The Case of the Angry Actress: A Masao Masuto Mystery (8 page)

In the bedlam downstairs, Murphy Anderson sat like a lost child, hunched over in his chair, warding off the reporters and hiding from the TV cameras, which were still barred from the house.

Masuto watched him as Beckman said, “Do you want to talk to the maid, housekeeper?”

“No. Get their statements.”

“There's no one you want to arrest?” Beckman asked hopefully.

“No—no one.”

“Let me get out of here, would you?” Murphy Anderson asked.

“You don't want to talk to the widow?”

“No, I don't want to talk to the widow. I only want to get out of here.”

“All right,” Masuto nodded. “I think I have had enough of this place too. I'll drive you over to your office. Now remember, they will crawl all over you when you leave here. Just walk straight ahead with me. Say nothing.”

“I'm a lawyer,” Anderson growled.

“Of course you are. How stupid of me!”

Out in the sunshine, they pushed past reporters, the curious, and the TV people. A cop came alongside of Masuto and said softly, “They got a call downtown from a Mrs. Baker. She wants you should drop by and talk to her.”

“All right. I'll get to it.”

He got Murphy Anderson to his car and into it, and then they were worming their way through the traffic, down Benedict Canyon Drive to Sunset. Anderson lay back in his seat, his eyes closed.

“How stupid of me,” Masuto repeated. “Forgetting that you are a lawyer and asking you whether you thought your wife was Samantha. A nasty question, and an invitation to give evidence against your wife.”

“Evidence? What the hell, nothing I say to you means anything in a court!”

“And what does Tulley's death do to your company?”

“It's a blow. It's a shot in the belly. It means that the show is over. No more ‘Lonesome Rider.' Well, we're insured—I mean Mike was insured in our favor.”

“How much?”

“A quarter of a million dollars.”

“That's a comfort, isn't it?”

“It's a comfort, as you say, but we're still in the red. We lose a lot more than a quarter of a million.”

“Well, to a cop such numbers have no practical meaning. I do apologize for an inconsiderate question. But tell me, please, who do you think is Samantha?”

“Now that's nicely put, isn't it, Sergeant? Who do I think is Samantha? I can tell you who Samantha is—she's a little tramp who bit off more than she could chew. I'm sick of all this weeping over a stupid kid who invites disaster. But who is Samantha? The answer is no one. This whole Samantha kick is a phony.”

“Then you don't think Samantha murdered Tulley?”

“I do not.”

“And you don't think that one of your associates might be married to Samantha?”

“Nuts.”

They were at Wilshire now. Masuto said that he would like to come up to the offices for just a moment. Anderson protested only a bit.

“The whole world has fallen in. There are only twelve hundred things for me to do, Sergeant. Why don't you give me a break for today.”

“Murderers are always inconsiderate. But Detective Beckman tells me that Cotter is in the office, and I would like to have a word with him.”

But it turned out that Cotter had been there and left.

“Did he say where he was going?” Anderson asked his secretary.

“I imagined he was going over to poor Mr. Tulley's home.”

“When was that?”

“At least a half hour ago. I had two ham-on-ryes and two coffees sent up. They're inside. The coffee is still warm. I felt that perhaps you would not have time to eat.”

“You felt right,” Anderson replied, leading Masuto into his office.

The sandwiches were on a tray on his desk. “Actually, they are ham and cheese. The world caves in, but you go on eating—especially when you're a compulsive eater. That's my problem. You know, I'm becoming fond of you, Sergeant. That snotty Oriental manner is intriguing. How about I put you in a TV pilot? We got to have something to replace the ‘Lonesome Rider,' who's plenty lonesome now, believe me. Ever thought of being an actor?”

“Who hasn't?” Masuto smiled. “It's the occupational daydream of Los Angeles. I have a cousin who works all the time. He's that heavy-set, sadistic General who always sits at a table eating, and says, ‘Take American out, shoot him.' My wife's sister was in the Brando film.”

