Read Online The Case of the Angry Actress: A Masao Masuto Mystery by Howard Fast - Free Book Online Page B

right?”
    â€œRight.”
    â€œI never met a decent man who wasn’t. Only the slobs are libres .”
    â€œ Libres? ”
    â€œThat’s what they call the cabs in Mexico. It means they’re free for customers.”
    â€œMurphy Anderson is sitting down in your living room.”
    â€œLet him set. You keep testing, don’t you?”
    â€œThat’s what they pay me for, Mrs. Tulley—”
    â€œCall me Lenore. You’ve moved into my bedroom.” She poured herself another vodka and tossed it down, shivered, and said to Masuto, “What are you, anyway? I mean, Christian or Mormon or ancestor worship or what?”
    â€œI am a Buddhist, Mrs. Tulley. You’ve been married six years. No children?”
    â€œThat is none of your damn business. Christ, maybe it is. I don’t know what is your business. I was married to Mike. You know, he kept a little book of every dame he took to bed, one hundred and twenty-seven entries, names, places, dates and physical descriptions, just in case he should confuse them.”
    â€œHe showed it to you?”
    â€œNo, my dear Detective Masuto. I got at it when he was away. Dirty curiosity. And you want me to have kids with that? Oh, no—thank God, that’s one I missed.” She stared at him then with awakened interest. “Good Lord, you still think that maybe I am Samantha, don’t you?”
    â€œNo, you’re not Samantha. But suppose we take four of your friends, Mrs. Tulley—Trude Burke, Phoebe Greenberg, Stacy Anderson and Arlene Cotter—”
    â€œMy friends?”
    â€œYou know them well, don’t you?”
    â€œWhat is well? Arlene Cotter is a bitch with the mouth of a snake. Stacy folds her hands across her belly and she drinks too much. She’s contented Beverly Hills. Phoebe Greenberg—well, no one knows her. I don’t even think Phoebe knows her. The day after she married Al, she became Great Lady of Beverly Hills. It’s the only part she ever had and she decided she would play it better without any speaking lines. And Trude Burke is a little tramp.”
    â€œOh? What do you mean when you call someone a tramp?”
    She downed a third vodka and replied, “I mean I’m being a bitch. And if you don’t know what a tramp is, my inscrutable Oriental, look it up in Mencken on slang.”
    â€œAnd which of the four is Samantha, Mrs. Tulley?”
    â€œYou must be kidding.”
    â€œNot at all. Will you answer a question truthfully—one question?”
    â€œYou’re impugning me, and I no longer like you, Mr. Chan. I know damn well what you intend to ask me. You are going to say, ‘My dear Mrs. Tulley, is one of them Samantha?’ The answer is yes. One of them is Samantha. You’re goddamn right one of them is!”
    â€œWhich one?”
    Lenore Tulley shook her head. She was a little drunk and she was becoming thoughtful.
    â€œWhich one?”
    â€œFuzz,” she answered with distaste. “What am I doing here in my own bedroom with an Oriental fuzz playing psychological games with me? Drop dead, Mr. Detective.”
    â€œYou said you wanted to get your husband’s killer.”
    â€œDid I? What could I have been thinking of? Killing Mike was a public service. She deserves a medal.”
    In the bedlam downstairs, Murphy Anderson sat like a lost child, hunched over in his chair, warding off the reporters and hiding from the TV cameras, which were still barred from the house.
    Masuto watched him as Beckman said, “Do you want to talk to the maid, housekeeper?”
    â€œNo. Get their statements.”
    â€œThere’s no one you want to arrest?” Beckman asked hopefully.
    â€œNo—no one.”
    â€œLet me get out of here, would you?” Murphy Anderson asked.
    â€œYou don’t want to talk to the widow?”
    â€œNo, I don’t want to talk to the widow. I only want to get out of