“I’ll be damned,” Wainwright said.
“I could be wrong. Remember that.”
“You’re wrong about one thing. I’d think twice before I pulled him in or handed his name over to the L.A. cops. I’d want to see some unshakable evidence.” He looked at the name again, then folded the slip of paper and put it in his pocket. “Maybe we’ll get lucky this time.”
10
Catherine Addison
Masuto picked up his phone and dialed the Crombie number. Mitzie Fuller answered. “Well,” she said, “if it isn’t Mr. Inscrutable himself! Do you know what I feel like? I feel like I’m under house arrest in a Banana republic. This is no life, Sergeant, and I don’t like ladies enough to spend the rest of my life in their company. Either you spring us or I’m going to bust out.”
“Give it until tonight,” Masuto said.
“Now if you’ll be our baby sitter, I might be able to relax and enjoy it.”
“I’m afraid that’s impossible right now. Please stay with it. Is Detective Beckman around?”
“He is always around. Only the bathrooms are safe from Detective Beckman’s prowling presence. I’ll call him.”
Beckman got on the phone and said, “Masao, these gals are driving me nuts. Also, the phone doesn’t stop. Every goddamn newspaper, TV station, and wire service in the world has been calling here. It’s one thing for me to say no comment. But these dames-they talk to their friends. So whatever stories get out, don’t blame me. I’m just the keeper. Outside in front, we got two TV cameras and crews, maybe six reporters, and a nice sprinkling of the public. Nothing like this ever happened before on Beverly Drive.”
“Just keep the doors locked. What about the picture?”
“You’re right. There isn’t a picture of the kid anywhere in the house. I mean a framed picture, or a picture on the wall, or one of those pictures you stand on a table or a piano.”
“You’re sure?”
“Absolutely. But let me tell you this. In Mrs. Crombie’s bedroom, I saw one of those big, classy leather-covered picture albums. I leafed through it, and, Masao, every picture in it is the daughter Kelly.”
“How do you know it’s Kelly?”
“Well, it’s obvious, isn’t it? Unless there’s some other kid in Mrs. Crombie’s life. Oh, it’s the daughter, all right, and it starts with her as an infant and takes her right through, I guess until right before she died. If you want one of the pictures, I can slip it out. Who knows if she ever looks at the book.”
“No-not yet. I think I can get a picture somewhere else. Now look, keep those women inside.”
“I’ll try.”
Masuto was on his way out when Wainwright called after him. “Hold on a moment, Masao. One thing.”
“Yes?”
“Why does he have to kill all the women?”
“Then there’s no motive-or four motives.”
“You mean that cold-blooded bastard would kill four women just to lay down a smoke-screen?”
“He’s running scared and he has a lot to protect. He’s killed three people already. A man like that is totally without conscience or morality. He will kill a human being the way you or I might kill a fly. You read about that kind of thing. There was that fellow in Texas who killed eleven people. You just don’t look for it in a place like this.”
“Which one of the four is he after?”
“I’m not sure. I could guess, but I’m not sure.”
“Alice Greene?”
“I’m just not sure.”
“And you don’t think he’ll drop it now?”
“He can’t drop it. It has him by the throat.”
“Which is what worries me, Masao. If anything happens to one of those women, we’re in it up to our ears. At this point, I don’t give a damn about the cost. I can put four men around that house day and night.”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because that’s not the problem. The problem is keeping them in the house. I’ll go down the line on the fact that nothing will happen to them while they’re there. But we can’t keep them there. You know by now the kind of women we deal with in Beverly Hills. They’ve had it their own way; they’ve always had it their own way. All I can do is ask them to stay there, and maybe while they’re scared enough they will. But the fear will wear off, and my guess is that by tomorrow, no force on earth can keep them there. But while they’re there, Beckman is with them, and there’s no one I’d trust more than Beckman in a situation like that.”
“All right,” Wainwright agreed uneasily. “Where are you off to now?”
“Downtown-oh, I am stupid, I don’t have a brain in my head.” He broke off and stalked back to his office and called the Crombie house again. This time, the phone was busy. He kept dialing, looking at his watch, dialing. It was eleven o’clock. The day was running away.
Beckman answered the phone.
“Sy, did you get her first husband’s name?”
“Whose first husband’s name?”
“Crombie’s.”
“Yeah. I forgot to tell you. She was married to a guy named Neville Addison. He invented a type of radar for use on small military vehicles and made himself millions. From what I’ve been able to get from Mrs. Legett”-he dropped his voice-“this Crombie dame is worth millions, but millions.”
“Good enough,” Masuto said. “Hang in there.”
Outside, the press was waiting, pleading with him. “Come on, Sergeant, open up. Give us something. Is the Mafia established in Beverly Hills?”
“Is this a contract job?”
“How does Monte Sweet fit into it?”
“Where is Monte Sweet?”
“Was he romancing this broad? Come on, give.”
Masuto got into his car and drove away. He was totally into it now, putting it together, piece by piece. He felt that he had most of the pieces, the only trouble being that the most important pieces were blank. He felt driven, compelled. The shadow figure who opposed him was locked with him in combat. Masuto knew, and by now the killer was aware that Masuto knew.
He pulled his car into the parking lot at the Los Angeles Police Department and went inside. On a day when every minute counted, luck was with him. Lieutenant Pete Bones was at his desk.
Bones regarded him sourly.
“I know,” Masuto said, “but if you could wrap up those two killings you got and maybe fish another one out of the bin, you wouldn’t hate me so much. Right?”
“I don’t hate you. You’re just one curious son of a bitch, and that pisses me off. What the hell have you got, some kind of lousy Oriental crystal ball?”
“Come on now, Pete,” Masuto said gently.
“How in hell did you know that those two bullets would match up?”
“Two bullets?”
“You know damn well what I’m talking about. The bullet that killed the Chicano kid and the bullet that killed the chemist.”
“Same gun?” Masuto said innocently.
“You know, if it was anyone else, I’d say you’re mixed up in something, but the word is you’re an honest cop. Not that I’m taking my hat off to the Beverly Hills Police Department.”
“No,” Masuto agreed. “Of course not.”
“All right. You got this thing with the botulism. Omi Saiku filled me in on that. It had to be a chemist, and you figured the chemist had to be dirty, so there was a dirty chemist somewhere whom we might have picked up, and if we put the screws on him, he would have implicated your killer. So your man killed him. You laid that out uptown. But how in hell could you be sure that the Chicano kid tied into it?”
“I don’t know how many plainclothes detectives you have in the L.A. force,” Masuto said. “Perhaps a thousand. We don’t have enough to make up a good poker game. So I have to guess. Sometimes I guess right.”
“Let me make a guess,” Bones said, “that the killing you had last night ties into this.”
“That’s good guessing.”
“Nah! Not even smart. We got a Chicano housemaid who dies of botulism who works for this Crombie woman, and then we got this Mafia-type killing in her front yard.”
“Is that what you think?” Masuto asked. “The Mafia?”