make it the hard way, I saw Mikey every day, the sweetest, most willing, most decent kid I ever knew. The only kinkiness in him was that he wanted to be an actor. Then we came out to the Coast and lost touch with him, and then one day, about sixteen years ago, Joe met him at a gas pump. He brought the kid home, and we fed him and made him stay with us. Joe got him a part in a TV film, and he liked what he saw and got him an acting coach. From there on it was step by step, until he became the Mike Barton of today. We love Mikey, so I don’t want to put Joe on a pedestal as Mr. Good Guy, but without Joe he would be another of the ten thousand unemployed actors around town. I don’t say Joe didn’t profit. He made eight films with Mikey, and six were enormous money-makers. But that’s not why he did it.”
“He had already changed his name to Barton when your husband met him?”
“Yes. He wanted it that way, and Joe let it stay. They decided on a mysterious past, and it worked, for what it’s worth.”
“And how did he meet Angel?”
“That’s another well-kept secret-” She hesitated, studying Masuto and Beckman thoughtfully.
“But you’re going to tell me,” Masuto said deliberately. “You’re not a chatterer, but you’ve decided to tell me a number of things. May I ask why?”
“Is why important?”
“I think so.”
“I’m afraid. There’s something happening here ever since Mikey married her, and it frightens me. He’s changed. A lot of stars and semi-stars in this town cat around like they’re in competition. Mikey wasn’t that way. There were a few girls in his life whom he really cared for, but he didn’t marry until he met Angel. He lived with one lady for five years, and while they were together he never looked at another woman. He has one real weakness- one, maybe a dozen. Who hasn’t? Mikey wouldn’t win any prizes for smarts. He’s sweet and kind, but not too bright. But the one real weakness I’m talking about is gambling. It’s a sickness, and he’s a big loser. He met Angel in Vegas, where she was dealing blackjack, and he fell for her like a ton of bricks. She had been on the job only a few days, and already she had the reputation of wanting nothing to do with any of the studs around the place. She walked off the job with him the next day and they came back to L.A. together and she moved in-and it didn’t work, not one little bit. It was a rotten, screwed-up marriage from the word go.”
“Not according to the media,” Beckman said.
“You can talk to the media or you can talk to me. The Angel that the fan magazines write about-the sweet, gentle, compassionate creature-doesn’t exist. The real Angel is by no means a sweet, warm woman. She’s a controlled cake of ice.”
“They say she has a slight foreign accent.”
“She’s French. She claims to have learned her English dealing at Collingwood’s in London.”
“Which you don’t believe?”
“Joe’s been to Collingwood’s. He says they don’t have lady dealers.”
“If the marriage is so bad,” Masuto asked her, “why do they stay together?”
“You never met Mikey?”
“This morning. I talked with him at his house.”
“All right. He paid a million dollars for her. He adores her, pays his price, and gets nothing, absolutely nothing, in return. If you want reasons, talk to a psychiatrist. It’s nothing I understand, nothing Joe understands. If she told Mikey to lay down at the front door so she could use him as a doormat, he’d do it. The one real fight Joe ever had with Mikey was when Mikey wanted him to put Angel into a picture.”
“Why?” Beckman asked. “She’s beautiful.”
“Beautiful, Mr. Beckman,” she said patiently, “is a salable commodity in Grand Rapids or St. Louis. In Hollywood you can’t give it away. On any street in West Hollywood, you’ll see ten girls as beautiful as Angel, and if you walk through one of the studios, you’ll see a hundred. Of course, they don’t have her press, which comes from being married to Mikey.”
“Still, if Mike Barton wanted it-”
“When you have ten million dollars riding on a picture, you don’t make gifts of starring roles. Anyway, Joe agrees with me. She can work her charm in a living room, but she’s not enough of a woman to make it on the screen.”
“What exactly do you mean?”
“I don’t really know what I mean. I’m Jewish. I look at Detective Beckman here and decide that he’s Jewish. Maybe if I wasn’t Jewish I wouldn’t know. I’m a woman, and when I look at Angel and talk to her-well, something’s missing. It’s just a feeling. I can be very nasty when I put my mind to it.”
“One more thing, if you can still put up with our questions. At the party last night, who left first, Angel or Congressman Hennesy?”
“They left together.”
“You’re sure?”
“Quite sure. But if you think Hennesy’s involved in the kidnapping-no. It’s not his style. He’s a white-collar crook-payoffs, bribes, influence peddling.”
“You seem to know him.”
“Ah, Detective Masuto, you live here in the Colony, and you know a great many people, some nice, some not nice at all.”
“Where does Hennesy live?”
“A few miles from here.”
“Is he wealthy?”
“That’s hard to say. You see, a public servant is always so ready to sell at almost any price that it’s difficult to say whether poverty or larceny is the motivating factor.”
Masuto nodded, repressing a smile. “Thank you. You’ve been very helpful and informative.”
“How often do we get two good-looking city detectives out here in Malibu?”
“Even if you do look Jewish,” Masuto said to Beckman when they were outside in the car.
“She’s a tough little lady. I wouldn’t want to get on the wrong side of her.”
“Still, it’s puzzling,” Masuto said. “One loves Angel, one hates Angel. Nobody gives any reason why.”
“You’re going to look for reasons why a dumbbell falls in love, you got to be crazy.”
“You think he’s a dumbbell?”
“She does. She may love him like a son, but she don’t give him even passing marks. Anyway, Masao, I think that as far as we’re concerned, the case is closed. The feds will step in, and they want all the cards where a kidnapping is involved. Anyway, the break-in part of it and the snatch itself was in Malibu, so it drops into the lap of the Malibu cops. We might as well head back to Beverly Hills to Barton’s place, and then I can tell my wife I actually saw Mike Barton in the flesh. That’ll give her meat for the coffee klatch for the next two weeks. Unless you want to talk to Lee?”
“He’s a screenwriter, isn’t he?”
Beckman consulted his notes. “That’s right. Cominsky says he’s the hottest writer in the business.”
“We’ll skip him. I don’t want any more imagination. I already have too many notions of what happened here last night.”
They were on Sunset Boulevard, heading east toward Beverly Hills, when Masuto’s radio lit up. It was Polly at the switchboard at the station house.
“Where are you?” she asked him.
“Just east of Sepulveda.”
“Let me try to patch you through to the captain. He’s been trying to get you.”
“Masao?” Wainwright’s voice was flat and bleak. “Where the hell are you?”
“Just passing the university.”
“Well, get your ass over here to San Yisidro, just up from Tower.”
“Why?”
“Because Mike Barton is sitting here in his car with a bullet through his head.”
