Page 24 of The Children of Eve (Charlie Parker #22)

CHAPTER XXIV

The National Museum of the American Indian in New York is situated in the Battery and occupies part of the Alexander Hamilton U.S. Custom House, a stunning Beaux-Arts building with a footprint covering three city blocks. While the white-marbled rotunda, with its oval skylight and muraled walls, was the most spectacular of the museum’s rooms, the most atmospheric and intimate, at least in Madeline Rainbird’s view, was the Collector’s Office, all Tiffany oak panels, subdued lighting, and depictions of seaports.

Rainbird had been with the museum for ten years, starting out as an intern in Collections Care before becoming a member of the conservation team, specializing in pesticides and pest management. This meant ensuring that the museum’s relics remained safe from insects or rodents and applying chemical analysis to establish what pesticides might have been utilized in the past. Until 1972 and the passage of the Federal Environmental Pesticide Control Act, the use of pesticides was unregulated, which meant that even culturally and historically valuable items were often exposed to potentially harmful agents. The fact that Madeline had recourse to the words insecticide, fungicide , and indeed rodenticide in her daily life went some way, she felt, toward explaining why she continued to struggle on the dating front.

Some pesticides were active for only a short time, but others— organophosphates and organochlorides, for example—could retain their toxicity for years. This presented a particular problem when it came to the repatriation of holdings to tribal communities, because it would obviously be unwise to hand back funerary objects or human remains laden with mercury or arsenic. But the museum couldn’t conduct tests without permission from tribal stakeholders, some of whom took a dim view of any further perceived assaults on the dignity of their ancestral dead. One of Madeline’s roles was to explain why such tests might be in everyone’s best interest and reassure tribal elders that the examinations would be conducted with the maximum respect and the minimum of intrusion, since Madeline herself would be responsible for them. Madeline was a member of the Passamaquoddy tribe, and had been born just outside the Sipayik reservation in Washington County, Maine, which meant that those with whom she was dealing could be sure she wasn’t paying lip service to their concerns. To further gild her credentials, she had accrued additional expertise in the care and preservation of human remains—another reason, perhaps, why she could sleep on either side of her bed most nights—which meant she was unlikely to be short of work in her lifetime, not when at least one North American university still held the bodies of up to seven thousand Native Americans in its collection. Making certain such relics were restored to their communities was high on the agenda of many at the museum, Rainbird included.

But all the museum’s efforts came with a cost attached, so it was constantly in search of funds to support its activities. It wasn’t as though it could rely on the resources of the Native American community, which had the highest poverty rate of any minority group in the country. More Native Americans might have been completing high school and going on to college than ever before, but many were also struggling to find jobs, since the kind of employment opportunities on which they used to rely—construction and manufacturing—continued to contract. As for casinos, if Madeline had a dollar for every time someone had suggested opening a gambling den as a way out of poverty for Native Americans, she could have bought herself better shoes and used them to kick the person in question hard in the ass.

So when a donor came along, especially one offering money without too many onerous conditions, it was cause for celebration, which was why Madeline, along with about a dozen of her co-workers, was currently standing in the Collector’s Office, a glass of sparkling wine in one hand and a napkin in the other, while trying to eat a particularly awkward canapé. The donor being acknowledged was a widow named Elle Louise Douglas, whose late and by all accounts unlamented spouse, an investment banker named Darryl Douglas IV, was a direct descendant of one of the Eel River Rangers. The Rangers were a group of settlers and gunmen led by Walter Jarboe who, over six months between 1859 and 1860, killed almost three hundred Yuki braves, and perhaps at least as many Yuki women and children, in an attempt to annihilate the native population of Round Valley in Mendocino, California, thus facilitating further white settlement. The killers had then billed the state for their services.

Darryl Douglas IV—in common, presumably, with Darryls I, II, and III—was proud of his heritage and regarded the Rangers as fearless protectors of the men and women who had built this great nation. The Yuki, according to Douglas family lore, were cattle thieves and murderers who had provoked the settlers into acting against them. As for the fatalities, the warriors had died in battle, which was how they would have wanted to go, while the Rangers sustained only a handful of casualties in the engagements, suggesting that “massacre” could more aptly have been superseded for “battle.” Per the Douglas version of history, the numbers of women and children killed in the conflict had been greatly exaggerated for political ends, besmirching the courage of their forefather and his fellow fine Americans. Quietly, Madeline Rainbird hoped that the spirits of Darryl Douglas IV and his predecessors were wandering the afterlife eyeless, eternally lost and afraid.

