The Case of the Angry Actress: A Masao Masuto Mystery (18 page)

“Can you take a walk over to Stage 6?” Masuto asked.

“All right.”

They walked across the studio grounds toward Stage 6. Jefferson wore a big, expensive, pearl-colored Stetson, a sport coat with gray checks, and he packed a forty-five caliber revolver in a shoulder holster. “Protective coloration,” he had once told Masuto. “It makes me a part of the place.” But he was consciously a character, a big man, well over six feet. He knew everyone and said hello to everyone.

“Always let them underestimate you, Masao,” he said. “But you know that as well as I do.”

State 6 was a large, cement-covered square block of a building. It completed a street of stages and processing houses, and then there was a big open space, bounded on three sides with stages and storerooms, but open on the fourth side to the thousand-acre stretch of sage and mesquite-covered hills that made up the vast back lot of World Wide Studios. Up in those hills was all that was necessary to the operation of a modern, contained studio: ranches, blockhouses, frontier forts, Indian villages, lakes, rivers, falls, sections of steamboats, an African village, a French town a medieval castle, a casbah, a New York street scene, a London Street scene, alpine peaks, cliffs—all of it linked by a winding, improbable road which was the basis for the studio tour.

“This square,” said Jefferson, “is the first stop for the tour. You know, star's dressing room, sound stage—they go through Stage 11, over there. Then they snoop through the carpentry shop and the plaster shop. Neither shop does the real work anymore. We've moved the main effort over to West Studio, but we still do enough here to give it a feeling of validity. This tour gives me a headache, and I'll have to put on six or seven extra men, but it is still the most original piece of entertainment anyone has thought of for a long time. Well, like I said, all the tour cars stop here. There's the first one coming now.”

He pointed down the studio street to where a gaily painted bus of sorts had appeared. An open bus, its seats stretched full across like the seats in a San Francisco cable car, with front, back and sides, were open except for a striped yellow and black awning. The awning was supported by six upright posts. The bus carried some twenty-four people. There was no question but that they were out-of-state sightseers. They wore sport shirts, carried cameras, and ran strongly to old folks and children; and they had the incredibly innocent, ready-to-believe look of people transported to some place as unlikely as the moon.

“The bus is a six-cylinder GM special job, geared very low,” Jefferson said. “The best it can do is twenty miles an hour, but on that one-lane road, that's more than enough. There are hairpin turns up there on the mountain that you wouldn't want to joyride over. Well, enough of that. You want to bring your kids out here for the tour, I'll get them passes.”

“That's good of you,” Masuto said.

“It is, bubby. Even the studio executives pay. Now let's get down to cases. Here's Stage 6. What do you want me to do?”

“You understand, Frank, that I can't map out all that's going to happen. Maybe nothing will happen. Maybe our killer knows it's a bluff.”

“Maybe.”

“But the odds are that I was believed, and if I was believed, the killer is as cool as ice and will plan to take out the witness. The killer is insane, and therefore the plan will be somewhat insane. Now we cannot anticipate the plan, but we can lay down certain rules for the game. Phoebe Greenberg will be outside. By the way—where will she make up?”

“They got their makeup department on Stage 9. They're shooting two pilots, one on Stage 9 and the other on Stage 10, but they coordinate the makeup and do it all on Stage 9. The makeup girl there is Jesse Klein, a real bubby. Why don't we walk over and talk to her?”

“Good enough.” They started over to Stage 9. “She comes over from Stage 9 to Stage 6. By then, I'll have the whole lot of them, with the exception of Phoebe, in Stage 6.”

“If they show.”

“They'll show. You can be sure of that. Now here's what I mean when I say that I can lay down certain rules for the game. I tell them that they must stay on stage—that under no condition is anyone to leave the stage until I return. Then I go outside and meet Phoebe. Then, when I have left, one of them will find some way to evade the others and get out of the soundstage.”

“Won't the others miss him right off?”

“No. The place is too big—and they're all mavericks. They won't stay together no matter what I tell them. Leave it to our killer to work it out.”

“This is a mighty iffy business, bubby,” Jefferson said.

“Of course it is. But what other way can we play it? I must gamble that only one of them will come out—and that's our cookie. How many doors does the stage have?”

“The hanger doors are locked. On the side facing the street, there are two doors, one at each corner. Then there's the alley, with a third door. That's the side alley. Back alley has two fire exits from the flying bridges and outside fire escapes.”

“Is there anything about this studio that you don't know?” Masuto asked.

“Very little, bubby—very little. If they pay me thirty-five thousand a year to walk around here in a cowboy hat, there's got to be a reason why.”

“All right. I come out of that door—the one nearest us.” They were at Stage 9 now, and Masuto pointed across the big square to Stage 6. “So that's covered. I want a man in the street to cover the other street door. I want a man in the alley, and I want a man behind the building to cover the fire exits. That's three men. Got them?”

“They're yours. When?”

“I want them behind the building at 10:40. On the nose. I'll meet them there.”

“You got it. What else?”

“I want them armed.”

“They're armed. But I don't want any shooting, Masao. They're good men and they know how to use their hands and they carry billies. I got a clean record on this lot. We never had shooting, not in the eighteen years I been here, and I don't want any now.”

“The killer will be armed.”

“Then if a gun is pulled, it's up to them to get the drop. Don't worry about that. When your killer shows, they will control the situation. I told you they're good men.

“I just hope to God they are.”

“And I want to do it quiet and quick, Masao, because the tours keep coming. A bus moves into this square every three minutes and another one moves out. Everything is timed, controlled and staged. We could put five thousand people through the tour on a busy day, so just think of how that could be loused up. I get paid to keep things from getting loused up. All right, we'll work it out. Let's go into makeup now.”

