Read The Case of the Murdered MacKenzie: A Masao Masuto Mystery (Book Seven) for Free Online Page A

you’re going to say. Leave it alone. Why the hell couldn’t you stay another week in Japan?”
    â€œWe got a funny city, Captain, and a lot of rich people, and we’re sort of a freak as cities go, and we got Rodeo Drive, where a man can buy a shirt for two hundred dollars and a suit for twelve hundred dollars, and we have the highest-priced hookers in the world, and we got houses that sell for three million dollars, but I never heard anyone accuse us of having dirty cops. They accuse Beverly Hills of everything else, but not a crooked police force.”
    â€œYou’re going too far, Masao. I’ve put up with damn near everything from you—”
    â€œJust tell me why you arrested and charged Eve Mackenzie, and I’ll swallow everything I said.”
    â€œI don’t have to tell you one damn thing!”
    â€œSo sorry, Captain Wainwright.” Masuto turned and opened the door.
    â€œWhere the hell are you going? And don’t give me any of that Charlie Chan routine!”
    â€œI’m going to sit in my office and decide whether I want to work here anymore.”
    â€œClose that door and stop being a horse’s ass!” There was a slight smile on Masuto’s face that disappeared as he turned around. “Now, sit down,” Wainwright said to him. “Talk. Get it off your chest.”
    â€œAll right. I listened to Beckman’s testimony. Then I had lunch with him. Then I went over to see Doc Baxter. He’s going to testify that there’s no way in the world Eve Mackenzie could have killed her husband.”
    â€œI know that.”
    â€œYou know that, and you withheld it from Beckman. Sy Beckman’s been my partner for years. He has more courage and decency than any man I ever worked with, and you’ve made a fool of him, and you’ve withheld evidence from him and you made him the arresting officer in as rotten and ridiculous a case as I’ve ever seen.”
    â€œThat’s so.”
    â€œWhy?”
    â€œI don’t have to tell you why, Masao, and don’t push me. I’m tired of being pushed. What’s the difference? The public won’t yell, because they don’t know the difference between a good case and a rotten case, and in another day or two the judge will throw the whole thing out of court, and Eve Mackenzie gets a million dollars worth of publicity, which ain’t bad for a washed-up movie star, and we close our file and that’s the end of it.”
    â€œAnd the killer walks away, and we never even know who he killed or where the real Mackenzie is, if there is a real Mackenzie.”
    â€œYou been sniffing around.”
    â€œThat’s what I get paid for.”
    Wainwright got up and stalked around his desk and stood staring out the window. “Times I hate this place and times I love it, and times the goddamn sunshine makes me sick. Look, Masao, this is tied into the Fenwick Works and a lot of other things. They come to me and they tell me to close the book on the Mackenzie case. Indict the wife and then let the case fall apart. She walks out of court free, and that’s the end of it. I tell them we don’t do things that way.”
    â€œWho?”
    â€œThere’s no who. I gave my word about it. Then they start turning the screw. They put the heat on the city manager, and then the calls come in from Washington, and then more heat—and all along the rationale is that nobody hurts. They want to bury the case. They want an unhappy wife who gets rid of her husband, only there’s no good evidence to convict her. Baxter thinks he’s going to testify, but Geffner will forget to call him.”
    â€œBut why? What’s behind all this? You tell me that Geffner’s in on it, but Geffner’s honest.”
    â€œWe’re all honest.”
    â€œIs the judge in on it too?”
    â€œDon’t put me in the middle of some lousy conspiracy. If we had one small