The Murder in the Museum of Man (22 page)

And I must say that the county jail, a large, granitic pile near the waterfront, a veritable Bastille, is a grim place. After an indecorous “body search” by a suspicious guard, I was taken to a room bare except for a table and two chairs. Malachy Morin, his limbs shackled, was brought in by another guard, who stood to one side of the table and watched every move we made. The poor man started to cry when he saw me. “Norman, Norman,” he said. “You’re the only one who’s come to see me. Everyone else has deserted me.” It seems all his friends from his football days and all the people he knows at Wainscott have forsaken him, and perhaps, because of the nature of the case, he has still not been able to find a competent lawyer to represent him.

Well, right off he started protesting his innocence. “Norman, I didn’t kill her like they say. I wasn’t saving her for … It was an accident, Norman. You have to believe me. Tell them, Norman, tell them I didn’t do it. And you know I didn’t have anything to do with Dean Fessing. I don’t know what happened to him. I’m not a cannibal, Norman. I may be a slob and a glutton and a fornicator, but I’m not a cannibal. Please, Norman, you’ve got to help me.”

I tried to calm him down, but when I reached to touch his shoulder, the guard intervened. But Malachy Morin is, I’m afraid, beyond comfort. He went on, blubbering out his soul to me, his eyes wide, red, and bulging, his mouth scarcely in control, his jowls aquiver. “You heard what the DA said yesterday, Norman. They want to execute me, Norman. They want to electrocute me. They want to strap me in that chair and … Oh, Norman, you know I’ve been afraid of electricity all my life. Doreen will tell you. I even make her turn on the lights in the office, and when there’s a storm, I go down into the sub-subbasement. I’ve been treated for it, Norman. It’s in my medical record. And now, now, they want to shave my head and attach an electrode and make me sit in that chair and … Norman, Norman, help me!”

I did what I could. I told him to get hold of himself. I told him that the District Attorney wasn’t God and that there would be a trial, and that one had to have faith in the American criminal justice system. And he did eventually calm down, but only for a minute. He started in again, slowly, his distress building, his pathos naked on his face.

“They’re so cruel in here, Norman, I can’t tell you. The way they taunt me. One of the prisoners, a little runty guy, goes ‘zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzZAP!’ every time I walk by his cell. And there was another one, a real wise guy, who called out, ‘Hey, Fatty, they won’t need to grease the chair when they fry you!’ And the guy in the next cell has a balloon that he chafes until there’s enough static electricity to make his hair stand on end. You can’t imagine it, Norman. I never appreciated civilization until I came in here. It’s like being in hell. And the guards are worse. Last night two of them pretended to be friendly. One was big and one was little and they stood outside my cell on their break. The big one told me I shouldn’t worry because he had been up to see the chair in Ellsbank and said I wouldn’t fit in it. Then the little one said they probably could squeeze me in but I shouldn’t worry because the
chair had been rewired and has all kinds of safety features to make sure no one gets hurt and that the first jolt knocks you out. They were pulling my chain, Norman, and I didn’t even know it. Then the big one said his friend was right, that they give you about two thousand volts to stun you before they ‘cook’ you for a minute or two with four or five hundred volts and then hit you with another two thousand, just to make sure you’re done. He said it was like doing a steak, you know, searing it on both sides and cooking it slowly in the middle. They were awful, Norman, awful to me. I tried not to listen, but I couldn’t get away from them. The big one said to the little one, ‘Did you tell him about the pan?’ The little one said, ‘Oh, the pan.’ Then they acted like they shouldn’t have said anything. ‘What pan?’ I asked, ‘what pan?’ I was terrified, Norman. ‘Oh,’ the big one said, ‘the pan they put under the chair.’ Norman, I nearly pissed myself. ‘Why do they put a pan under the chair?’ I asked. The little one coughed, and just when I thought I couldn’t take it any longer, he said, ‘It’s to catch the juices.’ Then they both laughed. Oh, Norman, I’m in hell. I’m in hell. You’ve got to help me. I’ll never call you Bow Tie again, I promise. What happened with Elsa was an accident, Norman. I swear I didn’t lay a finger on her. We were consenting adults all the way.”

I have to confess I was relieved when the guard said our time was up. Morin said he was working on a “statement” with the lawyer he had and asked if I would read it over for him. I said I would and that I would also look for an attorney for him. And I told him not to worry about the electric chair, although I’m not sure I spoke with much conviction. I think I’ll also write a letter to the warden suggesting that he somehow be separated from the other prisoners. I mean, the conditions he describes do sound inhuman.

Speaking of inhuman, I found upon returning a document in my e-mail that I will allow you, gentle reader, to judge for yourself.

There were some real fireworks at today’s meeting of the Oversight Committee, and I think Oliver Scrabbe has more than met his match in Thad Pilty. Constance Brattle didn’t help her own cause when she took a provocative tone right from the start, declaring that, given the arrest of Mr. Morin and other “ongoing conditions at the museum,” the committee would shortly extend the scope of its inquiry beyond the diorama of Paleolithic life. She then began to introduce Dean Scrabbe to the other members of the committee as someone who would be “instrumental in resolving the outstanding issues of the museum’s operations.”

Well, I don’t think I have ever seen Thad Pilty so angry. Barely controlling himself, his hands fisting and his jaw clenching, he glared right at Professor Brattle and Dean Scrabbe as he interrupted her: “Excuse me, Professor Brattle, excuse me, please. I find your last statement and the presence of Dean Scrabbe at this meeting totally unacceptable. My original agreement with the committee was that it would confine itself to suggestions regarding the form and content of the diorama itself. Unless Dean Scrabbe excuses himself and unless this committee keeps to the original agreement regarding its purview, I will have no choice but to withdraw from this and any future meetings with the committee.”

