle-a great face and the best pair of boobs this side of the Grand Canyon. Never heard a bad word out of her. She is the sweetest, nicest bundle that ever walked into this tonsorial cathouse. Tell you something, Sarge, if I was straight I’d break my ass trying to get next to her. One thing about broads you can bet your last dollar on, the nicer they are, the worse bums they tie up with, and Mitzie’s ex, Bill Fuller, is no exception to the rule.”

“William Fuller, the director?”

“That’s right. Now let me tell you something. I don’t run the biggest hair shop in Beverly Hills, but I like to think it’s the best, and I get the pick of the classy broads, and they talk and they talk and they talk. If I didn’t have trouble writing my own name, I could write you a tome on the habits of so-called straight men that would curl your hair, and I’d have a chapter on film directors. They are the meanest, most arrogant, egotistical set of bastards that ever lived, and Billy Fuller is one of the top runners. I’m still waiting to hear something nice about him. Now I don’t know why they got divorced, because Mitzie don’t talk. They were only married six months when it broke up, but Mitzie got the house on Palm Drive, which the real estate ladies tell me is worth three-quarters of a million on today’s market, and the word is that she gets a fat check every month. Well, she earned it. Six months living with Billy Fuller has no price on it. But you want a candidate, you got him. He’s a killer. He’d kill anything that got in his way.”

Masuto was silent for a long moment. Then he said, “I wouldn’t mention that to anyone else-for your sake, as well as mine.”

“You asked me.”

“I know. And you told me. And for the time being, it rests with us. Right?”

“Right.”

The L. A. Cops

Masuto stopped off for a hamburger and a cup of coffee, and he had them wrap two and fill a container of coffee for Beckman. Knowing Beckman, he knew that it would make no appreciable difference to Beckman’s appetite if he had brought a sandwich to the vigil. For Beckman to sit in the car, preserving a sandwich for some future dinner hour, was unthinkable. He turned out to have been right.