The Case of the One-Penny Orange: A Masao Masuto Mystery (Book Two) (12 page)

“He's a cop,” said the fat woman.

“You're putting me on.”

“Why don't you let him go inside and show his picture around?” the telephone operator asked.

“Because it goes against my grain to cooperate with the fuzz.”

The woman from inside took the picture from Masuto and stared at it. “I've seen this kid.”

“Everyone's seen her,” the fat woman said.

Still staring at the photo, she took Masuto by the hand and led him into the big room. “Show it,” she said. “Maybe someone knows her.”

The fourth desk drew a response. The thin wistful girl who sat there in front of a computer nodded and said, “I've seen her.”

“Do you know her name?” Masuto asked eagerly.

“I can't even remember where I've seen her. Wait a minute. Yes. Absolutely. I saw her at a party up in the hills. Freddy Wolchek brought her.”

“You don't know her name?”

She shook her head.

“And where do I find this Freddy Wolchek?”

“Look, Officer, he's a nice guy. I don't want to send him any grief.”

“I only want a lead to the girl.”

“Okay — what time is it?”

“Almost four.”

“If he's not working, he'll be at Schwab's. Sitting at the counter, I guess.”

“What does he look like?”

“Big, heavy. He must be six-two. He has a reddish beard.”

“And if he's working?”

“Who knows? Any one of the studios — I should be so lucky.”

“Do you have an address for him?”

“Janey!” she called out. “Get Freddy Wolchek's address for me, would you?”

Schwab's, on Sunset Boulevard just east of Crescent Heights, was only a few minutes from the Screen Actors Guild. It was, as Masuto knew, not simply a drugstore but a sort of social center and gossip and information exchange for actors who were not working. Masuto paced a long lunch counter, spotted three bearded men, chose the largest, whose beard was tinged with red, and sat down next to him. The red beard was bent moodily over a cup of coffee.

“You're Freddy Wolchek?”

The red beard nodded without looking at him.

“Tracy Levitt, over at the Screen Actors Guild, said I might find you here.”

Now the red beard looked at him.

“I'm Sergeant Masuto, Beverly Hills police.”

“I'm clean,” the red beard said. “I'm so clean I'm antiseptic. I don't even have the price of a joint. I'm Honest John. I never even been busted, never.”

Masuto showed him the photo. “You know the girl?”

He stared at the photo and then nodded slowly, “That's Cleo. What has she done, knocked over a bank?”

“Does she knock over banks?”

“I wouldn't put it past her. She's bad medicine.”

“Cleo what?”

“Damned if I know. She never told me.”

“Tracy said you dated her. You brought her to a party.”

“I didn't bring her. I picked her up there. That was a night. She is bad medicine, old buddy. She is a cokey. She is crazy — crazy.”

“Where does she live?”

“Who knows?”

“Didn't you take her home?”

“She took me, old buddy. No, I didn't take her home. I lost her somewhere that night. Tell you what, though — I know where she works.”

“Oh?”

“If you call it work. At least that's what she told me. I never checked it out. You know that little sort of beat-up shopping center in Topanga Canyon, maybe halfway between the Valley and the ocean?”

“I know the place,” Masuto said.

“Well, there's a massage parlor there, it's called the Pink Flamingo. She massages. So she told me. I don't like to call any kid a hooker, because I've known some hookers, they were a damn sight nicer kids than a lot of Beverly Hills dames, but this Cleo …” He shook his head. “She is bad medicine.”

Topanga Canyon is one of those strange anomalies that one finds in the vast spread of Los Angeles, a wild, beautiful, sparsely settled gash in the Santa Monica Mountains, cutting through from the San Fernando Valley to the Pacific. From Schwab's Masuto drove over Laurel Canyon Pass into the San Fernando Valley, picking up the Ventura Freeway and driving west. It was still before five o'clock when he turned off the freeway and drove into Topanga Canyon, yet in spite of the fact that this was late spring, the day-light long and mellow, the canyon was already shadowed, the deep cleft gathering the ominous gloom of night hours before night would fall.

