“If you will wait outside for a moment or two, Mr. Gritchov,” Wainwright said slowly, as if each word choked him, “I will have Detective Sergeant Masuto take you to All Saints Hospital.”
Gritchov nodded and left the office, closing the door behind him, and Wainwright burst out, “That lousy son of a bitch! Petty bureaucrat!”
“I think we both behaved with admirable control, Captain.”
“And we continue to. And for Christ’s sake, cut out that Charlie Chan stuff. He’s no fool, and I don’t want any backwash. Take him over to the hospital. I’m going up to talk with the city manager.”
“Right.”
“And don’t push it. If the goddamn F.B.I. wants it, let them have it.” At the door he paused. “You still think that hooker in the hotel killed him?”
Masuto shrugged and nodded.
“Screw the F.B.I! Petty bureaucrat! That bastard!”
4
Riding the mile that separated the police station and All Saints Hospital, the Soviet consul general was rigidly silent, and Masuto made no effort to engage him in conversation. As they entered the pathology room, Dr. Baxter unbent from over the corpse of Jack Stillman, and grinned malevolently at Masuto.
“Back again with a live one,” he said.
“Got the bullet?”
“All wrapped up nice and neat. Thirty-caliber short. Pop, pop! Sounds like a stick breaking, so I guess you won’t find anyone who heard it. Do you want it?”
“Please,” said Masuto.
Baxter handed him a little packet, the bullet wrapped in tissue, which Masuto placed in his jacket pocket. “This is Mr. Gritchov.”
Gritchov was observing the action with interest. He showed no signs of being disturbed by the contents of the pathology room.
“Oh?” Baxter raised a brow.
“I would like to take him into the morgue for identification.”
“You already know his name. You just told me.” Baxter grinned again.
“Very funny. Where’s the body?”
Baxter led the way to the morgue door, but as he started to enter, Masuto barred his way. “We’d like to be alone, Doctor-if you don’t mind.”
“Alone with the dead. How touching!”
“If you don’t mind.”
“I have no objection, and I’m sure the corpse has none.”
Inside the morgue room, Gritchov said, “You’re an interesting man, Detective Sergeant Masuto.”
“All people are interesting, Consul General, if you regard them without judgment.”
“And do you?”
“I try to.” He pointed. “There is the body.”
Gritchov went to the table and drew back the sheet that covered the fat man. Masuto watched as he stood there, studying the face of the dead man. Then Gritchov replaced the sheet.
“You know him?” Masuto asked.
“Yes. His name is Peter Litovsky. He had a small post in the embassy in Washington. He was what we call a cultural attache, one who maintains-”
“I understand the function of a cultural attache.”
“Shocking,” said Gritchov, with nothing in his manner or tone to indicate that it actually was shocking. “I shall have to inform his family, and that will not be pleasant.”
“Then you know him personally?”
“Of course. I had dinner with him two nights ago.”
“Then he was in San Francisco? I thought he was attached to the embassy in Washington.”
“He is. Of course. He came to San Francisco with the Zlatov Dancers. That was entirely within his proper function as cultural attache.”
Puzzled, wondering what had changed an angry, taciturn Russian official, who opened his mouth only to deliver thinly veiled insults, into this almost affable conversationalist, Masuto decided to press his advantage and confessed to being somewhat confused by the fact that Mr. Gritchov had refused to comment on the photograph.
“One wishes to make certain in a serious matter like this.”
“Naturally. Do you know what Mr. Litovsky was doing in Los Angeles?”
“In Beverly Hills, as you pointed out to me, Detective Sergeant. Beverly Hills is very much spoken of, even in our country. I suppose he seized this opportunity to see how the very rich live in a capitalist country. We have no equivalent of Beverly Hills in our country, so it is quite natural for a visitor from the Soviet Union to be curious about it. What an unhappy thing that he had to pay such a price for his curiosity.”
“Do you know whether Mr. Litovsky could swim?”
Gritchov shrugged. “Evidently not.”
“Perhaps you do not remember, but when we spoke on the telephone, I told you that Mr. Litovsky was found naked and drowned in the swimming pool.”
“Yes. Of course.”
“I see. Is it the custom in your country for men to swim naked in a public pool?”
“You mean he had no bathing suit?”
“That’s exactly what I mean. Furthermore, his clothes, his eyeglasses, his wristwatch, his wallet-all of these things have disappeared. Furthermore, his drowning was not an accident. He was murdered.”
Masuto saw the small muscles around Gritchov’s jaw tighten, but his voice was even as he said, “Can’t we leave this place, Detective Sergeant? It’s cold and the air is fetid.”
Masuto led the way out. Baxter had left, and the two bearded young men working in the pathology room gave them only a passing glance. In that place, death was more interesting than life.
“Where can I take you?” Masuto asked when they were in his car.
“I have a reservation at the Beverly Wilshire.”
“Then you’re staying in Beverly Hills?”
“For the time being.”
“Permit me to say that I am somewhat bewildered. I inform you that a colleague of yours was murdered under very unusual circumstances, that he was left to drown naked in a swimming pool, and you have not even the curiosity to ask me how he was murdered.”
“How was he murdered, Detective Sergeant Masuto?”
“He was given chloral hydrate, probably in a drink, and then when he went into the pool area, probably because he was choking for air, a person or persons unknown pushed him into the pool and saw to it that he drowned. Then they undressed him and left his naked body floating in the pool, a shameful and ignominious end to any life.”
“Detective Sergeant Masuto,” Gritchov said quietly, “you are a small and unimportant public official, the equivalent of what we in our country would call a militiaman. You neither function in nor understand a larger scheme of things. I am a diplomat, with diplomatic immunity. I am not called upon to answer any of your questions. There are men in your country who have both the experience with and the responsibility for what happened to Mr. Litovsky last night, and I am sure that they will take the appropriate measures. I think that closes the subject.”
For once, Masuto envied Wainwright’s choice of language and response. “So sorry, Consul General,” he said. “Most humble apologies.”
Gritchov said no more. Masuto dropped him at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel in Beverly Hills and then drove back to police headquarters. Sy Beckman was in the office, and he said to Masuto, “Wainwright’s in a lather. What got him so pissed off?”
“The Soviet Union. We had a visit from the consul general.”
“Oh?”
“He charmed us all. What did you come up with in Stillman’s room?”
“Zero. He smokes dollar-fifty H. Upmann cigars. Had half a box there, and I only accepted one of them. It is hell to be an honest cop. Nothing else worth mentioning-not one damn thing. You’d think that if he had a hooker in the room last night, she’d drop a bobby pin or something. Nothing.”
“Prints?”
“You know Sweeney. He got enough prints to keep him busy for a week.”
“How about Stillman’s prints?”
“L.A.P.D. is working on them. Look, Masao, I am starved. Suppose we knock off and go out and eat.”