The Counterfeit Murder in the Museum of Man (18 page)

The question I asked myself was, Who would want to implicate Col Saunders? Max Shofar? But why? De Buitliér? I retrieved some of the memoranda the curator had sent me. There were affinities, but nothing definite. He and Saunders might be rivals if the worst happens, that is, should the board decide to force me
out, leaving Wainscott to take us over. I wondered if it might not be Saunders himself? Some people, through a streak of perverse vanity, would not object to being considered capable of murder.

But I couldn’t really concentrate. I was pondering when and under what circumstances to send the letter to Lieutenant Tracy. Or, rather, in what manner to present it to him. For instance, with the benefit of my opinions after I had perused it more thoroughly? With a curt FYI on a Post-it? With nothing but itself?

The more I pondered the question, the more my anger grew. We had worked closely together. We had esteemed each other in an unspoken friendship. I had helped him solve a number of unfortunate deaths here at the museum. To put it in Di’s parlance, he owed me.

At the risk of being charged with withholding evidence, I decided to hang on to the missive until I had interviewed Saunders. What was it evidence of? That there had been a wrangle for a rare coin? That the man didn’t like the murder victim? That he might have been walking his dog in the area when the murder occurred? Besides, the anonymity of its author vitiated an already weak circumstantiality.

I decided that, when I did forward it, I would send it to the office of the district attorney. Indeed, I determined that, should anything turn up regarding Stella Fox and the suspicious suicide, I would send that along to the DA as well. More than that, I would release any incriminating taped evidence to the local television stations at the same time. Two can play at this game.

Hank has yet to get back to me with anything regarding my sighting of Ms. Fox in the Neanderthal exhibition. I’m beginning to wonder if I simply imagined it in an advanced state of wishful thinking.

I put in a call to Col Saunders. His secretary told me he was
in the Far East, but would be home by Saturday. I told her I was calling in reference to the von Grümh murder and that he should call me at the office at his earliest convenience.

I find it bracing to be around a man like Harvey Deharo. He very publicly walked me to our table in the Creole Lounge, a Caribbean restaurant with colorful decor and pungent odors popular with the movers and shakers of Seaboard, such as they are.

Diantha likes to come here, especially in winter, when the decor and the menu remind her of sandy beaches, swaying palm trees, and warm sunshine. I enjoy it, though when they have live music, very often young black men playing on what look like steel barrels, I find it intrusive.

I seldom drink at lunch, but could not resist joining Harvey in ordering a piña colada upon our being seated. While we perused the offerings and waited for the drinks to arrive, he leaned across the table, his memorable eyes holding mine for an instant. He has the knack of being relaxed and intense at the same time. Perhaps it’s the softness of his accent.

“You’re probably wondering, Norman, why I’ve asked you to lunch. I mean other than the pleasure of your company.” He smiled, and I was struck by a note of uncertainty.

“It occurred to me,” I said, looking up from the temptations of the menu, which included a seafood gumbo I had ordered before.

He leaned back as the drinks arrived and as we ordered. He asked about the stone-baked pork and settled for something “less damaging,” as he put it. I settled for the gumbo with a green salad. We sipped our drinks.

“Anyway,” he resumed, still awkward for some reason, “I
have a regular agenda.” He smiled and relaxed. “Okay, first, I wanted to talk about some projects at the lab. You’ve asked me in the past for informal updates instead of the biannual reports that can be a nuisance for me to write and for you to read.”

So we chatted about the lab for a while. Harvey has begun several green initiatives in an effort to reorient the focus of the work there. We are both of the opinion that research on genes, especially for applied genetics, is not as popular as it used to be, and for good reasons.

He mentioned a project to genetically modify a strain of bacteria to make it more efficient in the breakdown of cellulose. The object would be to create and capture methane gas that could be used directly in the production of energy. “It’s cleaner than oxidizing, that is, burning the cellulose, and would allow us to fuel power plants from garbage, grass, leaves, waste lumber.”

“Instead of it going into landfills,” I offered. I was basking in a sense of well-being that Harvey has the knack of bestowing on the people he likes.

