RONALD HABER
The telephone burst in on Masuto’s sleep like a fire engine gone berserk. As he reached out to pick it up, he saw that the luminous dial of his clock said 4:20. In the background, Kati made small sounds of despair. She could never grow used to the telephone in the middle of the night.
Wainwright was on the phone and he minced no words. “Masao, Haber is dead. Murdered.”
“What? Where? When?” Masuto was still fuzzy with sleep.
“In his apartment on Lapeer. I’m there with the sheriff’s men, and I want you to get your ass over here.”
“Now?”
“Now.”
“It’s four-twenty in the morning.”
“If these lousy deputies could get me out of bed at four in the morning, I can damn well get you out at four-twenty, so get your ass over here and stop yammering.”
While Masuto dressed, Kati put the tea-kettle on to boil, but he was in no mood to wait. He gulped down a glass of milk to settle his sour stomach and then climbed into his car and drove through the night — or morning — for the strange gray thickness of dawn was already beginning. Once again, as so often before, he pondered the geographical insanity that called itself Los Angeles. There was a city of Los Angeles and there was a county of Los Angeles. The city of Los Angeles had its own police force. The county of Los Angeles had a sheriff, with a vast force of deputies. Within the city of Los Angeles were other cities, such as Beverly Hills, which had their own police forces, and also within the city of Los Angeles were unincorporated areas, which were policed by the sheriff’s deputies — and while there was a courtesy interchange of the right of movement and information, it did not make for efficiency.
Lapeer Street, where Masuto was bound, was in West Hollywood, an unincorporated area policed by the sheriff’s deputies. When he arrived, three sheriff’s cars were parked in front of the building, a small, unimpressive apartment house. He showed his credentials to the deputy at the street door. It was five o’clock now, a glint of dawn in the sky, but the stairway was dark, lit by a single weak bulb. The commotion had awakened other tenants, who, many of them half dressed or in robes, were standing curiously in their half-open doorways.
Haber’s apartment was a one-bedroom, drably furnished flat. Always, on entering such a place, Masuto relied on his first impression — here a sense of bleakness, indifference, lack of imagination, and a degree of despair; the habitation revealed more than the man, even though the place was in disarray, furniture overturned, a lamp smashed, drawers emptied and dumped on the floor. Three deputies, a fingerprint man, a county photographer, two morgue men, and Wainwright crowded the living room. The morgue men had their rubber sheet still folded, evidently waiting for Masuto to see the body.
It was not a pretty sight. Haber lay in a corner, as if he had been flung there.
“Beaten to death,” Wainwright said to Masuto.
“Animals,” said one of the deputies. “This place is lousy with animals.”
“Can we take him away, Sergeant?” one of the morgue men asked Masuto. He nodded. They put Haber’s body on a stretcher, covered it with the rubber sheet, and marched out. Masuto stood silently, his eyes wandering around the room.
“Well?” Wainwright demanded.
Masuto shrugged. “Violence is the disease of our times. The sickness is not restricted to West Hollywood.”
“I’m not asking for your damn philosophy.”
“He’s dead.”
“Great! Brilliant! How does it tie in? It’s sure as hell a different M.O.”
“Murderers are not required to be consistent.”
“You give me a pain in the ass,” Wainwright said. “I ask you to clean up one lousy killing and now we got two.”
“This one’s in West Hollywood — theirs.” Masuto nodded at the deputies.
“That’s sweet.”
“You gave me until tomorrow. It’s not tomorrow yet.”
“Tomorrow’s today,” Wainwright said. “All right. I’m sorry. This happened at about three A.M., SO I got no sleep at all. I’m edgy. For God’s sake, Masao, what have we got here?”
“I don’t know,” Masuto said thoughtfully.
One of the deputies said to Masuto, “Captain Wainwright here tells me that Haber worked for the dealer who was shot in Beverly Hills yesterday. Do you have a connection?”
Masuto was prompted to assure the deputy that there was a connection between every living creature and every event on earth; but he thought better of it and simply shook his head.
“Hell, Sergeant, you’re not telling me it’s a coincidence? Because if you are …”
“It’s not a coincidence.”
“You just said …”
“You asked me whether I have a connection. I shook my head,” Masuto interrupted, almost with irritation. He disliked deputies, not out of any specific behavior on their part but simply because he did not have a high opinion of their intelligence, and it irritated him that he should be disturbed by something that was almost a common affliction of mankind. “I did not say there was no connection. There is. But what the connection is, I don’t know.”
