Arrows pointed us to the public elevators. “Skip it,” Mike said, tugging at my sleeve as I stood behind a rowdy group of eight-yearolds. “Check out the stairs.”
Whenever possible, Mike opted for the unmechanical route through a building. It was a logical way to get to see more of a scene, often including parts of a location that weren’t meant to be observed by outsiders.
Like everything else in the old buildings, the staircases were enormous-easier to fly down than to climb up. Because the height of the rooms was so grand-high enough to house a dinosaur skeleton or whale model-there were four flights of steps between each floor.
When we reached the second landing, Mike stopped to crack open the door that led into the corridor. He closed it behind him and started back for the staircase. “Birds.”
We loped up to three, and I paused to catch my breath while he opened the door to look. “African mammals. Monkeys and apes everywhere.” He tried another door that stood directly opposite the entrance to the exhibits, but it wouldn’t give. “Remind me to ask. I want to know what’s behind every locked door.”
“Good luck. There must be several thousand of them in this place.”
I was relieved to get to the fourth level and leaned on the banister to catch my breath.
“Wait here.” I was happy to rest while Mike went on up to the fifth level, past the signs that announcedNO PUBLIC ACCESS. He pushed open the pair of double doors and was gone for several minutes.
“What did you find?”
“The longest hallway I’ve ever seen in my life. Offices and cubbyholes everywhere. And lockers. Floor to ceiling, as far as you can see. Gray metal lockers, like a storage facility, that stretch from one end of the building to the other. C’mon. Let’s go see how many ways there are to stuff a monkey.”
More arrows on four led us around corners, past the Dinostore, the cafe, and the extinct mammals to a receptionist who worked for Mr. Mamdouba. She pointed us to his open door just as he must have heard our voices and walked out to welcome us.
“Mamdouba here. Elijah Mamdouba.” The slight black man who stood before us was barely five feet five inches tall, but had a powerful voice and handshake to match. “Miss Cooper? Mr. Chapman? Won’t you come in?”
I followed him into the room, a perfectly circular space that occupied a corner turret, looking out on the intersection of Seventy-seventh Street and Columbus Avenue. I couldn’t recall ever being in a round office before, and the delightful whimsy of the shape was enhanced by the assortment of treasures that sat on his desk and bookshelves. Not sterling tea services and Old Masters, as we’d seen at the Met, but priceless pieces of cultural history from all over the world. Four identical doors were set back into the walls, two behind his desk and two across the room, all covered with decorative exhibition posters.
Mamdouba grinned as he watched me take in his surroundings. “I’m sure you are both quite familiar with our museum, am I right?”
We talked for several minutes while I wandered around the room, examining specimens, skeletons, and photographs of Mamdouba that had been taken in deserts and jungles all over the world. The gentle lilt of his African accent belied the credentials that were hung on his wall among the pictures. There were undergraduate and graduate degrees from Cambridge University and a Ph.D. from Harvard in cultural anthropology.
“But I’m sure you’re not here to listen to me go on about the latest species of fish we’ve just discovered.” All trace of the smile disappeared. “You want to talk about Miss Grooten.”
“Yes, we’ve got quite a lot of questions. About her, and about the exhibition she was working on while she spent time here.”
“Anything we can help you with. I liked Katrina a great deal.”
“You knew her personally?”
“Not terribly well, Miss Cooper. She was quite junior, of course, so the other members of the bestiary exhibition team often used her as a gofer, I think you call it. She ferried information back and forth between their quarters downstairs and my office. We shared some professional interests, too, not least of which was our love of Africa.”
“Are you from South Africa, too?”
“No, Mr. Chapman. Ghana. Born there in fifty-two, when it was still the Gold Coast. But my travels have taken me all over the world.”
“Did you meet Katrina here, at the museum?”
“Yes. I’m supervising our involvement in the big joint show. I saw her here often.”
“Why did you take notice of her? I mean, she wasn’t one of the most important scholars or contributors to the project.”
“Actually, it was she who asked formy attention at the time. She was working at the Cloisters, as you know. But by the end of the summer, she was interested in going back home. She wanted a job at an institution there, and she was thinking of changing her entire field of concentration. Katrina’s background was in medieval art history. She’d become interested in anthropology along the way, and came to me for guidance.”
“Why the change in focus?”
“Perhaps her friends can tell you that, Miss Cooper. I don’t know which came first-her desire to go home, and a realization about the shortage of European art collections in Africa, or the subject matter itself. Once she was exposed to the extraordinary collections we have here, I assume she became more interested in them.”
“Did you socialize with her? Outside the museum?”
“No, no. I can’t think that we were ever anywhere together except right in this building.”
“Did you know anything about her personal life, her problems?”
He reflected for a minute before answering. “Not really. She told me, in the fall, that she’d been ill. Nothing she wanted to discuss with me. She apologized from time to time, at meetings, for being distracted when I called on her to answer questions. She didn’t look terribly healthy, but then, have a glance around at some of these young scientists. Not the heartiest-looking lot. We don’t pay them enough to eat very well, and then they spend all their time in these windowless laboratories, with fluids and preservatives that would give a funeral home a bit of competition. Can’t say as I thought she looked worse than many others.”