“Exactly. Where methane results anyway and has a far worse greenhouse effect than CO
₂
.”

He spoke of efforts to produce a lawn cover “with minimal genetic tinkering”—something that didn’t need mowing, fertilizing, or watering.

“A new kind of grass?” I volunteered.

“No, no. No one should be messing genetically with grass. The family Gramineae is too important to humankind. Think, Norman, of what would happen if we inadvertently unleashed a broad-spectrum pathogen that affected wheat, barley, oats, corn, rice, millet, sugarcane. A lot of people would starve.”

“That might save the environment,” I couldn’t keep myself from saying.

He laughed his rich laugh and wagged a finger at me. Then,
serious again, he lowered his voice. “I also need to tell you in strictest confidentiality that we may be close to a breakthrough in an effective anti-aging therapy.”

“In what form?”

“A pharmaceutical.”

I felt a chill of wonder and surprise, not all of it pleasant. Death, for all its disadvantages, has been a reliable constant in human life. The richest and the poorest must both come to dust.

“What’s the process?”

“That’s the crux of the matter. We change basic cellular behavior.”

I didn’t have the wherewithal right then to explore my first reactions, including the possibilities of terminating the research as too radical and disruptive if successful. He told me, as though reading my mind, that he wanted me on a committee to consider the whole matter from an ethical point of view.

I nodded, but must have looked dubious as he waxed persuasive. “It’s far too early to think about technology transfer and all that. But, Norman, if it’s half as effective as I think it will be, the museum’s financial worries will be over.”

“Who’s doing the research?”

“Doctor Carmina Gnocchi is heading the team. Along with me. She’s in molecular biology at Wainscott. A real pistol. And not half-cocked, either.”

“Yes. I believe I’ve met her.”

“You still seem … doubtful.”

What could I say? That there are already so many ageless old people, corporeal ghosts peering out from reconstructed faces like souls trapped in life. But other than a sharp yet formless unease about the whole issue, I really had no opinion. I said, “I’ll have to think about it.”

When the food arrived, we took a break to eat and to talk
about our families. I didn’t mention that I had a chimpanzee living at home and that Diantha and Elsie were out at the cottage. That we were, for all intents and purposes, separated.

I did mention that I would like his help in preparing for an Oversight Committee meeting that would bring up the whole Neanderthal business. I said, “Professor Laluna Jackson, you know, of the Victim Studies Department, will be on hand. And she already takes a dim view of the museum and its director.”

He rolled his eyes. “You know, I doubt the woman has any African heritage at all. I mean she may have a touch of the old tarbrush, which I’m allowed to say, but I doubt even that. She frizzes her hair and applies skin darkener. Her black-speak accent is utterly bogus, and the chopping motion of her hands is so farcical as to make me cringe. What people like Laluna Jackson do is make an inadvertent and damning parody of black culture.”

I had no reply to that and said nothing.

He continued. “You know something else … I have a feeling she started out as a he.”

“I don’t follow you.”

“I’d bet that if you did a background check on Ms. Jackson you’d find she began life as a little boy.”

“You mean she had herself rearranged?”

He laughed. “That’s one way of putting it.”

“Why do you think so?”

“I have a nose for these things. She’s not all there. I don’t understand why people can’t just be what they are …”

“Not everyone is as blessed as you, Harvey.”

“You’re too kind, Norman, too kind. But don’t worry. I’ll come to that meeting with you. Let me do the heavy lifting on that one.”

I smiled. “I look forward to it.”

We ate well. We had a second drink. We got mellow. Harvey,
his handsome face glistening, leaned toward me and lowered his voice. “I’m about to burden you with something, Norman. And I hope you don’t mind.”

“Not in the least. I hope.”

He hesitated. Then, “Okay, do you remember our first interview? You had my CV. You leafed through it, referring to notes you had made. Your questions were smack-on. And do you know why I like you, Norman? Do you know why I admire and trust you?”

I made a gesture of modest disavowal.