Grinning, the fingerprint man said, “I got some beauts, Sarge. You want to see them?”
“What?”
“The prints. I took a set of Haber’s. I got a dozen that don’t belong to him.”
“No, thank you,” Masuto muttered.
“He’s a lover,” the fingerprint man said to the deputy at the door. Hurt, he was on his way out.
“Didn’t you know, Billy,” said the deputy, “they got nothing but smartass cops in Beverly Hills. All class. It ain’t no asshole, like this place.”
The fingerprint man departed. Another deputy said to the deputy at the door, “Just keep your mouth shut and stop being a horse’s ass.” Then he went over to Masuto. “I’m sorry, Sergeant. But a night detail’s lousy, and around this time everyone gets edgy. My name’s Williams, and I’m on night Homicide. Any help you and Captain Wainwright can give us, we appreciate.”
“Balls,” the deputy at the door muttered.
Williams gave him a stony look. Wainwright said nothing. He was watching Masuto with interest. They had worked together for too long for him to question anything Masuto said or did.
“You questioned the neighbors?” Masuto asked Williams.
“All of them.”
“They were all awake?”
“There was a hell of a fight and racket in here. One of them called us. A young girl, name of Cindy Lang.”
“Just one? How many tenants in the place?”
“Four on this floor. Those were the ones who heard it.”
“And only one called you?”
“That’s the way it is, Sergeant.”
“Did any of them see anything?”
“They claim no.”
“They’re lying,” said another deputy.
“Maybe yes, maybe no,” Williams said. “Nobody wants to get involved.”
“Running feet? That could tell something. Two feet sound one way. Four feet sound different.”
Williams turned to the deputy at the door, who shrugged and said, “I never asked them that.”
“Well, goddamn it, ask them!” Williams snapped. The deputy left, and Williams said to Masuto. “They heard a car start.”
“They always hear a car start.”
“Did they hear anything else?”
“Like what?”
“Voices.”
“Men’s voices. Nothing very clear.”
“Any of the tenants know Haber?”
“No. Or so they say. He was a loner.” Williams looked around the apartment. “They must have searched the place first. After they killed him, they took off.”
“What was on his person?”
“Keys and wallet. You want to see it?”
Masuto nodded. Williams took a brown envelope out of his pocket and handed it to Masuto. Wainwright dropped into a chair, sighed deeply, and half closed his eyes. The deputy who had been at the door returned.
“Well?” Williams demanded.
“Some say two feet, some say four feet, some say six feet — which means one person or two or three.”
“I could have never figured that out,” Williams said.
“What did Cindy Lang say?” Masuto asked. He was going through the wallet: Master Charge, driver’s license, insurance card, but no bills. Three keys.
“If he had bills, they took them,” said Williams. “I don’t think they were after money, but it’s a habit with hoods. They didn’t want his credit card.”
“Who’s Cindy Lang?” the deputy asked.
“You got a brain like a sieve,” Williams said disgustedly. “She’s the kid who called us. The blond in apartment F.”
“Oh.”
“Well, what did she say?”
“She says she thinks there were three of them.”
Masuto nodded. Wainwright was dozing now. The photographer gathered his stuff and left.
“What killed him?” Masuto asked Williams.
“Skull fracture, over the left temple.”
“Brass knuckles?”
“That’s what the doctor thinks.”
“You mind if I look around?”
“Be my guest. But this place has been searched like an earthquake hit it.”
“They didn’t find what they were looking for,” Masuto said. “So they decided to beat it out of Haber. Except that he didn’t have it.”
“What?”
“Who knows?”
“Then how the hell do you know he didn’t have it?”
“They killed him.”
“Maybe after they took it.”
“Maybe.” Masuto went into the bedroom. The search was thorough, bedclothes torn off the bed, mattress turned over, pictures ripped off the walls — and in the bathroom, bottles emptied, toothpaste tube slit open. He went to the closet. Haber had been in his shirt-sleeves at the time of the murder. His jacket hung in the closet. Masuto took the jacket and spread it out on the bed. Wainwright had finished his nap, and he and Williams were watching now. Masuto folded back the lining, and there, attached to it with two strips of Scotch tape, was a small plastic envelope containing a single stamp.
“I’ll be damned,” Williams whispered.
Wainwright said nothing.
“Goddamn it, Sergeant, how did you know where that was?”
“I didn’t know. I tried to crawl into Haber’s mind — a little.”
“Is that what they were after? That stamp?”