Mamdouba smiled and then said, as an afterthought, “Besides, most of them look awfully pale to me.”
Mike leaned forward, his notepad resting on his left knee, his pen in his right hand, with which he was gesturing. “So exactly what is it you do around here?”
“I’m the administrative director of the museum, sir. The keeper, as they call us in England. Everything in this wondrous place is under my care. We have to know how to maintain all these specimens, how to display them appropriately, when to acquire something new.”
“You got a body count?”
“Ah, Mr. Chapman. A little more respect for our dead. The closest I can give you is about thirty-two million species and artifacts. Mammals alone-I presume that’s your area of interest-we’ve got over 270,000 specimens, and that includes their skeletal material, their skins, and their innards, which are in jars all over the building.”
“On display?”
“Just like an art museum. Maybe one, maybe two percent of what we’ve got is out on view. But you know about that. I understand you’ve already begun your questioning across the park, at the Met.”
“You’ve spoken to someone over there?”
“Well, I could simply say I’ve read today’s newspaper, couldn’t I? In fact, Anna Friedrichs told me first. She was here yesterday, in the afternoon. She was very fond of Katrina.”
“Are you close to your colleagues at the Met?”
“To begin with, Mr. Chapman, many of them don’t even consider us to be in the same business. Our institutions may both be called museums, and we’ve each got vast holdings, but most of the similarities end there. Anna’s interests have a bit more humanistic content than those of her other colleagues. I think that brings her closer to us. More simpatico. What do you know about the history of natural histo
ry museums?”
“Not a thing,” I answered. Mamdouba’s smile was magnetic. He stood up and came out from behind his desk, walking over to sit on a sofa that was on the far side of the room. We both turned to look at him.
“The British did it first, you know. Seventeen fifty-three. There were earlier collections, in Paris and even at Oxford, but it was the British Museum that was open to the general public, to all ‘studious and curious’ persons, as its grant allowed. It was never meant to be just art, but cabinets full of all kinds of odd things that people had collected. Birds, animals, and human ’monstrosities‘-all kept in spirits. Wine, frequently. Alcohol proves to be a wonderful preservative. Even the royals had the bug. You don’t know about Peter the Great?”
“Know what?” Mike was always ready to take on historical data.
“When he discovered his wife had a lover, he had the man beheaded. He actually placed the head in a large jar and had it pickled. Deposited it in the empress’s bedchamber, as a painful reminder of the price of her infidelity. Peter kept an entire collection of biological oddities. Centuries later, his descendants found them-even the fermented head, in rather good shape-still on their shelves in the palace.”
Surely, Mamdouba would get us beyond the sensational. His entire career was invested in this work. “Andthis museum?”
“The greatest in the world. With a very similar start, actually. I can show you the first annual report, from 1877. Bones of an extinct dodo; three thousand bird skins from the ‘cabinet’ of Prince Maximilian of Neuwied; hundreds of beetles; private vaults of the French consul general in New York; mollusks and shells that-for lack of a formal home-had been stored in the Wall Street offices of Brown Brothers, the old investment firm.”
“Where in the world did the money come from to build such an enormous showcase?”
“Aha, Miss Cooper. This was the golden age of exploration. Theodore Roosevelt, Junior-every schoolchild knows that statue out in front. But there were so many other extraordinary men of great vision. J. P. Morgan, Morris Jesup, Albert Bickmore, and Teddy Roosevelt’s father, too.” Mamdouba reeled off the names, standing now and pointing at photographs on the wall.
“These men had the vision that led to the discovery of the North Pole, the charting of the Gobi Desert, with the richest dinosaur fields on earth, the penetration of the deepest jungles on the African and South American continents.” The fingers of his left hand spread across the length of his chest as he pressed against it. “Weare the living history of the evolution of life on this planet, constantly changing, always interpreting and incorporating new data. A tremendously vital research organization, also. Not just a bit of oil and canvas left to hang for a century or two in a gilded picture frame on a museum wall.” He grinned again as he returned the salvo of his friends across the park at the Met.
“Would you mind showing us where Ms. Grooten worked when she was here?”
“I’ll be glad to have someone take you around. We’ve dedicated an entire acre of basement space to arranging and archiving the exhibit.”
“An acre?”
“Yes, Mr. Chapman. After all, we’ve got twenty-five acres of floor space within our buildings. Come this way.” He guided us out past his receptionist into the main hallway.
“What’s upstairs?”
“The fifth floor? The longest corridor in North America, outside of the Pentagon. There may be something that rivals it at Versailles or Windsor, but it’s the length of three city blocks. Goes a lot farther than the entire village in which I spent my youth.”
“Can we see what’s up there?”
His hesitation was almost imperceptible, but the rest of his delivery had been so smooth that I’m sure Mike caught it, too.
“When President Raspen returns from her voyage, I’m certain she will approve.” He went right on with his polished performance. “Surely you know Margaret Mead? Well, she had the turret office above mine all to herself. A remarkable woman. More than fifty years she was associated with this museum. Half a century of work in the field, all in the most primitive areas of the world, if you can imagine that.”
