The Counterfeit Murder in the Museum of Man (28 page)
Read The Counterfeit Murder in the Museum of Man Online
Authors: Alfred Alcorn
I planned to make a copy to send to Diantha. But, like a lot a people, she’ll probably think it a fraud. She hasn’t deigned to respond to any of my overtures. I have all but given up. There is something demeaning about calling and either leaving yet another message or hanging up, knowing that it’s known who called. I could swallow what little pride I have left and drive out there. And do what? Surprise her consorting with her paramour? No, I am a coward when it comes to scenes. I would rather suffer my worst imaginings in private, would rather let the green-eyed monster feed on my entrails than make a spectacle.
It doesn’t help that my time is running short. The Governing Board meets next week. I am still out on bail. I am still equivocating about Elgin Warwick’s proposal. I don’t know what to do except to go on trying to find out who murdered Heinie if only to prove that it wasn’t I.
Speaking of which, I have a call in to Merissa Bonne. She is a suspect and needs to undergo the Alphus test. She might also tell me what Diantha’s up to.
The heavy and heavily insured package came by courier service from George Simons of Park Street, Boston, directly to the top of my desk in the museum. I won’t say my fingers trembled as I scissored my way through the strong tape and opened the sturdy cardboard box, but I was full of eager foreboding.
The letter on top confirmed my suspicions.
“Dear Mr. de Ratour, I regret to inform you that the pairs of coins you have sent me match each other precisely. That is to say, the coins from the boat are forgeries as well as the ones that were gifted to your museum.
“Along with close-up photos in black and white, I have attached the results of various technical tests, including several on the metallurgy of the samples. In fact, they are among the best forgeries my staff has ever come across, not that that will be of much comfort to you.
“Also, it might interest you to know that they are in all likelihood not copies of each other, but copies from the originals, whether they be real or forgeries.
“Please call if you have any questions …”
I sat for a while trying to sort out the significance of Mr. Simons’s report, when Doreen followed her very enlarged midsection into my presence and told me that Lieutenant Tracy had just called and that I was to tune in Channel Five. She turned then and clicked on the small television set I keep handy.
Under a flashing banner stating
BREAKING NEWS
, a gentleman
named Ken was telling an attractive woman named Baretta, no doubt his anchor team partner, something about “dramatic news regarding the Sterl case.”
Baretta turned full-on to the camera saying, “Seaboard police this morning announced a major development in the ongoing investigation into the suspicious death of businessman Martin Sterl.”
Then Ken again: “Our reporter Jack Cogger is covering the story at police headquarters. Jack, what have you got?”
The camera cut to a head-and-shoulders shot of young, crew-cut Jack Cogger in front of police headquarters out on the bypass. “Hi Ken, Hi Baretta. Indeed, Seaboard police lieutenant Richard Tracy announced that arrest warrants have been issued for Blanko Dragan and Andrijana Jakovich, aka Stella Fox, in the murder of Martin Sterl, whose apparent suicide in June has been regarded suspiciously from the start.”
There followed a head shot of Sterl, a quite ordinary mortal with glasses and toupee, as Mr. Cogger’s narration continued. “Tracy said the police were operating on leads supplied by Norman de Ratour, the director of Wainscott University’s [sic] Museum of Man.”
The video taken from the diorama monitors that I had secured for Lieutenant Tracy played as Mr. Cogger, voice over, said, “The tape of Dragan and Jakovich, shown here at an exhibit at the museum, was supplied by Ratour, who himself has been implicated in the recent murder of Heinrich Grümh.”
There was a file photo of me, not very flattering, just before the camera switched back and forth between the reporter in the field and the two anchorpersons thusly:
Jack: “Back to you, Ken and Baretta.”
Baretta: “Jack, are the police saying anything about a possible connection between the two murders?”
Jack: “Right now police are treating the murders as separate.”
Ken: “What does Ratour have to say about his role in the investigation?”
Jack: “The Wainscott News Office told us that they had no knowledge of Ratour’s involvement. They referred us to the museum. We have a call in and a news crew on the way there now.”
Baretta: “Thanks, Jack. This is a story we’ll be keeping an eye on.”
