The Case of the Kidnapped Angel

2

Masuto had occasionally speculated on what makes a “bankable” star, a term very expressive in Hollywood if nowhere else in America. Certainly it was not theatrical talent, not appearance-though appearance was important-not beauty, not brains, but rather an indefinable thing which some called charisma for want of a better name. It was not connected with the way an actor lived his life, treated the other sex, was or was not a doper, a drunk, a liar, or a thief. It was something that cut through all that, recognizable yet undefinable-and whatever it was, Mike Barton possessed it. He was onstage as he stepped out of his house, and he strode over to Masuto with a kind of assurance reserved for his narrow clan, yet lacking, Masuto felt, any of that tired inelasticity that comes from fear and sorrow. He was a star, but not a very good actor.

He shook hands and said, “Let’s walk, Sergeant. My house has big ears.”

“Whose ears?”

“Damned if I know.”

“Kidnapping for ransom is planned. It’s not decided on the spur of the moment. Someone must have known that your wife would spend the night at the beach house.”

“Who? I didn’t know it myself. Angel didn’t know. We decided that she should show up at the party because Netty’s a dear old friend. I had a splitting headache and I felt too rotten to trek over to Malibu. I told Angel that if the party was a drag, she should cut out of there at ten o’clock or so, but if she was having fun and decided to stay on, she shouldn’t try to drive back here. Hell, that’s what the beach house is for.”

“But the people at the party would know that she planned to stay overnight.”

“Some of them, maybe. I suppose Netty would know. Where the hell is all this leading, Sergeant?”

“The woman who gave the party, Netty Cooper-did you talk to her?”

“Come on, come on. My wife was in trouble.”

“Still,” Masuto persisted, “someone must have known that she would be at the party-”

“Sure. People knew that.”

They were at the greenhouse now. “I guess we ought to step inside,” Barton said, “just in case someone’s watching. It’ll make some sense for me to be walking in the garden with you.”

Inside the greenhouse Masuto asked him, “Who might be watching?”

“Goddamnit, Sergeant, you get me at the worst moment of my life and ask me questions that make no damn sense.”

“I’m sorry.”

“All I want is to get back into the house and wait for the phone to ring.”

“I can understand that.”

“Then it makes no sense for me to be out here talking to a gardener. You keep asking me who is watching. How the hell do I know? But someone knows every move I make and every move Angel makes, and they’re going to think it’s funny as hell for me to be out here with you. Furthermore, let me tell you this: If anyone follows me when I make the drop and Angel is hurt, I swear to God I’ll sue Beverly Hills for every dollar they got in their treasury.”

“No one will follow you.”

“Then I suggest you get your truck out of here.”

Masuto nodded, reflecting that to be a policeman in Beverly Hills was quite different from being a policeman anywhere else in the world. He watched Mike Barton stride across the garden to the house, the stride and bearing of a thoroughbred horse, and then Masuto walked to his truck, got in, and drove out of the place. A few minutes later he parked the pickup at the police station on Rexford Drive, ignored a uniformed cop who wanted to know whether he had changed his profession, and then climbed the stairs to Wainwright’s office.

“Back already?” Wainwright asked sourly.

“He didn’t want me there. He raised hell and told me to get out.”

“Great. We pay a hundred dollars to rent the truck for a day and we get ten minutes out of it.”

“Beverly Hills can afford it.”

“They don’t pay for it. It comes out of our budget. Did you get anything?”

“Not really. Some impressions.”

“Well, just sit on them. The city manager was in here and he wants us to keep hands off. Ranier and McCarthy are out there with Barton, and they’ll be in touch with us once Barton pays the ransom. When Angel is returned, we can move in and investigate.”

“And if Angel isn’t returned?”

“Let’s take it one thing at a time.”

“I’d like to go out to Malibu now,” Masuto said.

“What for?”

“I want to see his beach house and I want to talk to Netty Cooper, the lady who gave the party where Angel spent last night.”

“The Malibu cops are handling that.”

“I know, Captain. Nevertheless, she resides here. The Malibu cops would expect us to stick our noses into it.”

“I don’t want trouble with the brass, Masao. They want us to keep hands off.”

“Absolutely. I’m not tailing Barton or interfering with him. I’m looking at a place where a crime was committed, a break-in and a kidnapping. It would be derelict on our part not to look into it, and it would undoubtedly open us to various charges that-”

“All right. Do it. I’m sick of being told when to be a cop and when not to.”

“I’d like to take Beckman with me.”

“What for? You need the company?”

“For protection. He’s bigger than I am.”

“Take him and get the hell out of here!”

