The Case of the One-Penny Orange: A Masao Masuto Mystery (Book Two) Read online

“Exactly?” Masuto raised an eyebrow.

  “I am a precise person.”

  “Go on.”

  “I went in. No one in front. I came back here, and …” He spread his hands. “That’s it. I saw him on the floor, dead. I called the police. Then I called an ambulance.”

  “How did you know he was dead?” Beckman snapped.

  Masuto shook his head, and Haber began to blubber that nothing like this had ever happened to him before.

  “All right,” Masuto said, not unkindly. “You called the police. What then?”

  “I was in front. I couldn’t stay there.”

  “No one else came into the shop before the police?”

  He shook his head. “We don’t have many customers — clients — off the street. Mostly by appointment. But what I don’t understand is, why didn’t anyone hear the shot?”

  “A twenty-two don’t make that much noise,” said Beckman. “There was two doors between here and the street. But if he took him in here, it must have been somebody he knew.”

  Masuto stared at Haber, who was frowning.

  “Well?” Masuto demanded.

  “I guess so,” Haber agreed.

  “Who?” demanded Beckman.

  Haber shook his head. Masuto motioned toward the cases. “Was anything taken — stolen — or sold, or removed?”

  “I didn’t look.”

  “Well, look now.”

  While Haber brooded over the display cases and Sweeney finished his fingerprint work, Masuto called Captain Wainwright at headquarters. Wainwright was upset. “Now just hear me, Masao,” he said. “This is not East Los Angeles. When a store is ripped off in one of the streets north of Wilshire and the owner is shot, it means every damn one of them will be breathing down my neck, the chief, the city manager, the mayor, and maybe fifty prominent citizens — and this is not a place without prominent citizens.…”

  Haber stood in front of Masuto, shaking his head. “Nothing,” he said.

  “It doesn’t appear to be robbery,” Masuto told Wainwright. “At least not yet. Just a clean, neat murder.” He put down the phone. “How sure are you?” he asked Haber.

  “I know the contents of the cases. Anyway, they’re all locked.”

  “Where is the key?”

  Haber pointed to the small pile of stuff from Gaycheck’s pockets. Sweeney packed his stuff away, grinning at Masuto.

  “Nice prints, very nice prints. Nothing like a print on glass. You don’t have the murder weapon?” he asked Masuto hopefully.

  Masuto shook his head. He was going through the contents of Gaycheck’s pockets. “This key?” he asked Haber. Haber nodded.

  “The trouble with you,” Sweeney said, “is that you got no faith in Western technology.”

  “Opens all the cases?” Masuto asked.

  “All of them.”

  “Technology,” Sweeney repeated, and then left.

  “That man,” said Beckman, “gives me a pain in the ass. He draws down eighteen thousand a year, and I never known his goddamn fingerprints to give us anything.”

  “How valuable is the stuff in the cases?” Masuto asked Haber.

  “All of it? I don’t know — maybe twenty, twenty-five thousand dollars.”

  “That’s very interesting,” Beckman said. “When his place was ripped off last June, he claimed a loss of twenty-two grand — it was twenty-two, wasn’t it, Masao?”

  “It was. One case smashed and emptied.” He looked at Haber thoughtfully.

  “I had nothing to do with that.”

  “Now those,” said Masuto, pointing to a set of American stamps in the glass case, “what are they worth?”

  “That’s a complete set of the TransMississippi Exposition, 1898, mint — a very nice set.”

  “Mint?”

  “That means they’re uncanceled, never been used for postage. In U.S. stamps, we deal only in mint, except for the very first issues. This set, well, it’s very nice. We could get almost two thousand for it.”

  “Are there fences for stamps?” Beckman demanded.

  “Fences?”

  “People who buy stolen stamps,” Masuto explained.

  Haber hesitated. “I suppose so.”

  “And what might they pay for such a set?”

  “There’s really no way to identify mint stamps. I suppose a thief could sell these to a dealer in some other city for at least seven or eight hundred dollars.”

  “Why some other city?”

