The Case of the Angry Actress: A Masao Masuto Mystery (19 page)

“We thought we'd come together,” Anderson explained to Masuto. “We wanted to bring Phoebe, but she had already left when I called her home.”

“There was a message from her at the gate,” Masuto told them. “There was some mix-up at the cemetery. Evidently, they had some sort of title problem about the grave site. She had to buy seven square feet of additional land, and there was nothing to it but they must have a certified check. She went to the bank first, then to the cemetery, and then she'll be here. It doesn't matter.”

“We'll hold it up, then?” Cotter asked. They were all tense and nervous.

“No—no, we don't need Mrs. Greenberg.”

“How do you know?” Cotter demanded.

“For Christ's sake, Jack—don't be a damn fool!” Stacy said.

Sidney and Trude Burke stepped over to join them, and Murphy Anderson said, “Hello, Sidney.”

“I'm putting that in the record,” Sidney said. “A leper needs hellos. He files them away. Take it from me, Murph—don't be Mr. Goodguy. No percentage.”

“I don't like that,” Cotter said. “You're too damn quick with that tongue of yours, Sidney, and one day you're going to choke on it.”

“For crying out loud—” Anderson began. Cotter snapped at him, “Who the hell is Masuto here to act as any kind of judge and jury? It's no worse to think of Phoebe as the killer than it is to think of Trude as the killer—”

“Oh, drop dead,” Trude told him. “I never knew a cowboy player who wasn't an idiot—so why don't you stop trying to be a bigger shmuck than God made you! Let's get inside and get this lousy horror over with.”

“I'm for that,” Lenore Tulley said.

Masuto opened the door to the soundstage, and Sidney went through and opened the inside sounddoor. One by one, they entered—Masuto last. It was exactly one minute after eleven o'clock.

Inside the door, they stood in a tight group, allowing their eyes to become used to the dim light. Directly in front of them, a pile of cable lay like a tangle of enormous snakes in a jungle of arc lights and reflectors. There was a standing set of a modern kitchen, tiny and surrealist in the great inclosed space, and in the background one side of an ocean liner. Otherwise, only two high, half-drawn cycs and the shadowy spaces of roof, catwalks and far walls. Still, it was a dark forest—full of lairs and windfalls.

“Mrs. Greenberg left word that she would be here no later than eleven-five, and it's almost that now,” Masuto said.

“If Phoebe's pegged for the killer,” Stacy said, “then I am getting out of here right now.”

“No one said she is pegged for the killer,” her husband reminded her.

“I hate this stage. Let's get out of here.”

“I just realized,” Trude said.

“What?”

“He got his first one here. This is where Freddie Saxton was killed. Of course.”

“Which is why we're here, bright eyes,” Sidney said. “And it's no he. We got a dirty-minded broad doing all this scragging.”

They were drifting apart now, just as Masuto had predicted, gathering courage as they realized that the soundstage was only a soundstage—no more, no less.

“Clean-minded Sidney,” Trude said. “That's why I married you, my turtle dove, because you're so clean-minded and sincere.”

“You married me for my money.”

“Big discovery.”

Masuto said loudly, “Look everyone—stay together and stay inside. For your own protection, stay together—and under no circumstances is anyone to leave the soundstage without permission from me—not until the witness arrives.”

“Where is Phoebe?” Cotter demanded petulantly. He was over by one of the great cycs now, and he called out to Anderson, “Murph, this is ripped—did you know? They'll bill us for a new cyc—they come to about seven hundred dollars.”

“The hell with it!” Anderson said. “Stop worrying about the goddamn cyc.”

“Mr. Anderson,” Masuto said, “I'm stepping to the door to see if Mrs. Greenberg arrived. I'll be back in a moment.”

“Sure.” Then Anderson called to Cotter, “Anyway, I think that cyc was torn before. Forget it.”