It was small consolation that Darryl Douglas IV felt the same way about Blacks, Jews, Latinos, and Asians as he did about Native Americans, being a hardened proselytizer for the merits and accomplishments of the white race. He was also, as it emerged after his sudden death on a golf course at the age of sixty-eight, a cocksman of the highest order, incapable of passing a crack in a wall, or possibly even a hole on a golfing green, without wishing to stick his dick in it. Admittedly, his much younger wife had suspected him of a certain level of infidelity, accepting it as part of their marital arrangement, but the scale of it revealed after his death, including payoffs for three abortions, appalled even her. There was also the humiliation of learning that mutual friends had been aware of Darryl IV’s behavior, so she felt as though intimates had been laughing and whispering behind her back for two decades.

Consequently, the widow Douglas set out to use some of her husband’s estate in ways calculated to kill him were he not already dead, including a substantial donation to the National Museum of the American Indian, her only stipulation being that the donor plaque should acknowledge payment being made in recompense for the actions of the Douglas family against the Yuki. This was why she and her three children were now being honored with a small reception in the Collector’s Office. They had brought with them a man named Mark Triton, a dealer in Native art and antiquities, both North and South American, whom the Douglas woman had met at a charity event and who had suggested to her that a contribution to the museum might be an appropriate form of atonement for the Douglas family’s historical failings.

While he had an interest in contemporary art, Triton principally sold Native American ceremonial pipes, weapons, totems, carvings, beadwork, parfleches, clothing, and pottery, generally higher-end material from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. He maintained lines of contact with the museum, and was outwardly scrupulous about ensuring that antiquities of unusual importance or sensitivity found their way back to their rightful tribal owners, sometimes taking a financial hit along the way. But despite Triton’s reputation for probity, Madeline still had reservations (and how many times had she heard that particular pun thrown back at her?) about his dealings because fetishes, totems, and similar objects had particular spiritual and hereditary associations for their tribal claimants that he could not possibly share, no matter how many Native Americans he had working for him or how many good causes he supported.

Triton had also clashed with museum curators and tribal representatives over issues of provenance, because it wasn’t always possible to establish how a seller might have come by an item, especially if someone claimed to have discovered it in Grandpa’s attic after the old coot bought the farm. Triton might have been prepared to roll over in exceptional circumstances, but he remained a businessman who reserved the right to buy and sell as he saw fit and wasn’t about to run every acquisition past a committee. Neither was Madeline so naive as to believe that Triton didn’t discreetly pick up and dispose of certain collectibles without ever letting it be known they’d passed through his hands, cutting lucrative deals with connoisseurs who preferred not to have their collections come to the attention of tribal representatives or the authorities. Thanks to his network, Triton also acted as an agent and intermediary, bringing buyers and sellers together and taking a cut for his efforts, which made it even less probable that he would always raise moral objections to an exchange. Finally, he was reputed to have a sideline in pre-Hispanic antiquities, and more than once the Mexican and Peruvian authorities had failed to halt auctions in the United States and Europe in which Triton had an interest, silent or otherwise. Mark Triton might have been honest by the standards of many in art and antiques, but that was a low bar.

In recent years, Triton had commenced stepping back from his business concerns, not only to write a long-mooted book on Native American tribal art but also to enjoy his own collection, which was reputed to be modest in size but very carefully curated and undoubtedly valuable. This reception represented Madeline’s first opportunity in years to question him personally about his plans for Triton Rarities, as she had last been in his company before the COVID pandemic. He hadn’t changed much in the interim, aided by having gone bald in his early thirties and keeping his head shaved for the three decades plus change that followed—like a man, someone once quietly joked, who feared being scalped and had decided to make the effort as worthless as possible. Triton was very bronzed, very slim, and eschewed the Western dress styles favored by some in his trade, preferring casual suits and white shirts worn without a tie. The shirts matched the brilliance of his dentition, so that shirt and teeth might have been composed of a common material.

