The Branch Page 7

  “This is our most popular exhibition room,” said the girl, slowing her pace to allow Moore to study the displays more closely.

  Case after case displayed life-sized figures in varying states of suffering and death. Here was Mussolini hanging by his heels, there was John Kennedy getting the top of his head blown off, over there was Lincoln a microsecond after John Wilkes Booth had fired his pistol.

  “Very realistic,” said Moore, pausing to examine Julius Caesar’s death throes.

  “We’re especially proud of this one,” said the woman, pointing to Marie Antoinette’s head, which dripped a trail of blood and ganglia as it hung, suspended in time and space, midway between the guillotine blade and the small basket that awaited it.

  “Not bad,” commented Moore. “Have you got Braden anywhere?”

  “In the next section,” she replied, leading him through another doorway and stopping before a representation of James Wilcox Braden III, the forty-eighth President of the United States, and the only one ever to commit suicide in office.

  “He doesn’t look quite the way I remember him,” remarked Moore. “Still,” he added, staring at the blood that seemed to be flowing continuously from his wrist into a bowl of warm water, “it’s impressive.”

  They walked on past the other exhibits. De Sade was again trying to find the ultimate breaking point of the human soul and body, Martin Luther King was staring in disbelief as the blood spread over his shirt, Nikolai Badeliovitch still had an uncomprehending expression on his face as a failing life-support system ended the first manned expedition to Venus.

  Another room. Here there were plagues, famine, leprosy. The Andersonville prison. Auschwitz. Vlad the Impaler busy earning his sobriquet.

  Still another room, and they came to the Christians falling beneath the fangs and talons of the lions, the huge dogs ripping children to shreds during the Calcutta riots of 2038, heroes and martyrs and star-crossed lovers—and, in a tall display case that took up fully a quarter of the room, Jesus writhed once again on his cross, his eyes asking in mute agony why God had forsaken him.

  “What do you think of it?” she asked, when they had passed through the last of the displays.

  “I find it fascinating,” he answered. “Whoever created it certainly had a morbid preoccupation with death.” He looked around. “How long has this place been here?”

  “The building itself is almost two hundred years old,” she said. “As for the Museum of Death, it’s been in business just under five years.”

  “Who frequents it?” asked Moore. “I wouldn’t have thought you could draw enough people to warrant the expenditure.”

  “We manage to make ends meet,” she replied. “We draw a goodly number of tourists and sightseers. And of course we’ve also got a pretty steady clientele: historians, artists, costumers, and a fair share of freaks.”

  She led the three men through a small doorway and up a flight of stairs to a row of offices. The first four doors, which seemed to lead to the same oversized chamber, were labeled stockroom.

  “What do you keep in there?” asked Moore.

  “Future exhibits. Would you like to see some of them?”

  “Very much.”

  She unlocked one of the doors, and a rush of cold air hit them. Moore stepped inside and found himself staring at perhaps fifty corpses, all neatly labeled and lying on slabs.

  “We keep them refrigerated until we need them,” explained the woman.

  “Then those weren’t wax or plastic figures I saw.”

  “I should say not.”

  “Where do you get your bodies?” he asked.

  “Originally the morgue supplied all our needs, but most of the specimens were too badly damaged to use. Recently we’ve been obtaining them elsewhere.”

  “For instance?”

  “Trade secret,” she said with a smile, ushering the three men out of the chamber. “My office is the last one on the left.”

  “I take it that you’re something more than just a tour guide,” remarked Moore dryly.

  “Oh, I’m a little of everything,” she replied, walking up to her office and inserting a computerized card in the lock. Moore got a brief glimpse of the gold lettering on the door before he followed her inside: Moira Rallings Taxidermist. The woman turned to Moore. “Have your men inspect the office and then wait outside for us.”

  Moore nodded to Montoya and Visconti, who gave the room a thorough going-over and then reported that it seemed secure. Moore motioned them into the hall and closed the door behind them.