His desk still covered with files, Beckman was talking into the telephone when Masuto entered. He put down the phone, and Masuto told him, “Come take a ride. We’ll drive over to my house, I’ll change clothes, and then we’ll head out to Malibu. Unless you got something out of this morning?”

“We’ll talk in the car,” Beckman said. He was a big man, three inches taller than Masuto’s six feet, heavy-set and slope-shouldered. He sat in Masuto’s old Datsun scrunched over and observed that when you scratched the surface of anyone, what came up was pretty damn strange.

“How’s that?”

“You want to know about Angel. Well, I put out every line we have. I called Gloria Adams at the L.A. Times and I called Freda Mons at the Examiner. Between them they know about every celebrity in the country, when they pee and when they cut their fingernails and who they’re in bed with, and I even called Elsie Binns at S.A.G., who knows practically every actor in the world, and do you know that none of them could come up with even a license tag for Angel Barton. That is, before two and a half years ago, which was when she moved in with Mike Barton. So who is she and where was she and where does she come from?”

“How about her maiden name?”

“That, Masao, is a lulu. Nobody, but nobody, has the vaguest notion what her maiden name was, or whatever her last name was, maiden or not.”

“What did they call her? They must have called her something.”

“They called her Angel.”

“What about the Motor Vehicles Bureau?” Masuto demanded. “Did you try them? If she drove a car before she was married, she had a license.”

“I’m slow but not stupid, Masao. Sure I tried them. They’re a pretty lousy organization to begin with and they don’t break their backs doing things for the Beverly Hills cops, and when I told them that all I had was a first name and an address, they didn’t exactly applaud me. Nothing. So I called the L.A. cops who got some good computers. Zilch. Zilch wherever I turned. Two and a half years ago, that lady just didn’t exist.”

“She existed. Now what about Barton?”

They were at Masuto’s cottage now, and Beckman suggested that they save Barton for the ride out to Malibu. “Otherwise, we got to talk about the weather, which doesn’t change, and football, which ain’t your game anyway.”

It was after eleven now, and Kati, delighted to see her husband at midday, immediately began to prepare food. “I’m not hungry,” Masuto said. “I’ll change and then we’ll have to go.” Beckman was hungry, and Kati fried a large hamburger, which he wolfed down with a glass of milk. “I expected tempura,” he explained to Masuto when they were back in the car. “You didn’t expect me to pass up an offer of Kati’s tempura.”

“You ate hamburger.”

“That’s what I got. I’d have to be a pig to turn it down and ask for tempura.”

“I guess you would.”

It was about twenty-five miles from Masuto’s home in Culver City to the old Malibu Road, the location of the Bartons’ beach house. When they were on the Pacific Coast Highway heading north, Masuto reminded Beckman about Barton. “You said his real name might just be Brannigan. Why ‘might just be’? A good many film actors change their names. It’s no great secret.”

“It is and it isn’t, Masao. In the old days Jewish and Italian and Polish actors used to sit on their real names, and sometimes their real names were absolutely secret, actors like Leslie Howard and Kirk Douglas and Tony Curtis to name only a few. But after the war things changed and you got people like George Segal and Sylvester Stallone who don’t give a damn and lots of others too. But with Barton, it’s different.”

“How’s that?”

“Well, think about the way he looks, a kind of a cross between Robert Redford and Ronald Reagan. He’s got to be Irish or Wasp, so you don’t think of him changing his name. But his past is as blurred as the Angel’s. He turned up here in Hollywood in 1964 and it seems that for two years he did everything except act-washed dishes, waited on tables, pumped gas. Then he got some bit parts in TV, and then he pulled off a major role in a series-and from there, zoom. He’s one of the top ten. But who is he? Nobody seems to know.”

“A hundred million people have seen his face. How does he hide?”

“Maybe he don’t have to hide. You hide if you’re on the run, if there’s a want out for you. If it’s just a background you’re maybe ashamed of, or some kind of nastiness that won’t help the image, or maybe even something you want to forget, you change your name.”

“Then where did the Brannigan notion come from?” Masuto reminded him.

“I talked to Gloria Adams at the L.A. Times. She says that in the interviews with fan magazines and such, Barton just blurs his past-admits to being an Easterner from upstate New York, but she mentioned that two years ago she got a letter from back East. She tells me her column is syndicated all over the country, and this letter says that Barton’s real name is Brannigan and that he comes from Schenectady in New York. So she asked Barton, and he says it’s a lot of hogwash, so she just forgot about it, because crazy mail is a part of her job. She wanted to know how come the Beverly Hills cops were suddenly interested in Mike Barton, but I put her off and told her that if something broke, she’d be the first to know.”

