Howard Fast - The Case of the Kidnapped Angel

“I think you should go home, Mr. Ranier. It’s almost eleven o’clock.”

They had all departed, the living and the dead, leaving Masuto alone in the house with the servants. He was tired and he was depressed. In its outer countenance, Beverly Hills was the most beautiful of cities-lovely palm-lined streets, immaculate lawns, splendid examples of every tropical plant that money could provide; and behind the facades of the million-dollar houses, a bitter commentary on the happiness that money buys. He thought about it for a while, and then he thought, as so often before, about giving it all up-and then wondered, as so often before, what else he could do. He had a profession, and he was very good at it, but it was too much like the pathology of Dr. Baxter; he cut and dissected and put the bits and pieces under his own peculiar microscope, and then he had to live with what he discovered.

He called his wife. She never asked when he would come home. The tone of his voice told her things. “You are unhappy and depressed,” she said to him. “Has it been bad?”

His thought was that he struggled to retain some faith in the human race, and when that slipped away, it was very bad indeed. But he said, “Not too bad, Kati.”

“I’ll wait for you. You haven’t eaten.”

“How do you know that?”

“I know you.”

He put down the telephone. A sliver of light gleamed from under the kitchen door, and Masuto went through the pantry and into the kitchen. Lena Jones sat at the kitchen table with Mrs. Holtz. Their teacups were empty. They just sat there.

“I wait until you leave,” Mrs. Holtz said to Masuto, “then I lock up. Go to bed,” she said to the black girl.

“I’m afraid.”

“Nothing will harm you, so go to bed.”

“I won’t be able to sleep. I’m too scared.”

“It’s all right,” Masuto told her gently. “No one will harm you now. Tell me, Lena, where were you when Mrs. Barton returned this afternoon?”

“Upstairs, cleaning Mr. Barton’s room.”

“Did you happen to look out of the window? The room is at the front of the house, isn’t it?”

“I did look, yes.”

“Why? Was there some special reason?”

“The window was open. I heard Mr. Kelly call out.”

“From where? I mean, where was Kelly?”

“I guess in his room over the garage.”

“And you heard his voice. What did he say?”

“I think, hey, Angel.”

“Angel? Not Mrs. Barton?”

“Once I heard him call her Angel,” Mrs. Holtz said. “Like he was making fun of her.”

“And from the window, you saw Mrs. Barton?”

Lena nodded. “Coming up the driveway. Walking slow, like she didn’t hear Mr. Kelly at all.”

“She didn’t respond to his shout?”

“No.”

“How did she look?”

“Terrible. She was dragging herself.”

“Did you see a taxi pulling out of the driveway?”

Lena shook her head and began to sob.

“You go to bed,” Mrs. Holtz said. “Right now, you go to bed.”

Still sobbing, Lena Jones stood up and walked out of the kitchen.

“Sit down,” Mrs. Holtz said to Masuto. “I make you a nice cup of tea. Or maybe coffee?”

“Tea will be fine.”

She put a kettle of water on the stove and started the light under it. “A few minutes,” she said. “Tell me, you like your tea strong like the British drink it or weak like the Americans drink it?”

“Weak.”

“I’m sorry I don’t have Japanese tea. It’s green, yes?”

“Sometimes.”

“And you’re Japanese? I mean I know you was born here, the way you talk, and on the police.”

“Yes, I’m Japanese. When we’re born in America of Japanese parents, we’re called nisei.”

“I’m asking too many questions? I’m nosy?”

“Please feel free to ask me anything.”

“Myself, I’m Polish. I was in a concentration camp.” She pulled up her sleeve to show the tattoo mark. “I was a young girl. I don’t like to talk about how I survived.” As she spoke, she cut several slices of sponge cake and set the plate in front of Masuto. “Mike’s favorite cake. Poor boy.”

“It looks delicious,” Masuto acknowledged. “But I’d rather not.”

“Japanese don’t eat cake?”

“Of course they do. But my wife is waiting up for me with dinner, and if I don’t finish every bit of it, she’ll be hurt.”

“You’re married! So if your wife is waiting, why don’t you go home already?”

“Because I wanted to talk to you again, Mrs. Holtz.”

“You give me credit for more brains than I have. Tell me something, I know you’re not Jewish, so what are you, a Christian?”

“I’m a Buddhist.”

She shook her head. “I think I heard about it, but I don’t know what it is.”

“It’s a way of living, acting, being, of knowing who you are.”

She poured the tea and placed it in front of him. “Sugar?”

Masuto shook his head.

“So tell me, please, how do Buddhists feel about Jews?”

“The same way they would feel about any other people.”

“And none of them hate Jews?”

“Buddhists try not to hate.”

“That’s nice.” She sat at the table, facing him, a shapeless woman whose lined face was etched with suffering. “That’s very nice, Mr. Masuto. Hate is so crazy, so unreasonable. Someone like Kelly, he has to hate Jews, he has to hate colored people, he has to make life miserable for poor Lena.”

“I thought he was very fond of Mr. Barton.”

Mrs. Holtz shrugged. “Not so fond. Sure, Mike was good to him. Maybe nobody was ever so good to Kelly as Mike. And Kelly liked his job. But he’d get mad at Lena and yell, ‘Get that lousy Jew nigger out of here.’ Then he’d complain about the Jew food I cooked. Not with Mike where Mike could hear him. And I’ll tell you something else. He has a gun.”

“How do you know?”

“Because Lena was cleaning his room and she saw it.”

“Perhaps Mr. Barton wanted him to have a gun.”

“Maybe. I don’t know.”

“We think,” Masuto said, “that Mrs. Barton was blackmailing her husband. Miss Newman seems to feel that strongly. Do you have any notion of what she might have held over him?”

Mrs. Holtz shook her head. “They had terrible fights at first, and then, about a year ago, they stopped fighting.”

“Do you know what the fights were about?”

“I wouldn’t listen. I liked Mr. Barton too much. I couldn’t bear to listen.”

“Did Lena listen?”

“Lena’s a good girl. She wouldn’t listen.”

“No, of course not,” Masuto said, his tone easy and without threat. “But you yourself, Mrs. Holtz, you live here, you must have known what went on in this house.”

“I’m not a spy,” she said with annoyance.

“No, of course not. And I’m not talking about ordinary blackmail on Mrs. Barton’s part. It was something she knew about him, or something about herself. Miss Newman indicated that it would wreck Mr. Barton’s film career if it came out-and that this was the reason he stayed married to Angel.”

“He must have had a reason. They weren’t like a man and a wife. They had separate rooms. Sometimes for days they didn’t even talk to each other.”

“Was he in love with Elaine Newman?”

“You think Elaine killed Angel? You’re crazy, Mr. Policeman.”

“No, I don’t think she killed Angel.”

“She loved him, he loved her, that’s a sin?”

“Did Angel know?”

“What do you think? She knew and she didn’t care. She had Mike’s money. She lived like a queen.”

“Who do you think killed Mike Barton?”

Mrs. Holtz answered without hesitation. “Kelly. He killed both of them, and now Lena and me, we’re here alone with him. Why don’t you do something about that, Mr. Policeman?”