Howard Fast - The Case of the Kidnapped Angel

“Not that I know of,” Masuto said. “Anyway, I don’t do the P.R. You know that. They’ll give you the story over at headquarters.”

“You know they give me nothing. Anyway, we want pictures. If I could talk to the servants?”

“Absolutely not.”

“I don’t have to talk to them. Let us photograph them.”

“No.”

He went back to his unit, and Dempsy said, “They’ve been driving me crazy, Sergeant. Anyway, the two ladies are too scared to come out of the house, and I wouldn’t let them in.”

“Good. Now where’s Voorhis?”

“Home, sleeping.”

“Wake him up and get him over here. Now, as I understand it, Kelly’s place is over the garage.”

“That’s right.”

“Two entrances,” Beckman said. “I checked it out yesterday. There’s one door at the top of that staircase outside”-he pointed to the farther wall of the garage-”and another at the end of a passageway on the top floor of the house. Same passageway leads to Mrs. Holtz’s room and the maid’s room. Both doors have those locks with the little thing in the handle. You turn it, and then you can close the door from the outside and it’s locked. No keys. I asked Kelly about that. He said there never were any keys while he worked here.”

“You tried both doors?” Masuto asked Dempsy.

“Sure. The doors are the kind you can kick in, but I didn’t want to try that until you gave the word.”

“What do you think, Masao?” Beckman asked. “Can we force entrance, or will we be asking for trouble?”

“Who from? Both owners are dead, and if Kelly’s alive, why would he lock the doors?”

“Do you have sufficient cause?”

“A man could be half dead in there. That’s sufficient cause.”

Before they went into the house, Masuto said to Dempsy, “No media inside the house. If Ranier or McCarthy or any other friends of the Bartons show up, tell them to wait and get me. And when Voorhis arrives, I want to see him. Now get him over here.”

Masuto and Beckman went into the house and through to the kitchen. The two women turned from their work to stare woefully at the detectives.

“What happens now, Mr. Masuto?” Mrs. Holtz wanted to know.

“We’ll see. I want to get into Kelly’s room. I’m told there are no keys.”

“That’s right. Kelly never asked for them. He said he didn’t need them, so Mr. Barton never had them made.”

“Is it a single room?”

“No, two rooms, a bedroom and a little sitting room. The outside door is into the sitting room. Kelly always kept that locked, but he never locked the door into the hall upstairs.”

“But we hardly ever went into his rooms,” Lena said. “When we had to go in there and clean, it made him mad. He tell us to stay out, with a lot of badmouth talk.”

“Mrs. Holtz,” Masuto said, “I have to address you as the caretaker of the house, simply because there’s no one else responsible. I’m informing you that I have good reason to believe that Kelly is injured and requires help. I want you to understand that considering these circumstances, I shall break down the door.”

Mrs. Holtz sighed and shrugged. “If you must, you must.”

“Servants’ quarters,” Beckman said as he led Masuto up the kitchen stairs and into a shabby hallway. “Four rooms here, and Kelly’s place. I guess they don’t build them like this anymore. That’s it,” he said, pointing to the door at the end of the hall.”

“Kick it in, Sy.”

Beckman raised his size fourteen shoe and let go at the door. It flew open, the bolt tearing out of the jamb, and they walked into Kelly’s bedroom. There was a single bed, neatly made up, and pasted on the wall, several tear sheets from skin magazines.

“Super neat, some of these ex-cons,” Beckman said.

Masuto opened the door to the sitting room. Kelly sat in an ancient armchair, a crooked smile on his face, his eyes wide open. There was a bullet hole in the center of his forehead.

“Poor bastard,” Beckman said. “Poor dumb loser.”

“It was his karma.”

“Spends the best years of his life in jail and ends up like this, hates the whole world, hates Jews, hates blacks, and the poor dumb bastard never knew what he was doing.”

“That’s it. He never knew what he was doing.”

“Why?” Beckman wondered. “Why did they kill him?”

“He wanted some of the million dollars. Probably, he didn’t want too much. He was always a petty thief. But whatever he wanted, it was more than his life was worth.”

“The same killer?”

“No, I don’t think so,” Masuto said slowly. “We have three murders, and we have three murderers.”

“Come on, Masao, why? Why three?”

“Because I think I know who two of them are, and neither of them could have killed Kelly.”

“I’ll call the captain. What about Doc Baxter? He’s doing the Angel’s autopsy.”

“I want him here. I want to know when Kelly died. Tell the captain that, and let him fight it out with Baxter.”

For a while after Beckman had left, Masuto stood staring at the dead man. It would be comfortable, he felt, to believe, as his ancestors had, that people lived many lives, and that perhaps in one of them Kelly would have found some peace. Now three people were dead, a simple, bloody case of greed-vulgar and grotesque.

Masuto went back into the bedroom and opened the top drawer of the old chest that served as Kelly’s wardrobe. He pushed aside underwear and a rumpled shirt, and there was Kelly’s gun, an ancient automatic pistol, rusted and clogged in the barrel. When he had worked out the clip, he saw that it was empty. If anyone had tried to fire the gun, it would have blown up in his face, a gun that Kelly had picked up somewhere, perhaps in a garbage dump. Aside from the gun, the two small rooms revealed nothing that could relate in any way to his death. No writing, no pens, no pencils. Perhaps Kelly had been illiterate. There were half a dozen magazines, Playboy, Penthouse, two suits in the closet, a pair of sneakers, an extra pair of shoes, a razor and shaving cream on the sink in the tiny bathroom and only aspirin and a laxative in the medicine chest. A plant with several red geranium blossoms served as the only touch of color or decoration.

Masuto closed his eyes and stood silently until he heard steps in the passageway. It was Beckman returning, and with him, Officer Voorhis.

“Oh, Jesus,” Voorhis said. “When did that happen?”

“While you were on duty last night. What happened, Voorhis, did you fall asleep?”

“Sergeant, I swear to God-”

“I don’t want that!” Masuto snapped at him. “I want to know whether you fell asleep, and I want the truth!”

“Jesus, Sarge, this place was quiet as a tomb. Maybe I dozed a little, but I didn’t sleep.”

“You can explain the difference another time. Where were you?”

“In the front hall.”

“Did you go out and patrol the grounds?”

“Yes.”

“How many times?”

Voorhis hesitated.

“The truth,” Masuto said.

“Once.”

“Great. Just great. And when was that?”

“About an hour after you left.”

“So from one o’clock until Dempsy relieved you, you just sat in the hall and dozed, as you put it. You didn’t sleep, you dozed. That’s a damn easy way to earn your pay.”

“I told you it was quiet as a tomb. Nothing moved.”

“When you were awake or when you were sleeping? Never mind. Did you hear anything, the shot, the sound of a car?”

“Nothing, Sarge. I never heard a sound.”

“Beautiful!” Beckman exploded. “You’re one smart cop, Voorhis. You’re put on duty to guard a house and a murder takes place right under your nose.”