Howard Fast - The Case of the Kidnapped Angel

“Poor dumb kid. Well, that’s more of a reason than I ever got. She had something on him. I don’t know what it could be-” He shook his head hopelessly.

“And the kidnapping this morning. Did you buy it, Mr. Goldberg?”

“What do you mean, did I buy it?”

“I mean,” Masuto said slowly, choosing his words carefully, “did you feel that it was a real kidnapping or a faked kidnapping?”

“How the hell should I know? Sure I knew that Mike wouldn’t have given twenty cents to get her back, but the public wouldn’t buy that, and if Mike had refused to pay the ransom for his wife’s life, that would wash him out as a working star. We talked about that, and I agreed that he should pay it.”

“Did you also agree that he should keep the police and the FBI out of it?”

“Did he? I didn’t know that.” He shook his head worriedly. “Why would he do that? He had to pay the ransom, but I’d think he’d have the cops in there every step of the way.” He stared at the curl of smoke rising from his cigar. “Sergeant?”

“Yes?”

“How long do we have to stay here?”

“You don’t have to stay here at all. You can leave whenever you wish.”

“Well, I’ll wait until my wife finishes talking to Ellie.”

Masuto nodded and left the room. Beckman was in the hall outside talking into a telephone. Masuto waited. Beckman put down the telephone.

“Where are they?”

“Downstairs in the game room.”

“Any of them leave?”

Beckman shook his head. “It’s like they’re all watching each other. Mrs. Goldberg is still upstairs with Newman. Angel’s still in her room.”

“And Kelly?”

“He’s in the kitchen with Mrs. Holtz. The black kid is downstairs. They keep her running for drinks. By the way, Doc Baxter called. It was a twenty-two short, just as we thought, and he still fixes the time of death between twelve-thirty and one. One more thing-” Beckman paused, relishing the moment. “Wainwright had a couple of cops canvassing the houses on San Yisidro. They found a kid who saw a yellow two-seat Mercedes drive by at about twelve-thirty or so. He remembered it because it’s his dream car, and he never saw it before.”

“Did he notice who was driving, a man or a woman?”

“No. He was at an upstairs window, being sick with the flu, so he never saw who was driving.”

Masuto thought about it for a while, and then he said to Beckman, “Sy, I want to talk to Angel Barton, and I don’t want anyone else talking to her first. So go upstairs and wait for me outside her room. No one goes in-but no one. And if she wants to leave, just delay her. I won’t be more than ten minutes.”

“This Dr. Haddam said-”

“I don’t give a damn what Dr. Haddam said.”

“Okay, Okay, Masao. What’s eating you?”

Masuto laughed and shook his head. “I’m sorry, Sy. We live in an insane world.”

“What else is new?”

“I try to suspend judgment. Sometimes that’s almost impossible. What did you find out downtown about Joe Kelly?”

“He has a record, like Miss Newman said. Seven priors. In and out, he spent maybe twenty years in jail, all of it theft, grand larceny, petty larceny. He’s a thief, that’s all. He got out on parole eight years ago, and Mike Barton hired him. He’s been clean ever since.”

“All right. Go upstairs now. I’ll join you in a few minutes.”

Masuto went into the kitchen. Kelly and Mrs. Holtz sat at the kitchen table, each with a cup of tea. Mrs. Holtz was a woman of at least fifty, possibly even sixty years. She was crying, yet seemingly unaware of the tears rolling down her cheeks. Kelly sat watching her, his long, lined and battered face impassive. But that, Masuto realized, could be misleading. A man who had lived Kelly’s life would be beyond the point of revealing emotions facially. Masuto felt the tragedy of his own aloofness, but it was a tragedy mankind shared, the tragedy of being fragmented, of each person being walled away from the suffering of others. There was little left for those two people. In all likelihood Kelly could never find another job.

Masuto pulled a chair up to the table, waving Mrs. Holtz back to her seat as she started to rise. “Don’t get up, please.”

“I’ll get you a cup of tea, Sergeant. A piece of cake.”

“No. No, thank you. Just a few questions.”

“You might as well know about me,” Kelly said. “I got a record.”

“I know.”

“I never slugged anyone and I never shot anyone. I was never busted for carrying a gun.”

“I know that.”

Mrs. Holtz evidently did not know it. She stared at Kelly in astonishment.

“And I never left this place today.”

“Yes. Then you saw Mr. Barton leave with the ransom money?”

“I was washing a car in front of the garage when he pulled out. He had a big brown suitcase, and he put it on the front seat of the car next to him.”

“What time was that?”

“Maybe ten, fifteen minutes past twelve, because after he pulled away I turned off the water and came into the kitchen here for my lunch.”

“That was twenty minutes after twelve,” Mrs. Holtz said. “I remember.”

“Why do you remember the exact time?” Masuto asked her.

“Because inside, in the living room, Mr. McCarthy and Mr. Ranier was having terrible argument. Joe heard it too. He said, ‘What do you think? Maybe they’re hungry.’ It was joke. I said, ‘No, it’s only twenty minutes after twelve.’”

“Did you hear what they were saying?”

“I don’t listen. Maybe Joe?”

He shook his head.

“Mrs. Barton was kidnapped,” Masuto said, “and in great danger. Yet you were able to joke about things.”

Mrs. Holtz shrugged. “Is terrible not to care about someone, but she was never nice to us.”

The telephone rang, and Masuto picked up the extension on the kitchen wall. It was Klappham, on night duty at the station house. “The captain left me this number, Masao,” he said. “Bones down at L.A.P.D. called and left this message for you. They picked up the yellow Mercedes. It was parked on Fourth Street downtown. No damage. Mint condition and the key in the lock.”

“Did they dust it?”

“I was just going to tell you, wiped clean.”

Masuto hung up the telephone and turned back to Kelly. “Did you ever drive for Mrs. Barton?”

“Sometimes.”

“Did you ever take her to meet anyone?”

“Maybe, but I don’t know who she met.”

“What does that mean?”

“Well, a lot of times, I drive her down to the Music Center. I drop her off and she’d tell me when to pick her up. Same thing out to Malibu, if she didn’t want to bother to drive. We got that big Lincoln Continental chauffeur car, with a bar in it and a telephone and all that garbage, and I guess it made her feel pretty classy riding around in it. She didn’t like my driving, but when you been busted as many times as I have, you drive careful, and when she was alone with me she could really let go. She could talk pretty damn dirty. Sometimes she’d cuss me out in French. I don’t know the words, but from the way she spit it out I knew she was cussing me. She was always after Mr. Barton to dump me and hire someone else.”

“Did you ever take her to meet a man-I mean did you ever actually see her with a man?”

“Once, when I had to pick her up at the County Museum, she was kissing someone.”

“Who?”

“That’s it. I was coming down Wilshire, maybe two, three blocks away. When I got to her, he was gone.”

“Yes. Do you know whether either of the Bartons owned a gun?”

“Yes,” Mrs. Holtz said. “Yes. She left it one day on her dressing table. No, not on it-inside. You know how the top comes up with a mirror. It was there, and Jonesey saw it. It scared her to death. Jonesey was cleaning the room, and she came running to me.”