Howard Fast - The Case of the Russian Diplomat

The rabbi thought about it for a long moment, and then asked, “How do you know it will be very terrible?”

“Because I have been a policeman for many years, and because I learned to sense things. That’s not a very good answer, is it?”

“Tell me something, Sergeant Masuto, are you a Christian or a Buddhist, or perhaps simply a person without any particular faith, as so many are these days?”

“I am a Zen Buddhist.”

“Interesting. What is your request?”

“I would like you to call your friend in Las Vegas and ask him whether he knows a man, a booking agent, named Jack Stillman.”

“Why should he know him?”

“Stillman lives in Las Vegas. I think he’s Jewish.”

“Still, Las Vegas is a large place. It seems a most peculiar request.”

“If you feel it’s out of line-” Masuto spread his hands.

Both Beckman and the rabbi stared at Masuto for a few moments. Then the rabbi consulted his desk directory, found the number he wanted, and dialed it.

“Rabbi Bealson, please,” he said. And a moment later, “Larry, this is Hy Schineberg in Los Angeles.” Pause. “Yes, too long. But you’ll have to make it here. My congregation watches me too carefully for me to get away to Vegas.” Pause. “No, I’m calling at the request of an interesting policeman. Do you happen to know a Jack Stillman? He lives in Vegas and he’s a booking agent.” Now the rabbi listened. “Now that is odd, very odd indeed. Thank you, Larry.” Pause. “Soon, I trust.”

He put down the telephone and stared at Masuto, smiling slightly. “Well, Sergeant Masuto, the world is full of interesting coincidences.”

“I don’t think that what you are going to tell me is a coincidence.”

“Do you know what I am going to tell you?”

“I can guess. I would probably be wrong.”

“All right, let’s see. First of all, Jack Stillman is Jewish. He is not a member of Rabbi Bealson’s congregation, although he was, very briefly, when he married his first wife, whom he recently divorced. Shall I continue, or would you like to guess?”

“Would one of you please tell me what this is all about?” Beckman demanded.

Masuto liked the rabbi. A part of Masuto’s life was a game, and he had the feeling that the rabbi understood this particular game.

“Let me guess. Stillman was connected with the Jewish Defense League.”

“A theatrical booking agent? Wouldn’t that be a strange connection?”

“Perhaps.”

“You’re an interesting man, yes indeed. The fact is that about a year ago, some J.D.L. youngsters came to Stillman, and he gave them five hundred dollars. It was not a secret. I mean, it was nothing that Stillman attempted to hide, so I violate no confidence. Rabbi Bealson happened to hear about it. He also told me that recently Stillman married an exotic dancer-I think that’s the term-whose name is Binnie Vance. She was one of his clients, and she was apparently well known in certain circles.”

Beckman was staring at Masuto, his mouth open.

“Is something wrong, Seymour?” the rabbi asked.

“I’ll be damned,” Beckman said slowly.

“Did he say anything in particular about this Binnie Vance?” Masuto asked.

“No, except that she is an exotic dancer. He did say that Stillman was the last man you would expect to support the J.D.L., but you can never tell about Jews. Could I ask you why you are so interested in Jack Stillman, Sergeant, or is it none of my business?”

Beckman looked at Masuto, who nodded slightly. “He was shot to death this morning,” Beckman said. “In his room at the Beverly Glen Hotel.”

“Oh, I didn’t know. I’m so sorry. What an awful thing-and how terrible for his new wife.”

“I should have told you before,” Masuto said. “I didn’t mean to make light of it.”

It was a quarter after eight when they reached the station house in Beverly Hills. Beckman checked in and then went home to sleep. Wainwright had left for the night. Masuto telephoned his wife.

“How’s Ana?” he asked.

“She’s fine. Her throat seems to be better. Should I send her to school tomorrow, Masao?”

“I don’t see why not.”

“I’m glad you said that. There’s only a few days of school left before the summer vacation, and she loves to go to school. Will you be coming home now?”

“Not now, I’m afraid. Later.”

“How much later? Masao, you hardly slept. Have you had dinner?”

“Yes,” he lied.

“I watched the television news about that awful thing that happened at the Beverly Glen Hotel. Please be careful.”

“I’m always careful. You know that, Kati.”

Frank Cooper was in charge of the plainclothes night shift, and Masuto asked him whether Wainwright had found Binnie Vance.

“She’s staying at the Ventura. She opens there tomorrow.”

“I know that. Did he reach her?”

“She’s opening the Arabian Room, first show on the opening night, and this got to happen. You know what I hear, I hear there’s big Arab money in the Ventura, but that could be a crock. You don’t hear of nothing these days except that there’s big Arab money in it. I don’t care how much loot these Saudis got, they can’t own everything.”

“What I want to know,” Masuto said patiently, “is whether she was informed of her husband’s death.”

“Yeah, according to the captain.”

“What was her reaction?”

“Damned if I know. I didn’t talk to her.”

“What about the Stillman case? Anything new?”

“Nope. But that F.B.I. guy, Clinton, he was here about an hour ago and sore as hell because he couldn’t reach you. According to him, you should have been sitting here waiting for him. They’re cute, those cookies. He wants you at the Feds’ office downtown at eleven tomorrow. He was pissed off because you never mentioned Stillman to him. He wanted to know what kind of idiots we were not to think of a connection between the drowned man and Stillman, especially when the call came from Stillman’s room in the hotel.”

“What did you tell him?”

“I told him I was a stranger here myself, and that I don’t get to work until six o’clock. Anyway, he wants you to bring everything you got on the case with you tomorrow. I guess he don’t have a high opinion of the Beverly Hills police.”

Masuto left the station house and drove downtown. He took Santa Monica Boulevard to Melrose Avenue, and from there he turned south on the Hollywood Freeway. The Ventura Hotel was clearly visible as he approached the downtown area, and Masuto reflected that it was indeed an incredible building. It consisted of four round towers, like four turrets of some ancient castle, with the body of the hotel seemingly suspended in the center; but the towers were of glass, shining in the night, with outside elevators crawling up and down the glass surface like black beetles. Improbable anyplace, the building was even more improbable here in this earthquake country, and Masuto wondered, as he had so often in the past, at the insistence of engineers and architects that the new Los Angeles be built mostly of glass. The hotel was part of a complex of new skyscrapers that had risen out of the clearance of some of the worst slums in the city, sitting on a hill that had once been climbed by a cable car known as Angel’s Flight.

The hotel, still minus the finishing touches of construction, was open to the public, the Arabian Room being the first of its large dining and entertainment rooms to open. The lobby of the new hotel was crowded. It was the end of June, and already the tourist flow into Los Angeles had begun.

Masuto went to the desk and asked for the number of Binnie Vance’s room.