“Did you call the Schenectady cops?”

“I did that, but they don’t have fancy computers, and they said that for anything seventeen or eighteen years ago it would take a couple of days to get into their old files.”

Masuto nodded. “That’s good work, Sy. From here on we’ll just take it as it comes.”

“You think he’ll ever see Angel again?”

“Somehow, I do.”

“It’s almost noon. By now Barton’s made the drop.”

“I would presume so.”

It was just past twelve when they turned left off the Pacific Coast Highway at old Malibu Road and pulled up in front of the Malibu police station. Joe Cominsky, the Malibu chief of police, had started out as a uniformed cop with Sy Beckman when they were both members of the Los Angeles police, and now he shook his hand warmly. “It’s been a long time, Sy, many moons.”

“I envy you. If you’ve got to be a cop, I suppose Malibu’s got everything else beat.”

“It has its points. Glad to meet you, Sergeant,” he said to Masuto. “Maybe you’re just what we need on this, because this Barton thing is sure as hell a Chinese puzzle.”

“The sergeant’s not Chinese. He’s nisei.”

“I know, I know. Just an expression. No offense.”

“Forget it,” Masuto said. “I know what you mean. I’d like to look at their beach house, and then I’d like to talk to Netty Cooper. I’m sure you’ve been talking to her.”

“Just got back from there.”

“Then you have a list of the guests last night?”

“It’s a Who’s Who of the film business. You know the kind of people we got out here in the Malibu Colony. Top directors, top stars, top producers. The thought of a couple of them sneaking down the road after the party to kidnap Angel Barton is just bananas.”

“Were there no people from outside the Colony?”

“Fred Simmons, the producer, and his wife. Simmons is sixty-seven with a bad ticker. They left about eleven. Fred Simmons has more millions than you could shake a stick at. He’s no candidate.”

“How many people were there?”

“About twenty altogether.”

“I’d like to talk to Mrs. Cooper.”

“Absolutely,” Cominsky said.

“And to have a look at the Bartons’ beach house.”

“Sure. Suppose we go along there now. I’d like another opinion. When I said Chinese puzzle before, I wasn’t making an ethnic crack. I meant the puzzle part of it. It’s just a mile down old Malibu Road. I’ll drive you there.”

“Then Angel never had to touch the highway. She just drove down Malibu Road. I suppose someone could have been waiting, watching for her car.”

When they reached the Barton beach house, Cominsky pointed to the slope on the inland side facing the house. “Nothing there but mustard grass. No place to hide.”

“On top?”

“Maybe. There’s a road up there, between here and the Pacific Coast Highway, so I guess they could have parked there and watched. But let’s look at the house.”

The house was one-story and brown-shingled, presenting a blank wall to the road. The entrance was on the beach side, and alongside the house, nestled between the Barton house and the adjoining house, an alley led through to the beach. Cominsky opened the door to the alley, explaining, “Most of the people here leave passkeys with us.”

“No garage?” Masuto asked.

“Not here. Very few of them. People park in the space in front of their houses.”

“I don’t see her car?”

“They took it-a yellow two-seat Mercedes. Worth over forty grand. We put out an APB on it, but no word yet.”

“And when they left, was the gate open?”

“Right. Hold that thought, Sergeant. The gate wasn’t jimmied. Either they opened it with a passkey, or they came around from the beach. And the nearest public pass-through to the beach is a quarter of a mile away. Just follow me through here.”

The passageway was no more than three feet wide, the house directly on the left making a windowless wall. In the Bartons’ house there were several side windows, all of them covered with fretted iron grillwork.

“What about these people next door?” Masuto asked.

“Divorced actor. He does westerns in Spain. Been there three months and not expected back until next month.”

They emerged into the blazing sunlight of Malibu Beach, the white sand stretching in front of them, a man walking a dog, a youngster in a wet suit trying to surf, and four pretty girls playing volleyball. The Barton house had a broad shaded porch facing the ocean, and in front of it and three steps down, a wooden terrace enclosed by a picket fence. On the terrace were tables under striped beach umbrellas-folded now-lounge chairs, and dining chairs. Cominsky opened the gate at the side of the picket fence and led them across the terrace.

“Barred on the road side, but not the beach side.”

“The water kills thoughts of evil,” Masuto said, and Cominsky glanced at him strangely.

“Yet the evil persists,” Masuto added, smiling. “Only the sand is washed clean. Forgive me, Chief. I’m also puzzled.”

“Oh? Yeah,” Cominsky agreed. “Just take a look at this front door.” He unlocked a police padlock that had been bolted to the door and stood aside. Masuto and Beckman stared at the door, which had been attacked in two places by a jimmy and forced open. In the lower corner of the window, next to the door, was a stick-on label with the legend HELMS SECURITY.

