Howard Fast - The Case of the Poisoned Eclairs

“He uses a silencer. Look around a bit, Cowley. See if you can find the bullet. A little slug, a twenty-two. It might be embedded in the door.”

“I ought to get after him.”

“We don’t know who he is or where he went,” Masuto said gently. “Look for the bullet.” Then he went back into the building.

Wainwright was just putting down the phone. “What in hell happened to you?” he demanded.

“I have been shot.”

“Let me look at it. Yeah, it just nicked your cheek. Where do they keep the peroxide?”

“In the john.”

Wainwright swabbed out the cut and put a Band-Aid across it. “You say he was in his car across the street. That has got to be sixty feet, and with a twenty-two pistol, he is cne hell of a shot, maybe an impossible shot.”

“He could have had a shoulder brace or it could have been a target gun this time, maybe a rifle. Or maybe just laying the pistol on the door of his car to steady it. Or he might have been aiming for my chest.”

“Which would still be pretty damn good shooting.”

“It would.”

“Why you?” Wainwright asked. “If it’s the same guy?”

“It is.”

“How can you be sure?”

“Because he called and spoke to Polly, and she told him I was handling the case.”

“That’s stupid!”

“No-he might have had information. How was she to know? I’m the one who’s stupid. He knows a lot about us. Well, now I know something about him.”

“What, if I may ask?”

“He-it-the killer is a man. He’s an expert pistol shot. He drives a Mercedes.”

“So do half the people in Beverly Hills. But why a Mercedes? You said you couldn’t see the car, just that it was dark.”

“I know that sound. There’s a particular sound when you gun a Mercedes. Also, he’s rich.”

“Not uncommon in this town.”

“And he has an enormous ego and a complicated but childish mind. The botulism, for example. Not brilliant, not even clever, but complicated. Also-and this I think is where I’ll get him-he has killed before.”

“You mean the chemist and the Chicano kid?”

“No-no. There’s killing somewhere in his past that we don’t know about.”

As Masuto was leaving, Wainwright called after him, “Masao, be careful.”

“I am always careful,” Masuto said.

Alice Greene

A curved drive in a half-moon shape swept in from the sidewalk, past the front door of Laura Crombie’s house, and then back to the sidewalk. A low hedge of variegated plantings stretched parallel to the sidewalk, from one end of the driveway to the other. The house was well lit inside, but the driveway was in darkness.

Masuto parked his car in the street, behind Beckman’s car, and then walked slowly up the driveway where three other cars were parked. At one side, the driveway was intersected by a connection with the garage. The garage doors were closed. Masuto looked closely at the three parked cars. The first in line was a Mercedes two-seater 450 SL. “Twenty-seven thousand dollars,” Masuto said to himself. Beverly Hills was not a place where people hid their wealth under a bushel. Next, a Cadillac Seville, sixteen thousand dollars. The third in line was a Porsche Turbo Carrera, the price of which, Masuto guessed, ranged between forty and forty-five thousand dollars, just about twice what he and Kati had paid for their little house when they first purchased it. Well, he thought, his two children were safe at home in their beds and Kati was at a consciousness-raising session, while the four women inside the house were in deadly danger. He made no moral judgment, nor did he place value on a piece of shiny machinery priced at forty thousand dollars. Himself, he was paid to protect these people, and this he would do to the best of his ability.

Masuto rang the bell. Beckman opened the door for him. “Thank God you’re here, Masao. You’re five minutes late.”

“You’re counting?”

“You’re damn right I am. These dames are driving me nuts.” He spoke in a whisper.

“How’s that?”

“They been drinking. I tried to lean on them and make them hold back, but they just don’t listen.”

“Are they drunk?”

“Not so you can notice, but they put down the stuff like it was going out of style.”

“Where are they?”

“In what she calls the library.”

“Let’s go in.”

He followed Beckman into the room. The four women sat facing each other, two on easy chairs, two on the couch. Each had a glass in her hand.

“Welcome, Oriental sleuth,” Mrs. Crombie said. “Has the stalwart Beckman been telling you we are drunk? We are not-only nicely, warmly lit. Do you want a drink?”

“No, I don’t want a drink.”

“He’s very handsome but severe. So severe. So straight,” a pretty red-headed woman said. She was the youngest of the four, and Masuto guessed that this was Mitzie Fuller.

“Fuzz,” a slender blonde said, shrugging. Alice Greene, Masuto decided.

The fourth, Nancy Legett, just stared at him. Her eyes were full of fear. She was small and dark. She was in one of the big easy chairs, not just sitting in it but giving the impression of being trapped there, trapped and doomed and afraid.

Masuto reacted to her. Her fragile, empty world of wealth and possession had come tumbling down around her head. As for the others, they could put on masks. She had no masks. He scarcely heard Laura Crombie introducing the women. For one long moment, he was in a state reached sometimes in his meditation, when he knew things that he did not otherwise know.

“The whole thing,” said Alice Greene, “is a crock. A well-filled crock. I’m here because Laura pleaded with me to stay. Otherwise, I’d tell you to take your fantasy and stuff it. How dare you do this to us! This is Beverly Hills, not the South Bronx. As for this business of being in danger, another crock! That chocolate was not meant for me. It was delivered to the wrong house.”

“Alice, for Christ’s sake, shut up,” Laura Crombie said.

“Give me another drink.”

“No!”

“Then I’ll get it myself.”

“Like hell you will! This is my house!”

“Great. I’m glad you told me. Now I’m going to get the hell out of here!”

Both women were on their feet, and Laura said, “No-no, I’m sorry. Please. Please stay.”

“Not on your life.”

“Alice, I’m begging you.”

“Peddle it somewhere else.”

Laura turned to Masuto. “Stop her. Make her stay here.”

Facing him, Alice Greene said, “Just try it, buster. Just lay one hand on me.”

“I’m not going to lay a hand on you,” Masuto said gently. “You are in danger, great danger. Believe me.”

“I’ll handle it. I’ve handled it for thirty-six years, mister. I’m all grown up. You might not think so to look at me, but I’m all grown up. Now get out of my way.”

She pushed past him, and Laura pleaded, “Can’t you stop her?”

“I have no right to stop her.”

She ran after Alice Greene. Masuto and Beckman followed. Alice was fumbling with the locks on the door.

“How do you open this stupid thing?”

Laura Crombie stood back and whispered to Masuto, “She’s in no condition to drive. Can’t you arrest her for drunken driving?”

“Only if she commits a violation while driving,” Beckman said.

Alice Greene finally opened the door and walked to her car with long steps. She got into the Mercedes and with the light on from the open car door, the two men and the woman in the doorway could see her fumbling in her purse for the car keys.

“Sy,” Masuto said to Beckman, “get into your car and follow her. Anything-even a rolling stop at a stop sign-anything. The moment she steps out of line, pull her in for drunk driving.”