“Have a sandwich.”

“I am honored,” Masuto said, taking the sandwich gratefully. He was starved. He bit into it and chewed thoughtfully and then said, “Didn't anyone like Tulley?”

“Everyone loved him. He received over a thousand letters a week—fans. They adored him. In Chicago, they tore off his pants.”

“Just between you and me, Mr. Anderson—who do you think killed him?”

“Have some coffee.”

“Of course,” Masuto said, accepting the coffee, “that's the trouble with this case. Every one of you knows who the killer is. Maybe the candidate isn't the same in every case, but you all know. Only, there's one thing you apparently can't get into your respective skulls—that this killer is a homicidal maniac, and that he will kill again and again and again.”

“That's your guess.”

“No. That the way the symbols are arranged—but you don't believe in symbols anymore, and you don't see them. You are a people enlightened—”

The loudspeaker intercom on Anderson's desk crackled at that moment, and his secretary said, “I have a call for Detective Sergeant Masuto.”

“Any name?” Masuto asked.

“Oh, yes. She said you would know her. Her name is Samantha.”

Anderson reached for the phone, but Masuto gripped his arm and said quickly, “Do you have a private line in the office?”

“There, in the corner,” pointing to a phone on an end table next to the couch.

“Get on it. Call the operator. Use my name, give her the main number, and trace us. Quick.”

Then, as Anderson ran across the room to the other phone, Masuto lifted the one on the desk and said, “Hello. This is Sergeant Masuto.”

“All right, Masuto—this is Samantha. Now listen carefully. I am not going to repeat.” The voice was the precise, controlled theatrically trained voice of a professional.

“Now wait a minute. Let me get my pad.”

“Come off it, Masuto. I know you're having the call traced right now. That will take you at least eleven minutes. I don't propose to give you more than five.”

“You're optimistic if you think we can trace a call in eleven minutes. How do I know you're Samantha?”

“How? Because I know what went on in that lousy trailer room when that little louse, Sidney Burke, arranged for his gangshag.”

“A good many ladies seem to know,” Masuto said.

“No, no. Not at all. Let me give you the rundown, Sergeant. Max Green was in that room, and he's dead—”

“Who is Max Green?” Masuto interrupted.

“Interrupt me once more, mister, and I hang up. Now are you ready to listen?”

“Go ahead.”

“Max Green was there, and he's dead. A rotten little creep called Fred Saxton was there, and he's dead. Al Greenberg was there and he's dead. Mike Tulley was there, and he's dead. Which leaves Jack Cotter, Murphy Anderson and Sidney Burke. Four down, three to go. You know, Sergeant, just to convince that heathen and doubting Oriental mind of yours, the gun that killed Mike Tulley was a 32-caliber Smith and Wesson. It was his wife's gun. I shot him three times in the chest. None of that has been on the air yet. Check me and see. As for the other three—tell them to expect me.”

She hung up, and Masuto replaced the phone and said to Anderson, “Let it go, Mr. Anderson. She's off.”

“Was it Samantha?” he asked eagerly.

“That's what she said.”

“What else did she say?”

Almost word for word, Masuto repeated what the woman had said—all of it, leaving nothing out, and watching Murphy Anderson's face as he spoke. At the end, he said to Anderson, “Who is Fred Saxton and who is Mike Green?”

“Oh, my God,” Anderson whispered.

“Who are they?”

“Fred Saxton was the production manager on the ‘Lonesome Rider.' Max Green was the assistant producer.”

“Isn't that sort of the same job?”

“Sort of.”

“Then I presume they're both dead?”

“Yes, they're dead. We had changed the title from assistant producer to production manager and then we gave the job to Fred Saxton.”

“How did they die, Mr. Anderson?”

“Max died a normal death. My God, this thing is insane enough without making it crazier. Max died of a heart attack, over a year ago.”

“How old was he?”

“I don't know—forty-six, forty-seven.”

“Then it wasn't so normal, was it?”

