“I’m an Episcopalian,” I responded, not sure I had answered his question.
“Yes. Then tell me, sir, where was your Episcopalian God when the trains pulled into Treblinka? Where was He when Stalin and Kaganovich, a Jew, by the way, deliberately starved to death six or seven million people in Ukraine? Where was He when the machine guns of the special units overheated at Babi Yar? Where was your Episcopalian God when Stalin worked and starved and froze to death those millions in the mines of Magadan? Where was He when Pol Pot murdered a quarter of his countrymen? When the Hutus sharpened their pangas and hacked to death half a million Tutsis? Tell me, sir, where was your almighty Episcopalian God then?”
Had I only heard the man’s voice it might have sounded like a cri de coeur. But Freddie Bain was smiling broadly, was on the verge of mirth.
“God is not cruel.”
“Then why did He create us as we are?”
“Man is free to be evil,” I said.
“Then God, too, is free to be evil. Think about it, Mr. de Ratour. If we are made in the image and likeness of the Almighty, Mr. de Ratour, then like us He needs a good laugh now and again. And what could be funnier than looking down on mass murder? Hilarious. Knee-slapping. God-roaring. A scream. Face it, God is a joker. If He made us for anything, He made us for His amusement.” At which point he laughed himself, his noise bouncing like the reflected flames off the surfaces curving around us.
“That, sir,” I said though a clenched jaw, “is the most damnable blasphemy I have ever heard.”
“Not so, Norman. If not laughing, what else could He have been doing? And if God doesn’t exist, then what difference does it make? We are but infinitesimal specks on a speck, our greatest and worst moments of history of no more significance than what happens on a petri dish.”
“History judges,” I said, grasping at straws.
“History comes and goes.”
“You’re mad” was the best I could do.
“Bah” was all he said to my pathetic response. Then, “And I want my tape.” With that he turned unsteadily, but with a certain melodramatic flourish, and walked across to the fire. There, backlit by the flames, he stood and toyed with a cigar.
A moment later Miss Tangent went over to join him. I looked at Diantha. “I think you should come home with me now.”
But she seemed under a spell. She looked across at Freddie Bain and said, “Oh, Dad, Freddie’s just pulling your leg. He has his little rants. Everybody does. You should have heard Sixy get going about gays. He wanted to kill them all.”
I implored her again, knowing it was futile. I was torn myself, in turn afflicted with the lowest form of lust, with enough anger to want to burn the place down, and with an awful foreboding. Though I had no real proof, I was now certain Freddie Bain had a lot to do with what was happening at the Museum of Man. But I couldn’t stay.
It was freezing and dark outside, with the upper reaches of his preposterous domicile looking like battlements against the night sky. I got in and started my cold old car. I had been shocked into sobriety but still drove with the exaggerated care of the technically drunk. I was full of rebuttal. In the after-arguments running in my head, I stood back, remained dignified, and said things like, If Hitler was an artist then art has no meaning. Or, The profundity of nihilism is an illusion. Or, better, Nihilism is the profundity of the unimaginative. Why? he would ask. And I would respond: Because it is easy to imagine nothing, and evil is a form of nothingness.
I stopped at a roadside diner to drink coffee and calm myself. I kept trying to convince myself that God is good. That the world is good. That people are good. The worst kinds of self-doubts gnawed at me, the kind from which you cannot escape into nice big abstractions like nihilism. Could I, I asked myself, have been a Nazi under other circumstances? No, I said, no. At the same time, I knew my denial was an indulgence in the moral luxury afforded by hindsight.
I also wondered, as a more immediate concern, if I had done the right thing in walking away. Am I a coward? A moral coward and, where Miss Tangent is concerned, a sexual coward?
I am confused. With Elsbeth gone only days, I scarcely know my own heart. I know I loved Elsbeth. I thought I loved Diantha. And perhaps I do. But now that love has been polluted with lust for another. I sit here writing this with my head on a poker of pain wanting, in the depths of my corrupted being, feeling her lips and her touch, to be in that big bed with that mocking, maddening Lorelei.