Masuto took the stamp out of the envelope carefully and examined it. “No.”
“Masao, how do you know?” Wainwright demanded.
It’s a ten-cent black 1847 George Washington, and it’s worth about three thousand dollars. They weren’t after this and they weren’t after three thousand dollars, because if they were he would have given it to them.”
“What are you, a stamp expert?” Williams snorted.
“I don’t know a thing about stamps. Haber told me about this stamp yesterday. He invented some cock-and-bull story.” He turned to Wainwright. “Either Haber knew the stamp was in Gaycheck’s pocket and took it before he called us, or it was in the safe and he knew the combination of the safe and he was lying.”
“How about him killing Gaycheck for the stamp, and then we let the sheriff worry about it.”
“No way,” said Masuto.
“Anything else here?”
Masuto shook his head, replaced the stamp in the plastic envelope, and gave it to Williams. “I guess it belongs to Gaycheck, and he’s dead. What about it, Captain?”
“Hold it for evidence. Let’s see what happens. Anyway, I’m hungry. Let’s get some breakfast, Masao.”
“All right. But I want to talk to Cindy Lang.”
Masuto called his wife first. It was almost seven o’clock, and she had not slept since the telephone awakened both of them. “Masao,” she said, “you must have a night’s sleep and you must rest and we don’t even see you anymore.”
He tried to soothe her.
“Masao, I was reading a book on Women’s Liberation, and first I was provoked, but now I am not sure. Not at all.”
He put down the phone and told Wainwright that his wife was reading books on Women’s Lib. “I always felt I should have married a Japanese girl. Now you’re shaking my dream,” Wainwright said. “Let’s find Cindy Lang.”
They walked down the hall and knocked at the door of apartment F. It opened the width of the safety chain, and Masuto had the impression of straight blond hair and suspicious blue eyes.
“We’re from the Beverly Hills police,” he said. “This is Captain Wainwright. I’m Detective Sergeant Masuto.”
“Well, this is not Beverly Hills. I talked to the local fuzz. I told them what I know, which is nothing. I don’t know Haber.”
“If you could spare us a few minutes,” Masuto said gently. He showed her his badge.
She thought about it for a moment or two. Then, “Okay — but I got to get to work. I’m due in at seven-thirty.” She dropped the chain and opened the door, and they entered the apartment: one room, a studio bed still unmade, some bright prints on the wall, and a rag rug. Cindy Lang was in her twenties, a slight, pretty girl wearing blue jeans and a blouse — a girl little different, Masuto thought from a hundred others he would see on the streets of West Hollywood — where blue jeans and loose yellow hair, dyed or real, were almost required uniform.
“You called the sheriff last night?” Masuto asked her.
“That’s right. It sounded like they were killing someone, so I called the fuzz. Does that make me anything?”
“It makes you part of the human race. No one else called them.”
“All right, so I’m part of the human race. Now can I go to work?”
“You told the deputy that three people ran past here. How did you know it was three?”
“It sounded like three.”
“What sounds like three?”
“Three people. Why don’t you do your thing, Sergeant, and I’ll do mine. I’m a waitress, and it’s a lousy job but it’s mine and it’s all I got. If I’m late, I get my ass burned.”
“I think you saw them. I think you opened your door and saw them.”
“I think I didn’t.”
“If you saw them,” Masuto said kindly, “then you may be the only one who did. That would be very important.”
“Sure. You want to know what’s important? Cindy’s important, because if I don’t take care of her, there ain’t nobody else going to. You know where you are? You’re in West Hollywood — not in Beverly Hills. This place is lousy with kinky creeps. Who’s going to call the cops if they decide to beat up on me?”
“We can arrange with the sheriff …” Wainwright began, but she interrupted.
“Don’t sell me those lousy deputies. I was coming home the other night and one of them stops me and tries to shake me down for twenty bucks and tells me my car stinks of pot, and I never touched a stick for two months, and then he pulls me in on suspicion of being a hooker, and I got to get my girl friend out in the middle of the night to swear I don’t solicit, so don’t tell me about deputies. They stink.” She held the door open. “Now I got to go to work.”
“I like her,” Masuto said as they walked down the stairs to the street.
“I’d like her more if she talked.”
“She talked. She told us there were three of them. Where do you want to eat?”
“Ben Frank’s — up the Strip.”
Masuto had ordered eggs, hot cakes, and sausage. From behind his two boiled eggs, Wainwright regarded him gloomily and asked how he ate that way and remained thin.
