The Case of the Murdered MacKenzie: A Masao Masuto Mystery (Book Seven) (5 page)

“I'm curious. Where's the body?”

“The body. Now, what did you imagine, my Oriental friend, that I'd have it sitting here in the icebox against the possibility that you'd return one day and ask to contemplate it?”

“I merely asked.”

“Indeed. Well, I have to inform you that Mr. Robert Mackenzie, having gone to his reward, whatever that may be, is reposing quietly about six feet below the surface of that Rolls Royce of all cemeteries, namely Forest Lawn, where the Mackenzies have a family plot. Ah, thus liveth and dieth the rich.”

“When you did the autopsy,” Masuto said, “did you notice anything unusual—some birthmark or such—on the body where the clothes would have covered it.”

Baxter looked at him shrewdly. “You got some smarts, Masuto. I give you credit for that. You're wondering why she took one look and said it wasn't her husband. But suppose nothing was there?”

“Then it was the absence of something, which amounts to the same thing. Suppose it was an operation. What's most likely?”

“Appendectomy.”

Masuto sighed and shook his head.

“You could cover the L.A. hospitals,” Baxter said. “That's not impossible. Of course, it could have been done twenty years ago. How old was Mackenzie—fifty-three? It might have been done when he was a kid. And I can assure you that the corpse, had no surgery—large or small.”

Masuto shook his head again. “It's pretty hopeless. But one other thing. There was a blow to the head.”

“Skull fracture.”

“Would the blow have rendered him unconscious?”

“Absolutely. In fact, odds are that it killed him.”

“The blow was on the right side?”

“You're a real smartass detective, aren't you, Masuto. And Mackenzie was sitting with his right side against the wall. So if his wife knocked him out, she had to lean over behind him. I told that to your brainless partner, but he has imagination. He said that if Mackenzie had twisted around to talk to his wife, she could have hit him there. Just turn around a little more, sweetheart, and bend your head so I can knock your brains out. Cops! God help us with that kind of law and order! Tell you something, they subpoenaed me as a witness and I'm going to blow this case right out of the courtroom.”

“I'm sure you will,” Masuto agreed. “Very grateful. Thank you.”

It was good to be out of there, back in the fresh air, away from the stink of open bodies and formaldehyde. Masuto drove to the police station at Rexford Drive in Beverly Hills. After parking at the station, he sat in his car for a few minutes brooding over as essentially wrong a situation as he had ever encountered. Then he stepped into the sunshine that almost always bathed Beverly Hills, and then he went into the police station.

Captain Wainwright had locked his office door, enjoying his after-lunch cigar in premises where smoking was forbidden. Masuto could smell it seeping under the door, whereby he knocked and named himself at the same time. Wainwright opened the door and asked what his business was. “I'm still out to lunch,” he said.

“We have to talk.”

“You were out in Santa Monica. I told you to take the day and sit in court and hold Beckman's hand. You going to look a gift horse in the mouth?”

“That's right. This horse has three legs.”

“I do declare, Masuto, that you can make my life as miserable as a dog's hind side on an anthill, and I damn well do know what you're going to say. Leave it alone. Why the hell couldn't you stay another week in Japan?”

“We got a funny city, Captain, and a lot of rich people, and we're sort of a freak as cities go, and we got Rodeo Drive, where a man can buy a shirt for two hundred dollars and a suit for twelve hundred dollars, and we have the highest-priced hookers in the world, and we got houses that sell for three million dollars, but I never heard anyone accuse us of having dirty cops. They accuse Beverly Hills of everything else, but not a crooked police force.”

“You're going too far, Masao. I've put up with damn near everything from you—”

“Just tell me why you arrested and charged Eve Mackenzie, and I'll swallow everything I said.”

“I don't have to tell you one damn thing!”

“So sorry, Captain Wainwright.” Masuto turned and opened the door.

“Where the hell are you going? And don't give me any of that Charlie Chan routine!”

“I'm going to sit in my office and decide whether I want to work here anymore.”

“Close that door and stop being a horse's ass!” There was a slight smile on Masuto's face that disappeared as he turned around. “Now, sit down,” Wainwright said to him. “Talk. Get it off your chest.”