32
It is Monday, December 18, and Diantha has not returned home since Friday, and, frankly, I have become concerned for her welfare. She did call yesterday, mostly to tell me she wouldn’t be going with me to the Curatorial Ball, which we held last night. She hinted and then proposed outright that she come and bring Freddie Bain and Celeste Tangent. I hesitated a moment, but then said no, that I didn’t think it would be a good idea.
My evening at that grotesque fortress-cum-mansion still resounds within me. I want, of course, to dismiss everything that madman said, but it lingers, like an intellectual infection. I keep running it around in my head. If we are made in the image and likeness of God, what percentage of our DNA, ontologically speaking, overlaps? Is God a joker? I’m sure the question is hardly a novel one, but I have wrestled with it repeatedly since that weird evening. Did God simply set in motion the awesome machinery of natural selection, then sit back and watch? Does He laugh at us?
It would have been worse, I’m sure, had I stayed the night. But I sometimes wonder. Miss Tangent, her eyes, her hair, her touch, also lingers, so that I suffer a kind of low-grade erotomania in which she and Diantha and Elsbeth tease and tempt and leave me. They invest my sleeping dreams, night visions bizarre and poignant, from which I awake in torments of lust and despair. I would have thought grief something pure, a kind of suffering that renders one innocent.
And then it’s all mangled and mingled with my workaday life, the heavy routine of being a museum director. Not to mention my role as a part-time murder investigator. Who is Freddie Bain? Had I stayed Friday night, might I have found out? Is he Moshe ben Rovich? It hardly seems likely, given his proclivities. How does Celeste Tangent fit into all this? It’s obvious she works for him as a seductress. And Ossmann? Penrood? And myself, had I not suffered the rectitude of indignation that night? What would he want with a powerful aphrodisiac? To sell it as an illegal drug, obviously. What might Diantha be able to tell me when she comes back? If she comes back.
Korky and I went to the ball together, not as dates, of course — I certainly didn’t dance with him. Still, we raised a few eyebrows when we came in. I could hear their thoughts. Is Norman coming out or just swinging on the closet door? But as time goes by, I find myself caring less and less what people think. It has occurred to me, finally, that the standards of yesteryear, for better or worse, no longer apply.
Korky appears to be doing well, considering what he’s been through. We had a drink at my house before setting out. Elsbeth’s absence shouted at us from every cornice and corner. We clung together for a small tearful moment. But said nothing. One word and neither of us would have shut up for the evening. Which might have been cathartic in its own way.
As we drove over together, he confessed he suffers bouts of acute depression. He said he is still very interested in what he calls “the marvelous world of fine food,” but that he can no longer tolerate the thought of anyone going hungry in the world. “I’m torn, Norman, about what to do with my life. I feel like volunteering for an international relief agency, you know, where you fly to one of those wretched villages in Africa to hand out food to the starving. But it wouldn’t be me.”
“A man doesn’t live by bread alone,” I murmured inanely.
Which made him laugh. “No, he needs, baguettes, bagels, boules, franchese, focaccia. It’s the difference between feeding and eating. But I still can’t write about it. I don’t know what I’m going to do.”
The Curatorial Ball wouldn’t have been the same anyway. Rather
than dismantle the Diorama of Paleolithic Life in Neanderthal Hall, as we’ve done for the past couple of years, we decided to hold the party in one of the function halls of the Miranda Hotel. We decorated it ourselves with streamers and those collapsible ornaments. We had a papier-mâché menorah, some Kwanzaa symbols, and a pagan display provided by a local coven. We moved Herman the Neanderthal into the foyer and decked him out in his traditional Santa suit. And the Warblers, getting just a bit creaky, sang all the old favorites. But it wasn’t the same.
Korky, I was glad to see, met a friend and left the party early. I lingered and drank too much, turning wine into water at a miraculous rate. Rather than drive, I left the car in the parking lot, declined several offers of a lift, and walked home under a cold clear night, looking up at the heavens, a speck on a speck, and remembering Elsbeth.
