Howard Fast - The Case of the Poisoned Eclairs

“And of course she never mentioned who delivered it?”

“No. It wouldn’t be of any importance.”

“Yes. And since I left you, anything?”

“No, nothing out of the ordinary. I called the ladies. They’ll all be here.”

“I’d like to change that,” Masuto said.

“Oh, no!”

“Please. I’d like you to call them again and get them to your house right now. And then I’m going to have a policeman sitting in his car across the street from your house.”

“But why?”

“I’ll tell you why very bluntly and plainly-because I’m afraid.”

“Sergeant Masuto, we don’t live in a jungle. This is Beverly Hills.”

“I know it is. Will you please do as I say?”

“I suppose so. When will you be here?”

“About ten, as I said.”

“And we just sit here and wait for you? Come on, you can’t be serious!”

“I am very serious. I know what I ask is a nuisance, but I’m trying to keep you alive-all of you.”

“Aren’t you being dramatic?”

“I hope so. Enough to impress you.”

He finished with Laura Crombie and was talking to Polly again when Beckman came over to the car and stood by the open window. Masuto had just asked her to get a make from L.A.P.D. on Tony Cooper.

“Who’s Tony Cooper?” Beckman asked him.

“A hairdresser. You’ve seen his place on Camden Road.”

“How does he fit into all this?”

“I don’t know. I look where the light is, because everywhere else it’s dark.”

“And what’s that supposed to mean?”

“Not very much. They tell the story of a man crawling around under a lamp post on his hands and knees. Another man stops and asks him why, and the man on his hands and knees says that he lost a gold cufflink. ‘Where did you lose it?’ the man asks, and the man on his hands and knees replies that he lost it a hundred feet down the street. ‘Then why are you looking here?’ the second man asks. And the man who lost the cufflink replies, ‘Because it’s light here.’”

“That don’t make much sense,” Beckman said.

“What does in this crazy case? There are your investigators,” Masuto said, pointing to where a car had pulled up. “Give it about an hour, Sy, and then I want you to drive over to Laura Crombie’s place. I asked her to get the other three women over there, and they should be there by then. I don’t want anyone else going into that house without your say-so.”

“Come on, Masao, you can’t do that. Wainwright would have my scalp if I tried anything like that.”

“I’m not telling you to pull any rough stuff. We’re putting the house under police protection. There’s nothing illegal about that.”

“What do you mean, we’re putting it under police protection?”

“I’ll fix it with Wainwright.”

“So I see someone going in. Do I stop them?”

“No. Just find out why. Park near the door. If Mrs. Crombie says it’s okay, let them in. But stay right on top of it, and don’t take your eyes off that door for two minutes.”

“That’s great. When do you get there?”

“About ten. Maybe earlier-not later.”

“And when do I eat?”

“Get a sandwich on the way. And grab those investigators. They’ve given it their five minutes.”

“Masao,” Beckman said, “why is L.A.P.D. the only police force in the country that calls its detectives investigators?”

“Ask them,” Masuto said, and put his car in gear and drove off.

At Rexford Drive, Captain Wainwright listened bleakly to Masuto’s account of the day’s events.

“Assumptions,” he said without enthusiasm. “All you got is a series of assumptions. We still don’t know but maybe this Mexican girl died of the damn eclairs, and you link up the kid on Mulholland Drive with a group of wild guesses. You tell me we got a lunatic who’s killed two people already, but all I see that I can put a finger on is a food poisoning and a killing that belongs to L.A.P.D.”

“I beg to disagree. We have a murderer who is indifferent to human life. He’s killed two people and a dog, and he’ll kill anyone who stands in his way.”

“What in hell do you mean, stands in his way? What is his way? What is he after?”

“I think he’s after those four women. I think he’s going to try to kill all four of them.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know. If I knew, we wouldn’t be arguing. All I’m asking is that you give Beckman and me a free hand on this case.”

“For how long?”

“As long as it takes-maybe another day, maybe a week. I don’t know.”

Wainwright sighed and nodded. “Okay, but don’t talk to the press. Not a word. You want to make a murder case out of this, you can have the time. But keep it quiet.” He stared intently at Masuto. “You keeping anything back?”

“Would I?”

“You damn well would. All right, it’s yours.”

Polly intercepted Masuto on his way out. She was small and blonde and blue-eyed. “What do I have to do,” she asked him, “to get a reaction from Detective Sergeant Masuto?”

“You get it all the time. I hide it behind Oriental inscrutability.”

“Which means?”

“That I adore you but don’t dare show it.”

“Bull. You are married. Every decent man is married. Try a singles bar some night and you’ll see what I mean. Don’t you want to know what downtown has to say about your Tony Cooper?”

“That’s what I asked.”

“Well, here it is.” She read from a slip of paper. “Three arrests, homosexual practice, no convictions, all of it ten years ago. You know, it should be the women who do the resenting, not the cops. We suffer when the men leave the market place, and as far as I’m concerned the cops have got better things to do than to pull people in for being gay. You know how they do it?”

“I have heard,” Masuto said.

“They entice them into porno movie houses and then arrest them. I think it stinks. Our boys wouldn’t do that, would they, Masao?”

“No, we’re too short on cops. Thanks, Polly.”

It was almost six o’clock when Masuto parked on Camden Drive across the street from the beauty parlor, but the shop was still open. Only a single customer remained, a brown head being trimmed by a slender, dark man in a white jacket with pink stripes. Masuto crossed the street and entered the shop.

“We don’t do men and we’re closed,” the man in the striped blazer told him.

“Tony Cooper?” Masuto stood just inside the door.

“That’s right.” He stared at Masuto thoughtfully, and then said to the woman in the chair, “Don’t move, baby. I’ll be with you in a minute.” Then he walked over to Masuto and whispered, “Fuzz?”

Masuto nodded.

“Oriental fuzz. I’ll be damned.” Still in a whisper, “Can you come back? She’s the end of the line.”

“I’ll wait.”

Masuto sat down and picked up a copy of Architectural Digest and leafed through the pages. You could gauge the prices at a hairdressing establishment by the kind of magazines they left around. Architectural Digest probably indicated a twenty-five or thirty dollar haircut. It was part of the trivia that went into Masuto’s store of facts. A policeman living very simply in a small house in Culver City-which is to Beverly Hills what Brooklyn is to Fifth Avenue-he did his daily work in one of the wealthiest communities on the face of the earth. It called for a certain kind of balance and a special kind of perspective, and he thought of this as he leafed through the magazine, looking at photographs of the homes of millionaires. He had never envied wealth, although often enough he pitied those who possessed it; but then, he was a Zen Buddhist, and that gave him his own unique handle on things. Sy Beckman handled it by ignoring it; it just happened to be the shop where he worked.