The Counterfeit Murder in the Museum of Man (22 page)

I cleared my throat. “That’s true, Bertha. But the Museum of Man is a serious institution. We deal in the truth as far as we can ascertain it.” I glanced at Professor Jackson and allowed myself to add, “Besides, there’s already enough counterfeiting going on.”

At first I thought it was just a joke in questionable taste, an attempt by Alphus and Ridley to get a rise out of me. It wouldn’t have been the first time. Little did I suspect it would end in nightmare. The fact is, I am lucky to be walking around like a free man.

Let me start with this afternoon. Actually with yesterday afternoon, as I am writing in the small hours, unable to sleep. I had tried several times during the day to reach Diantha out at the cottage. But she refused to pick up or click on, which always leaves me with an unraveled feeling.

A general staff meeting in the Twitchell Room had gone badly, in part through my own inattention. Ah, the problems. Everything from moldering skulls to accounting decisions to weakening attendance figures. My authority, never that of a tight-ship captain, has begun to slip. There was an absence in the room that turned out to be me. Several times I glanced through the tall windows at the deep blue sky that is endless and timeless and wondered what I was doing there. The thought of a large, powerful martini when I arrived home kept me going. Not for the first time I feared I might be slipping into alcoholism.

Because the construction of said drink began shortly after I came through the door of my abode. I am partial to Cork Dry Gin (not that it matters after the first one) and a touch of ordinary vermouth rinsed in ice and poured over an unstoned olive.

Though Alphus had been alone for several hours, which usually renders him morose, I found him in a strangely agitated
state. He was dressed in a sports jacket, a kelly-green summer-weight thing, along with a shirt and tie and pressed Bermudas. He avoided my eyes and pretended an interest in the small kitchen television, which showed forest fires blazing in the remote West. He is not adept at dissembling, but when I asked him, putting some force into my voice, what was going on, he merely shrugged.

I was nursing my martini and feeling the better for it when Ridley showed up wearing very dark glasses. He, too, acted nervous in the manner of someone trying to appear casual.

“Okay,” I demanded of both of them, “what’s up?”

Alphus gestured that they were going to a restaurant.

“Really?” I did not take them seriously. I was confident no restaurant would serve them. “Sure, gentlemen. And I have a window seat on the next shuttle to the space station.”

Alphus shook his head and repeated more emphatically what he had said before.

“And how do you plan to arrange that?”

Ridley signed in his slow, southern way, “Alphus is my Seeing Eye assistant.” He took out what looked like a baton and telescoped it into the kind of white cane used by the blind.

It began to dawn on me that they might be serious, that they might try to carry it off. “Where do you plan to go?” I asked.

“The Edge,” Alphus said, a note of defiance in his movements.

I shook my head. “I can’t allow it.”

“You can’t stop us.” Alphus managed to make his signing seem like a growl.

“I can call the police.”

They both looked at me as though they had caught me cheating at some elaborate game we played. More to the point, I was helpless. Call the police? And tell them what? That I am responsible in a semi-legal way for a chimpanzee who is pretending to
be a Seeing Eye ape in service to someone who is not blind, both of whom are heading for an upscale restaurant on the Seaboard waterfront?

“All right. But how are you going to get there?”

Ridley took out his raspberry or whatever those things are called. “Text,” he signaled. “Taxi.”

I tried to divert them. I told them we could order in anything they wanted. I told them we could cook up a feast together. Invite people over. Have it catered so that it would be like a restaurant. But to no avail. They not only insisted on doing it, but pleaded for me to accompany them. I refused, of course. I told them I would not be party to such a farce. I told them it wouldn’t work. I told them they might be breaking the law. Besides, they forgot that I was out on bail as an accessory to murder. Any trouble with the police, and I could end up in jail.

Alphus signed, “All they can do is not let us in.”

“We need you,” said Ridley and smiled. “We want your company.” He had his berry in hand and was tapping something into it.

I remonstrated with them, repeating myself. It was no use. I could tell from the way Alphus buckled on a collar and leash and led Ridley tap-tapping after him that they had been practicing, the villainous pair!

