The Case of the Russian Diplomat: A Masao Masuto Mystery (Book Three) Read online

  “What the hell is this?” Stillman asked unpleasantly.

  “I’m Detective Sergeant Masuto, Beverly Hills police. This is Detective Beckman. Are you Stillman?”

  “Yes, but it’s five o’clock in the morning.”

  “I’m sorry,” Masuto said. “Things happen at inconvenient hours. May we come in?”

  “What for?”

  “Simply to ask you a few questions.”

  “He asked questions,” indicating Beckman. “I answered them.”

  “I have some questions of my own.”

  “Look,” said Stillman, “whatever happened here happened when I was asleep. I know nothing, and I don’t intend to be pushed around by a couple of small-town cops—not at this hour of the morning.”

  He started to close the door. Masuto put his shoulder in the way and replied mildly, “Beverly Hills is hardly a small town. We have a population of over thirty thousand, and if you will not talk to us here, Mr. Stillman, we will be happy to wait until you are dressed and then take you downtown, where you can talk to us at the police station.”

  The cold blue eyes stared at Masuto, and then, unexpectedly, he said, “What are you, Chinese?”

  “I am a Nisei, which means that my parents were born in Japan. Now may we come in?”

  Beckman recognized the slight hardening in Masuto’s voice, very subtle, an indication of closely controlled but increasing anger. Masuto was almost as tall as Stillman, but narrower, leaner, no extra flesh.

  Stillman nodded, closing the door behind them. The bedroom was large, with a couch and two brocade armchairs facing the bed, and two windows. The drapes were drawn. Before he sat down, Masuto parted the drapes and looked down at the pool. The first glimmerings of dawn now.

  “Sit down,” he said to Stillman. Beckman remained standing. Masuto took one chair, Stillman the other.

  “The call that informed us that there was the body of a man in the pool came from your room, as Detective Beckman told you earlier,” Masuto said.

  “It was a mistake. I was asleep from about midnight until he woke me.”

  “It was not a mistake. A woman made the call. Mr. Stillman, a woman used the telephone in this room. I want to know who she was.”

  “I told you—”

  “Would it be easier,” Masuto interrupted, “if I gave the story to the Los Angeles Times, specifying that a nameless woman who shared this room with you discovered a body in the swimming pool in the middle of the night?”

  “Who the hell-”

  Again Masuto interrupted. “Suppose you just tell us what happened and stop the indignation.”

  “What then? Do you still give it to the papers?”

  “Only if I must. Possibly not. I’m not a reporter, I’m a policeman.”

  “All right. Look, understand me. I don’t give a damn about my reputation. I live in Vegas, and nobody’s going to fault me for wanting my bed warm. But I was just married to Binnie Vance, and she’ll cut my heart out if she hears about this. I picked up this dame in the Rugby Room, and I bought her a drink, and then I bought her dinner. She was a pro. I paid fifty bucks for last night, but like I said, she was a pro, and she didn’t rip off my wallet when she left. I respect that. I respect integrity in any line of work. That’s the whole story. If she made the call, she made it without waking me. I was asleep. I didn’t lie about that.”

  “I’m glad you have principles,” Masuto said.

  “What the hell does that mean?”

  “What was her name?”

  “Judy.”

  “Judy what?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You went to bed with a woman and you don’t know her last name?”

  “Jesus Christ, I didn’t marry the broad. She tells me her name was Judy. I didn’t ask for her birth certificate.”

  “What does she look like?”

  “Not like a hooker.” Stillman was trying to be helpful. “You get a classy kind of broad in the Rugby Room, five seven, stacked, blond hair, blue eyes—a good-looking kid.”

  Beckman was taking it down in his pad. “What was she wearing?”

  “Let’s see—silk shirt, tan suede pants, same color, or almost, boots—”

  “Boots?”

  “Boots.”

  “What kind of jacket?”

  “Same thing as the pants, suede. Four gold chains around her neck.”

  Out in the hall, Beckman said to Masuto, “Where does it get us? So she saw fatso in the pool and reported it. Another dame would have kept her mouth shut.”