“Why? It's young, but people die of heart attacks in their forties. It happens.”

“And how did Fred Saxton die?”

“One of these stupid accidents—” He broke off, rose suddenly, and went to a little bar in the room and poured himself a glass of brandy.

“You want a little brandy, Sergeant?”

“No. So maybe it was not an accident. What happened?”

Anderson drank the brandy, wincing and making faces. “His skull was crushed. On one of the sound stages we rent over at World Wide. A hundred-pound sandbag counterweight fell from the beam where it was rigged. He never knew what hit him. Died instantly. Terrible—just terrible.”

“I thought everything was lead counterweights and electric winches today.”

“This was an old stage. Those bags could have been up there for years—I don't know. But it could have been an accident too.”

“I suppose so,” Masuto admitted.

“Can I tell Jack and Sidney about what she said?”

“Why not? A few minutes ago, you refused to give an inch about our Samantha. Have you changed your mind?”

“I don't know,” Anderson replied.

CHAPTER FOUR

Peggy Groton

W
HEN
Masuto entered City Hall on Santa Monica Boulevard, he was already aware of a glow of notoriety in which the city would alternately squirm and bask. Beverly Hills was hardly a place for violent murder. He sometimes thought of the place as a toy city, with a toy police force to guard people who dreamed away their lives, but those were very private thoughts and not proper to any bona fide policeman. Usually, he came and went unnoticed, but today reporters tried to buttonhole him, and curious ones, town bureaucrats and employees, begged to be let in on the facts.

His chief also begged. “What I want to know, Masao, is do the two deaths connect? Do we have some kind of a double killing on our hands?”

“Maybe a triple killing,” Masuto said. “This is one with a taste for blood and death. This is a demon. But you don't believe in demons, do you?”

“I also do not buy any high-class Oriental philosophy at this moment. I also don't like a cop who gets on a connecting bug and goes off on the mass-killer kick. Just before you came in, it was on the wire that some dame goes off Mulhol land Drive on the Valley side. You'll connect that up too.”

“What dame?”

“I don't know. It's Hollywood anyway. Haven't we got enough trouble? Let the city worry about it.”

“Who's up there?”

“I don't know, rescue service and city cops, I suppose. What's the difference?”

“Did the car burn?”

“How do I know if the car burned?”

“Chief, do me a favor,” Masuto said, trying to control his excitement. “Believe me—something is happening, something is working out. Get them on the radiophone and tell them to hold everything until I get there. Not to touch the car. I don't mean they should not take the woman to the hospital—”

“The woman's dead, Saito.”

“Of course—of course. Will you phone them?”

“They're city cops—all right, I'll phone. I had to go and hire a Japanese cop. But what about all this? Where are we? Was Al Greenberg murdered?”

“He was murdered.”

“You're sure?”

“No one's ever sure about such a killing.”

“And Tulley?”

“The same killer. That's a very strong opinion. More opinion is that the same civilized joker murdered a third man, one Fred Saxton, on the World Wide lot about seven weeks ago. Perhaps a fourth man—that waits to be seen. And nothing is going to wish it away.”

Mulholland Drive was a high rib out of a sea of yellow smog. To Masuto, as always, the sight was unreal and hideous, and his eyes burned. He parked on the edge of a snarl of cars and people that had stopped traffic entirely, and only halfhearted efforts were being made to put the traffic through. As Masuto learned and as he had expected, there were no witnesses. The rescue car was there and two police cars and a sheriff's car and the crawling traffic. And eight motorcycles. The riders were between eighteen and twenty-four years old. They were all bearded and most of them were stripped to the waist. Motorcycle boots, black leather trousers and cigars. They sprawled by their bikes, surly, angry, frustrated. Masuto walked past them to the edge of the slope. The car was about a hundred and fifty yards below, not burnt but thoroughly smashed. Stretcher bearers were crawling carefully up the slope with the woman's body. She was strapped into the stretcher, her face covered, so apparently she was dead. Some cops were around the car.