“Genes, metabolism.”
“I don’t like this, Masao — I don’t like this whole rotten business. We got two murders. That stinks.”
“One is the sheriff’s.”
“Like hell it is! The newspapers and the goddamn TV will tell the world that a Beverly Hills stamp dealer and his assistant were murdered. They always got us harboring a war criminal. I swear I don’t want to go back to my office, because the city manager will be there, and the mayor, who’s got nothing else to do but nitpick the cops, and what have you got besides that smug Oriental look on your face?”
“Nothing.” Masuto was hungry. He kept eating.
“Boiled eggs. Why the hell don’t you level with me?”
“Because my guesses would only show me off as a smartass Oriental, as you like to put it, and last night I learned that I’m about as Oriental as Jimmy Carter, and anyway, fifty percent of the time I’m wrong.”
“And fifty percent of the time you’re right.” Wainwright looked at his watch. “It’s seven forty-five, and the guy from the safe company will be on North Canon at eight o’clock. I want to be there when he opens the safe.”
“It’s open,” Masuto said between bites.
“What’s open?”
“The safe.”
“What! What in hell are you trying to tell me, Masao?”
“You were pushing me for brilliant Oriental guesses. I made one.”
“You’re guessing?”
“I’m guessing.”
“You’re telling me that someone opened the safe and cleaned it out?”
“Only the first part. I’m guessing that last night someone opened the safe. If you want another guess, I would guess that it was empty, that Haber opened it and cleaned out whatever was worth cleaning out before he called the police. The second guess is easy, because no one will ever be able to prove whether I’m right or wrong.”
“Then why in hell didn’t you tell me that and tell me to put a man on the store?”
“Because I didn’t know until I found the stamp in Haber’s jacket, and then it was too late.”
Wainwright rose.
“Where are you going?” Masuto asked.
“To the store.”
“You haven’t finished your eggs.”
“Take the eggs and stuff them.” Wainwright tossed two dollars on the table and stalked out.
Masuto finished eating without haste. He was puzzling over the fact that there were three keys in Haber’s pocket. He had simply presumed that one of them was the key to the store, but if that were the case — no, it couldn’t be. He paid his check and drove back to the house on Lapeer. Williams was just leaving, getting into his car when Masuto pulled up.
“Could I see the keys again?” Masuto asked him.
“You had your breakfast. I been in that lousy hole for five hours.”
“Please forgive me.”
Williams handed him the keys. He separated the car key and tried one of the door keys in the outside door of the apartment, the door that would be opened by a responsive buzz. It fit.
“The other one is to the apartment upstairs?” he asked Williams.
“Right. Why didn’t you ask me? I could have told you.”
“I like to do things the hard way,” Masuto said. “Thank you.”
Then he drove to Beverly Hills, to the store on North Canon. There was a prowl car parked in front, and behind it, Sy Beckman’s car. Officer Frank Seaton opened the door for him. The place was a shambles, the cases broken open, stamps scattered everywhere.
“I thought you patrolled these streets,” Masuto said.
“For Christ’s sake, Sergeant, don’t lean on me. I took enough chickenshit from the captain. Anyway, those velvet drapes were drawn, and anyway I didn’t come on duty until seven o’clock this morning.”
Beckman came out of the back room. “One lousy morning, Masao. What in hell’s been going on?”
Haber’s been beaten to death in his place in West Hollywood.”
“So I’m told. The captain’s burning. What’s eating him?”
“This and that. Is he here?”
“He went back to the station. He says for you to get your ass over there as soon as you turn up.”
Masuto nodded and went into the back room, followed by Beckman and Seaton. “They had the key to the front door,” Seaton said. “Maybe if they had jimmied it open, someone would have noticed it.”
“I’ll tell them,” Beckman said sourly. “Where do you suppose they got the key, Masao?”
“From Haber.” He was staring at the safe. It was not a very good safe to begin with, but it was no professional job that had opened it. Neither was it strictly amateur, but rather somewhere between the two. They had drilled holes around the dial, torn off the dial, then forced the door open.
“What was in it?” he asked Beckman.
“Nothing. They cleaned it out and dumped the stuff on the floor with everything else.” He motioned to the broken cabinets, the emptied desk drawers, the litter of stamps and papers. “Nothing that means anything. It’s one hell of a mess, isn’t it? I only got here half an hour ago and I got to straighten out this mess. You’d better get over to the station, Masao.”
