“I asked you about Mitzie Fuller before,” Masuto said.
“Yeah?”
“You said you don’t know her.”
“You’re sitting here,” Legett said, “because you bulled your way into my office and I let it be. I don’t have to answer one goddamn question. As a matter of fact, I can have you thrown out of here. You’re a small town cop who’s off his range.”
“You called Mitzie Fuller a number of times, asking for a date. Why deny it? You’re divorced.”
“You have got one stinking nerve.”
Masuto slid Catherine Addison’s picture across the desk. Legett glanced down at it. “What’s this? That’s Kelly. What has she got to do with all of this?”
“You knew her?”
“Of course I knew her. She was Laura’s kid.” He pushed the picture back at Masuto. “That’s enough. Get out.”
Masuto put the picture in his pocket and left.
12
Monte Sweet
Masuto was building his structure, but it was still a house of cards, fragile, unsupported. He had written the name of the murderer down on a slip of paper and had handed it to Wainwright, but that was a gesture, a touch of ego that he was almost ashamed of, and always there was the possibility that he could be wrong. If he was wrong, then he had slandered an innocent person, and the fact that only he and Wainwright knew about the slander did not lessen his guilt. Whatever else he was-a policemen, a father, a husband, a rose-grower, a Nisei-he was still above all a Zen Buddhist with an ultimate responsibility to himself.
Yet as he picked up piece after piece, the pattern he looked for was beginning to emerge. Still, it was without meaning; he had built an arch out of intuition, psychological guesswork, and shreds of disconnected evidence. The keystone was missing.
Lost wholly in his thoughts, he ran a red light, narrowly missing a cursing motorist, and then he saw the blinking light of a Beverly Hills black-and-white behind him. He pulled over to the curb, the black-and-white behind him. The officer got out of his car, walked over and said, “Traffic lights don’t mean anything to you, do they, mister?”
Then the cop bent down and said, “I’ll be damned!”
“I will if I keep this up,” Masuto said.
“Are you chasing something, Sergeant?” the officer asked.
“No, Macneil. The only thing I’m chasing is an idea. I just ran the light. I haven’t done it in years.”
Macneil shrugged. “We can’t all be perfect.”
“You ought to give me a ticket. I deserve it.”
“Ah, the hell with it! Only keep your eyes open, Sarge. You missed that guy by inches.”
Masuto drove on. He turned off Santa Monica Boulevard into the parking space behind the real estate offices of Crombie amp; Hawkes. Their three-story building oozed prosperity. Over the door, heavy brass letters spelled out the names of the dead Hawkes and the living Crombie. Inside, the first floor was reminiscent of a bank, with two rows of desks, four on each side, and behind each desk an attractive woman. These, Masuto surmised, were the residential agents. A broad staircase led up to the second floor, and brass letters indicated that business properties were dealt with up there. Next to the entrance a pretty blonde woman-there was a pretty blonde woman at almost every reception desk in West Los Angeles and Beverly Hills-supplied information. But then the pretty girls from every town in America poured into Los Angeles to become film stars, an ambition which very few of them ever achieved.
The pretty girl at the reception desk informed Masuto that Mr. Arthur Crombie was not in.
“When do you expect him?”
“He left for lunch. It’s after three now, and he’s usually back by two-thirty. So he may have had an appointment with a customer. He’ll call in sooner or later.”
Masuto gave her his card. “I would appreciate hearing from him when he returns.”
“I’ll tell him.”
Back at headquarters, Wainwright intercepted Masuto. “Well, what about it, Masao? Where are we?”
“God knows.”
“That’s a hell of an answer. Pete Bones called. He wants to talk to you.”
Dropping down behind his desk, Masuto dialed the number and asked for Bones.
The thick, throaty voice said, “Masuto?”
“Wainwright said you wanted to talk to me.”
“Right. We’re going to put away the chemist. No one’s claimed the body, so he goes into Potter’s Field. Do you want to look at the corpse before we bury it?”
It was as cold and sad and terrible as so much of the human comedy or tragedy, depending on one’s point of view. A man is trained as a chemist. What did he dream of as a kid, Masuto wondered? What wonderful adventures marked his first days with test tubes and retorts? And then what began to corrode and rot, until his knowledge produced a botulin that destroyed a poor Chicano girl who never knew of his existence or of the existence of the man who hired him. And now as alone as any corpse could be, he went into the earth, unmourned, unknown, and unwanted.
“What was his name?” Masuto asked, out of a curiosity he could not repress.
“Alfred Bindler.”
“Poor devil.”
“The son of a bitch is not worth your sympathy. Tell me, do you want to look or do we dump him?”
“No, I don’t want to see him. Wait a moment. He was shot behind the ear?”
“Right.”
“Were there powder burns?”
“No. The way we see it, the range was the whole length of the room. The killer opened the door. Bindler had his back to him. The killer raised his gun and popped him.”
“Twelve feet?”
“Just about.”
“If he picked his spot and Bindler was in the act of turning, that was damn good shooting.”
“You can say that again.”
Masuto put down the phone. Someone knocked at the door to his office.
“Come in.”
He knew the face. A smallish man, balding, with protruding blue eyes and a wide mouth. It was a face millions of people knew.
“You’re Sergeant Masuto?”
Masuto nodded.
“I’m Monte Sweet. They told me to see you. They told me you were in charge of the case.”
“Sit down, Mr. Sweet,” Masuto said.
“Yeah.” He sat down in the chair next to Masuto’s desk. “Yeah-look at me. I’m ugly as sin. I make a living out of that, out of being ugly and nasty and rotten. They pay me thirty grand a week to insult the yokels in Vegas. An Italian sits down in the front row, I call him a wop. My real name’s Seteloni. I see you sitting there, I say, Hey, Chink, where’s the laundry? Stupid stuff, and they laugh themselves sick. It turns my stomach to watch those muttonheads laughing, but that’s what I do for a living and it stinks. I’m fifty-three years old. You think a guy of fifty-three can’t fall in love? You think Monte Sweet couldn’t love anything? Well, let me tell you different. I loved that woman the way I never loved anyone. And she loved me. God damn it to hell, she loved me! It was real! And now that lousy creep killed her.”
He was shaking with emotion, tears welling out of the corners of his eyes, his hands trembling. “I’ll get you
