The Love Potion Murders in the Museum of Man (16 page)

A drumroll of sorts sounds from a hollow log beaten with sticks. The camera swings around to catch an imposing older man in loincloth and monkey skins, his face elaborately painted, as he approaches. Accompanying him are three nearly naked women, one quite heavy, and a fierce-looking younger man who shakes a gourd.

Off camera, in a near whisper, Corny can be heard saying, “Here comes the chief and his three wives. The young man is his first son by his first wife.”

The chief stops and, after an elaborate bow, makes a long speech as his son shakes the rattle all around Corny’s person. There is a sudden commotion on the screen. When the picture comes back on, Corny is being held and his limbs bound by several muscular-looking natives to the four corners of the gallows-like affair he mentioned earlier. He is looking into the camera, somewhat breathless, and saying, “Keep the tape rolling, Ferdie. I don’t know what they’re going to do, but let’s not miss any of it.”

Corny shows, surprisingly, little obvious fear, more a kind of
breathless exhilaration. He says, wincing as they strip off his clothes and bind him with what look like pieces of grass rope, “If being killed and eaten by a lion could be called the ultimate wildlife experience, I suppose that being killed and eaten by cannibals is an anthropologist’s ultimate contribution to research. It appears that I am no longer merely the observer, but have become the observed. Keep the camera steady, Ferdie.”

The screen went blank for a moment. I fervently hoped it was the end of it. Then Corny appears again. One native is holding a slender hollow tube, perhaps five feet long, up to one of his nostrils, while another blows something through from the other end. Corny retches, but bends his head down for another dose of whatever it is they’re blowing up his nose. Finally, still retching but smiling, Corny is again talking into the camera, sounding even more like that hard-breathing Englishman.

“That was tremendous, probably one of a class of hallucinogens used in these parts to induce trances. I should shortly be seeing visions. I am, of course, terrified. But I am also exalted. I only regret that I am not able to take notes, except verbally. My fervent hope is that whatever happens, that researchers will study this and do papers on it. I am scared but I am also excited. Both emotions, no doubt, will affect my objectivity as I am reduced in anthropological terms to ultimate subjectivity. Ferdie, pan to the right for a moment.”

The camera pans to the right, and Corny can be heard in a voice-over. “There are the sacred cooking spits on which specific parts of the victim are slow-cooked, according to Bricklesby’s account. He relates that the body parts are consumed according to rank. The chief, seated over to the left, close on him, Ferdie, will get my heart. My genitals will go to his oldest son by his first wife. I’m quoting what I remember of Bricklesby’s report. I may get to witness the event depending on what they start on first. If
Bricklesby has it right. My liver will go to the portly woman to the right of the chief. His first wife. The brain, strangely enough, is considered refuse and discarded. Perhaps it’s an example of primitive dietary laws. Oh, my God, here comes the chief and all his retinue. Ferdie, make sure you get this all down.”

Ferdie pans back, showing a group of the natives coming over to kneel in front of Corny. They make placatory, almost devotional sounds. A figure in mask and loincloth shakes ashes over Corny’s head. “This is the purification ceremony. Those are the ashes, Bricklesby tells us, of the last celebrant as they call the victim. Notice that there is no animosity here. They consider it a great honor. I am about to become a part of the tribe. The Yomama word for ‘initiation’ is very close to the one used for this ceremony. Ferdie! Ferdie! It’s about to start …”

A figure in an elaborate headdress dances to the pounding log drum and appears in front of Corny, who is spread naked like the universal human figure by Leonardo. “Ferdie, keep the camera on the shaman in the cockade of red macaw feathers. Oh, God, I think he’s doing the cleansing dance right now.”

The camera keeps to the man in the brilliant headdress and painted, near-naked torso dancing around and bending over an object on the ground. As Corny again comes into view a harsh, familiar sound is heard off camera. Corny gasps. “Oh, God. That’s a chain saw. Bricklesby said nothing about that. It’s not in the tradition. Oh, God. Or am I hallucinating?”

Poor Corny is not hallucinating. The shaman figure comes into view holding what looks like an old chain saw. It’s sputtering and emitting great clouds of blue smoke as the figure approaches Corny.