  “Sit down, Mr. Moore,” said Moira Rallings, seating herself on a wooden rocking chair in a darkened corner of the small, cozy office.

  Moore walked past a large bookcase that was filled to overflowing with anatomy and taxidermy texts and an occasional illustrated history book, then sat down on the edge of her cluttered desk.

  “Shall we get down to business?” he asked.

  “That’s what we’re here for.”

  “Fine.” He leaned forward. “Who is Jeremiah the B? What’s his real name?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Where does he live?”

  “He used to have an apartment in Skokie, but it’s empty now.”

  “Why does he want to kill me?”

  She looked surprised. “I didn’t know he wanted to.”

  “Perhaps we’re going about this the wrong way,” suggested Moore. “Suppose you tell me what you do know about him.”

  “I know that I’d like to see him dead fully as much as you would,” said Moira with obvious sincerity. “And I know that you can’t trace him through the normal channels. He has no criminal record, and he once told me that he’d never been fingerprinted or voiceprinted.”

  “How about retina identification?”

  “If you get close enough to him to take it, I don’t imagine you’ll need it,” she replied with a smile. “Besides, they’ve only been doing it for eight or ten years. My guess is that he’s not on record.”

  “You said you wanted to see him dead. Why?”

  “He stole my life savings.”

  “How?”

  She sighed deeply. “I’d better start at the beginning. One day, about three months ago, I saw him picking pockets right here in the museum and threatened to report him. He offered to split the money with me if I kept quiet about it.”

  “Did you?”

  “I kept quiet,” said Moira, “but I didn’t take any of the money. He moved in with me a couple of days later.”

  “Into your apartment, not his?” asked Moore.

  “That’s right.”

  “Then for all you know, the Skokie address might not exist at all.”

  “It exists,” she replied bitterly. “I went there five weeks later, right after he cleared out with my savings and my jewelry.”

  “I assume you didn’t find him?”

  She shook her head.

  “How was the apartment registered?”

  “In the name of Joseph L. Smith.”

  “Joe Smith!” said Moore incredulously. “How can an amateur like that still be on the loose? Joe Smith, for Christ’s sake!” He shook his head in disbelief. “Well, let’s get on with it. What did you learn about him while you were living with him?”

  “He was born in Tel Aviv.”

  “I thought he was an American citizen,” interrupted Moore.

  “He is. His mother was an American archaeologist. They stayed in Israel until he was ten or eleven, then went to Egypt.”

  “Is she still alive?”

  “No. Both of his parents died in an accident when he was fourteen, and he was sent back to the States to live with an aunt. I don’t know her name. He left her house after a couple of months and has been on his own ever since.”

  “Where?”

  “Let me think for a minute,” she said, lowering her head. Finally she looked up at him. “Manhattan, the Denver complex, Seattle, and then here. He used to work in a library, but I don’t
know which city it was in. I got the impression that his duties were pretty menial.”

  “How long has he been in Chicago?”

  “A little over a year,” replied Moira.

  “What did he do before he latched onto you?” persisted Moore.

  “Begged, hustled, robbed. A little of everything—except work.”

  “Where is he likely to hang out?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “What are his interests?”

  “He hasn’t any,” said Moira. “He knows a lot about archaeology, but that’s probably just from his upbringing. He once told me that he speaks Hebrew and Arabic as fluently as English, but he may have been lying.” She smiled ruefully. “He lies a lot.”

  “Has he got any aliases?”

  “I only know of one—Manny the B. But I got the feeling that he had a lot of others.”

  “Does he gamble?”

  She shook her head. “He didn’t during the time I knew him. I gather he once lost his bankroll on a fight that he thought was fixed, and he hasn’t made a bet since.”

  “How big a bankroll?” Moore asked sharply.

  “I don’t know, but from the way he talked about it, it must have been pretty substantial.”

  “What fight?”