“All right. I listened to Beckman's testimony. Then I had lunch with him. Then I went over to see Doc Baxter. He's going to testify that there's no way in the world Eve Mackenzie could have killed her husband.”

“I know that.”

“You know that, and you withheld it from Beckman. Sy Beckman's been my partner for years. He has more courage and decency than any man I ever worked with, and you've made a fool of him, and you've withheld evidence from him and you made him the arresting officer in as rotten and ridiculous a case as I've ever seen.”

“That's so.”

“Why?”

“I don't have to tell you why, Masao, and don't push me. I'm tired of being pushed. What's the difference? The public won't yell, because they don't know the difference between a good case and a rotten case, and in another day or two the judge will throw the whole thing out of court, and Eve Mackenzie gets a million dollars worth of publicity, which ain't bad for a washed-up movie star, and we close our file and that's the end of it.”

“And the killer walks away, and we never even know
who
he killed or where the real Mackenzie is, if there is a real Mackenzie.”

“You been sniffing around.”

“That's what I get paid for.”

Wainwright got up and stalked around his desk and stood staring out the window. “Times I hate this place and times I love it, and times the goddamn sunshine makes me sick. Look, Masao, this is tied into the Fenwick Works and a lot of other things. They come to me and they tell me to close the book on the Mackenzie case. Indict the wife and then let the case fall apart. She walks out of court free, and that's the end of it. I tell them we don't do things that way.”

“Who?”

“There's no who. I gave my word about it. Then they start turning the screw. They put the heat on the city manager, and then the calls come in from Washington, and then more heat—and all along the rationale is that nobody hurts. They want to bury the case. They want an unhappy wife who gets rid of her husband, only there's no good evidence to convict her. Baxter thinks he's going to testify, but Geffner will forget to call him.”

“But why? What's behind all this? You tell me that Geffner's in on it, but Geffner's honest.”

“We're all honest.”

“Is the judge in on it too?”

“Don't put me in the middle of some lousy conspiracy. If we had one small notion of who the real killer is, it would be a different ball game.”

“And you don't? Not even one small notion?”

“I want you to stay out of this, Masao. It's done with.”

“You know it's a beauty, Captain. For some reason Eve Mackenzie knows what she shouldn't know, so they frame a case around her and put their own lawyers in to defend her, and tell her that she takes her choice—keep her mouth shut and walk out of there a free woman or talk and sit in jail for ten years. Only it's so damn stupid it has to fall apart. What happens then?”

“We're cops. We don't make laws and we don't run the country. We're just cops.”

“Sure.”

“And now, suppose you get out of here. Lunch is over. I got work to do.”

“Would you mind if I looked around the Mackenzie house?”

“I sure as hell would mind. Stay out of there.”

Angry, puzzled, and to a degree bewildered, Masuto returned to his car and drove down Lexington Road to the Mackenzie house. He parked his aging Datsun across the street from the big, expensive house, a two-story brick painted white, with a tile roof and high walls on either side to hide the grounds behind the house, and to the left of the house a gated driveway. While Masuto sat there the front door opened and a woman stepped out, a tall, well-built lady of about forty, her hair dark, her figure a bit heavy but still attractive. She stared directly at Masuto for a minute or so, and then she went back into the house.

A few minutes later a Beverly Hills prowl car pulled up alongside Masuto, and the officer driving said, “I didn't know it was you, Sergeant. The lady in the house called in a suspicious car. You got to admit that Datsun of yours is pretty suspicious in the neighborhood.”

“I guess it is,” Masuto admitted.

He drove back to the police station, studied the blotter, and found nothing to interest him. Sensible professional criminals, with some exceptions, steered shy of Beverly Hills. It was too heavily policed. Burglaries, house break-ins for the most part, were done by amateurs or kids. Car thefts led the list. Masuto was staring at the list without actually seeing it when Wainwright entered his office.

“When Beckman finishes at court,” Wainwright said, “he'll fill you in on the follow-ups. Today, you might as well knock off.”

“I want to talk to Geffner.”