At which point I pressed the
OFF
button. I simply could not watch any more of it.

Am I a coward? Perhaps. But as ambivalent as I may feel about
Corny sometimes, he is still a member of the museum community. He is still one of us. And I dread, absolutely dread, having to watch him being sacrificed on the altar of anthropological research. More than that, I dread having to go to Jocelyn and explain to her what has happened to her husband.

No, I have not yet viewed the rest of the Corny Chard tape. I have dreamed about it. I obsess about it during my waking hours. The very drawer in which I have placed the tape seems haunted. Several times now I have taken it in hand, gone down to the Twitchell Room, and, at the last minute, pavid and pale, lost my nerve.

Of course I have my excuses. I have been spending a good deal of time at home with Elsbeth. She has finally agreed to have an oxygen apparatus available to use when she has trouble breathing. I think she did it to relieve the anxiety Diantha and I experience when she starts gasping for breath like a fish out of water.

Perhaps, at some unconscious level, I have conflated what awaits me on the tape and what awaits Elsbeth. Both are unimaginable and yet as real as the ground and the sky. I wonder if we find death a mockery because life, after all, is all we’ve got.

To more mundane matters. I have received at long last the curriculum vitae of Ms. Celeste Tangent. Indeed, I have received two copies, one from a young man in Human Resources with a note apologizing for the delay, and one from Lieutenant Tracy. The woman appears to have had, if I do say so, a rather checkered career to have ended up as a laboratory assistant in a genetics lab.

Born twenty-seven years ago in Norman, Oklahoma, Ms. Tangent claims a degree in business administration from a correspondence school associated with Oral Roberts University. She next
lists herself as an assistant supervisor at the Caucasian Escort Service, Brooklyn, New York. In that capacity, she “recruited, trained, and directed young women in the etiquette of an upmarket escorting service patronized by a distinguished and discreet clientele.”

After several years of plying this trade, she accounts for a gap of some seven months to conduct research into the leisure patterns of successful entrepreneurs in vacation spots in Mexico, Rio, and the Caribbean. Upon returning to New York, she assumed the position of maître d at the Crazy Russian. This is an establishment in the Brighton Beach section of Brooklyn that she describes as a pricey, after-hours bistro for a discerning clientele interested in seeing a side of New York few tourists know about.

She lists another hiatus devoted to research in exotic realms, including, of all places, Nepal, where she studied spirituality. And for the past six months she has been working as a laboratory assistant for the Ponce Institute, “helping the best scientists in the world make really great discoveries.”

I put in a call to the lieutenant. He wasn’t available, but he called back a few minutes later.

“Ms. Tangent’s CV,” he said as a greeting.

“Thanks for sending it along. Tell me, Richard, do we have any background on the organizations she’s been associated with?”

“Not a whole lot. My sources in New York say there’s a good chance that both the escort service and the restaurant were mob-connected. But it will take them some time digging to find out exactly what mob because both of those establishments are out of business now.”

We discussed the obvious incongruence of Ms. Tangent’s current employment given her background. “But if she’s a plant,” I said, not entirely comfortable with the jargon, “it implies there
is something going on in the lab that’s of interest to organized crime.”

The lieutenant smiled. “Elementary, dear Watson.”

“Too elementary, perhaps,” I conceded. “But how would ‘the mob’ know enough for them to want to infiltrate the lab? The research really is quite sophisticated, and the bureaucracy formidable. I mean it all seems a bit far-fetched.”

“You’re right, Norman, to a point. But people talk. They get a few drinks on board. They brag. They exaggerate. Someone down the line or up the line hears about it. Criminals are businessmen, they’re opportunistic. They do some checking. The scam gets rolling. I’ve decided to make Ms. Tangent the object of some light surveillance. Find out where she hangs out and who she hangs out with, that sort of thing.”

I said I thought that was a good idea and then brought the lieutenant up to date on the Sigmund Library incident. I told him that after waiting several days and finally deciding that the proper channels were clogged — as usual — I called Ms. Spronger and Mr. Jones directly. It seems both have retained lawyers. They said they would get back to me. “One wonders, Lieutenant,” I said, “what the world did before lawyers insinuated themselves into every aspect of our lives.”