Not long after that a taxi pulled up and sounded its horn. It was one, apparently, that they had used before, judging from the way the cabbie greeted Ridley and nodded to Alphus. I stood on the sidewalk, drink still in hand, still entreating them.

“Come on,” they signed. “What have you got to lose?”

What indeed? Out of concern for their welfare, out of weakness, I capitulated. I went inside, put on a jacket, and squeezed in next to them in the back of the cab.

It being a Wednesday and relatively early, I assumed there
wouldn’t be many people at The Edge. It is an upscale faux casual sort of place owned and run by Simon and David, two gay men of a certain age. It’s right on the harbor. In fact, it’s the same building where the Green Sherpa used to be. It’s been changed radically, with a dark, atmospheric bar where the gift shop had been. In summer the dining area extends to a large deck built on piers over the water.

My heart went out to the official greeter, whose face froze in a pained smile as we came through the door, a leashed Alphus leading a tapping Ridley, with me in a cringe bringing up the rear.

“Can I help you?” said the unfortunate man from behind the reception desk. He might have been either David or Simon, judging from his aspect. He clearly struggled with his up-to-date conscience. How far does the desirability of diversity go? And if Seeing Eye dogs, why not Seeing Eye apes? But what about the other customers?

“Yes,” I said. “We called. A table for three. The name’s Ridley.”

“Of course,” said Simon David, recovering some of his aplomb. “We have a text message. I’ll see what’s available.”

We stood around in front of the desk drawing stares. The hall from the main door had thick carpeting, sconces for light on dark, paneled walls, and doors opening into restrooms on one side and the bar on the other. I was wrong about Wednesday. The place was buzzing with people. We waited. Time began to drag. Other parties came in and stood behind us. Two couples, well oiled to judge from their demeanor, came out of the bar and began to make remarks. “Do you always make fun of the handicapped?” I asked the chief offender, a young, crew-cut man with a head like a red pumpkin.

“I’m sorry,” he confessed, and burst out laughing. One of the women had the self-possession to pull him away. I glanced
around nervously with all the acute discomfiture of one in a false position.

Simon David finally returned. “We don’t have any private rooms available,” he said in a voice meant to sound accommodating but final. I’m sure he didn’t have any to begin with, but that didn’t matter.

“That’s perfectly all right,” I said, meaning we would leave.

Ridley poked me with his stick and shook his head.

“I’ll be right with you folks,” Simon David said to the people in line behind us.

Well, we finally got seated. As unobtrusively as was possible under the circumstances, Simon — as he turned out to be — led us to a table more or less in the shadows next to the railing above the shimmering water. In a
sotto voce
aside to me, he said, “It … he is … housebroken?”

“He’ll be fine,” I assured him, and resisted an impulse to slip him a twenty.

“We will need three settings,” I said to the waiter, a gangly college youth with acne and an expression of earnest bemusement who had begun to remove two of the four place settings. I kept my voice as normal as I could. One couple had already gotten up and left. Simon watched nervously from the doorway. I was relieved when the moon slid behind a cloud, obscuring us momentarily.

“Are you expecting a third party?”

“We are a party of three,” I said, indicating Alphus, who had taken a seat with his back to the other customers. In for a penny and all that.

“I see. Or rather, I guess, I don’t see.”

“Mr. Alphus, our Seeing Eye … assistant, is also joining us.”

“Will he need a setting?”

“He will be joining us for dinner.”

“I see. I’m afraid it’s against health department regulations … to serve animals in the restaurant.”

“He is completely table-trained.”

“I see. Still …”

I closed my eyes as though that might dispel what I found to be a waking bad dream. I glanced in the direction of the distant, hovering Simon. “Could you ask Simon to step over here.”

As the other patrons watched more or less surreptitiously, the waiter went over and conferred with the co-owner. The co-owner was joined by the other co-owner, judging from appearances. I would guess they were having a tiff. David finally stalked off and Simon went after him.

The waiter returned alone, his demeanor struggling to achieve an air of decisiveness.

“I’m afraid it’s a no-go, sir. We aren’t even allowed to have cats in the kitchen. Your Seeing Eye … companion is welcome, but we won’t be able to serve it … him … food.”