  “I don’t know anything about boxing. He mentioned the names of the fighters as if everyone should know them, though. It would have been, oh, nine or ten months ago.”

  “That would probably have been the Tchana-Makki heavyweight title fight,” said Moore. “We’ll be able to check with our bookmaking agencies, and see if we can get a lead from them. As for his parents, we’ll just have to do it the hard way and check out every American archaeologist who was in Israel twenty years ago and died in Egypt during the past decade.”

  “Can an organization like yours do something like that?” she asked curiously.

  “You’d be surprised what we can do when we set our minds to it,” he replied with a grim smile. “Or, rather, when I set my mind to it.” He paused. “Do you know if he’s ever been married?”

  “He never mentioned it,” she said with a shrug.

  “Any kids, legitimate or otherwise?”

  “None that I know of.”

  Moore stared at her for a long minute. “You seem like a reasonably bright, reasonably attractive, reasonably selective woman,” he said at last. “Why the hell did you ever shack up with a dumb hustler like Jeremiah?”

  “I really don’t know,” she said uncomfortably. “It just happened.”

  “He must be an attractive man.”

  “Not especially,” said Moira, her expression puzzled. “That’s the funny part of it. He’s not even very good in bed. Looking back on it, I’m even more surprised at myself than you are.”

  Moore stood up, stretched, and walked to a window that overlooked the darkened suburb. “From what you know of him, why do you think he might want to kill me?”

  “I don’t think he wants to,” she replied thoughtfully. “If he did, you’d be dead by now.”

  “Who are you kidding?” said Moore with a contemptuous laugh. “He couldn’t shoot a fish in a barrel without blowing off half his foot.”

  “He’s a very unusual man,” said Moira. “I don’t know why or how, but he always seems to get his way. Call it luck if you want, but if he truly tried to kill you I think he’d succeed.”

  “I don’t believe in luck,” said Moore, trying not to think of the episode in the Plaza Gomorrah.

  “That’s up to you,” she said. “But whether it’s luck or something else, things have a way of working out for him.”

  “Then why is he still a small-timer?” asked Moore.

  “I don’t know.”

  “What are his ambitions? What is he after?”

  “I don’t think even Jeremiah could answer that. He just seems to live from one minute to the next. I’ve never seen him worried or upset. If he needed money, he just went out and got it.”

  “Why did he need money?” asked Moore quickly. “Was he feeding some kind of habit?”

  “I know he used to go to Karl Russo’s place down in Darktown, but I wouldn’t say that he was addicted to anything.”

  “Then you think if I checked out all the local pushers I’d come up empty?”

  She paused to consider the question. “Probably,” she said at last.

  “If you’re right about his not wanting to kill me, just what does he want?”

  “Knowing the way his mind works, I’d say he’s trying to impress you enough so that you’ll give him a top job in your organization.”

  “Do you really believe that?” asked Moore skeptically.

  “It’s an educated guess, nothing more,” said Moira.

  “How the hell did they ever let him out of kindergarten?” said Moore, shaking his head in amazement. He walked back to the desk. “If I told you he was wounded, where do you think he’d go to get patched up?”

  “I don’t know that he’d bother,” replied Moira. “If he was healthy enough to elude whoever shot him, he’s probably healthy enough not to risk visiting a doctor.”

  “Has he got any friends that you know about?”

  She shook her head.

  “Does the name Krebbs mean anything to you—an old man missing an eye and a couple of fingers?”

  “No.”

  “How about Maria Delamond?”

  “No.”

  “Lisa Walpole?”

  “I’ve never heard of any of them.”

  “From what you know of Jeremiah, would you say that he’s capable of slitting an old woman’s throat?”

  She considered the question for a minute. “I don’t know if he’d do it himself, but he certainly wouldn’t have any moral compunctions about getting someone to do it for him.”

  “You know,” said Moore, “somehow I don’t feel I’m getting my money’s worth from you.”