The lieutenant said to give him a call if lawyers continued to get in the way. “I have to admit I was somewhat dubious at first. But I think what happened there is strange enough to warrant closer investigation.”

We chatted awhile longer and ended agreeing that, while we had nothing definite to go on, there were some promising leads opening up.

I may be mistaken, but I think I detect strains in the Diantha-Sixy arrangement. It was noticeable on Friday when she brought him by to show him the museum. I was in the midst of evaluating
and commenting on the quarterly reports of the curatorial staff when they appeared in the doorway, seemingly disoriented by a wholly new milieu. I was delighted, of course, to see Diantha. She is so demonstrative, coming around the desk to give me one of those full-length hugs I find so unnerving, especially when they come with a big kiss on the lips.

Mr. Shakur, as usual, didn’t just shake my hand, but went through a whole routine after a “gimme five, bro.” Then, instead of sitting down like an ordinary person, he paced around like a caged cat with a bald head and earrings, jabbering away in that argot of his. “Too f*cking, spanking real, man. I mean real like ozone, out there, man, orbit. I didn’t know they had places like this, man. I mean cool with a capital K. That African gear downstairs is right over the edge, man. I mean off the freaking planet Earth. What you say, Di, we do a shoot here, like with all of our faces morphing in and out of those, like masks and shit, and I do my black honky cut?”

“He’s saying, Dad, that he would like to do a music video in the museum.” Diantha spoke with an apologetic edge to her voice, as though embarrassed, as though, perhaps for the first time, seeing her paramour through my eyes.

I smiled indulgently. “Getting permission would be a problem, I’m afraid.”

The Rapper King turned a chair around and sat in it facing the desk, his chin propped on top of the back. “But you the top dog, Mr. Dude. I mean you bark and the others, man, they shit. You know what I’m saying?”

“It doesn’t quite work that way, Sixy. The curators have a very large say about what goes on in their collections, and I know what they’ll say.” My response didn’t seem to faze him in the least.

“I’m mellow with that, man.” He shook his gleaming skull.
“This crib is totally killer, man. I mean cool with double
K
’s.”

It went on like this for a while longer until they finally took their leave. Diantha gave me another one of those kisses that stay on the lips. I’m not going to bring it up with her, of course, but I do think it would be for the best if she and Mr. Shakur were to part company. She deserves so much better. But I confess I would feel a proprietary sense regardless of whom she associated with.

At the same time, Mr. Shakur’s effect on me borders on disorientation. I felt I had been in touch with a different kind of consciousness, not necessarily lower, but off to the side, like off the edge, man. If I’m not careful, I’ll end up speaking like him.

Mr. Shakur’s productions came up later that afternoon when I went over to the Pavilion to drop in on a party for Marge Littlefield, who is retiring as comptroller of the MOM. She’s taking early retirement, because, she told me, she and Bill don’t need the income and she has grandchildren to enjoy.

Anyway, in the course of this little affair, held in what used to be the “rec room” for Damon Drex’s literary chimps, I ended up talking about Anglo-Saxon poetry with Maria Cowe’s assistant, a comely young woman with nervous eyes from Human Resources. She said she had just read a translation of
Beowulf
by the Irish poet … whose name escapes me now (a senior moment, Izzy would say). I remarked that I thought there were similarities between rap music, so called, and the rhythmic scheme in Anglo-Saxon poetry. As a demonstration, I proceeded to quote to her some of the lyrics Sixpak had shown me.

I was amazed to see this young woman blush quite red, stammer something, and on the flimsiest of pretexts turn from me and pretend to listen to people in another conversation. But then, I’ve come to accept that manners among young people and a lot of others aren’t what they used to be.

It’s been one of those days. I sit here in my perch at home like some old gangly bird full of hankerings more suitable to a man half my years. My unseemly yearnings stem in part from the “enhanced” video I received from Worried this morning showing the three people having sex in an office at the Genetics Lab. Worried e-mailed me last night, telling me I would find the tape in a bag labeled
TOXIC
next to the recycling area on the second floor. I was to remove the tape and replace it with an envelope containing $350, which I did, no questions asked.