Howard Fast - The Case of the Kidnapped Angel

“You only mentioned the three in help. Are there any others?”

“Just his secretary, Elaine Newman.”

“Is she here today?”

“Not yet. She comes in around ten, but she could be early or late. Mike doesn’t hold her to strict hours.”

“Does she know about the kidnapping?”

“No, and we decided not to tell her. When she comes in, I’ll send her over to my office to get some papers and my secretary will keep her waiting there and then she has to pick up a manuscript for Mike. That will keep her out of it until noon. This is still off the record, and according to the kidnapper, we have to keep it that way.”

“All right.” Masuto nodded. “I’ll wait right here for Barton.”

Masuto had occasionally speculated on what makes a “bankable” star, a term very expressive in Hollywood if nowhere else in America. Certainly it was not theatrical talent, not appearance-though appearance was important-not beauty, not brains, but rather an indefinable thing which some called charisma for want of a better name. It was not connected with the way an actor lived his life, treated the other sex, was or was not a doper, a drunk, a liar, or a thief. It was something that cut through all that, recognizable yet undefinable-and whatever it was, Mike Barton possessed it. He was onstage as he stepped out of his house, and he strode over to Masuto with a kind of assurance reserved for his narrow clan, yet lacking, Masuto felt, any of that tired inelasticity that comes from fear and sorrow. He was a star, but not a very good actor.

He shook hands and said, “Let’s walk, Sergeant. My house has big ears.”

“Whose ears?”

“Damned if I know.”

“Kidnapping for ransom is planned. It’s not decided on the spur of the moment. Someone must have known that your wife would spend the night at the beach house.”

“Who? I didn’t know it myself. Angel didn’t know. We decided that she should show up at the party because Netty’s a dear old friend. I had a splitting headache and I felt too rotten to trek over to Malibu. I told Angel that if the party was a drag, she should cut out of there at ten o’clock or so, but if she was having fun and decided to stay on, she shouldn’t try to drive back here. Hell, that’s what the beach house is for.”

“But the people at the party would know that she planned to stay overnight.”

“Some of them, maybe. I suppose Netty would know. Where the hell is all this leading, Sergeant?”

“The woman who gave the party, Netty Cooper-did you talk to her?”

“Come on, come on. My wife was in trouble.”

“Still,” Masuto persisted, “someone must have known that she would be at the party-”

“Sure. People knew that.”

They were at the greenhouse now. “I guess we ought to step inside,” Barton said, “just in case someone’s watching. It’ll make some sense for me to be walking in the garden with you.”

Inside the greenhouse Masuto asked him, “Who might be watching?”

“Goddamnit, Sergeant, you get me at the worst moment of my life and ask me questions that make no damn sense.”

“I’m sorry.”

“All I want is to get back into the house and wait for the phone to ring.”

“I can understand that.”

“Then it makes no sense for me to be out here talking to a gardener. You keep asking me who is watching. How the hell do I know? But someone knows every move I make and every move Angel makes, and they’re going to think it’s funny as hell for me to be out here with you. Furthermore, let me tell you this: If anyone follows me when I make the drop and Angel is hurt, I swear to God I’ll sue Beverly Hills for every dollar they got in their treasury.”

“No one will follow you.”

“Then I suggest you get your truck out of here.”

Masuto nodded, reflecting that to be a policeman in Beverly Hills was quite different from being a policeman anywhere else in the world. He watched Mike Barton stride across the garden to the house, the stride and bearing of a thoroughbred horse, and then Masuto walked to his truck, got in, and drove out of the place. A few minutes later he parked the pickup at the police station on Rexford Drive, ignored a uniformed cop who wanted to know whether he had changed his profession, and then climbed the stairs to Wainwright’s office.

“Back already?” Wainwright asked sourly.

“He didn’t want me there. He raised hell and told me to get out.”

“Great. We pay a hundred dollars to rent the truck for a day and we get ten minutes out of it.”

“Beverly Hills can afford it.”

“They don’t pay for it. It comes out of our budget. Did you get anything?”

“Not really. Some impressions.”

“Well, just sit on them. The city manager was in here and he wants us to keep hands off. Ranier and McCarthy are out there with Barton, and they’ll be in touch with us once Barton pays the ransom. When Angel is returned, we can move in and investigate.”

“And if Angel isn’t returned?”

“Let’s take it one thing at a time.”

“I’d like to go out to Malibu now,” Masuto said.

“What for?”

“I want to see his beach house and I want to talk to Netty Cooper, the lady who gave the party where Angel spent last night.”

“The Malibu cops are handling that.”

“I know, Captain. Nevertheless, she resides here. The Malibu cops would expect us to stick our noses into it.”

“I don’t want trouble with the brass, Masao. They want us to keep hands off.”

“Absolutely. I’m not tailing Barton or interfering with him. I’m looking at a place where a crime was committed, a break-in and a kidnapping. It would be derelict on our part not to look into it, and it would undoubtedly open us to various charges that-”

“All right. Do it. I’m sick of being told when to be a cop and when not to.”

“I’d like to take Beckman with me.”

“What for? You need the company?”

“For protection. He’s bigger than I am.”

“Take him and get the hell out of here!”

His desk still covered with files, Beckman was talking into the telephone when Masuto entered. He put down the phone, and Masuto told him, “Come take a ride. We’ll drive over to my house, I’ll change clothes, and then we’ll head out to Malibu. Unless you got something out of this morning?”

“We’ll talk in the car,” Beckman said. He was a big man, three inches taller than Masuto’s six feet, heavy-set and slope-shouldered. He sat in Masuto’s old Datsun scrunched over and observed that when you scratched the surface of anyone, what came up was pretty damn strange.

“How’s that?”

“You want to know about Angel. Well, I put out every line we have. I called Gloria Adams at the L.A. Times and I called Freda Mons at the Examiner. Between them they know about every celebrity in the country, when they pee and when they cut their fingernails and who they’re in bed with, and I even called Elsie Binns at S.A.G., who knows practically every actor in the world, and do you know that none of them could come up with even a license tag for Angel Barton. That is, before two and a half years ago, which was when she moved in with Mike Barton. So who is she and where was she and where does she come from?”

“How about her maiden name?”

“That, Masao, is a lulu. Nobody, but nobody, has the vaguest notion what her maiden name was, or whatever her last name was, maiden or not.”

“What did they call her? They must have called her something.”

“They called her Angel.”

“What about the Motor Vehicles Bureau?” Masuto demanded. “Did you try them? If she drove a car before she was married, she had a license.”