  “That makes Judy a little special, doesn’t it?”

  “For a hooker.”

  “For a person.”

  “What now?”

  “Take a look around the basement before you leave, Sy—laundry bins, that kind of thing. See if you can dig up his clothes.”

  “And you?”

  “I’ll phone in the description, and then I’m going home for a hot bath.”

  “And what about me?”

  “What about you?”

  “Do I get to sleep?”

  “Tonight.”

  “It is tonight,” Beckman said.

  “Not anymore. It’s tomorrow.”

  2

  THE

  SHOT

  MAN

  Masuto lay steaming luxuriously in water as hot as he could bear. Kati, having just seen the children into their school bus, entered the bathroom with an enormous white towel and settled herself on the stool to await her husband’s completion of his bath. To Masuto, a hot bath was not simply a hot bath; it was the continuation of an ancient ritual without which life would have been considerably less tolerable.

  He had already told her about the incidents of the night, and now she said, rather plaintively, “You know that I have never been to the Beverly Glen Hotel. Wouldn’t it be pleasant if we could have dinner there some night and I could see that famous Rugby Room? My mother would be happy to stay with the children.”

  “No.”

  “But she would.”

  “I was not referring to your excellent mother, but to the Beverly Glen Hotel.”

  “But why?”

  “Kati, darling, I dislike being judgmental about the City of Beverly Hills, since they pay me my wages. The hotel is another matter. It makes my skin crawl.”

  “But why?”

  Masuto sighed and shook his head. “How can I explain why? Perhaps another time. Hand me the towel, please.”

  He meditated for half an hour before he left the house, sitting cross-legged, wrapped in a saffron-colored robe, silent and motionless until his mind was clear and alert. When he had finished he felt renewed and refreshed, and on his way to Rexford Drive, where police headquarters was, he thought a good deal about the drowned man. It promised to be a quiet day—so far, at nine-thirty, no robberies, no assaults, nothing of importance on his desk except an inquiry from the city manager concerning the drowned man.

  “What about the media?” Masuto asked Beckman.

  “I’m sitting on it until I hear from Wainwright. He’s not in yet.”

  “How does Joe Haley know about it?” Haley was the city manager.

  “I told him.”

  “What?”

  “Just that there was a drowning.”

  “That’s no good. Go up there and give him the whole story, the missing clothes, everything. I don’t want him to scream about us covering up anything. Let him decide whether he wants to keep a lid on it. Did you hear from Doc Baxter?”

  “I called his home just before you came in. He’s on his way to the hospital.”

  “You didn’t find his clothes?” Masuto asked, almost as an afterthought.

  “No.”

  “Okay. If Wainwright wants me, tell him I’m at the hospital—down in the pathology room.”

  Beckman looked at him curiously. “Are you on to something, Masao?”

  “I don’t like a drowned man who undresses himself and then hides his own clothes. Do you?”
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  Driving to the hospital, Masuto wondered whether he was unduly harsh with Beckman. Sy Beckman was a large, lumbering, slow-moving man, not stupid, but slow in his conclusions, and totally dependable. Given his choice, Masuto would rather have Beckman than any other man on the force. Yet there were times when Beckman irritated him, and reflecting on that now, he determined to go out of his way to be pleasant, even grateful. He felt better then. It was a lovely morning, and his car radio told him that there would be a minimum of smog. Well, that at least was something, not great but better than those hideous days when the Los Angeles basin filled up with the noxious yellow stuff. Masuto had been born in the San Fernando Valley, in the long, long ago when his father owned a four-acre produce farm outside of what was then the little village of San Fernando—a farm that he lost when he was interned during the madness of World War II. Then the Valley had been like a garden, and no one ever thought about a thing called smog. Ah well, that was long ago and over now. Los Angeles was still for him the best of all possible places.

  At the hospital, he showed his badge to the clerk at the pathology room and then went inside—trying not to breathe too deeply of the smell of formaldehyde, which he disliked intensely—past three young, bearded men who were bent over microscopes, to the autopsy room, where Dr. Baxter was leaning over the corpse of the drowned man.