Madeline finished the canapé without leaving too many crumbs on her clothes and placed the napkin and glass on one of the tall tables scattered around the room. A series of brief speeches commenced, although the widow Douglas was not among the speakers, which was for the best as she had already consumed most of a bottle of Schramsberg Blanc de Blancs and wasn’t letting any food spoil her appetite. Offered the floor, she might have felt compelled, not for the first time, to unburden herself publicly about her late husband, and nobody liked a messy widow.

The plaque honoring the donation was displayed on a small wooden stand, alongside a gift from the museum to the donor: an early twentieth-century beaver totem, beautifully painted. Beaver totems were associated with avenging wrongs, so it was a suitable offering. The widow volubly expressed her approval of the totem as it was presented, helped by a chorus of quietly impressed noises from Triton, but she greeted the sight of the plaque only with a grimace of satisfaction. Her children— two boys and a girl, all in their mid- to late teens—looked variously bored and bewildered. Madeline wondered if they were ignorant of the resentments underpinning the endowment. Probably not, she decided. Even allowing for the general self-absorption of teenagers, they couldn’t have been unmindful of the imperfections in their parents’ marriage. Madeline hoped the widow Douglas had set aside some of her bequest for family therapy.

Madeline disengaged herself from a quartet of her colleagues and headed in Triton’s direction. He saw her approaching and excused himself from the widow’s company. He and Madeline might have had their differences over the years, but he respected her expertise and regularly sought her advice and assistance. She never refused him, and any help she gave was always reciprocated with a donation to the museum from Triton Rarities. It was also a means of keeping open communication channels and facilitating dialogue over problematic sales or acquisitions.

“It’s been too long,” said Triton. He opened his arms but did not immediately move to embrace her. “Are we doing this again? I’m never sure. If it helps, I’ve had all my shots.”

They hugged. Madeline had to admit that he remained a striking man; not exactly handsome, but singular in looks and with charm to burn. Thankfully, she was immune to his more carnal aspects, which he wasn’t above exploiting. Three failed marriages and a string of conquests to his name indicated that Mark Triton had more in common with Darryl Douglas IV than his widow might have cared to hear. Triton’s current squeeze, Tanya Hook, a buyer for his company, was a quarter century his junior but could have pleaded another five years in the right light. Madeline watched her discreetly dissuade one of the waitstaff from refilling the widow Douglas’s glass while the widow’s older son took less discreet glances at Tanya’s breasts.

“I tried contacting you a month or so ago,” said Madeline to Triton, “but your secretary said you were on a buying trip. Anywhere interesting?”

The barest flicker, but enough of a tell for her to note it.

“You know how it is,” Triton replied. “Always looking and rarely finding. I don’t recall seeing a message.”

“I didn’t leave one. It was a curiosity call more than anything else. I hear that your plans for divesting yourself of Triton Rarities have accelerated. I was wondering what replacement management structures you might be considering.”

“It’s not just Triton Rarities of which I’ll be divesting myself, though I might hold on to one or two galleries. Will you miss me that much?”

“Better the devil you know.”

Triton sipped his soda water. Madeline had never seen him consume alcohol.

“Are you familiar with King Lear ?”

“I scanned the CliffsNotes in high school,” said Madeline, “so let’s go with yes.”

“When I was taught the play in college, we were told that Lear’s error lay in challenging his three daughters to say which of them loved him more—an old man’s vanity, in other words. But I learned later that a contemporary audience would have blamed him for dividing his kingdom, as a kingdom divided cannot abide. I want to reward the most loyal and long-serving of my staff with a portion of Triton Rarities. I also want to guarantee its continuance—and cosset myself with a comfortable old age—by selling a significant percentage to an outside investor.”

“Have you had expressions of interest?”

“Any number of them. Despite your periodic interventions, I’ve managed to build a solid business, and therefore a saleable one, as long as I agree to remain in an advisory capacity for a year after purchase. The issue going forward is how to continue to combine moral and financial obligations in a way that doesn’t threaten to fracture the company.”

He swirled his soda. Madeline waited. She could see that he had more to say.

“You and I get along, don’t we?” he asked.

“We’ve had our ups and downs, and I feel you’ve occasionally behaved badly. But for the most part, yes, we’ve maintained a civil, even friendly, relationship.”

“Beneficial?”

“I suppose,” said Madeline, “if more for you than for us.”

“I won’t insult you by asking you to keep it between ourselves, but perhaps, down the line, I might run some names by you—from both inside and outside Triton Rarities.”

