Howard Fast - The Case of the Poisoned Eclairs

“There are at least a thousand like that within five miles of here,” Masuto said with annoyance.

“Can I help that, Masao? At least the old lady remembered.”

“I’m sore at myself, not at you.”

“They’ll be calling the city manager,” Beckman said.

“He’ll have a busy day. Did the saleswoman keep the slip of paper on which the order was written?”

“I thought of that. No. The kid asked to have it back. It’s open and shut, Masao. X drives up in his car, sees the kid, gives him the paper and a ten-dollar bill. Buy the cake and keep the change.”

“It could be. And that might just mean that the kid hangs out in the neighborhood. So get over there, Sy, and ask around. One Chicano kid knows another. Take a couple of bills from expenses, and buy a little information. It’s the only thread we have, and a damn thin one.”

“I’ll try,” Beckman agreed. “Where will you be?”

“Downtown with Omi. I’m curious about botulism.”

Beverly Hills, like many other small cities in Los Angeles County, has limited police resources. The country tends to regard Los Angeles County as a single metropolitan area, but in reality it encloses more than seventy towns and cities, as well as a considerable unincorporated area. Most of the small cities in the county have their own police forces; some depend on the sheriff’s office, which polices the unincorporated areas of the county; and then to one degree or another, many of the small towns depend for additional resources on the police force of the city of Los Angeles, the largest metropolitan area in the county. Omi Saiku ran the poison laboratory for the Los Angeles Police Department. He was a small, cheerful man whose dark eyes peered out of heavy glasses. He welcomed Masuto into his tiny room, a single table, a single chair, and shelves of mysterious bottles.

As Masuto entered, Omi rose from the microscope into which he had been peering and said, “Ah, estimable cousin, you deign at last to visit my house of horrors.”

“Wainwright calls that kind of talk my Charlie Chan routine,” Masuto replied sourly.

“Ah so. He does not distinguish between the Chinese and the Japanese. A Western failing. Did you know that Roshi Azuki is in Los Angeles? Tomorrow he will attend za-zen at the Zen Center. Can you join us?”

“Tomorrow I’ll be looking for a homicidal maniac.”

“Yes. Of course. Your botulism man.”

“Man?” Masuto demanded. “Why man? Why not woman?”

“Because no woman would kill in such a manner.”

“Why not?”

“I have been in this room for twelve years,” Omi said. “The poison homicides and suicides of the whole state reach me eventually. There are patterns. Strychnine is the most common and the most frequently used by women. Now what is a poison, Masao? Strictly but generally speaking, it is any substance that causes change in the molecular structure of an organ. That’s not difficult. It’s less a question of substance than of quantity. Alcohol, morphine, cocaine, nicotine are all deadly in sufficient quantity. But according to my records, ninety-five percent of women murderers do not plot bizarre poisonings. Driven to desperation, they take whatever is at hand, arsenic, found in Paris green, phosphorus in rat poison, and of course strychnine, easily come by. The fancy poisoning is done by men, and by golly this botulism of yours is the fanciest I’ve seen in a long while. Now take this bacillus botulinus. Why do we see so little of it? Why are whole populations not ravaged by its poisonous toxin? Thank mother nature, who always gives with one hand and takes away with the other. In other words, bacillus botulinus is anaerobic.”

“Which means what?”

“Simply that it will not grow in the presence of air. It requires low temperature and airlessness. Now don’t think that you can take a piece of meat, let it putrefy, exclude the air, and grow a botulin. Maybe yes, maybe no-most likely no. To grow a botulin, you require the botulism bacillus, and since it cannot live in the presence of air, the likelihood is that you won’t get it. The only place it seems to turn up these days is in canned goods, and even there it’s only one out of a thousand bad cans that produces a botulinus. But here, honored cousin, here we have something unique-not the putrefaction which produces the botulinus, which in turn produces the deadly toxin, no indeed-here we have the toxin itself, no putrefaction, no source, simply the deadly poison. And that, my dear Masao, is the work of a chemist. Find the chemist and you find your murderer.”

“Thank you,” Masuto said without delight.

“Or conceivably a pharmacologist.”

“I am most grateful.”

Masuto bade his cousin good-bye and descended to the floor below, moving through the vast machinery of the Los Angeles Police Department, wondering how it might be to work for an organization like this rather than for the police force of a small town of thirty thousand population. He found Lieutenant Pete Bones at his desk, painfully pecking out a report on his typewriter. Bones, a heavy-set, thick-necked man in his forties, turned his pale blue, suspicion-clouded eyes on Masuto and then grinned.

“Ah, my favorite Oriental sleuth. How goes it in the pastures of the rich?”

“Too much time on their hands. The result is murder most foul.”

“That’s a quote from somewhere. I retire in two years. The wife and I have a cabin, if you can call it that, up at Mammoth. I’m going to read all the books I never read being a cop. You’ll come and visit us, Masao.”

“With pleasure.”

“And what can I do for you now?”

“Can you set the machinery to work? I’m looking for a chemist or a pharmacologist with a criminal record, probably in this area, but maybe upstate.”

“Masao, you can make a San Francisco request as easy as we can. I can put it into work here. I’ll tell you this. We got to come up with at least ten names, maybe more.”

“I can narrow it,” Masuto said. “The one I’m looking for-well, I think he’ll be killed, either today or tomorrow or the next day.”

“What!”

“Possibly yesterday, but more likely today or tomorrow.”

“Wait a minute, wait a minute! You’re asking me to look for a chemist with a criminal record who’s going to be murdered? Come on, Masao, come on! Who’s going to kill him?”

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t know who this chemist is, or maybe he’s a pharmacist, but you don’t know who he is or where he is or which he is, but you know he’s going to be killed, but you don’t know who’s going to kill him. Do you know how crazy that sounds?”

“Pretty crazy, yes.”

“Then how in hell do you know he’s going to be killed?”

“I don’t know. I said I think so. I’m dealing with a killer, and I try to put myself into his mind and think the way he thinks. It’s not easy. You get a crime of passion or violence, and you can understand it. They are crimes done by human beings who have momentarily lapsed. But this is something coldly plotted by a man who has stopped being human. So I try to approximate that kind of mind. I have to. It’s all we have, not one damn thing more. If I can find this chemist while he’s alive, it will help, maybe wind the thing up. Even dead, it will help.”

“Okay,” Bones agreed. “I’ll set things moving in the county. You can line up the San Francisco cops from Beverly Hills.”

“I don’t think it’s up there. I think it’s right here in L.A.”

At that moment, a uniformed policeman approached them, looked at Masuto curiously, and then asked, “Are you Sergeant Masuto, Beverly Hills P.D.?”

Masuto nodded.

“We got a call for you.”

Bones picked up his telephone and told them to put through Sergeant Masuto’s call. He handed the phone to Masuto, and Beckman’s voice said, “Masao, is that you?”