Masuto stepped through the soundstage door into the street, blinking in the hot sunlight. The soundstage had been dim, cool and silent. Out here, a steam calliope was blaring circus music from the other side of the square. Busses with their brightly striped awnings of yellow and black were rolling in and out of the square, and under the guidance of young men and women in costume, crowds of tourists were being ushered through the carpentry shop and the plaster shop and the mocked-up Soundstage 11 to see all the wonders of how movies were made. There were kids eating icecream cones and popcorn and frankfurters, boys and girls holding hands, cowboys, Indians and gay Western ladies of the movie saloons. And through it all moved the grotesque lumbering figures who were America's cartoon heroes—Captain Devildom, with five wiggling tentacles and a ray gun; Major Meridean, dressed like a gladiator but with a rocket belt that could zip him anywhere in the world to right wrongs and defeat master criminals; Space Ace Ambrose in his gleaming space suit of red, white, and blue anodized aluminum, and other symbols of character and courage.

The calliope was screaming out a Sousa March as Masuto crossed the street, turning to face the soundstage. At the far end of the stage, the uniformed studio guard stepped out of the alley and lounged a few steps down the street, so that he could watch the door without appearing too obvious.

At the same moment, out of the corner of his eyes, Masuto saw Phoebe leave Stage 9 and start toward him. At least, he was certain that the stout, dark-haired woman—hair greying and wearing a cheap blue cotton dress that fell four inches below her knees—was Phoebe Greenberg. It had to be. Yet he wouldn't have believed that any makeup could be so perfect.

Then she met his eyes and they exchanged glances and he made a slight circle of approval with his middle finger and his thumb and she dropped one lid, and he knew that it was Phoebe. But in that time, for one part of a moment, for one part of a second, he made the error of negligence and sheer stupidity that he was destined to make. For one instant, he took his eyes off the soundstage door. When he glanced at it again, Captain Sharkman stood in the street in front of the stage.

Even in that instant, Masuto could not help thinking what a remarkable and impressive costume it was. It was mad, but then the world was mad and this was a dream factory out of which rolled, day in and day out, the phantasies, romances and nightmares of an entire nation. This was why a thousand generations had lived and died and fought and toiled—so that an apparition called Captain Sharkman could strut slowly toward him on the sun-soaked studio street. Captain Sharkman was six and a half feet tall. From the waist down, each leg was the separate body of a shark, an astonishing imitation of the pasty white skin of the fish itself. The torso was white and pale grey, and the arms were two ugly appendages that ended in sharkfins, and the head was a shark's head, ugly, expressionless, uptilted with the undercut jaw open. Through that opening, Captain Sharkman had vision, but the mask was cleverly constructed and no eyeholes were apparent. And on either side of Captain Sharkman's head, a pair of moist red gills moved in slow rhythm. Two red, white and blue striped epaulets gave him his rank.

During the next few seconds, things happened very quickly. Masuto saw the studio guard staring at Captain Sharkman but making no move to stop him. “Look for a murderer,” he had been told. But no one told him to look for Captain Sharkman. If a decision was difficult for Masuto to make, it was impossible for the guard. If the guard followed Captain Sharkman, the door would be left unguarded.

“And what do I do?” Masuto asked himself.

But there was nothing to do. Captain Sharkman shuffled up the street toward him. Phoebe walked across the square toward him. Masuto stood and waited, and a tour bus slowly moved across the top of the street toward the high mesquite hills on the back lot. The plan, prepared so carefully, had come to pieces.

Masuto made his decision. He let go of his plan and he let go of Phoebe. It was wrong, and he wanted her out of there, and as the bus crossed in front of her, he yelled, “Get on that bus!”

She had a mind and she had good reactions. Masuto watched with pleasure how specifically and quickly she reacted to his command, stepping onto the bus as if she had been waiting for it, standing on the running board and hanging onto one of the steel uprights that supported the awning. The passengers giggled with pleasure at her makeup and costume, and the driver-guide spoke into his microphone, “One of our Western ladies of small repute, friends, right out of a border saloon, yes, sir—one of the many surprises—”

Captain Sharkman broke into an entirely unexpected and most unlikely sprint, swinging onto the running board on the opposite side of the bus, hooking an arm-fin around the steel support. Masuto raced after him, caught the upright at the very end of the bus and hung on there as the bus rolled out of the square and onto the beginning of the mountain road, and still Masuto did not know for certain whether the murderer was on the bus here with him or back on Sound-stage 6, chatting with the others and laughing quietly at Masuto's stupidity. Well, that's the way it was; you were brilliant and intuitive and you built a plan step by step and removed every wrinkle and considered that finally it was foolproof, and then the unexpected.