When Masuto entered Wainwright’s office, a small, hawk-faced man of about fifty was already there, facing Wainwright, who sat behind his desk and greeted the detective without pleasure.
“This is Mr. Zev Kolan, the Israeli consul general in Los Angeles.” And to the hawk-faced man, “This is Detective Sergeant Masao Masuto. He’s in charge of the case.”
Masuto shook hands — a very strong grip for so small a man. “What can I do for you, sir?”
“Give me some proof that Ivan Gaycheck is actually Gaylord Schwartzman.”
“I told him that we sent the prints to Interpol and they made the identification,” said Wainwright.
“Yes,” said Mr. Kolan. “I am sorry to trouble you, but this has happened before. The Interpol records of Nazi officials are not dependable. There was just too much confusion and chaos at the end of the war. We would very much like to lay hands on Captain Gaylord Schwartzman, preferably alive, but if it is so, then dead. My government would like to know for certain.”
“I don’t see what I can do for you,” Wainwright said.
“I saw Schwartzman once.”
“You saw him?”
“He killed me.” Both policemen stared at him. He did not appear insane, Masuto thought — no indeed, very sane. Kolan said softly, “Eight of us were condemned to death at Buchenwald. I was fifteen then. He commanded the firing squad. I was hit in the shoulder, low, under the bone. Then Schwartzman drew his pistol and administered the coup de grace.” He pointed to a pale scar on his temple. “He was careless. I was thrown into an open mass grave that they dug outside the walls. Hours later, I regained consciousness. I crawled out of the grave and made my way to a farm. They sheltered me. Not all Germans were Nazis. But I think I would recognize Schwartzman — even today, so many years later, even dead.”
For a while after he finished speaking, the two policemen were silent. Then Wainwright said, “If you would please wait outside for a few minutes, Mr. Kolan?”
Kolan nodded and left. Wainwright stared at his hands for a moment or two, then said to Masuto, softly and ominously, “I don’t like to be played for a horse’s ass, Masao. How did you know the safe had been opened?”
“I didn’t know. I made an educated guess. There’s a family named Briggs on Camden Drive …”
“I know about the Briggs case. Nothing was taken.”
“Gaycheck on the same day. Nothing is taken. Then Haber — and from the look of it, nothing was taken except whatever bills he had in his wallet.”
“Whoever murdered Gaycheck didn’t take his money.”
“Someone else. The robbery crew was moving systematically. First Briggs, then Haber. They took the key to the store from Haber. You saw the store.”
“I saw it.”
“I guessed. It wasn’t a brilliant guess — just a guess.”
“And can you guess who murdered Gaycheck?”
“I might. But that would be the wildest guess of all — with nothing to support it.”
“And Haber?”
“I couldn’t even guess,” Masuto said. “Maybe later. What do you want to do about Kolan?”
“The body’s at Cleary’s Mortuary. Take him over there and let him have a look. It’s the least we can do.”
Driving to the mortuary, Masuto explained to Kolan that Beverly Hills was too small and too peaceful to have a police morgue.
“Peaceful?”
“Most of the time. So we have a contract arrangement with several funeral homes. It suffices.”
“You’re Japanese, aren’t you, Sergeant?”
“Yes. Nisei. That means born in America of Japanese parents.”
“Have you ever been to Israel?”
“On a policeman’s pay?” Masuto laughed. “I’d like to go. Someday — who knows? But I’ve never even been to Japan.”
“You’ll find it interesting.”
There was a funeral in progress at Cleary’s, and a tall, skinny man in striped pants and a frock coat whispered them into a back room. In front of the coffin, in what he called their “holding room,” he explained that there had been an autopsy and that they had been given no instructions for embalming. “It will be messy,” he apologized.
“His face?” Kolan asked.
“Very nice — very nice indeed.” Then he opened the coffin, and for a few minutes Kolan stared at the chalk-white face of what had once been Ivan Gaycheck, né Gaylord Schwartzman.
Then he turned away and nodded.
“Schwartzman?” Masuto asked.
“It’s Schwartzman — yes. It’s a face I will never forget. Do I sound regretful? But not for that man in the coffin, Sergeant. We Jews have a saying that one must have compassion — even for one’s enemies. But for that man I have no compassion, God forgive me. I had hoped it would not be him, so that one day we might take him alive. But it is. After thirty-three years, a death so peaceful, so easy.”
“I think no death is easy,” Masuto said. “And thirty-three years — how long is that in God’s time?
“I don’t know,” Kolan said. “But it’s over now, isn’t it?”
“It’s over.”