Read Online The Case of the Murdered MacKenzie: A Masao Masuto Mystery (Book Seven) by Howard Fast - Free Book Online

man with the broad, heavy hands and splayed fingers of a garage mechanic. As a matter of fact, he had been a mechanic a good part of his life, and there was, as Geffner put it, nothing about cars that he did not know.
    â€œI don’t buy the perfect murder,” he said to Masuto as they drove north on the Pacific Coast Highway. “I don’t buy it at all. You fix a car and somewhere it’s got to show. You cut a brake line, it shows. You fix the wheel, it shows.”
    â€œBut suppose you do nothing to the car,” Masuto insisted. “You knock out a person and put her behind the wheel. Do it on a downhill stretch in a place like Malibu Canyon. She goes through the guardrail. What then?”
    â€œSuppose the car burns,” Geffner said.
    â€œSure, those things can happen, but mostly they don’t. Every time you turn on the television you see a car go out of control and burst into flames. You ever see a car in a highway crash burst into flame?”
    â€œOnce or twice,” Masuto said. “I didn’t actually see it happen, but I was called in.”
    â€œNever saw it myself,” Geffner admitted.
    â€œTell you how they do it, Mr. Geffner. They use a small incendiary charge. Sometimes they blow it by remote control, sometimes it’s set to go off on contact.”
    â€œThe car didn’t burn. I didn’t talk to the highway patrol myself. Evidently, they phoned it in to the county sheriff in Hollywood and he called Judge Simpkins. I guess he felt that Simpkins ought to know as soon as possible.”
    â€œWhat about the media?” Masuto asked.
    â€œWe’ll know when we get there. I hope we get there first.”
    â€œWhat are you going to tell the highway cops?” Masuto asked.
    â€œWe’ll see what they tell us. The highway patrol likes to feel that they own the state. It’s not exactly the truth.”
    At the Malibu Colony, Geffner made a right turn off the Pacific Coast Highway and into the hills. Driving that way, they could see the night lights of the Fenwick Works, built on a low hill and facing the Pacific, a great, sprawling complex of buildings, with a lit sign that said: TOMORROW IS TODAY AT FENWICK. The Malibu Canyon Road ran eastward, connecting the Pacific coast with the San Fernando Valley, and in the course of its ten-mile journey from the coast to the Valley, it ran through some of the most splendidly scenic country in the West. While not unusually high, the mountains that bordered the road were precipitous, shelves of raw rock that climbed a thousand and fifteen hundred feet from a road frequently gouged out of the rock itself. Daytime, the road was as beautiful as it was dangerous; at night, it was simply dangerous.
    They had come over thirty miles from Culver City, and Masuto wondered what compelled a district attorney who, at best, could only claim to have lost a comely defendant.
    â€œNo,” Geffner said. “I’ve been had. The state’s been had. It stinks. Someone is playing dirty games, and for them the law means nothing and the court means nothing. Maybe I simply want to validate the way I earn a living.”
    â€œIt’s not easy,” Masuto said. “I’ve tried.”
    There were lights up ahead, enough light to make a glow over the road, and then there were the cars lined up on the narrow shoulder, CBS News and ABC News and NBC News and the press cars and the independent TV stations and some traffic and a tow truck trying to get through, and two long, sleek black limousines which, Masuto guessed, might be the property of Fenwick Works, and, their lights flashing, two highway patrol cars and a sheriff’s car out of Malibu Station. It was a large company, but the violent death of a star is not an everyday occurrence, and the death of a star on trial for murder is worth everything the media can give it, and the media would certainly give it Masao Masuto among other things. Masuto felt that