33
I have been made privy to some disturbing information regarding Freddie Bain, information that makes me more anxious than ever for the safety and well-being of Diantha. As I was sitting in my office this morning in a practically deserted museum — everyone who can has already officially or unofficially taken holiday leave — Lieutenant Tracy called and said he wanted to drop by with Sergeant Lemure and Agent Jack Johnson of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
I said certainly, and not long afterward they arrived. Dressed in a plain but sharply pressed dark blue suit, Agent Johnson evinced the practiced no-nonsense demeanor of a veteran law enforcement officer. He took in, I noticed, some of the more outré items decorating the office but said nothing. He gave my hand a short, brisk shake and sat down in one of the three chairs I had pulled up before my desk for the meeting.
Flanked by Sergeant Lemure in rumpled suit and Lieutenant Tracy in tweed jacket and holiday tie, Agent Johnson started right in. “Mr. de Ratour,” he said, getting my name right, “I hope you understand that the Bureau seldom shares information with a private citizen regarding an ongoing criminal investigation …”
“Or even with local police departments,” Sergeant Lemure put in.
“That’s right. But it seems the Bureau, the Seaboard Police Department, and you have a keen common interest in the activities of one Freddie Bain.”
“That’s right.”
“Could you tell me why?”
“For several reasons. But one of them involves confidentiality and the others remain conjectural.”
“If it involves criminal activity, Mr. de Ratour, I’m afraid I won’t be able to comply with any request for confidentiality.”
I nodded. “I don’t believe it is criminal. But I will leave it to your judgment.” I waited for him to nod and then continued. “A couple of months back one of our professors — or, I should say, one of Wainscott’s professors who was affiliated with the museum — undertook a highly dangerous expedition to South America. Given the nature of the trip, we here at the museum refused to fund any substantial part of it. We did underwrite his medical supplies and his insurance for medical evacuation.”
“How was it dangerous?” Agent Johnson, a man in his forties, regarded me steadily with cool hazel eyes.
“It was very remote to begin with. A lot of outsiders have disappeared while exploring the territory. The situation, apparently, has been exacerbated recently by road-building and logging activities near the tribal lands. The Yomamas are reputed to be cannibals as well as very fierce. Indeed, Professor Chard went there with the express purpose of witnessing an anthropophagic ritual.”
“That’s cannibalism,” Sergeant Lemure put in.
Agent Johnson ignored the sergeant. “And he got eaten instead?” There might have been the slightest touch of ironic humor in his tone.
“Yes.”
“How do you know?”
“We have it on tape.”
“I see. And how does Freddie Bain fit in to all this?”
“Mr. Bain funded most of the expedition.”
The agent nodded. “Well, there’s nothing illegal in that, is there? At least on the surface.” He paused for a moment as though considering. He shifted in his seat. “And your other conjectures?”
I must say I felt a bit self-conscious detailing for this experienced FBI agent what amounted to little more than hunches. I had a sense as I reviewed my suspicions regarding the “love potion” deaths and Korky’s kidnapping that Lieutenant Tracy and Sergeant Lemure wanted me, for professional reasons, to do the speculating for them.
Whatever the case, Agent Johnson listened with unnerving attention. When I finished, he said, “First off, Mr. de Ratour, I would advise you to be very careful in any dealings you have with Freddie Bain.”
“Yeah, he ain’t called ‘the Bear’ for nothing,” Sergeant Lemure put in.
Agent Johnson betrayed only an instant’s irritation with the interruption. “It may help you if I fill you in on some of his background.”
I nodded, waiting.
He glanced down at a notebook. “Freddie Bain was born Manfred Bannerhoff in the city of Omsk in the former Soviet Union. According to Interpol, Israeli police intelligence, and other sources, his father, Gerhardt Bannerhoff, was an officer in the Wehrmacht in World War Two. He was taken prisoner when von Paulus surrendered at Stalingrad. He survived the gulag, stayed in Russia, and married a Russian woman by whom, though well into his forties, he fathered Manfred. When he came of age, Manfred Bannerhoff changed his last name to Bannerovich. Then came glasnost. When Gorbachev opened the Soviet borders during the eighties to Jewish emigration, Bannerovich had himself circumcised, changed his name to Moshe ben Rovich, passed for a Jew, and made his way to Tel Aviv. Apparently a good number of Gentile Russians found themselves to be the sons and daughters of Israel during that time.”