There were only three cars in the little shopping center when he pulled up in front of the Pink Flamingo and parked. He had never noticed the Pink Flamingo before, but it occurred to him that there was nothing very unusual about a massage parlor in Topanga Canyon, which had everything else from communes to sensitivity centers and nudist camps and TM temples.

He walked to the door, rang the bell, and waited. After a few moments the door was opened by a small Oriental man. “Massage?” He smiled. Masuto walked in without replying. The small man studied him. “You want nice massage?”

Masuto had thought he was Korean, but the accent was Japanese. “I want to see Cleo,” Masuto said.

“Ah so. You know Cleo. She very nice. Very clever. Fourteen dollar, please.”

They stood in a tiny, dimly lit entryway. Down a narrow hallway, Masuto could see the entrances to six cubicles, each with its own small drape. The sound of two women talking; a shrill laugh; some low groans, which might have indicated that a massage was proceeding satisfactorily.

“I'm not here for a massage,” Masuto said sourly.

“No? No massage? No good then. No screwing here. I run clean, legal place.”

“You run a pesthole, you miserable creature,” Masuto said in Japanese. “I am a policeman. I want to see Cleo.”

“No Cleo here!” His voice was shrill.

“You will speak in your native tongue! Do you take me for a fool?” Masuto snapped at him, still speaking Japanese. “Where is the girl I want? Either tell me or I'll break you in two, you wretched piece of offal.”

“Inside — in the last booth.”

Masuto strode down the hallway and flung back the curtain on the last booth. It was empty except for a massage table and a chair. Then he heard the sound of a door closing. As he turned back to the front, his way was blocked by a massively fat blond woman in a loose housecoat. She began to curse him.

“Lousy Jap pig! You lousy yellow mother …”

He pushed past her. The proprietor had disappeared. He ran to the door, flung it open, and dashed out. One of the three cars he had seen there, a red MG convertible, roared out of the parking lot and onto Topanga Boulevard, heading south. Masuto raced to his car, fumbled in his pocket for the key, cursing his stupidity, then got it started and swung around into Topanga. The red MG was already out of sight. He pushed his gas pedal down to the floor, got the Datsun up to fifty, managing somehow to hold the light car on the narrow, twisting road.

He turned on his radiophone and put out an A.P.B. call: “Red MG convertible. Driven by a girl. Name of Cleo. Blond hair, blue eyes, about twenty-five. Hold for questioning. I'm proceeding south on Topanga. She's about a mile ahead of me.”

He was so intent on the road ahead that he heard the motorcycles before he saw them, and then they were on either side of him, two on his left and one on his right. Each rider carried a three-foot length of cycle chain clenched in gloved hands. He heard the chains crash against the body of the Datsun, and then his right-hand rear window was shattered. He bore down on his gas pedal, and still they were alongside him, systematically smashing his car to rubble. A chain end turned his windshield into a maze of cracks, the left-hand front window smashed — miraculously, none of the flying glass had cut him yet — blows thudded against the body of the car, again on his windshield, and he felt the glass shards on his face, heard the crazy drumming noise of the chains all over the car.

He did the only thing he could think of doing, instinctively. He stood on his brakes and turned his car violently to the left. The brakes screaming, the car almost turning over, he smashed into the metal guard rail, bracing himself with all his strength. The guard rail bent and bowed out over the precipice below, but it held, and at the same time the two motorcycles on his left crashed into his car, the first one striking the front of his motor, the rider flung like a thrown ball over the guard rail and down fifty feet into the rocky cleft of Topanga. The second motorcycle struck the back of the Datsun, and the rider was flung over the car and landed on the pavement.

The door on Masuto's left was bent out of shape and locked closed. He slid over the seat, pushing aside the broken glass, opened the right-hand door, and got out. Blood was running down onto his shirt, and as he touched his cheeks he realized that he had tiny glass cuts on his face and hands. In front of him, the second rider lay in a pool of blood on the pavement. No time to think or to know how badly he was hurt. The third motorcycle was roaring down on him. He leaped back and dodged the swung chain. The cyclist braked to a stop about fifty feet down the road, dismounted, and advanced on Masuto, swinging the chain. His face covered by his blue windmask and helmet, his body encased in black leather, he was a nightmare man-at-arms out of another world; and to increase the nightmare effect, two cars drove by, slowing without stopping.