“We watched the other night when a sight-impaired person fed his Seeing Eye dog inside a McDonald’s,” I said.

He shrugged. “Yeah, McDonald’s …” Then his demeanor changed markedly. I followed where he had glanced before shifting his attentions back to me. Ridley, pretending to fumble, had produced a hundred-dollar bill from his wallet.

“McDonald’s. Yes …”

The money changed hands with admirable covert deftness, and Alphus was presently inspecting a fine cloth napkin and the cutlery that came with it.

The other customers did gawk. And I felt a keen embarrassment, in part because of the ruse and also because of the way we were taking advantage of people’s better natures. Another couple at an adjoining table did get up abruptly and make their
way toward the reception area. But all the others were soon back to their food and talk.

Our table, close to the railing along the water, was also up against a partition of varnished lattice that separated the deck into two sections. I was able to glance through and see that the couple who had left were being reseated a good distance away.

One well-meaning matron came over to bestow smiles and ask if she might pet Alphus. I said he allowed, but didn’t appreciate it. Of course, she said, she understood. A distant relative had a Seeing Eye dog who could practically talk.

Alphus gave her his version of a smile.

The pretense we all agreed upon — the waiter, whose name was Marlen, the other patrons, and ourselves most of all — was that there was nothing extraordinary about an ape, a well-dressed, well-behaved ape, but an ape nonetheless, sitting like an upright Christian at table in an upscale restaurant. I could sense the amused amazement around us when Alphus took the menu from me and perused it with what, for a chimp, was a thoughtful expression. “Cute,” I heard someone remark. “Well trained,” said someone else.

Marlen came back for a recital of the specials. “We have a pan-seared tilapia in a hand-washed mint sauce on a bed of braided, whole wheat capellini cooked in wood-heated water. The chef recommends our second special of the evening. It’s pulled loin of pork cooked
au feu nu
with a sweet potato rémoulade and wine-soused sautéed chard. But I’m afraid we’re all out of the third special. I’ll give you a few minutes. Would you like to see a wine list?”

“Please,” I said.

Needless to say, I was on tenterhooks the whole time. Several times I had to tell Ridley not to sign. “Remember, you’re blind.”
Frankly, I was afraid that someone I knew would see me in this ridiculous situation. Or that someone would come in and make a scene.

The covert glances from the other customers continued, especially when Simon showed up with the wine list and I read off the choices to the other two. I suggested an Argentinean Malbec, which I had heard mentioned favorably at a meeting of the Club’s wine committee. Alphus took the embossed folder and, after studying it, pointed instead to a recent Nuits-St-Georges
premier cru
.

“Very pricey,” I said.

Ridley nodded okay. Then, on a scrap of paper he scrawled, “My treat. Go for it.”

“Three glasses?” asked Simon, an eyebrow going up. But he shrugged when I said yes.

There were more stares as Alphus took a look at the menu and pointed out to me that he wanted the
filet mignon au poivre
rare with extra salad. For an appetizer, he picked a double order of
pâté de ferme
with honey-pickled gherkins.

I read the choices off to Ridley, who nodded twice at the lemon-poached scrod served in a froth of
bisque de homard
and, for a starter,
une tranche de foie gras
from un-force-fed geese. I ordered the pork.

Marlen brought the wine. He poured about an inch into my glass. I handed it to Alphus, who held it up to what light was available, nosed it, and then sipped. I could feel the incredulous amazement all around us. He nodded and the wine was poured. We raised our glasses.
Salut
.

The appetizers arrived not long after and we ate leisurely, sipping wine, breaking off pieces of bread, and carrying on a complicated three-way conversation in which Alphus would
sign and I would pretend to interpret it vocally for Ridley, who would covertly sign back.

Our waiter deftly cleared away the plates in preparation for the main course and refilled our glasses before I had a chance to stop him. I did not want to add inebriation to the situation. Ridley indicated he wanted to go to the men’s room. Alphus understood and rose to play his part, dutifully leading the convincingly tap-tapping Ridley toward the reception desk and the men’s room.