A different voice off camera intoned, “This has been a Channel Five breaking news special report. We now return to our scheduled broadcasting.”
Just then my phone rang. It was Mort in Security. A news crew had indeed arrived and I was wanted in the Diorama of Paleolithic Life.
Well, I had asked for it, hadn’t I? The newsperson turned out to be a petite young woman of Chinese extraction who worked her hands up and down in front of her as she talked to the camera held by a technician whose polished skull reflected whitely in the overhead lights of the exhibit.
The newsperson asked me basic, sensible questions with the “Early Kitchen” display as a backdrop. What made me realize I had seen the suspects before? My knack for remembering things. In my opinion, why did the suspects pick the museum for their meetings? A mistaken sense of privacy. Did I think there was any connection between the Sterl and von Grümh murders? Perhaps mirror images of each other. Are you working with the Seaboard police on the von Grümh murder even though charged as an accessory? Not at liberty to say.
She thanked me graciously and, following the beacon of her cameraman’s skull, left.
Back in my office, I wondered if I should call Diantha to tell
her I would be on the evening news. Hoping, of course, that she might see me in a different, more advantageous light. Or would it not be more impressive if I were to consider it something of a trifle, which, in fact, it was.
I got back to work. Amid the pile on my desk was a draft of a letter to Elgin Warwick. I had been gnawing at the thing for the past several days. I had run out of equivocations. Izzy’s words kept coming back to me. Don’t do something you will regret the rest of your life.
Following the rapid heartbeat of the pulser on my screen, I figuratively tore up the equivocating draft and wrote instead:
Dear Elgin:
I want first to thank you very much for your generous and original idea regarding the preservation of your remains here at the Museum of Man after you die. I have thought long and hard about it. Our chief counsel Felix Skinnerman has championed the idea. Indeed, he has suggested that, centered on your temple and tomb, we create a mortuary wing open to any and all who wish to join “the permanent collection.” He foresees that it would become quite popular, with many subscribers, though few on the scale you envision.
That, alas, is the rub. The purpose of the museum is to find, preserve, and display the best that humanity has created through the millennia. Any enterprise that detracts from this essential mission strikes me as self-defeating.
You might argue that yours would be the only contemporary relics on the premises. But I fear there would ensue substantial and justified pressure from other benefactors to be afforded the same privileges. We might
be quickly overrun and diverted from our primary responsibilities.
So I must, in all good conscience, decline your offer. We would, however, certainly welcome your outstanding collection of Egyptian art and artifacts that, with appropriate support, we would display in a temple worthy of its excellence and with suitable, eponymous tribute.
Sincerely,
Norman de Ratour
It is one thing to write a letter like that and feel noble about it. It is quite another to put it in an addressed envelope, stick on a stamp, and drop it into a mailbox. Which is precisely what I did, thereby canceling whatever small elation that the news of the Sterl case and my part in it had provided.
I wondered if I had, with a lick of the tongue, sealed my own professional doom. Perhaps. He would receive the letter just days before the meeting of the Governing Board. I could have waited. But I had acted instead. The thought gave me a kind of depressed peace of mind. I walked home in the warm gloaming of a summer evening, my integrity, if little else, intact.
Alphus, I could tell from a smell of burned food in the air when I arrived home, had been trying to cook again. He hasn’t gotten the idea of different degrees of heat under a frying pan. The hot dogs he had been trying to make for himself and Ridley were charred beyond recognition, and he had an abashed look on his face. I had told him cooking without my presence was strictly forbidden.
More to placate me than anything else, he produced a third
installment of his memoirs and, under my direction, mixed me a medium-bore martini. I put the memoir aside and took some lean hamburger out of the refrigerator and some appropriate rolls out of the freezer.
They sat on stools around the counter watching the run-up to a baseball game while I sipped my martini and made a green salad. They were both wearing baseball caps and lettered T-shirts. Ridley’s read,
GLOBAL WARMING IS COOL
. Alphus’s read,
SAY NO TO THE MALTHUSIASTS
.