Mamdouba pressed the elevator button and we waited for the slow machine to grind its way up to four. We took it down to the first floor and again entered the North American mammal hall. He stopped at a guard desk and used a telephone to call someone to take us the rest of the way.
“What’s going on with the animals? Somebody sick?” Mike asked, referring to the crew of gowned and masked scientists still at work inside several of the dioramas.
“Aren’t these wonderful? It was one of our original explorers, Carl Akeley, who designed the first diorama here. Before his time, people stuffed animal skins with straw. It was not only bad aesthetically, because of all the lumps, but there was frequently insect infestation. Akeley was a great sportsman and hunter. He knew the animals intimately.”
Mike was more interested in the taxidermy technique than I was. He listened closely as Mamdouba described the famous Akeley innovation. “The first thing Carl did was pose the actual animal’s skeleton. The real one, after the body was cleaned. Then he used clay to sculpt the creature’s muscles and tendons, on top of its very own bones. Completely true to life. Finally, he’d take the original skin and place it over the reconstructed animal. That’s why they look so lifelike.”
More than I needed to know about the lost art of taxidermy.
“So the little men and women in white, what are they up to today? Plastic surgery for the old animals? BOTOX?” Mike and I watched as they dabbed with Q-tips at ears and hooves and antlers.
“Precisely, Mr. Chapman. Just the occasional touch-up. Keep their teeth white and their coats shiny. The surgical masks do look a bit serious, don’t they? We make our workers take that precaution when they’re in the cabinets. You see, one of the surefire ways to kill the bugs when you’re preserving the natural skins is to make certain there’s enough arsenic in the treatment.”
Mamdouba looked serious. “It’s a staple in our conservation department, Detective, and we wouldn’t want any of the workers to breathe it in. Could be deadly.”
19
“Forgot your pass, Mr. Mamdouba?” A bespectacled young man, about thirty, dressed in a denim work shirt and jeans, came up behind the curatorial director and tapped him on the back.
“Ah, Zimm. Perfect man for the job. Meet Alexandra Cooper here. And Mr. Chapman.”
“Mark Zimmerly. Entomology.”
“Bugs?” Mike asked as they exchanged handshakes.
“Yeah, well, spiders in particular. Gnaphosoidae. Australian ground spiders. Six hundred and fifty species and still counting.”
“No offense, but I was hoping for something with fewer legs and no stingers.”
Zimm turned and led us back to a tall doorway behind the bank of elevators. There was a laminated photo ID around his neck, and he bent over to scan it in against the security pad.
Mamdouba followed Zimm, taking us down a poorly lighted staircase that wound around for three flights. The dull gray paint was chipped and faded, and there were smudged handprints on the wall where people before us had tried to balance their footing on the narrow treads.
Chapman whispered in my ear as I turned a corner, “Remind me to tell Mercer and Vickee never to let the kid go to a museum. Friggin‘ arsenic everywhere. Did you have any idea?”
“Takes us back to square one. Whoever poisoned Katrina Grooten knew the field of suspects would be wide open. He didn’t have to go into a pharmacy and ask for a prescription. Just point the finger at someone else who worked in any of the institutions.”
At the bottom of the steps was a large sign:BESTIARY. A red arrow pointed to the right, below the wordsTHE MET. And a green arrow headed left:AMNH. We all followed Zimm around to the office in which he worked.
“Miss Cooper and Mr. Chapman are investigating Katrina Grooten’s death.”
“What a shocker,” the young man said. “Saw the story in thePost. Coul
dn’t believe it was someone I knew. Someone who worked here with me.”
“Why don’t you tell them about what you’re doing here, and what her role in it was. Zimm’s been with us since he was a high school student.”
“I’m a graduate student at NYU. Started to come here when my family moved to Manhattan, fifteen years ago. Thought this was the coolest place in the world. Spent all my free time here, so my teacher encouraged me to do an internship while I was at Stuyvesant.” Zimm had gone to one of New York City’s premier public high schools, specializing in science and math, for which kids had to pass a special test for admission eligibility.
Mike smiled at him. “So you started working at the museum when Pluto was still a planet, huh?”
“Ah, Mr. Chapman. At least we’re always controversial here,” Mamdouba said. “You disagree with my friends at the planetarium?”
“All I know is that for the first thirty-five years of my life, there were nine planets in the solar system. Now your museum decides Pluto’s just an icy comet. I don’t deal with change that well.”
“Don’t hold it against me, man.” Zimm laughed. “I’ve got nothing to do with the astrophysicists. What we’re doing down here is assembling and cataloging all the specimens that are under consideration for selection in the exhibit.”
“Who’s in charge?”
“Well, Elijah has the final word. I’m just the functionary. People bring me their artifacts, or photographs of the items. I inventory them, scan them into the computer, and pass the lists along to the joint committee, and to Elijah.” He moved over to his desk and clicked the mouse of his computer; the program for the big show appeared on the screen. He scrolled down to give us a sampling of the thousands of proposed artifacts.
Mike stopped him halfway down the list ofB ‘s. “Whoa. You got a namesake here, Coop. They’ve got their own Blondie.”
The Bone Vault Page 17