Howard Fast - The Case of the Kidnapped Angel

“And married.”

“They always are.”

Leaving her at the house, Masuto drove to All Saints Hospital and made his way down a flight of steps to the basement and the pathology rooms. Dr. Baxter was waiting to welcome him with a malicious smile.

“Finished, Doctor?” Masuto asked pleasantly.

“I, my Oriental wizard, am finished. You have just begun.”

“I am sure you will make it less difficult for me.”

“Oh, no. No, indeed. I intend to make it damned confusing for you. Not with Mike Barton. A simple case of a bullet in the head, twenty-two caliber. Not with Mr. Kelly, whose skull was blown open with a thirty-eight. But with the Angel-ah, there we have a nest of worms.”

“You know what killed her?”

“You’re damn right I do. I’m a pathologist, not a cop. Would you like to hear what killed her?”

“Very much.”

“Good. Then come over here and have a look at the body of the deceased. Having seen only one puncture hole on the arm of the deceased, you Sherlocks concluded that the Angel was not a user. Nothing of the kind. In her circle it is not fashionable to mark the arm. She used her thighs.”

Masuto turned away, and Baxter covered the body. “Squeamish, huh? Now let me tell you what killed her. It was a combination of three things-Scotch whisky, chloral hydrate, and a large dose of heroin.”

“Chloral hydrate?”

“The venerable Mickey Finn. My guess is that it was mixed into the whisky, which would put her to sleep, and while she was in slumberland, someone not concerned about marking the beautiful arm slipped in and shot her full of heroin.”

Masuto made no response to this, his carefully constructed puzzle tilting and crumbling, and Baxter watched him with satisfaction. Then his usually impassive face creased in unhappiness, and he whispered, “Oh, my God, what a fool I was.”

“Not alone, young fellow,” Baxter said cheerfully, “not alone by any means. One among many, because now comes the whammy. Brace yourself.” Silent, Masuto stared at him. “You can’t guess? Come on, throw a wild one at me.”

“I don’t know what the devil you’re talking about,” Masuto said tiredly.

“Kind of upset you with that three-way knockout. By the way, any one of those three, the Mickey, the whisky, or the heroin would probably not be lethal. Put them together, and you have a one-way ticket into the great beyond. Still waiting for the whammy?”

“Yes, my good doctor,” Masuto said coldly.

“Okay, here it is. Your Angel is not a woman. She’s a man.” Pleased with himself, he waited for Masuto’s reaction.

“Is this another manifestation of what passes for your sense of humor?”

“Really getting to you today,” Baxter said, rubbing his hands together. “As a matter of fact, it’s pretty damn funny, isn’t it?”

“You are the coldest, most inhuman imitation of a healer I have ever encountered!” Masuto said angrily.

“Healer? Hell, no. I am a pathologist, sonny, and don’t you ever forget that-and a damn good one. And what I said before goes. Your Angel is a man.”

“All right, I’m listening.” His anger passed. Now the last few pieces were falling into place. “Please explain it.”

“Have you ever heard of sexual reassignment?”

“You mean the medical change of a man into a woman?”

“Exactly. There have been half a dozen notorious cases and several thousand that the public never hears about. Now you take our Angel here. A rather small, delicately built man, not a homosexual, decides that he’s a woman in a man’s body. Some authorities feel it’s a fixation. Others that it’s a genetic error at birth. He goes to Denmark or France-or even up her to Stanford-where they’ve been doing it lately.”

“Just what do they do?” Masuto asked.

“You want the whole thing?”

“Yes.”

“All right. It begins with chemotherapy procedure. There are two families of hormones that play a major role in determining who is a man and who is a woman, the androgens and the estrogens. Both are present in both sexes, but in a man the androgens predominate and in a woman the estrogens predominate. The first step in sexual reassignment is to reverse the role and put the man on massive doses of estrogens. That starts a biochemical process of change. The male functions cease. The growth of the beard slows, the hips become rounded, then the entire musculature takes on a feminine aspect. Even the breasts begin to increase.”

“Just from the hormones?”

“You’re damn right, just from the hormones. But that’s just the beginning. Electrolysis takes care of the beard. That’s permanent. Then we go into the operating room. Silicone discs are implanted in the breasts. And then they do something called a bilateral orchiectomy, which, without going into details, mean, the changing of a man into a woman through operative procedure, removal of the testes and the conversion of the penis into an artificial vagina-and that’s what you have lying there on my table, a woman who was once a man. Would you like to have another look?”

Masuto nodded, and once again Baxter removed the rubber sheet that covered Angel Barton’s body. Even after having listened to Baxter’s detailed lecture, Masuto found it hard to believe that he was not looking at the body of a beautiful woman. Watching him, Baxter said, “You start with a very handsome young man, you get a beautiful woman.”

“Could she have intercourse?”

“After a fashion.”

“What does that mean?”

“She’s altered. That doesn’t make her a whole woman. We’re not God.”

“Then eventually Mike Barton would have known.”

“Unless he was a total idiot.”

“Poor fool in a kingdom of fools,” Masuto muttered. “The idol of millions married to a man who became a woman-his terrible secret. What clowns we are. That was his word. The only word. The proper word. How could he let the world know?”

Baxter covered the body. “Not a bad day’s work. As for our movie star. He danced-and he paid the piper.”

“I would appreciate it if you could sit on this for twenty-four hours.”

“I’ll be delighted to cooperate,” Baxter said. His victory had almost mellowed him, but he could not resist adding, “I regret that I haven’t handed you the killers on the same silver platter, but the city does pay you gentlemen for service.”

Masuto departed without replying. His car was parked behind the hospital in the lot, but he felt a need to walk, and as he walked, circling away from the hospital and toward Sunset Boulevard, he once again contemplated the ridiculous anomaly of a Zen Buddhist policeman in Beverly Hills. Why did he go on with it? Why did he continue? What kind of karma brought him to this ultimate barbarism which was also the glittering crown of a monied civilization. These were questions he had proposed a hundred times before. They always remained unanswered.

He walked back to his car and drove to his home in Culver City. It was only one o’clock, and Kati was both alarmed and delighted.

“This is my spiritual and physical nourishment for today. I have eaten wretched food, and tonight I shall not be home before midnight. I have a half hour, dear Kati. Can you prepare something?”

It was a sudden descent and an imposition. She had just fed her two children and sent them back to school, and now she was in the midst of her ironing. The nisei women in her consciousness-raising class, which she had begun to attend a full year ago, would have voted to send Masuto out to a lunch stand. But since none of them were witness, Kati embraced her husband, and after she had assured herself that no injury or other tragedy had sent him home, prepared the tempura from the night before with amazing speed.