  “You know more about Jeremiah now than you did twenty minutes ago,” replied Moira. “And if you want him as badly as I think you do, you’ve gotten your money’s worth and then some. After all, Solomon Moody Moore isn’t exactly hurting for money.”

  “True,” agreed Moore. “However, I figure you’ve only given me a thousand dollars’ worth. Now you’re going to earn the other fifty-nine.”

  She eyed him suspiciously. “How?”

  “You’re coming to work for me.”

  “The hell I am!”

  “Let me make my offer before you refuse it,” said Moore. “I’ll pay you the sixty thousand now, and two thousand a day until I catch him.”

  “What do I have to do for it?”

  “Just hang around and look pretty.”

  “As a decoy?” She laughed sarcastically. “Do you really think Jeremiah will swoop down and try to rescue me from your dastardly clutches?”

  “Not at all,” replied Moore. “I very much doubt that Jeremiah gives a tinker’s damn whether you live or die. But on the other hand, I think he’ll care quite a lot about what you may have to say to me.”

  “But I’ve told you everything I know about him.”

  “Perhaps,” said Moore, “though we have a painless psychoprobing device at my office that will make sure of it. However, what you know and what Jeremiah thinks you may know are two different things.”

  “It won’t work,” said Moira adamantly.

  “If it doesn’t, you’ve got a guaranteed income for the rest of your life.”

  “All I would have to do is be seen in public with you?” she asked suspiciously.

  “That’s right.”

  “I won’t have to sleep with you?”

  “Absolutely not,” Moore assured her. “I never mix pleasure and business. You’ll be provided with your own private quarters in my office building.”

  “That’s a lot of money,” she said thoughtfully. “And I want to see Jeremiah dead as much as you do. But I’d have to leave the museum and give up my work until he was caught, wouldn’t I?”


  “Yes, you would.”

  “Couldn’t I spend a few hours a day here?”

  He shook his head. “For two thousand dollars a day, you’ll stay where I want you to stay.”

  “There’s a special exhibit I’ve been working on for the past two years,” said Moira. “You’d have to let me take it along so I can continue working on it.”

  “Which one was it?” asked Moore. “The Crucifixion?”

  “It’s not on public display. Would you like to see it?”

  Moore shrugged a semi-assent, and she led him out of the office.

  Montoya and Visconti fell into step behind them as they walked down the corridor to a large metal door.

  “Just you,” she said, and Moore nodded to his men, who returned to their places outside Moira’s office.

  She unlocked the door, then pushed it open and stepped into the darkened room. Moore followed her, and she immediately closed the door behind them.

  “Are you ready?” she whispered.

  “I’m ready,” he replied in bored tones.

  She switched on the colored overhead lights, and there, mounted on various platforms and podiums, were forty lifelike corpses. Grouped in twos, threes, and fours, nude or clad in kink, all were frozen into positions of almost unbearable ecstasy. Fellatio, cunnilingus, homosexuality, lesbianism, sodomy, bondage, flagellation, all were meticulously displayed, as were some aspects of the sex act that made even the raunchier performances at the Thrill Show look mundane by comparison.

  “Do you like it?” asked Moira at last, her face suddenly alive with excitement.

  “It’s … ah … impressive,” said Moore, mildly surprised that he could still feel shocked about anything sexual, and idly wondering what kind of mind could conceive and create such a display.

  “It’s my own project,” she said proudly. “No one else has been allowed to work on it, and only a handful of people have even seen it.” She lovingly stroked a nude male of Homeric proportions. “It’s all mine, and I won’t leave without it.”

  “You could only work on it when I didn’t need you,” said Moore.

  She lowered her head in thought for a long moment. “I don’t think I’m interested,” she said at last. “My work is more important to me than your money.”

  “Then let me offer one final inducement,” said Moore, who had been observing her carefully. “After I’m through with Jeremiah, you can have what’s left of him for your project.”