  Baxter straightened up, saw Masuto, and said graciously, “What the hell are you doing here?”

  “Just curious.”

  “You’re not a policeman, you’re a damn ghoul. You just can’t stand a natural death.”

  “I don’t enjoy any kind of death,” Masuto replied gently. “Was his death natural?”

  “He drowned. That’s natural enough for someone who can’t swim and takes a few too many.”

  “Mostly, people who can’t swim don’t go swimming.”

  “I’m tired, Masuto. I’m in no mood for Oriental philosophy.”

  “If that’s philosophy, heaven help us. Are you sure he died of drowning?”

  “You’re damn right I’m sure. Water in the lungs—all of it. He drowned. No marks, no sign of violence.”

  “How many drinks? Was he drunk?”

  “No, he was not drunk—unless two or three drinks wiped him out.”

  “Then why did he drown?”

  “Because he couldn’t swim. Why don’t you leave it alone?”

  “I suppose because both Gellman and you want me to. That brings out the nastiness in my nature. Have you spoken to Gellman today?”

  “That’s none of your damn business, Masuto.”

  “You’re the attending physician up there at the hotel. You’re also the medical examiner for the city.”

  “What are you insinuating?”

  “Nothing so awful. Gellman wants it to be an accident. I refuse to accept the fact that a fat man who would float like a cork makes his clothes, his watch, and his spectacles disappear and then proceeds to drown himself in a swimming pool. The pool is only sixty feet long. From the shallow end there’s twenty-five feet before it deepens to five feet. Did he suffer a coronary? Did he have angina?”

  Baxter hesitated. “No.”

  “Then he was poisoned, which means he was murdered.”

  “There’s no sign of poisoning.”

  “What about the contents of his stomach?”

  “I haven’t gotten to that.”

  “And if you find nothing,” Masuto insisted, “I still say he was poisoned.”

  “By what? By the smog?” Baxter asked sarcastically.

  “I suggest chloral hydrate, more commonly known as a Mickey Finn. You’d find no trace of that, no matter how you tested. And how do you know he had only two or three drinks? Did you test for alcohol in his blood?”

  “Damn you, Masuto, don’t tell me how to do my job.”

  “Then don’t tell me how to do mine,” Masuto said, smiling slightly. “By the way, when you’re finished, put him in the icebox. I want him to stay fresh for identification.”

  “Your photographer was here and he took pictures.”

  “I know. Please forgive my insistence. I think whoever comes looking for him will want to see him in the flesh.”

  “He won’t keep forever.”

  “A few days will do.”

  Masuto pulled back the man’s upper lip and stared thoughtfully.

  “You are a ghoul,” Baxter said.

  “And I would deeply appreciate a telephone call, concerning whatever you find in his stomach or in his blood.”

  Baxter grunted. Masuto thanked him and got out of the pathology room and breathed deeply outside. Back in his office, he still had the illusion of smelling the formaldehyde. He hated the smell.

  “That’s one place I do not like,” Detective Beckman said, after Masuto told him what had taken place. “Anyway, Masao, what makes you think that you can’t detect chloral hydrate in an autopsy?”

  “Something I read somewhere.”

  “You talk about the stink of formaldehyde. The same thing for chloral hydrate. It stinks.”

  “In a drink?”

  “Well, maybe a few drops in a drink couldn’t be smelled. You think the fat man got a Mickey and drowned?”

  “Something of the sort.”

  Masuto picked up the telephone and dialed Dr. Rosenberg, his dentist. Beckman drifted away, yawning. Dr. Rosenberg came on the phone.

  “You’re due for a cleaning, Masao. We sent you two notices. None of you turkeys understand the necessity for prophylactic dentistry. It’s like shouting in the wilderness.”

  “Next week,” Masuto promised.

  “So you say. I’m putting my nurse on. Make a date with her.”

  “Hold on. I have a question.”

  “Oh?”

  “Did you ever see a false tooth or a cap or a bridge or something like that made out of some grayish metal?”

  “Silver?”

  “I don’t think silver. Maybe an aluminum alloy, maybe steel.”