  “Because if they were stolen, we’d circulate the information here in L. A. and dealers would be looking for them.”

  “And you’re absolutely sure there’s nothing missing from the cases?”

  “I’m sure.”

  “Do you have the combination for the safe?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Who has it?”

  “Mr. Gaycheck.”

  “Where? Where did he keep it?”

  “In his head, when he was alive.”

  “He must have written it down somewhere,” Masuto insisted.

  “No.”

  “How long have you worked here, Mr. Haber?”

  “Five years — since Mr. Gaycheck opened the store.”

  “And all the times he opened the safe in those five years, you never caught the combination?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Bullshit!” said Beckman.

  “No, sir …” Haber began to shake again. “Because Mr. Gaycheck was a very careful man. He never opened the safe without blocking the view with his body.”

  “What did he keep in the safe?” Masuto asked.

  “Any cash over fifty dollars. Also some bearer bonds of his own — I don’t know how much. And if we had a very valuable stamp, he would put it in the safe.”

  “Like what?” Beckman snapped.

  “Well, last week we had a ten-cent black 1847 George Washington. It was in fine condition and any collector would pay three thousand for it. He put that in the safe.”

  “Is it in there now?”

  “No. We took it on commission from Holmbey’s, downtown. The sale didn’t come through and I brought it back yesterday. Are you going to arrest me?”

  “For what?”

  “Well — Mr. Gaycheck was murdered.”

  “Did you murder him?” Masuto asked gently.

  “Good God, no!” Haber burst out. “Murder him? I never fired a gun in my life. I wouldn’t know how. I have a bad back, so I was never even inducted.”

  “Then we won’t arrest you, Mr. Haber.” Masuto smiled. “Did Gaycheck have a wife, children, relatives? Have you notified anyone?”

  “No, sir. He wasn’t married. No one. He would mention that, no relatives, no family.”

  “Friends?”

  “None that I knew of. He would have lunch occasionally with some of the other dealers or with a client. That was business.”

  “How old was he?” Masuto asked, going through the wallet now. An American Express card, a Bank-Americard, a two-by-three photograph, but no driver’s license.

  “I don’t know,” Haber answered slowly. “I never asked him.”

  “Did he drive a car?”

  “No. He has a small condominium on Burton Way. He either walked or used a cab.”

  “There’s one hundred and three dollars here in his wallet. I want you to count it.”

  Haber’s hand shook as he counted the money.

  “These keys. For the shop and the apartment?”

  Haber nodded.

  “This key?” It was a third door key.

  “This is the shop key,” Haber said. “I suppose one of the others is his apartment.”

  “And the third key?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “No safe-deposit key. Did he have a box?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t think so.”

  “All right. Give your address and telephone number to Detective Beckman. Then you can go home. But for the time being, I don’t want you to leave the county.”
r />   “What about the store?”

  “The store will be sealed until we can have the safe opened and examine its contents. The rest is up to the legal department at City Hall. Detective Beckman will give you a number you can call for information.”

  While Beckman took down Haber’s address and phone number and ushered him out of the store, Masuto studied the photograph he had found in Gaycheck’s wallet. It was a picture, head and shoulders, of a young woman, no older than twenty-five, no younger than twenty. Straight blond hair, two buttons open on the blouse, good-looking, and not unlike any one of several hundred girls to be seen any day on the streets of West Hollywood. He was still staring at it when Beckman returned.

  “Sy,” Masuto said, “take the keys and the wallet and check them into the property department. I’m hanging on to this photo, so make a note of that. When you get back to the station, you can start to type out the report. I’ll talk to the captain and I’ll fill you in if there’s anything.”

  After Beckman left, Masuto continued to study the portrait for a while. Then he wandered around the back room, stared at the stamps in the locked cases, and went through the two drawers in the small desk. There were two ledgers, a large general cash book, and a smaller book. The larger book contained day-to-day transactions, but nothing under twenty-five dollars, as Masuto noted. In the smaller book were names and a sort of code mark next to each name, no identification of stamps and no prices. Not surprising, Masuto decided, in a man who must have had many cash transactions and who would have used any means he could to avoid paying taxes. There was also a comprehensive international stamp catalog.

