Howard Fast - The Case of the Kidnapped Angel

“Not according to the media,” Beckman said.

“You can talk to the media or you can talk to me. The Angel that the fan magazines write about-the sweet, gentle, compassionate creature-doesn’t exist. The real Angel is by no means a sweet, warm woman. She’s a controlled cake of ice.”

“They say she has a slight foreign accent.”

“She’s French. She claims to have learned her English dealing at Collingwood’s in London.”

“Which you don’t believe?”

“Joe’s been to Collingwood’s. He says they don’t have lady dealers.”

“If the marriage is so bad,” Masuto asked her, “why do they stay together?”

“You never met Mikey?”

“This morning. I talked with him at his house.”

“All right. He paid a million dollars for her. He adores her, pays his price, and gets nothing, absolutely nothing, in return. If you want reasons, talk to a psychiatrist. It’s nothing I understand, nothing Joe understands. If she told Mikey to lay down at the front door so she could use him as a doormat, he’d do it. The one real fight Joe ever had with Mikey was when Mikey wanted him to put Angel into a picture.”

“Why?” Beckman asked. “She’s beautiful.”

“Beautiful, Mr. Beckman,” she said patiently, “is a salable commodity in Grand Rapids or St. Louis. In Hollywood you can’t give it away. On any street in West Hollywood, you’ll see ten girls as beautiful as Angel, and if you walk through one of the studios, you’ll see a hundred. Of course, they don’t have her press, which comes from being married to Mikey.”

“Still, if Mike Barton wanted it-”

“When you have ten million dollars riding on a picture, you don’t make gifts of starring roles. Anyway, Joe agrees with me. She can work her charm in a living room, but she’s not enough of a woman to make it on the screen.”

“What exactly do you mean?”

“I don’t really know what I mean. I’m Jewish. I look at Detective Beckman here and decide that he’s Jewish. Maybe if I wasn’t Jewish I wouldn’t know. I’m a woman, and when I look at Angel and talk to her-well, something’s missing. It’s just a feeling. I can be very nasty when I put my mind to it.”

“One more thing, if you can still put up with our questions. At the party last night, who left first, Angel or Congressman Hennesy?”

“They left together.”

“You’re sure?”

“Quite sure. But if you think Hennesy’s involved in the kidnapping-no. It’s not his style. He’s a white-collar crook-payoffs, bribes, influence peddling.”

“You seem to know him.”

“Ah, Detective Masuto, you live here in the Colony, and you know a great many people, some nice, some not nice at all.”

“Where does Hennesy live?”

“A few miles from here.”

“Is he wealthy?”

“That’s hard to say. You see, a public servant is always so ready to sell at almost any price that it’s difficult to say whether poverty or larceny is the motivating factor.”

Masuto nodded, repressing a smile. “Thank you. You’ve been very helpful and informative.”

“How often do we get two good-looking city detectives out here in Malibu?”

“Even if you do look Jewish,” Masuto said to Beckman when they were outside in the car.

“She’s a tough little lady. I wouldn’t want to get on the wrong side of her.”

“Still, it’s puzzling,” Masuto said. “One loves Angel, one hates Angel. Nobody gives any reason why.”

“You’re going to look for reasons why a dumbbell falls in love, you got to be crazy.”

“You think he’s a dumbbell?”

“She does. She may love him like a son, but she don’t give him even passing marks. Anyway, Masao, I think that as far as we’re concerned, the case is closed. The feds will step in, and they want all the cards where a kidnapping is involved. Anyway, the break-in part of it and the snatch itself was in Malibu, so it drops into the lap of the Malibu cops. We might as well head back to Beverly Hills to Barton’s place, and then I can tell my wife I actually saw Mike Barton in the flesh. That’ll give her meat for the coffee klatch for the next two weeks. Unless you want to talk to Lee?”

“He’s a screenwriter, isn’t he?”

Beckman consulted his notes. “That’s right. Cominsky says he’s the hottest writer in the business.”

“We’ll skip him. I don’t want any more imagination. I already have too many notions of what happened here last night.”

They were on Sunset Boulevard, heading east toward Beverly Hills, when Masuto’s radio lit up. It was Polly at the switchboard at the station house.

“Where are you?” she asked him.

“Just east of Sepulveda.”

“Let me try to patch you through to the captain. He’s been trying to get you.”

“Masao?” Wainwright’s voice was flat and bleak. “Where the hell are you?”

“Just passing the university.”

“Well, get your ass over here to San Yisidro, just up from Tower.”

“Why?”

“Because Mike Barton is sitting here in his car with a bullet through his head.”

San Yisidro is a road that winds up into the Santa Monica Hills, branching off from Tower Road a short distance from Benedict Canyon. For about a mile and a quarter San Yisidro is within the city limits of Beverly Hills, and then the road goes on into Los Angeles. It must be noted that Beverly Hills itself is an island, entirely surrounded, not by water but by the City of Los Angeles. San Yisidro is a very elegant neighborhood, but there are spots where the cactus and the mesquite still grow untouched as they have for the past hundreds of years.

It was at one such spot that Mike Barton’s black Mercedes was parked, drawn up on the shoulder of the road, the central attraction for two Beverly Hills police cars, Wainwright’s car and Dr. Sam Baxter’s car. A uniformed policeman stood in the road, waving the curious by. Masuto and Beckman parked behind a prowl car and then joined Wainwright at the Mercedes. The door was open, and Baxter was examining the body of what had been Mike Barton. On the other side of the seat Sweeney, the Beverly Hills fingerprint man, was dusting the car and the dashboard.

“When did you find it?” Masuto asked Wainwright.

“Half hour. Officer Comdon was patrolling the road, and he saw the car. Barton looked alive just sitting there, which is why, I guess, other cars passed it by, but Comdon figured he might be lost or something.”

“When was he killed?”

Wainwright nodded at Sam Baxter, and Masuto went over to the doctor and asked him.

“How the hell do I know?” Baxter snapped. “Was I here? All right, we’ll play the guessing game.” He looked at his watch. “It’s four-thirty now. I’d say he’s been dead four hours, and that’s just a guess, and if you put me on a witness stand, I’ll say it’s a guess.”

“Thank you, Doc. Next to your skill I admire your sweet nature most. What killed him?”

“A gun. What in hell do you think killed him?”

“Yes, of course,” Masuto said humbly. “I thought perhaps you could tell us what kind of a gun.”

“The bullet’s still in his skull. When I open him up and take it out, I’ll give you all the details. Meanwhile, from the entry hole, I’d guess it was a twenty-two, and since the bullet didn’t go through, I’d say it was a twenty-two short. A guess, you understand? But what the hell, if I did my work the way you people do yours, my whole life would be guesses.”

“Yes, our work is hardly as precise. How far away was the gun when the bullet was fired?”

“You’re sure you don’t want the name of the killer?”

“Only if you have it.”