  “I’ve seen it,” Dr. Rosenberg said, his tone indicating severe disapproval.

  “Where? When?”

  “Russian dentistry, if you call it dentistry. They wouldn’t use gold. Too expensive or bourgeois, and they just weren’t any good with ceramics. Back during the war, we liberated a batch of Russian prisoners and I saw a lot of it, aluminum alloy and even steel—lousy dentistry. I don’t know if they still do it.”

  “Thanks, Dave—”

  “Hold on. I’ll put on the nurse.”

  Masuto made his appointment for a prophylactic treatment, and Beckman, still yawning, drifted back and sat down opposite him. “Don’t you want to know what Joe Haley had to say?”

  “I do.”

  “Nothing.”

  “Nothing?”

  “Not exactly nothing. He said that keeping the reputation of Beverly Hills clean is like trying to canonize Marie Duplessis. Who is Marie Duplessis?”

  “The most notorious hooker of nineteenth-century Paris. Sy, let me ask you a few questions. First. Stillman says he picked up this girl, Judy, in the Rugby Room. How did she get there?”

  “How does anyone get there?”

  “Exactly. By car. No one walks to the Beverly Glen Hotel. It’s not on the street. It’s on a hill and there’s not even a sidewalk.”

  “So she drove.”

  “But nobody saw her. And if she cut out of there by the basement door, what happened to her car?”

  “That’s an interesting question,” Beckman admitted.

  “Next. Why the missing clothes?”

  “That one’s easy, Masao. They don’t want the body identified.”

  “But sooner or later, it will be, so we can conclude that they’re playing for time. Next question.”

  Wainwright walked into the office in time to hear that, and asked whether they were playing guessing games or just killing time.

  “That’s right. Next question. A woman sees a body in a swimming pool. She doesn’t get excited or hysterical, ju
st calls the operator and tells her. Why?”

  “You tell us,” said Wainwright.

  “Because she knows he’s dead; because she killed him.”

  “Goddamn it, Masao, you can’t operate like that. You don’t know if the man was murdered, and already you got a killer.”

  The telephone rang, and Beckman answered it. “Yeah,” he said. “Yeah. Okay. Yeah.”

  “That was Baxter, Captain.”

  “Oh?”

  “He said he thinks he found traces of chloral hydrate in the fat man’s stomach. He can’t be sure, but he thinks so. He doesn’t like you,” he said to Masuto.

  “So sorry. So we have a murder. What about the alcohol?”

  “The man was drunk—maybe,” Beckman said.

  “A little drunk, perhaps. High. He strips and goes into the pool, falls asleep and drowns.”

  “The trouble is,” Wainwright said, “that when you come down to it, we’re a small town with a small-town police force, and still we got a collection of some of the most important characters in the country, and if they don’t live here, then they come here. This one bothers me.”

  Masuto nodded. “That’s understandable. I think he’s a Russian.”

  “Why?”

  “Just a guess. My dentist, Dr. Rosenberg, suggests that his bridgework comes from there.”

  “Gellman’s going to love that. A dead Russian in the Beverly Glen pool.” Wainwright turned to Beckman. “Put his picture on the wire to Washington. We’ll see if the F.B.I. can come up with something.”

  Masuto picked up the telephone, dialed Information, and asked for the telephone number of the Soviet consul general. He listened for a moment, thanked the operator and put down the phone.

  “What are you after, Masuto?” Wainwright wanted to know.

  “Just fishing. Did you know the Russians don’t have a consulate here? The operator thinks they have one in San Francisco.” Beckman was coming back. Masuto called, “Sy, find a San Francisco phone book, and give me the L.A. Times—today, yesterday, the day before.”

  “And goddamn it, stop yawning!” Wainwright snapped.

  Wainwright watched with interest as Masuto dialed the San Francisco number and asked for the consul general. Then Masuto said, “No, I insist on speaking to him. This is an official call from the Beverly Hills police on a matter of the utmost importance.” Pause. “Yes, Detective Sergeant Masuto.” Pause. “Yes, I’ll wait.”