“That's your affair, Masao. Do it on your own time.”

Masuto drove back to Santa Monica and got into the crowded courtroom by flashing his badge. Beckman was still on the stand, being cross-examined by Cassell.

“And you actually believe,” Cassell was saying to him, “that this woman, Eve Mackenzie, who weighs a hundred and fourteen pounds, could bend over her husband while he sat in the tub and knock him unconscious? Come on, Detective Beckman.”

“If she used a hammer—” Beckman began.

Geffner interrupted with an objection. “The question calls for a conclusion,” he said. “Detective Beckman is not a physician.”

“I'm going to allow it,” Judge Simpkins said. “I must say that I'm not thrilled by any of the evidence you've presented thus far, Mr. Geffner, and with this witness you've opened every door imaginable. Don't ask me to close them. Anyway, it's almost five o'clock. I think we'll adjourn.”

Beckman spotted Masuto and joined him, and Masuto told him that he intended to talk to Geffner and that it wouldn't be possible if Geffner's star witness listened in.

“This is one time I wish I could.” Beckman sighed. “It's been a long, stupid day. I'll see you tomorrow.”

Geffner was surrounded by reporters, and Masuto waited until he had worked his way out of them. Then Masuto fell in next to him as Geffner walked out of the courthouse, and Geffner said, “So you're back, Masuto. I wish you had been here. This mess might have been less messy.”

“Not likely. I have to talk to you.”

“That can only mean grief. I have enough grief.”

“You can't make the grief go away, and at least I don't print what I hear.”

“All right. I'll meet you at the bar of the Seaview, Ocean Avenue just off Wilshire.”

“I know the place.”

In the dark comfort of the bar at the Seaview, slumped in a heavy carved wood and black leather chair out of another era, Geffner said, “Masuto, I've practiced law for twenty-five years, and this is the first dirty trick I've ever been caught up in, and so help me God, I can't make head or tail of it, and I don't know whether I'm being honest or dishonest or what.”

“I think you should talk about it,” Masuto said.

“You know something, I'm going to, because if I don't talk to someone about this, I'll go out of my mind. Beckman was the arresting officer, but the file came to me via Wainwright. Very curious. I told him that there simply wasn't enough clean evidence to go into a preliminary hearing with, that it wouldn't wash. He just shrugged it off and he tells me I got to, you got to. I said no, no judge would move to indict. Then I get a call from Washington. Not direct. First Senator Haitman calls. I know him. I know his voice. He tells me a very important top-secret call from Washington is coming in. Who? What? Nothing but innuendo. Then the call comes. From the White House. Not the President. Gives me an extension and tells me to call back. I call back. This is the White House, she says. I give her the extension and the guy tells me to take the Mackenzie case and see it through. I tell him it's a rotten, tainted case. You take it and see it through, he tells me. I argue that any sane judge will dump it at the preliminary. Just present it, he tells me, if they dump, they dump.”

“And you don't know who he is—this voice?”

“Not a glimmer. But the preliminary hearing was before Judge Speeker. He's crazy as a. bedbug on the film business. Hates it. The film people ruined California, according to him. He gives us our indictment. So there I am scheduled to go into court without enough evidence to convict this lady of robbing a gumball machine. Well, you saw the beginning. The only other witness I have is that ridiculous Mrs. Scott. I can't put Baxter on. He'd blow the whole thing.”

“Eve Mackenzie—she's out on bail?”

“A hundred thousand—very low for murder one. The Fenwick outfit put up the bail.”

“And the lawyers were from the same place?”

“Exactly.”

“Gets stranger and stranger. What will you do?”

“Finish my case. If Cassell doesn't make a motion—well, he has to make a motion to dismiss, and that's the end of it.”

“The judge dismisses, and she walks out free.”

“That's about what it adds up to. I suppose Wainwright closes the book then. But to what end, Masuto? That's what drives me crazy. A man who works for Fenwick is killed. Everyone—Washington, Fenwick, your bunch there in Beverly Hills—everyone wants his wife charged with the murder. But they know there's no evidence. They know she'll walk out. Why?”