The room was for extras, for bit players, for second leads and any others who didn't have their own dressing rooms or their own makeup people. It was crowded, noisy, and dominated by a tall, hawk-faced, efficient woman with dark eyes and grey hair. This was Jesse Klein, and when she spotted Jefferson, her dour hatchet face broke into a grin and she yelled, “Hey, cowboy! We got a part for you in this one.”

“Not me, bubby. You don't make no actor out of me.”

“Why don't you stop with that bubby-business, you big ape? How do you think it sounds to people, the way you go around, bubby this and bubby that? Anyway, we're busy here. You don't want to act, you want to tear down the profession—beat it.”

He took her arm, introduced Masuto softly, and asked her to step outside with them.

“That sounds like a dirty invitation.”

“Come on, come on—stop with the wisecracks already, bubby.”

“You know,” she said, going out with them, “you got 1930 slang, old Franko. The kids don't say wisecracks anymore. There are no more wiseacres. That has gone the way of 23 skiddoo. Today you break them up or you're putting them on or you're bleeding on them or you're talking cockamamie or something. What do you want, anyway?”

“You know Phoebe Greenberg, bubby?”

“Sure I know her, poor kid. She inherited nothing but lousy. Then she married poor Al, and the whole world said she had it made. Everyone—Phoebe, you got it made. You got the world by the short hairs. And everybody tells Al he married an angel. Are you a religious man, John Wayne?”

“I'll tell you what,” Jefferson said. “You stop calling me John Wayne, I stop calling you bubby. Is that a deal?”

“It's a deal.”

“So I'm not religious, bubby.”

“All right—you religious?” she asked Masuto.

“It's a foreign religion, so go right ahead.”

“Then I'll tell you about God. You want to know what God does for kicks? He's got these angels roaming the world, trying to find someone's happy or got it made. Then one of 'em yells up to God, ‘Hey God, here's Phoebe down here. She's got it made!' Then? You know what then? Then—wham!”

“Sounds reasonable,” Jefferson said. “The point is this. Phoebe is coming in in maybe ten, fifteen minutes, and she wants to be made up. She'll tell you how she wants to be made up. You make her up. You ask no questions. You make her up.”

“Just like that?”

“Just like that. She wants a costume, get it for her. Who's on wardrobe?”

“Bessie Kenning.”

Jefferson took a pad from his pocket and scribbled a few words. “Give that to Bessie,” he told Jesse Klein, handing her the slip of paper.

“You don't want to tell me any more?”

“I don't want you to ask any more, bubby,” he said. “I'll meet you at the cafeteria at one o'clock and I'll buy you lunch and I'll buy you an ice cream soda for desert, and we'll set the whole place talking about me. Then, if you behave, I may tell you what kind of tricks we're up to.”

“You're all heart,” she said.

He walked down toward Stage 6 with Masuto. “Wait in the alley at the back,” he said. “I'll have the three boys with you in ten minutes.”

“Time's running out,” Masuto said.

“Don't worry. They'll be there.”

CHAPTER TEN

Captain Sharkman

M
ASUTO
was nervous. Time crowded him and caught up with him, and the whole machine was running too rapidly. He was a man who liked to think, who mistrusted quick conclusions, and now there was no time to think. He spent ten minutes waiting in the back alley, increasingly irritated as the minutes ticked by; and then when the three studio policemen appeared in uniform, his annoyance reached the bursting point.

“Why aren't you in plain clothes?” he demanded.

“Because nobody told us to get into plain clothes,” one of them explained. “If you want us to, we'll go back and change.”

Masuto's watch said ten-forty. “No, it's too late. We'll make out.” Masuto caught himself and calmed himself. In any case, it was not their fault. They simply did as they were told. Suddenly, he was almost physically sick with a wave of mistrust of Frank Jefferson. But then he overcame that. It was insane and pointless—and unless he controlled his thoughts and rode hard on his suspicions the entire fabric he was weaving would collapse. The point was not to mistrust Frank Jefferson, but to recognize an area of stupidity—which was always obvious in another person. It was his own errors, his own misjudgements and stupidities that might destroy him and Phoebe, not another's.

He explained the situation in as few words as possible. “I want the killer,” he said, “but above all, I want Mrs. Greenberg unharmed.”

“Don't worry about that, Sergeant.”

“Don't worry,” Masuto said bitterly. “How the hell can I not worry when I am told that no guns are to be fired?”

“Unless we have to.”

“What determines that?”

“Circumstances.”

“I am armed,” said Masuto. “If the killer has a gun, I'll use mine—that is, if the killer's gun threatens Mrs. Greenberg or myself. If the killer shows no gun, I won't use mine. Is that agreed?”

They nodded slowly.

“All right. I am going into the stage now. Remember—if possible I will come out of there into the street at nine minutes after eleven. I don't think so, but conceivably I could have a gun in my hand. Just take a long, hard look before you make any decision. That's nineteen minutes from now—right?”

“Right.”

“Then take your posts and stay on them.”

Then Masuto walked out of the back alley, turned right at the side alley, through the hard shadow into the burning white sunlight of the studio street. The candidates for murder were prompt, but perhaps that was to be expected. Trude Burke's MG was parked in front of the stage, and a grip was climbing in to return it to the parking lot. Sidney and Trude were standing at the door to Stage 6, and Sidney said cheerfully, “We're waiting, Sarge. I don't go in there without an escort.”

At the same moment, a huge black Northeastern company limousine drew up to the soundstage, and the uniformed chauffeur opened the door for the five people inside: Murphy Anderson, Stacy Anderson, Jack Cotter, Arlene Cotter, and Lenore Tulley.