As “guys” they are both starting to permutate into something I don’t particularly admire. I want to state for the record that I had no objection when Alphus became a “guy,” wanted to be called “Al,” and started listening to country-and-western music. I did tell him to keep it down. A lot of it consists, as far as I can tell, of grown men and women feeling sorry for themselves. I did not object in the least when he began drinking Budweiser from a can instead of sipping rare malts from a glass. And if he wants to watch the Red Sox and other teams with quaint names go through their rituals late into the night, that is his affair.
But he has started listening to someone named Rush something or other. I have listened in a few times. I must say that when Alphus starts taking this man seriously, then I confess I am vulnerable to the usual stereotypes about simian intelligence.
I also confess that I find listening to those radio communicators so diligently sharing their ignorance with their listeners exhilarating in its own way. I quite understand the appeal to indignation. It’s as though there exists a great reservoir of it out there for the tapping. From which I do not exclude myself. I just like to think that my indignation is better informed, that it is more justified, higher, more worthy of being indulged.
Take for instance those public radio reporters who use exaggerated Spanish pronunciation when referring to the names of
people and, especially, places south of the border. They do it, of course, at least in part, to show that they speak the language or at least know how to pronounce it. Or, as card-carrying members of the moral class, they are signaling their commitment to “diversity,” a word that itself is an exercise in virtue-mongering.
When I hear them gargling some name of Iberian origins, I ask, have they not heard of Anglice? Meaning that we say
par riss
instead of
par ree, comme les français
. The same way the French say
Nouvelle Orleans
instead of New Orleans or
Les États Unis
instead of the United States of America. We say Moscow instead of
Moskva
, which, in Russian, to be used correctly, would have to be inflected according to case, that is, the way it is used in a sentence. Of course not. But
Kooba
is starting to creep in along with
Meheeko
. Which raises another point. Should not those Latin American place-names derived from indigenous populations be pronounced in the original tongue rather than in Spanish, another imperial language? Talk about inconsistencies.
Mais, comme on dit, chacun à son goût
.
I had become so distracted by this inner rant that I nearly burned the patties of ground beef. And nearly forgot that I would be on the news.
I picked up the remote and changed to Channel Five. For this I received two annoyed frowns and the sign, “What’s up?”
“Watch,” I said. Moments later, Ken and Baretta were back on with Jack and Lisette, as my interviewer was named. I have to confess I was satisfied that I looked good, poised and authoritative. I sounded urbane. Alphus and Ridley, not to mention a few friends who called later, were suitably impressed. But I heard nothing from Diantha.
While dining on my only slightly charred burger and drinking one of Alphus’s canned beers, I went over his latest literary effort. Again, I was moved and amused.
I will always be profoundly indebted to MM as I call Millicent Mulally. If there are saints, then she is one of them. I knew the moment I saw her at the bottom of the tree that I could trust her. Her sweet, pretty face and the way she moved her hands to the others told me that these people were different. I knew they didn’t want to kill me, to imprison me, to study me.
So, slowly, still fearful, looking all around me, I came down the trunk of the big maple. Millicent took my hand and together, surrounded by the rest of the group, we walked out of the park and into the sanctuary of Sign House.
I don’t want to sound all goody gooey about this, but people who cannot speak or hear or both strike me as “advantaged” rather than “disadvantaged.” There is the peace that comes with quietness. The constant yapping of people, especially these days with everyone walking around with a device stuck to the ear, is blissfully absent.
At the same time, there is no absence of communication. Aside from and part of signing, there are smiles, frowns, jokes, arguments and much that is left unsaid for the better. It reminded me of my childhood in the wild when a glance, a gesture, and intuition meant so much more.
My signing at first was rudimentary — the kind you see in old movies when the white man meets the Natives. Under the tutelage of Millicent and Ridley and a few others, I soon wouldn’t shut up. Because what an ecstatic liberation it was to use my arms, hands, and fingers as a voice! Most human beings don’t realize what a blessing it is to be able to take your thoughts, turn them into words, and speak them. And, it lets you watch
other people and see what they are thinking and saying.
I learned not only how to say things, but also what not to say. Millicent taught me that words can be pernicious as well as beneficent. They can be used to stir envy, anger, distrust, hatred, and falsity. Of course, they can also be used to teach, to encourage, to tell things, even to love. As someone observed, human beings use words to groom each other, to make each other feel good.