“Yeah, a lot of Aryan-looking guys were walking around with sore dicks right around then,” Sergeant Lemure said, as though this time to deliberately irk the agent.
“History,” I murmured, “is full of ironies.”
Agent Johnson went on. “What Russia also exported to Israel was a criminal culture so cynical and cold-blooded in its operations it makes the Cosa Nostra look like a gentlemen’s club. Anyway, Moshe wanted bigger fish to fry than what was available in Tel Aviv. And besides, the Israelis are not that easy to exploit.”
“Yeah, they’ve all got guns and know to use them,” Sergeant Lemure said.
“So he emigrated to America?” I asked.
“Exactly.”
“How could he do that? I mean if he was a criminal.”
“He’s also a businessman. He had accumulated substantial capital, enough to make himself respectable. His papers were in order. He didn’t have a record. He landed in New York, eventually morphing into Freddie Bain, all-American boy. Along the way, incidentally, he picked up fluent German, Hebrew, French, English, and some Nepali, along with his native Russian, of course.”
“He still has no record, officially,” Lieutenant Tracy put in.
Agent Johnson leaned back as though to give the floor to Sergeant Lemure.
“Right,” the sergeant said, “no priors, but he’s got a rap sheet as long as your arm. Extortion, armed robbery, prostitution, drug dealing, murder. But no convictions and no outstanding warrants.”
“Amazing,” I said.
The sergeant shrugged. “He has good Ivy League lawyers working for him. Anyway, he got in thick with the Russian mob in Brooklyn. Got right in up to his neck. The word on the street is that he crossed Victor ‘Dead Meat’ Karnivorsky on a million-dollar drug deal. Karnivorsky put out a contract on him. He’s called Dead Meat because once he says you’re dead meat, you’re dead meat.”
“But he’s still alive,” I put in, stating the obvious.
“Right. Freddie made a deal from what we’ve heard. He was allowed to live once he paid Karnivorsky twice what he owed him and agreed to disappear.”
“So he came up here.”
“Eventually. First he took off for Nepal for a couple of years. I mean he disappeared.”
Agent
Johnson had the floor again. “Right. Then he landed here and quickly took over the Seaboard mob.”
“Seaboard has a mob?” I asked with some amazement.
“Every place has some kind of mob,” the agent said with weary cynicism. “Anyway, we can’t pin anything on him, but we think he’s mixed up in narcotics, prostitution, extortion, and probably quite a few legitimate businesses. He’s a very shrewd operator. He knows who to pay off and who to scare off. We suspect he may run a major pipeline for drugs moved around here and all up and down the East Coast. We think he uses the spices as a cover, but we haven’t been able to prove anything.”
“But why would he bother with Corny’s expedition?”
“He’s that kind of guy, Mr. de Ratour. He likes getting involved with things, weird things.”
“He certainly has Nazi leanings,” I said.
Agent Johnson nodded. “That’s been noted. But he’s also been a rabid Buddhist, an advocate for alien abductions, and a devotee of astral travel.”
“And now cannibalism,” Sergeant Lemure said.
“One other thing, Mr. de Ratour. Would you mind telling me how you know for sure that your professor is dead?”
“I was sent a tape. It’s quite graphic.”
The agent nodded. “I figured as much. And given that Freddie Bain paid for the expedition, don’t be surprised if he doesn’t come looking for that tape if he gets wind of it.”
“He already has,” I said. I hesitated and then said, “I know him personally. I’ve even been out to his place. It’s in the Hays Mountains, west of here.”
“The Eigermount.” Agent Johnson nodded, very interested in what I had to say. “Could you describe the interior for me?”
I did so in some detail. I also told him about the shady characters and how there seemed a lot of coming and going for an ordinary household. I admitted that my stepdaughter, Diantha Lowe, was out there with him as we spoke.
Agent Johnson nodded as though he already knew. Of a sudden I realized why he was here, why he was telling me all this, and what he wanted. “Is there any way you could get in touch with her?” he asked.
The Love Potion Murders in the Museum of Man Page 21