“An unexpected pleasure,” the driver said into the microphone that curved toward him from under his rear view mirror. “Here we have Captain Sharkman himself. Well, that's something to talk about, isn't it? We are taking the hairpin climb up there to the Peak of Despondency, and you can see the Norman tower up there built for the great remake of ‘The Conqueror'—and we have two studio guests, this little lady from the old West and Captain Sharkman. In case any of you have not had the pleasure of watching Captain Sharkman perform his great deeds on TV, I can tell you that he is one of the great cartoon stars of Grapheonics, and he does his part in righting wrong, preventing crime, and defending the American way of life. In his college days, Captain Sharkman was all-American—at the Naval Academy. Three years after his graduation he was in command of an atomic submarine, the ill-fated Finray that exploded off the coast of Africa in 1961. But by some miracle of electronics, instead of dying in that atomic blast, Captain Sharkman and his crew were transformed in a strange evolutionary process provoked by the atomic blast. They became sharkmen, and so were able to continue their lives and adventures in defense of the free world and the American way—”

As the spiel droned on, the driver was manipulating the hairpin turns of the studio road, climbing higher and higher, until Masuto could see below him the studio laid out, sound stages like small blocks, and beyond the studio the whole hazy vista of the San Fernando Valley.

“You will all recollect,” the driver continued, “that unfortunate accident in which an atomic bomb was lost off the coast of Spain. Well, we like to think that Captain Sharkman and his crew of fearless underwater heroes were instrumental in recovering it, and in their dangerous underwater existence, this is only one of their many, many tasks. At the top of the climb, at the Peak of Despondency, there is a souvenir and refreshment counter where you can purchase a small replica of Captain Sharkman, either entirely assembled or in plastic pieces, one dollar—”

They had slowed almost to a stop to take one of the hairpin turns and Masuto shouted, “Phoebe, drop off!”

Again, she obeyed. She dropped off the bus onto the edge of the road. Masuto dropped off. It hung in the balance, and then as the bus rounded the curve, Masuto saw that Captain Sharkman had also dropped off.

It had worked. Masuto faced the murderer. Phoebe ran a few steps, and then she was next to Masuto. “Behind me and down the road,” he snapped at her. He had drawn his pistol, and as Captain Sharkman came toward them, Masuto pointed the gun and said, “Don't make me kill you.”

A hundred yards up the road and fifty feet above them, the bus had stopped, the passengers staring at what was happening below. The driver yelled, “What goes on there, old buddy?”

The passengers giggled self-consciously.

Phoebe paused a few yards behind Masuto, and now Captain Sharkman leaped toward Masuto.

Masuto fired twice at Captain Sharkmen's legs. Either the costume deflected the bullets or Masuto missed, and then Captain Sharkman was upon him, and a blow of the big arm-fin knocked the gun out of Masuto's hand. As he attempted to lunge past Masuto, the detective caught him with a backhand karate chop, knocking him off balance. Sharkman, slipped, stumbled and then caught himself. The two of them dropped into karate position now, and Masuto realized that his right hand was bleeding from the blow with the fin. The fin was hard as steel and rough to simulate real sharkskin. It would only take a single karate chop with that rocklike fin to stop Masuto, to break a neck or an arm or a shoulder—and Captain Sharkman was determined to have the blow, to bring it in, to finish Masuto and get the girl. He was senseless now, mindless, and he rushed Masuto and screamed as he made his chop.

It missed. The audience in the bus shouted with excitement and howled with laughter.

Masuto's own cry came with the blow he launched. It was the explosive karate sound, and his hand chopped into Sharkman's neck and hit plastic and foam rubber. He hit again as Sharkman lumbered for his own position. Masuto was quicker, like a mongoose with a cobra, but Sharkman was almost invulnerable in his cacoon of plastic and foam rubber. Again and again, Sharkman swung his lethal fin, and again and again Masuto avoided it—only once not entirely, and it opened his left sleeve and took the surface skin off his left arm, shoulder to elbow.

It was then that Phoebe was able to dart in and pick up Masuto's gun, and as the crowd in the bus hooted and yelled and screamed, “Fake! Watch it, Sharkman—they got a gun!”