A third car stopped. The driver got out just as the cyclist made his first pass at Masuto with the chain. Masuto dodged it. The driver got back in his car and drove away. The chain began to spin around the cyclist's head as he advanced on Masuto again. As much as Masuto could think of anything in two seconds, he considered the problem of a policeman who refused to carry a gun in America today and who was very confident of his skill in the martial arts. The cyclist struck and Masuto dodged, feeling the wind of the chain as it passed his face.

“Come on, you yellow bastard!” the cyclist shouted, spinning the chain and charging Masuto. The detective spun on his heel, bent, and kicked high and hard. He felt the chain touch his hair and then his foot connected with the cyclist's chest, and the man was off balance, swaying, and then Masuto kicked out again, almost in a pirouette, his toe in the cyclist's groin this time. The man fell to his knees, crying out in pain and clutching his groin, and Masuto drove his knee into the blue windmask. The man crumpled, and Masuto, his hands shaking, staggered to his car, got the cuffs he kept in the glove compartment, twisted the cyclist's hands behind him, and cuffed him. Then he went to the iron rail on the side of the road, bent over it, and vomited, conscious somewhere in some recess of his mind that three or four more cars had driven past without stopping while all this went on. He felt better after he had thrown up. The blood on his face had coagulated and he was not bleeding anymore. The cyclist he had handcuffed was still lying on his face in the road, groaning and whimpering. Masuto walked over to him and pulled off his helmet. He was a white man with long, sandy hair.

“Jesus, man,” he whimpered, “you smashed my face. My nose is bleeding. I'll bleed to death.”

“Not likely,” said Masuto. He went to the second cyclist, who had been thrown over the car and flung onto the road, and now, for the first time since it began, a car stopped and the driver actually walked over to Masuto.

“I'm a policeman,” Masuto said.

“I'm Doctor Marvin Goldberg. Are you hurt?”

Masuto pointed to the cyclist who lay motionless in a pool of blood. The doctor went over to him and felt his wrist.

“I think he's dead.”

“There was another one,” Masuto said. “He went over the rail and into the canyon.” He went to the rail and the doctor followed him.

“There he is,” Masuto said, pointing.

“I can't get down there. You'd better call Rescue.”

“Could he be alive?”

“I don't know. It's fifty feet down and it's rock.”

“I'll try my radiophone,” Masuto said. “That one …” He pointed to the cyclist he had cuffed. “That one has a nosebleed. I had to kick him in the face and in the testicles. You might have a look at him.”

“I'll get my bag,” the doctor said.

The radiophone was not working. Masuto stood there looking at the wreck of his car. “The phone's not working,” he told the doctor. “They'll get here. They always do. How is he?”

“He'll be all right,” the doctor said.

Masuto walked over to the cyclist, who was sitting up now, his hands clamped behind him.

“What's your name?”

“Tom Cleerey.”

“All right, Cleerey. I'm putting you under arrest, and I'm going to read you your rights. You have the right to remain silent. I am arresting you for the attempted murder of Sergeant Masuto and for the murder of Ronald Haber. If you give up the right to remain silent, anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to speak with an attorney …”

Other cars were stopping, now that it was over; a line began to back up on the canyon road, and the traffic halted in both directions. It was still daylight, but the shadows were long and deep on the macabre scene in the canyon. Masuto saw the flashing lights of the highway patrol, and a moment or two later two L.A.P.D. cops and a highway patrolman pushed through the gathering crowd.

“This one's dead, and there's another one down in the canyon,” Masuto explained to them. “I'm Sergeant Masuto, Homocide, and I arrested that one — his name is Tom Cleerey — for the murder of Ronald Haber. That happened last night, over in West Hollywood.”

“You're crazy!” Cleerey shouted.

“But what he tried to do to me with a bicycle chain — well, that happened here — so I don't know where it goes. I read him his rights. Dr. Goldberg here was witness to it.”

“You called in on the red MG?” one of the L.A.P.D. cops asked.