I nearly clapped. I took inordinate pleasure in watching the confusion into which Constance Brattle and her cohorts were thrown. Randall Athol and Ariel Dearth started to say something, but she silenced them both. However, speaking as though he were utterly in charge of the whole place, Dean Scrabbe told the room that there was no way in which the finances of the museum in general and the funding of the diorama in particular could avoid oversight. He charged that aspects of the management
and policies of the museum bordered on the “criminally surreal,” and that he was going to take the whole matter directly to President Twill and before the Board of Regents. With that he gathered his papers and stalked from the room.

As you can imagine, it took a few minutes for the group to settle down. After a session of whispering with members of the committee, Professor Brattle announced that they would proceed with the meeting as planned. Professor Pilty seemed reluctant but nodded and introduced Mr. Emmanuel Quinn, a representative of Humanation Syntectics, the company designing and manufacturing the models. Professor Brattle in her turn introduced the Reverend Farouk Karoom, a minister in the Islamic Baptist Temple of Zion. I was so taken by this gentleman’s haircut, which I can only describe as topiary, that I nearly missed her characterization of him as a person “instrumental in agendarizing [or is it “agenderizing”?] community priorities [and who has] made multiculturalism more than another buzzword.”

The Rev. Karoom starting right in malapropping — fittingly enough now that I think of it —
biodrama
for
diorama
. “I will insist,” he insisted, “that people of color be given positions of power and dignity in any biodrama planned for the Museum of Man.” Patiently, as though conducting a seminar, Professor Pilty told the minister that the people to be displayed in the diorama were
Homo sapiens neanderthalensis
. Puzzled for a moment, the Rev. Karoom replied that “the sexual preferences of the models are besides the point.” It was Thad Pilty’s turn to be puzzled. Finally, he said, “I should explain, Reverend, that
neanderthal
is a designation that we give to primitive man —” (Professor Brattle: “And woman”). At which point Bertha Schanke, working on the Boston Kreme, remarked as to how she considered all men primitive. Mr. Onoyoko, after listening to the ongoing translation by Ms. Kushiro, turned in Ms. Schanke’s direction and smiled.

Professor Pilty waited for the room to quiet and then told the Rev. Karoom that the people to be depicted in the diorama were extinct. The Rev. Karoom nodded as though he understood and asked, “What does that have to do with minority representation in your biodrama?” Professor Pilty responded that they had considered making all the models dark skinned but thought that might be interpreted as racist in seeming to equate pronounced melanism with less derived morphologies. He went on to say that recent research on climate suggests that European Neanderthals were light skinned, perhaps even blond and blue eyed. Ms. Schanke interrupted him again, saying, “Why don’t you admit you don’t know and that the whole thing is a fantasy?”

Bobbing his amazing coiffure, the Rev. Karoom asked if the professor meant that there had been no “black Neanderthals.” Before Pilty could answer, the minister went on in declamatory tones he undoubtedly deploys from the pulpit: “You mean to tell us, Professor, that there were no black Neanderthals when I have read in the newspaper about the African Eve. Your own colleagues, Professor, are telling the world that the mother of us all was a sister.” When Professor Pilty started to explain about the European context, the Reverend cut him off. “You don’t get it, Professor.”

“What don’t I get?” Pilty asked, showing just a bit of exasperation.

The Rev. Karoom allowed a moment of silence before pronouncing with a dramatic flourish: “That black people
invented
white people.”

Well, that had Mr. Onoyoko mirthful again, and even Ms. Schanke joined in what was considered a good laugh at Thad Pilty’s expense. The situation didn’t improve much from there. Constance Brattle suggested that a compromise might be possible in that the models could be rendered in an intermediate shade, a kind of gray. Izzy Landes retorted that they would then
look like they all came from New Jersey. Professor Athol opined that the problem with the diorama was its “Eurocentrism,” to which Izzy retorted that, like it or not, we all, even Mr. Onoyoko, are part of European culture. Professor Ariel Dearth demurred, pointing out that Israel might be the best setting for the diorama given that whole families of modern-looking Neanderthals had been found in caves there. Professor Pilty then explained at some length that we were using a European setting because it was the one we knew the most about, because that was where he and his team had conducted their research. Which did little to mollify anyone.

All the while the Rev. Karoom sat back, gratified, I think, by the ruckus he had stirred up. Things had begun to settle down when Mr. Quinn, answering a question put to him by Professor Brattle, said his company could make the models any color they wanted. They could, he said, facetiously I’m sure, even make them spotted if that was what they wanted. The Rev. Karoom took the possibility quite seriously. He asked Mr. Quinn if that would be “black spots on white or white spots on black.” Mr. Quinn replied that they could make them either way. But he suggested that a better solution to the problem of pigmentation would be to use stripes because, if they were done skillfully, it would be impossible to tell if they would be black stripes on white or white stripes on black. Rev. Karoom then asked Mr. Quinn if these would be broad stripes or narrow stripes. Mr. Quinn replied that his company could make them broad or narrow. He said they could even make them very narrow. He said they could make the models pin-striped, if that was what the committee wanted. In fact, he said, “We could give you a cross-hatched pattern, you know, a kind of plaid, or even a herringbone design, like a tweed.” It went on like that, with discussions of piebald patterns, polka dots, and the like until Mr. Onoyoko was laughing openly and Professor Pilty was sitting
with his face in his hands. It is just possible, I am beginning to hope, that he will rethink the whole project.