Howard Fast - The Case of the Poisoned Eclairs

“Mitzie, how can you!” Nancy cried.

“It’s easy.”

“I’ll get the picture for you,” Laura Crombie said.

On the way out of the house, Beckman slid the picture of Catherine Addison into Masuto’s side pocket.

“There’s a possibility that Polly will put a call in to here,” Masuto said to Beckman, “from an L.A. cop. I’m going to stop off at my house and then I’m going on to Metro. So you’ll catch up with me in either place.”

The Director and the Producer

Long ago, it was said that no one knows Brooklyn, the suggestion implicit being that even if one set out to master such knowledge, the quest would be fruitless. The same might be said of Los Angeles. Long, long ago, the vast California county of Los Angeles contained dozens and dozens of separate towns and villages and cities, Los Angeles City being the largest. Through the years, under the impetus of urban sprawl and enormous population growth, these dozens of cities had come together, the way cookie dough placed too close on the cookie sheet will spread and join. Masuto worked in Beverly Hills, which was almost entirely surrounded by metropolitan Los Angeles; he lived in Culver City, which was another enclave into Los Angeles, and the studios of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer were also in Culver City.

But there was no non-urban countryside to be crossed between Culver City and Beverly Hills, or between the two of them and Los Angeles. The streets of one merged into the streets of the other, and even the oldest citizens would have been hard pressed to tell you what constituted the border between one place and another.

Usually, driving from work to his home, Masuto would take Motor Avenue or Overland Avenue south from the Twentieth-Century Fox Studios on Pico Boulevard. Both routes were in the direction of the MGM Studios, which were less than a mile from Masuto’s home. Perhaps Motor Avenue passed closer to his house. Masuto drove that way, and a few minutes before one, he parked in the driveway of his house.

Kati, who was vacuuming the living room, let out a squeal of surprise as he entered. “Masao, what is it? What happened?”

“Nothing happened.”

“You’re afraid to tell me. I don’t care. I’m just so happy to see you. I don’t care.”

“What don’t you care about?”

“You’ve been fired. All right. Good. I never enjoyed having a policeman for a husband.”

“I haven’t been fired. I’m going to MGM, and this is on the way, and I’m tired of eating junk food. I thought that if I stopped off here, I’d get a decent lunch. But maybe with the consciousness-raising, you haven’t got the time or inclination, and if that’s the case I’ll understand.”

“Stop teasing me. I have tempura all prepared for tonight, but you may just call me and tell me that you’re having dinner with four more women-”

“I might.”

“I have shrimp and string beans and sweet potato and zucchini all cleaned and ready.”

“It sounds incredible.”

He sat at the kitchen table, while the room filled with the delicious smell of deep-fried shrimp and vegetables. He had the pictures spread out in front of him, the three men and the girl.

“What do you think of Monte Sweet?” he asked Kati.

“Monte Sweet?”

“The comic. You’ve seen him on television.”

“The one who hates everyone. Oh, no, I can’t bear to watch him, he’s so filled with hatred and rage. How can a man be so terrible?”

“It’s his stock in trade.”

“Why is it funny to say terrible things about other people?”

“Perhaps all humor consists of a kind of hatred. We laugh at the suffering of others.”

“I don’t.”

“Because you, Kati, are a very special person.”

She placed the platter of tempura and a bowl of rice in front of him, and Masuto picked up his ivory chopsticks, reflecting on what a pleasure it was to eat with these beautiful artifacts rather than with the barbaric knife and fork, which turned an approach to food into an attack.

“What are those pictures?” Kati asked him.

“The men were once married to the women whose lives are threatened.”

“And the lovely girl?”

“Tell me, Kati. What do you see in her face?”, “Very open, very trusting.”

“Yes, I think so. Your tempura, as always, is brilliant.”

“How can tempura be brilliant?”

“Ah, believe me. Why don’t you sit down and eat with me?”

“Because I ate an hour ago,” Kati said. “Now that my consciousness has been raised at least a little bit, I can enjoy the position of the Japanese housewife who serves her husband hand and foot. I don’t mean that I really enjoy it, but I can see what I am doing objectively and I know something about what a male chauvinist pig actually is.”

“You mean all that in one session?”

“I don’t think you are a male chauvinist pig, Masao. That’s a terrible thing to say. It makes me uncomfortable.”

“And you’re not a Japanese housewife.”

“You mean they don’t have vacuum cleaners?”

“No. I understand Japan is quite advanced. But you happen to be a very beautiful American woman.”

“Ah so! Really!”

She was blushing, Masuto realized, and as he finished eating and stood up and kissed her, the telephone rang.

“Not in the middle of the day,” Kati said. She pulled away from him and picked up the phone. “For you, Masao.”

“Yes, this is Masuto,” he said.

“This is Officer Commager, L.A.P.D. Lieutenant Bones said you wanted to talk to me.”

“About the Catherine Addison case?” Masuto asked.

“That’s right.”

“Good! Great! How did he find you so quickly?”

“He put the word into the Hollywood and North Hollywood Stations. I guess he found out that it happened on Mulholland Drive.”

“Did you say Mulholland Drive?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Well, I’ll be damned. Do you have the exact date?” He covered the phone. “Kati-pen and paper.”

She brought him a pad and a pen.

“Yes, sir. It was March third, nineteen seventy-five.”

“Time?”

“We estimated that she went over the cliffside at about eight o’clock. It would be dark at that time of the year.”

“You’ve got a good memory, Commager.”

“No, sir. The truth is that I barely recalled the case at first. But Lieutenant Bones had them pull my report from the files. I have it right here in front of me.”

“Good, good. Now exactly where did this happen?”

“You know, Sergeant, we got to draw maps for this kind of thing. On Mulholland, for anything between Laurel Canyon and Coldwater Canyon, we take our measurements from the crossroads. In this case, from the point where Laurel Canyon Boulevard crosses Mulholland Drive. Measuring west from there-you really want this exactly? You know, it was three years ago.”

“As precisely as you can give it to me.”

“Okay, Sergeant. Measuring west from the Laurel Canyon crossover, you drive exactly one mile and seven twentieths. There the road curves to the left. On the left you have the high shoulder of the hill, on the right a sheer drop of about a hundred feet.”

“I think I know the spot. But I don’t remember a perpendicular drop.”

“I don’t mean absolutely perpendicular, Sergeant. There is a slight slope that’s covered with chaparral, but it might just as well be perpendicular for anything that goes over there. Now this Addison kid’s car was coining from the east, from Laurel Canyon, and she must have lost control, because instead of making the curve she went straight ahead and over.”

“At what speed?”

“You know that’s only an estimate,” Commager said. “But we get pretty good at that kind of thing. I got down here in my notes that she was moving at thirty miles an hour.”