The Love Potion Murders in the Museum of Man_ A Norman De Ratour Mystery - Alfred Alcorn [39]
He explained in his calming voice that we didn’t have to. “We can use the same private firm they use when they really need help. It will cost a few bucks. I’ll look into it and get back to you.”
What, I wonder, would I do without that young man.
The fact is, I haven’t really had much to report to anyone in terms of “breaking” news. I did receive a call from Lieutenant Tracy. He said Dr. Cutler had phoned to tell him that the M&M’s ingested by Bert and Betti had been dipped in soy sauce. Soy sauce had also been present in significant amounts in the food eaten by Ossmann and Woodley not long before they tore into each other. “Soy sauce, it seems,” the lieutenant said, “is the vector of choice.”
“An interesting little clue,” I responded, “but for the moment it doesn’t ring any bells.”
As though I didn’t have enough on my hands, I received just after lunch a most noisome call from a gentleman named Custer or Castor representing a company called Urgent Productions. He chewed my ear for a full half hour with one of those awful grasping voices, trying alternately to cajole me and to threaten me to let them use the museum for filming parts of A Taste of the Real, based on the book by the same name. It would drag the museum into the grotesque hoopla surrounding Raul Brauer’s account of the ritual cannibalizing of that young man on Loa Hoa.
Mr. Castor took it for granted, I think, that I would accede with groveling gratitude to the request to “borrow the authenticity” of the museum for a “serious film” that will “explore a profound human experience with an edgy but sensitive treatment.”
When I demurred, implying that the museum’s authenticity derives in part from eschewing participation in such ventures, he said that the studio would be willing to pay a “site fee” in the form of a considerable contribution. He mentioned a generous sum and added that they would give the museum “priceless, worldwide publicity.”
I demurred again. Mr. Castor increased the amount of the “donation.” I said no, thank you. He offered to hire me as a “consulting museum expert” and named a considerable sum.
When I said no again, he said, “Mr. de Ratour, I am a serious producer making you and your museum a serious offer to have you help us make a serious film.”
I told him I was a serious museum director who had just made a serious refusal. I told him I had read Professor Brauer’s book and found it to be full of half-truths, gratuitous sensationalism, and self-promotion. I said I expected the movie to be no less exploitive of an event that involved the tragic death of a hapless young man.
Mr. Castor’s voice took on a tone that I presume he meant to be quietly threatening. “I’m going to give you a couple of days to consider our offer. If the answer is still no, then we are prepared to go over your head big time.”
I told him that, given most of the world was over my head, he was welcome to it.
On the pretext of a managerial inspection, but mostly to satisfy my curiosity about the apparently fabulous Celeste Tangent, I took a stroll through the Genetics Lab in the afternoon, dropping by departments and saying hello. I wasn’t more than twenty minutes on my little excursion when Dr. Penrood approached rather breathlessly, a thin smile more revealing than concealing his annoyance, asking me if he could be of assistance.
By that time I had been into the area where Ms. Tangent works amid banks of complicated machines attached to computers that dice and splice bits of DNA from various sources. We were introduced, and I can still feel the unmistakable frisson of that women’s erotic aura. Worried is right.