Howard Fast - The Case of the Poisoned Eclairs

“Very interesting,” Masuto said.

“Okay, I’m going. But if you don’t tell me what this is all about tomorrow, I won’t talk to you again.”

“Promise. And thank you, Polly. Thank you for waiting.”

“You can say that again.”

For a few minutes after she had left, Masuto sat at his desk and stared at the door facing him. He was still staring at it when Wainwright opened the door and said shortly, “They’re here. In my office.”

Masuto followed Wainwright into the captain’s office. Bones and Kennedy were seated. They made no move to rise, nor did they smile or do any more than nod their heads coldly. Kennedy was the very image of a proper Los Angeles cop, about forty-five, trim, handsome, sandy hair, cold blue eyes.

Bones opened the conversation by saying, “God damn you, Masuto, we dragged our asses up here for your cute tricks, Like we got nothing else to do with our time.”

Watching Masuto, Wainwright saw his dark eyes harden, his mouth tighten. He had fought for Masuto before, and he often said that Masuto was the best cop he had on his force, but he also knew that Masuto was unpredictable. Whereby he stepped into the moment of silence and said, “Now, hold on, Bones. I don’t know what you and Kennedy are so pissed off at, but you’re in our town, and that calls for a little bit of restraint. So suppose you tell us what this is all about and we’ll save the name-calling.”

“I’ll tell you what it’s all about,” Kennedy said coldly. “Today this joker-” nodding at Masuto-“comes downtown to get the advice of our poison lab, which we don’t begrudge him, and then he goes to Pete here and tells Pete that a chemist whom he doesn’t identify but who has a criminal record is going to be murdered. Then he walks out, and then two hours later the man is murdered. Now what in hell goes on? You don’t want us to be pissed off? He’s your cop. Why the hell aren’t you pissed off?”

Masuto watched Wainwright, who was trying to repress a smile. “How does it stand?” Wainwright asked. “Do you think Masuto killed him?”

“It could be.”

“All right,” Wainwright said tiredly. “You drove all the way up here from downtown and I missed my dinner and my wife is sore as hell. As far as Sergeant Masuto is concerned, when he left headquarters downtown, he drove up to Mulholland Drive. He was there for almost an hour, and then he came here. So how the hell could he kill your goddamn chemist? Anyway, I got cause to be pissed off, the two of you coming up here sore as hell because I got a cop on my force smart enough to figure out that something is going to happen!”

Bones started to say something, and Wainwright cut him off. “Also, I don’t like nobody coming here and accusing one of my men. I’ll match my force against any.”

“Just a minute, before we say a lot of things we’re going to regret. Nobody accused anyone. You asked us if we thought Masuto had killed him. You got to admit, it’s goddamn strange. Also, what about this killing up on Mulholland? Your man Beckman practically gets into a fight with our cops-they shouldn’t touch the body until Masuto gets there. Who the hell is Masuto? The body was in Los Angeles, not in Beverly Hills, and your men come bulling in there and pushing us around.”

Wainwright turned to Masuto. “What about it, Masao?”

Masuto spoke slowly and chose his words carefully. The last thing in the world he desired at this moment was a feud with the Los Angeles police. “Perhaps Beckman was assertive. It’s the way he works. But he doesn’t push people around, certainly not Los Angeles policemen. No one does. I think Captain Kennedy knows that. It’s quite true that the boy’s body was in Los Angeles, but he wasn’t killed there. His body was dumped out of a car. We think the boy was involved in a murder case, and the killer executed him to get rid of a witness.”

“What murder case?”

Masuto spelled out the events of the day, detail for detail. When he had finished, there was a long moment of silence, and then Kennedy said, “And what about the chemist?”

“We are dealing here,” Masuto said, “with a pure botulism toxin, not with decayed food, but with the toxin that the botulinus produces. Your man at the poison lab assured me that only a trained chemist could produce it. Well, what kind of a chemist would risk his freedom and career to produce a deadly poison-a poison which he would have to surmise would be used to kill people? What kind of a chemist would be vulnerable? Almost certainly a chemist mixed up in the dope rackets. The odds are that he would have a criminal record. My own guess is that we are dealing with a killer who is indifferent to human life and allows nothing to stand in his way. He gets rid of witnesses. That’s why he killed the Chicano kid, so my analysis was not entirely fortuitous. I guessed that sooner or later he would kill the chemist. He tried the botulism, and it failed. Now, something else. Was the chemist killed with a twenty-two pistol?”

“That’s right,” Bones said grudgingly.

“Shot behind the ear?”

“Yes.”

“No sound of the shot?”

“No, no sound of a shot,” Kennedy said.

“Have you got anything?”

“Not a damn thing. The chemist’s name is Leroy Kender. He served time for refining horse. Then he was picked up for angel dust, but that didn’t stick. He lived alone in a furnished room on Sixth Street. He had almost nine hundred dollars in his pocket, so it wasn’t robbery.”

“It wasn’t robbery,” Masuto said. “This one doesn’t touch the money in his victims’ pockets.”

“That’s rich blood,” Kennedy said.

“Very rich. Fingerprints?”

“We’ll have plenty of fingerprints. But what the hell good are fingerprints unless you got something to match them with?” Kennedy asked.

“This one doesn’t leave fingerprints. But you have something to match if you want it,” Masuto said.

“What’s that?”

“The bullet that killed the Chicano boy you found on Mulholland and the bullet that killed the chemist. I have a notion they’ll match up.”

“Okay,” Kennedy said. “I’m glad you leveled with us, Masuto. Maybe we had a reason to be sore, maybe not. If you catch up with this killer-well, we got our own case against him.”

“I’ll stay in touch,” Masuto said.

“And keep us informed,” Wainwright said. “We’re in this together.”

When the two Los Angeles cops had left, Wainwright shook his head and said, “One day, Masao, you’ll get us in deep, and I swear when you do I’ll let you fry in your own juice. Where’s Beckman?”

“Sitting in his car outside the Crombie place.”

“On overtime.”

“Yes.” Then he added, “I have the four women there.”

“Where?”

“In the Crombie house. I had Laura Crombie bring them over.”

“Why?”

“Because I want to talk to them. Because someone is trying to kill them, and if it happens it won’t do this city’s image one bit of good.”

“You really think someone’s trying to kill four dames whose only crime is that they live in Beverly Hills?”

“He’s killed three people already.”

“I got to call my wife,” Wainwright said.

Masuto went downstairs. He came out of the building and paused for a moment under the light at the entrance. He never heard the shot, only felt a hot pain at the side of his chin, as if a bee had stung him. As he put his hand up to his face, he heard the roar of a motor, and across the street a dark car shot away.

There was blood on his hand.

A prowl car had just parked, and the officer leaped out and ran over to him. “What happened, Sarge?”

“A bullet nicked me,” Masuto said.

“I didn’t hear a shot.”