by a guy who’s gay. It’s only the cops and Anita Bryant who climb walls at the thought that somebody maybe don’t have the same sexual preference.”
“How well do you know them?”
“The way a hairdresser knows his customers. Some more, some less.”
“Start with Laura Crombie.”
“She doesn’t talk much. I don’t know whether I like her or not but she’s straight on. She doesn’t dye her hair.”
“Who would want to kill her?”
“You’re asking me? She doesn’t even take alimony from the son of a bitch she was married to.”
“How do you know that?”
“The women talk.”
“Do you know her husband?”
“Just by reputation. Crombie and Hawkes, real estate.”. “Who is Hawkes?”
“Nobody. He’s been dead for years.”
“Alice Greene?”
“Tall willowy blonde. Not real, but a great head of hair. She’s the type I’d go for if I were straight. Real class, except that a buck is a buck. No other reason why she married that creep Alan Greene-you can’t turn on the tube without seeing his ads for his string of stores. Since I’m talking, I’ll talk. Her alimony is five grand a month. I know some guys who’d murder their own mothers to save sixty thousand a year, and to add insult to injury she’s been having an affair with Monte Sweet, the comic. But they’ll never get married. They’d have to be crazy to kill the goose that laid the golden egg.”
“Meaning her alimony.”
“You bet your ass. The best investment there is. You put in a couple of years, and not only have you got the community property law going for you, but you got a fat check coming in every month.”
“And is that the case with Nancy Legett?”
“Now there’s something else. She’s a quiet little mouse-the one in ten in Beverly Hills who just lets her hair go gray. I don’t know what to make of her-quiet, polite, no gossip. She was married twenty-two years to Fulton Legett, the producer. He’s a big swinger, and for a long time he was up on top. But the past few years, he’s had one bomb on top of another, and today they say he’s broke. That don’t mean he’s poor, but maybe he’s tired of keeping her in that big house up on Lexington Road. She’s got three kids. They’re away at school, the way I hear it, two of them in swanky Eastern colleges and one in a prep school back east. That don’t come cheap.”
“And Mitzie Fuller?”
Tony Cooper leaned back and grinned. “Mitzie. She’s a doll-she’s an absolute doll. Red hair-real, not from the bottle-a great face and the best pair of boobs this side of the Grand Canyon. Never heard a bad word out of her. She is the sweetest, nicest bundle that ever walked into this tonsorial cathouse. Tell you something, Sarge, if I was straight I’d break my ass trying to get next to her. One thing about broads you can bet your last dollar on, the nicer they are, the worse bums they tie up with, and Mitzie’s ex, Bill Fuller, is no exception to the rule.”
“William Fuller, the director?”
“That’s right. Now let me tell you something. I don’t run the biggest hair shop in Beverly Hills, but I like to think it’s the best, and I get the pick of the classy broads, and they talk and they talk and they talk. If I didn’t have trouble writing my own name, I could write you a tome on the habits of so-called straight men that would curl your hair, and I’d have a chapter on film directors. They are the meanest, most arrogant, egotistical set of bastards that ever lived, and Billy Fuller is one of the top runners. I’m still waiting to hear something nice about him. Now I don’t know why they got divorced, because Mitzie don’t talk. They were only married six months when it broke up, but Mitzie got the house on Palm Drive, which the real estate ladies tell me is worth three-quarters of a million on today’s market, and the word is that she gets a fat check every month. Well, she earned it. Six months living with Billy Fuller has no price on it. But you want a candidate, you got him. He’s a killer. He’d kill anything that got in his way.”
Masuto was silent for a long moment. Then he said, “I wouldn’t mention that to anyone else-for your sake, as well as mine.”
“You asked me.”
“I know. And you told me. And for the time being, it rests with us. Right?”
“Right.”
5
The L. A. Cops
Masuto stopped off for a hamburger and a cup of coffee, and he had them wrap two and fill a container of coffee for Beckman. Knowing Beckman, he knew that it would make no appreciable difference to Beckman’s appetite if he had brought a sandwich to the vigil. For Beckman to sit in the car, preserving a sandwich for some future dinner hour, was unthinkable. He turned out to have been right.
“I’m starved,” was the first thing Beckman said to him.
“I brought you two hamburgers and coffee.”
“With pickles?”
“With pickles.”
“You know,” Beckman said as he unwrapped the first hamburger, “under that cold, inscrutable shell of yours, you got heart.”
“I’m relieved to know that. What happened?”
“You mean with the kid or here?”
“First the kid.”
“Well, we rounded up a couple of kids near the bakery, and they identified him. Jesus Consolo, fourteen years old. A good kid. Never got into any trouble, no dope, tenth grade, good marks. The L.A. investigators matched it up with a missing report, and I let them break the news to his parents. I’m no good for that kind of thing. I got a fourteen-year-old kid of my own, Masao, and I swear if I ever find that lunatic bastard-”
“No, you won’t. Now what about the kids who identified him? Did they see anything?”
“Nothing, nothing-nothing until it stinks. This bastard leaves no loose ends.”
“They all leave loose ends.”
“I sure as hell hope so.”
“And what about here?”
“Well, when I got here, I rang the bell and told Mrs. Crombie that I’d be here in the car. She wasn’t crazy about the idea, and I asked her about the three other women, just to make sure they were inside.”
“Were they?”
“Yeah, they’re there. I told her to bolt the back door and to call me in case anyone came to the back door. That’s it. All quiet as a graveyard.”
“Good. Patch in a call to your wife and tell her you won’t be home tonight.”
“What? She’ll skin me.”
“I want you to stay overnight in the Crombie house.”
“You’re putting me on.”
“Dead serious. I’m going to convince all four women to remain there overnight and I want you to stay with them.”
“And that’s what I tell my wife-that I’m sleeping in Beverly Hills with four dames?”
“If you want to be perfectly honest.”
“Masao,” Beckman said seriously, “I think you’re a little nutty with this one. They don’t need me there overnight. They lock the doors and the windows. Every one of these Beverly Hills houses has a burglar alarm system.”
“I need you there.”