“Because, Norman, in the nearly two years I’ve known you, not once have you alluded, even indirectly, to the color of my skin.”

I shrugged. “There has been no reason why I should.”

He shook his head. “I don’t think you understand. So many well-meaning and well-off white liberals I’ve met over the years feel constrained to signal in one way or another that they are not prejudiced, that they approve of me, and that they want me to approve of them. And I don’t care how subtly it’s done or how well intended, I find it maddening. Demeaning.”

“As would I. But then, I don’t consider myself a liberal. Except, perhaps in the old-fashioned sense.”

He lowered his voice even more. “Do you know what liberals have done to people of color?”

“I would have thought they have tried to help … in one way or another.”

“Oh, indeed they have. And in doing so they have made us their moral pets.”

I sipped at my drink. I could taste the power of the rum. “I don’t doubt you, Harvey, but I’m not sure I follow you.”

He looked around. He kept his voice low. “To start with, white liberals would never dream of holding black Americans or black
islanders or black Africans to anything approaching their own standards. To insist on that is to be called racist when exactly the reverse applies. Allowances are made for our behavior however egregious. Because, you see, we are moral pets.”

“But …”

He held up a hand. “It’s not only that, it’s the way we have come to figure large in the identity of affluent whites who can afford to patronize us. It’s mostly a class thing. As champions of us poor black people, white liberals can distinguish themselves from the benighted blue-collar workers, from Joe Sixpack. Your wealthy white liberal not only drinks better wine and eats better cheese, but he lays claim to being a better person. And people of color are part and parcel of that moral status. It matters not that most of them live comfortably and securely in white or upper-middle-class enclaves where any stray African Americans tend to be educated and middle-class as well.”

He stopped and took a good slug of his piña colada. “I’m sorry, Norman, but this is one of my pet peeves.”

“One of your moral pet peeves,” I rejoined. Then I pushed back just a bit. “But surely, Harvey, there are many whites who have worked for civil rights out of honorable motives …”

“Of course, of course.” But his acknowledgment bordered on the cursory as he went off again. Glancing around, he said, “It’s deeper and more pernicious than that. I’ve watched white liberals getting a moral thrill of vicarious indignation by rehashing past injustices against people of color. They pick that particular scab with great relish. It is one of the ways that they establish their moral credentials. It doesn’t occur to them that people who are encouraged to see themselves as victims remain victims.”

“But, surely, we cannot ignore history.”

“No, but there is no human group in the world that has not, at some point in their history, been enslaved in one way or another.
To make slavery such a large part of black history is to reinforce the worst kinds of stereotypes. And to keep opening a wound is to stay wounded.”

He leaned back, his eyes askance. After a moment they came back to mine. “You don’t watch much television, do you Norman?”

“Not when I can help it.”

“Okay, let me tell you what you see these days constantly on the ads. They create a situation with a white person and a black person in it. Invariably, the white person is shown as far less intelligent than the character of color. Do you know why?”

“I haven’t given it a lot of thought.”

“Because white people are secure in their intelligence, they can afford to be portrayed as stupid. But because there are real doubts about the intelligence of black people on the part of the white, well-meaning ad producers, they must be portrayed as smart.”

“Really?”

But Harvey scarcely paused. “There’s another thing that nettles me no end.” Again he leaned into me and lowered his voice. “Nice white people love to sniff out and expose the least particle of racism in what they regard as lesser whites. Because, you see, to label someone else a racist is to imply that you are not racist, that you are not one of them, regardless of any objective criteria.”

“Such as …?”

“Oh, where they work, where they live, where they weekend, where they can send their kids to school …”

He finished his drink. Then, smiling at himself, he said, “Oh, God, here I am, another black man complaining to a white friend about how we are treated. So I’ll shut up. But let me say
one last thing, Norman.” He paused. “Do you know what the real advantage of being a white male is?”

“There seems to be fewer of them.”

He shook his head. “The real advantage is that white males have no one else to blame when they screw up. No handy scapegoats, no excuses, no point in whining. That, my friend, is real empowerment.”