  Masuto put the ledgers and the stamp catalog under his arm, made sure the outside door was latched to lock, closed it behind him, and walked over to where Officer Cutler stood next to his patrol car. There was still a small crowd of the curious on the sidewalk, a KNX mobile unit parked behind Cutler’s car, and Hennessy of the Los Angeles Times and Bailey from the Examiner. Both reporters blocked Masuto’s way, pleading for something more than they had.

  “You’re only two blocks from the station,” Masuto said. “Get it from the P.R. there.” Then he told Cutler to leave, and picked up his own car and drove to the station.

  He sat in Wainwright’s office, waiting for the captain, who was with the city manager and the mayor, and when Wainwright returned his scowl was even more deeply etched than usual.

  “Murder,” he said, “is all right in East Los Angeles, in West Los Angeles, in Hollywood, and in the Valley. Not in Beverly Hills. For a half hour I was lectured on the impropriety of murder in Beverly Hills.”

  Masuto nodded sympathetically.

  “Well, goddamn it, Masao, what have you got?”

  “An interesting day. A robbery where nothing was taken and a murder where nothing was taken.”

  “The hell with the robbery at the Briggs home! What about Gaycheck?”

  “They are both of interest. A day is a contrivance.”

  “I am not interested in Oriental philosophy.”

  “That’s a pity. Now about Gaycheck — he was shot at close range with a small twenty-two-caliber weapon.”

  “So Baxter informed me,” Wainwright said. “Twenty-two short, from what they call a purse gun, probably a Smith and Wesson. The bullet went through the brain and lodged in the back of the skull. What else?”

  “By someone he knew. No sign of a struggle, no sign of any resistance. Someone raised the gun to his head and pulled the trigger, then grabbed Gaycheck and eased him down to the carpet. That is why, purse gun or not, I’m not going to assume it was a woman. Gaycheck must have weighed at least a hundred sixty pounds. It would have to be an extraordinary woman — cool enough to deal with a corpse, strong enough to handle the body.”

  “What about the next of kin?”

  “None. A man alone. Did we check his prints?”

  “Nothing at the F.B.I. or L.A.P.D.”

  “Interpol?”

  “I thought of that. We sent them a Telex a half hour ago. What about this man Haber?”

  Masuto nodded thoughtfully. “He intrigues me. He overperformed, vomiting, hands shaking. He’s an eloquent liar. There’s a safe in back of the store, and he denies knowing the combination. I think he’s lying. I also think he could make an excellent guess at the murderer. He may know why Gaycheck was killed. He put on a show of going to pieces at the sight of the corpse, yet he’s cool enough to play his own game. He lives on Lapeer, in West Hollywood. I would put a man on him.”

  “What kind of a safe?”

  “Stayfix.”

  “All right. We’ll have them send a man down in the morning to open it. And I want this cleaned up, Masao — quickly and efficiently.”

  “By tomorrow, no doubt.”

  “Don’t put me on, Masao. This is no casual street gunning. We got leads and we got connections.”

  “And we also have a very cool and very self-possessed killer.”

  “That’s what you draw your pay for.”

  “Thank you.”

  The door to Wainwright’s office opened, and a girl entered with a sheet of yellow paper, which she handed to him. “Telex, Captain, from Interpol.”

  He read it and then said to Masuto, “You never know.”

  “Gaycheck?”

  “His name is Gaylord Schwartzman — captain in the SS, fourth in command at Buchenwald, wanted by West Germany, East Germany, Israel, and France, disappeared in 1944, reported at various times in residence in Brazil, Argentina, and Canada.”

  “But not in Beverly Hills.”

  “No, not in Beverly Hills.”