“Helms ties into police stations,” Masuto said. “Was this tied into yours?”

“You’re damn right, Sergeant.”

“You tested it? It was working?”

“Absolutely.”

“And you had someone on duty?” Masuto persisted.

“Even if we didn’t, there’s an alarm bell attached that can be heard a mile away on this beach.”

“In other words,” said Beckman, “she never turned on the alarm.”

“Come inside.”

They stood in the living room of the attractively furnished cottage-grass rug, wicker furniture with bright blue upholstery, good prints on the walls. Masuto stood staring, captivated. Two of the prints were askew, a lamp was knocked over and smashed, a chair was turned over, and the grass rug was pulled out of place.

“I want you to see the bedroom,” Cominsky said.

“In a moment.” He was trying to recreate a struggle in his mind and to fit it into what had happened in the room. Beckman, who knew him well, watched with interest. “All right,” Masuto said.

“There are three bedrooms.” Cominsky led the way. “This is the master.”

The bedclothes were rumpled, a nightgown on the floor. As Masuto studied the scene, Cominsky walked over and touched a switch next to the bed. Above the switch, a red light glowed.

“This is the alarm switch. The light’s on when the switch is off.”

“I should think it would be the other way,” Beckman said.

“No, this makes sense. You put out the lights, and then the red light reminds you about the alarm.”

“What time did she leave the party?” Masuto asked.

“About one P.M. When they all live in the Colony, the parties tend to run late.”

“But it was a weekday. Most of them would have to be in the studios very early.”

“Yeah. She was one of the last to leave.”

“And Barton got the call at three A.M. That leaves two hours. Unless they were stupid enough to make the call from here, they had to break in and take her somewhere. If they were watching her, why didn’t they intercept her? Why break in at all? And if she went straight to bed, why didn’t she reach out and turn on the alarm?”

“You tell me,” Cominsky said.

“And if she wasn’t asleep, why didn’t she reach out and turn on the alarm when she heard the door go?”

“Was the bedside lamp on?” Masuto asked.

“It was.”

“You had the place dusted?”

“Early this morning. We don’t look for anything there.”

“Can I use the phone?”

“Be my guest.”

He called Beverly Hills and got through to Wainwright. “It’s one o’clock,” Masuto said. “What do you hear from Barton?”

“Nothing.”

“Did he pay the ransom?”

“According to Ranier he got the call from the kidnappers over an hour ago and left just before noon, taking the million dollars with him.”

“Never said where he was going?”

“Not a word.”

“Did Ranier listen in on an extension?” Masuto asked.

“He says he didn’t. He’s there with McCarthy, waiting for Barton to show. Where are you?”

“At Barton’s beach house.”

“Did you find anything?”

“Confusion. I’d like to talk to Netty Cooper while I’m out here.”

“Why not? Aside from the confusion, you got any ideas, Masuto?”

“Too many. If you want me, you can call the Malibu station. They’re right outside the Colony.”

He put down the phone and turned to Cominsky, who asked him if he had seen enough.

“I think so.” He picked up the nightgown and looked at it-white silk, white lace. He put it to his face to smell it. Cominsky grinned. Beckman said, “I never knew you went in for that, Masao.”

“Only lately.”

Cominsky padlocked the cottage door again.

“If the system is turned on with the bedside switch,” Masuto said, “then what happens when you open the door from the outside?”

“There’s a switch in the lock that turns it off. It’s not foolproof, but it’s a damn hard lock to pick.”

“Does your screen at the police station tell you when the alarm systems are on or off?”

“Yes. The officer on duty says it was off.”

“Here on this part of the old road,” Masuto said, “what kind of people live here?”

“Mostly the same kind you find in the Colony down the road, only with less money for the most part. Of course, some of them, like Barton, use their houses only on weekends, and some of the houses, like this one, are as classy as the houses in the Colony. Some people don’t want to live in the Colony, and then the houses at the Colony aren’t for sale very often. You get writers, actors, directors, lawyers-you name it.”

Masuto turned toward the ocean, staring at the incoming waves, apparently lost in thought. “I’d like to live here,” Beckman said. “I guess I’d rather live here than anywhere else.”

“Time was, and not so long ago,” Cominsky told them, “that you could buy one of these houses for forty, fifty thousand dollars. Now there isn’t one you can touch for less than half a million.”

Masuto smiled thinly and shrugged. “Let’s go back to the station house.” He had been thinking that Malibu Beach was very beautiful. But most of the world was very beautiful until men touched it.