My favorite place at Sign House was the library, a room lined with books and fitted out with comfortable armchairs and a couch. That’s were I spent most of my time. In the library I found what amounted to another kind of language. Signing and understanding it are one thing. But being able to read — that is the portal to the universe.
One of the first things I did was to go slowly through an old
American Heritage Dictionary
from beginning to end. Twice. What a magic invention are words. There is at least one for every imaginable thing under the sun. And if one doesn’t exist, you make it up!
I have not and perhaps won’t learn to write. I do not have the hand, eye, and mind coordination necessary. Ridley gave me his old computer and taught me how to use it. It seemed as new as the one with which he replaced it. Ridley has been very generous, giving me clothes, books, CDs, and good whiskey, even if he does get loopy sometimes.
I knew there were occupants of the house that were not comfortable around me. The stiff smile of toleration is one of mankind’s worst and most necessary achievements. I had to resist the urge to revert — to go apeshit, as Ridley puts it — and bite off their balls and faces.
So I learned to be modest and keep my privates covered. I learned you couldn’t fart anytime you wanted to, which never made much sense to me. I learned to knock on doors, or work the ringer light, because people liked their privacy, which I still find odd. We all know what people do in the bathroom or in the bedroom when they take off their clothes. The privacy thing took me a long time to learn. Perhaps because people will do things in front of animals that they wouldn’t do in front of other people.
Some of them didn’t take my presence very seriously at all. I had been ensconced there six months when a young man named Tim came to live in the house. He was a big handsome fellow with curly yellow hair and a normal laugh. He could even say a few words, but he couldn’t hear too well.
Well, right off, he noticed Megan, who was Fred’s girl. And she noticed him. For a while they kept their attraction secret, except from me. I would be in the library deep in a book when they would come in, sit on the couch, and go to all the fuss and bother people do. There was a lot of licking and mouthing, worse than bonobos if you ask me. I noticed, peering just over the rim of my book, that Tim had a sizable member that Megan, with considerable vigor, treated like a lollipop. I pretended not to notice. Just another ape reading Gibbon.
They were discovered of course. Fred burst in on them one night when he was supposed to be giving a signing class to some high school students. He didn’t find them in flagrante, but mussed up and reddened enough to be suspected with plausibility.
Afterward Fred cornered me in the television room
and bought me a beer at the house bar, which is just a refrigerator full of stuff that the residents pay for on the honor system.
“Okay,” he signed, “tell me what Meg and Tim were doing on the couch just before I came in.”
I took a slow sip of my beer, a bottle of Bass Ale. “I didn’t notice,” I lied, showing him the thick tome I had been reading.
He made a face. He’s one of the skeptics where I’m concerned. That is, he doesn’t believe I can read a comic book, much less Herodotus. Which in this case was to his disadvantage as I could play dumb with conviction. When he made the sign for kissing and then something more suggestive, I pretended not to know what he was asking.
“Were they sitting close?” he asked with some exasperation.
“What do you mean by close?” I asked back, taking a long swallow of the Bass.
“Touching,” he signed.
I again pretended to be mystified. “The couch is small,” I said, “and Tim is big.” Megan was kind of big, too, at least her backside, but I thought it best not to mention that.
He gave up finally, muttering with his hands something like “f*cking lying ape,” before stomping off.
Not long afterward, Tim and Megan left the house together and went to live in San Francisco. Fred has never forgiven me, as though it was my fault that his woman ran off with another man. Frankly, I don’t see why they couldn’t have shared her. There was certainly enough to go around.
What I’m trying to say is that in reality I was little more than a pet to some of the people there. Not to Millicent or Ridley and one or two others who knew what I was. The rest were kind, but in a different way. As a pet, I became the recipient of their affectionate feelings, and that can become irksome very quickly. They not only petted me, which I didn’t appreciate in the least, but I could tell they were making themselves feel good by thinking they were making me feel good.
But I am not complaining. The people at Sign House were generous, open, kind, and supportive. Without them I would not have survived. But they were also advanced primates. That is to say, they were complicated, contradictory, and often difficult. But what else is new.