  3

  ISHIDO

  Masao Masuto lived in Culver City, and for those unfamiliar with the geography of Los Angeles it may be said that while Culver City is only a few minutes by car from Beverly Hills, by property values and population it is a continent away. Masuto’s small, two-bedroom cottage was on a street of small cottages, differing only in the lushness and perfection of the shrubbery in front and the garden in back; for when he was not a policeman, when he was off duty, Masuto’s world was rather simple and contained. He had a daughter, Ana, aged seven, and a son, Uraga, aged nine, a wife, Kati, and a rose garden where he spent many pleasant and contemplative hours. The rose garden, surrounded on three sides by a wall of hibiscus, contained a world of forty-three different rose bushes, ranging from antique cabbage roses to ultrasophisticated, hybrid, scentless black and purple modern miracles of horticulture. Masuto knew each plant, its strengths, its weaknesses, its moment of bloom, and he was not beyond trusting that in their own way the plants knew him.

  His wife, Kati, had been raised in the old-fashioned way. She was a small, lovely, timid woman, and although she had been born in California, she had led a sheltered life. She did not drive a car. Her ventures on foot to the supermarket and the few other places that demanded her personal attention were undertaken with trepidation. Her home was her world, and she lived there in constant anxiety about the strange and violent profession her husband pursued. It was a world she knew only from his reports of his work — carefully censored.

  When he came into the house this evening, she greeted him with restraint, yet with the relief that was always evident. His bath was ready. He greeted his children, spoke a few appropriate words to them, bathed in steaming-hot water, then slipped into the kimono Kati had ready for him. Then he went into the tiny screened-off area that was his meditation room.

  As a Zen Buddhist, he tried to find time for some meditation, regardless of how much his day pressed upon him, forty-five minutes if possible, and at least a few minutes if no more than that was available. He knew that five minutes of perfect meditation accomplished more than an hour of struggling with his mind, trying to tame an un-willing beast. Now he sat cross-legged for thirty minutes, then went to his wife.

  They had tea, sitting on two cushions with a small, black enamel table between them. Masuto honored the pouring and drinking of tea in the old way, and Kati
waited for him to speak about his day.

  “A man was murdered,” he said finally.

  Kati shook her head in horror and sympathy. She never understood how this man, who was her husband, could live and work with murder.

  “I don’t judge, but he was a man who was responsible for the deaths of many innocent people. Death waited a long time before it welcomed him.”

  “Did he suffer?”

  “Less than those whom he killed,” Masuto replied.

  “Then something else troubles you. You are troubled.”

  “Oh, yes.” He smiled. “But you must not be troubled. It’s a small matter and very puzzling. Postage stamps.”

  “Postage stamps?”

  “About which I know absolutely nothing. Not the stamps one buys at the post office to mail a letter, but stamps that people collect with greed and passion.”

  “But Uraga has a stamp album, which you bought for him. He bothers everyone for the stamps on letters from Japan.”

  “Of course,” Masuto remembered. “And you recall why I bought it.”

  “The packet of stamps that he received as a gift from my kinsman, Ishido. How simple. If you would know about stamps — then go to Ishido. They say that his stamp collection is worth many thousands of dollars.”

  “Not so simple,” said Masuto. “I would have to humble myself, and that is something that does not come easily to me. Ishido despises my birth, my ancestors, and my occupation.”

  “No,” Kati protested weakly.

  “He is Samurai. My father was a gardener. He has never forgiven you for marrying me, and he has never forgiven me for being a policeman.”

  “That is in your mind, not in his. You forget that he has lived in California for the past thirty years. He is not bound by the old ways. I have heard him speak highly of you.”

  “And we have never been guests in his house. In all the years we have been married, we have not been guests in his house.”

  “And did you invite him here?”

  “Who am I to invite Ishido to my home?”

  She refrained from observing that, for a sensible man, he could be both stubborn and foolish; she simply said that not only Ishido was proud, then followed it with that very Japanese expression, “So sorry, dear husband.”

  Masuto was silent all through dinner. When he was silent, the children were silent. It was not the most pleasant dinner. When he had finished eating, he rose from the table, went to the telephone, and dialed a number. Kati listened.