“To what end?”

“To minimize the risk of friction between this museum and the company that will continue to bear my name—and, by extension, to be sure that the Native American community has the least possible cause for unhappiness with us. I don’t want my legacy, however modest, to be tarnished by acrimony or bad publicity. In fact, I even considered trying to poach you from the museum by offering you the position of CEO.”

Madeline was surprised. She had heard no whispers of this.

“Why didn’t you?”

“Because I knew you’d decline.”

Yet there was to his words an undercurrent that implied otherwise.

“A girl likes to be asked. It’s flattering.”

“The chance hasn’t entirely passed. Any new owner would be delighted to have you on board. Would you be open to joining?”

Madeline gave it a couple of heartbeats before replying.

“No, but thank you for the opportunity to refuse.”

“What if I could assure you that you’d be of greater value Triton Rarities?”

“I told you: I don’t want to be a CEO.”

“What about being a well-paid private conservator?”

“Of?”

“The priceless.”

“I’m too much of a realist to accept that term,” said Madeline. “Everything has a price.”

“Even you?”

“Even me.”

Intentionally or not, Madeline had stepped into a negotiation. What surprised her was that she did not immediately retreat from it; Triton spotted it also. A decade was a long time to spend in one institution, the prospects for advancement were few, and Madeline was still young. She had, on occasion, struggled to disguise her impatience with bureaucracy, parsimony—enforced or elective—and the tenacity with which the old clung to their positions. Triton was known to pay well and trust his employees.

But more than that, Rainbird’s home county of Washington suffered from the highest poverty rate in the state of Maine, and a declining population. Its towns were dying. Worse, the four Wabanaki nations of Maine—Maliseet, Mi’kmaq, Penobscot, and Rainbird’s own Passamaquoddy people—suffered a disadvantage that tribes in the other Lower 48 states did not: they lacked genuine tribal self-government. Under the Maine Indian Claims Settlement Act of 1980, or MICSA, the state of Maine was empowered to block nearly all federal Native American self-determination policy unless Congress authorized a federal override, and that had occurred only once. Even the simple act of digging a well on Passamaquoddy land required permission from the state. Millions of dollars in federal funds had been denied the Wabanaki, causing tribal development in Maine to stagnate. If Triton could be persuaded to invest in Washington County, and select Machias or Calais as the site of a permanent museum home for his collection, it might be the harbinger of real, fundamental change, especially if Rainbird had access to businessmen, lawmakers, funding…

“I understand that you’ve been approached about a pair of mantas seized at LAX a couple of days ago,” he said.

“You’re well-informed.”

“They don’t sell mantas at Target. Interested parties comprise a select constituency.”

“We’ve been asked to consult with the Cotsen on their preservation,” said Madeline. “The smuggler claimed not to know the source of the mantas or how they might have been stored before he bought them. They’ll need to be checked for pests, damage, decay—”

“And then they’ll be returned, I presume?”

“You know they will. The Peruvians will have the main claim, and the Mexicans won’t object because they’ll be offered the Moche pieces sharing baggage space with the mantas. It’s a good deal all around, except for the smuggler and the ultimate buyer. Our guess is that the mantas were acquired to order. Someone will be out of pocket.”

“But justice will have been served,” said Triton.

“You don’t sound convinced.”

“Those mantas may never see daylight again. The Moche pottery will gather dust in a Mexican cellar. If sold, at least a buyer might have derived a degree of pleasure from them.”

“We take a very different view of these matters, you and I,” said Madeline.

“Yes, on occasion. At other times, we think alike.” Triton tapped his water glass, making it chime. “We should talk again. I have a further proposition for you, and it may be—no, it is—a matter of some urgency.”

“Involving?”

“Saving the invaluable,” Triton replied. “Preserving the unique. It would be a private contract, but I promise you’d have no regrets about accepting it.”

“You seem very confident of that.”

“I am. Without your help, something ancient and precious might vanish forever.”

Over his shoulder, Madeline saw the widow Douglas’s eyes flit over various faces and backs before alighting, somewhat unsteadily, on Triton. One of her children received a tap on the shoulder and a whispered instruction that sent him toward them.

“I think you’re about to be summoned back to the widow’s side,” said Madeline, but she no longer had Triton’s attention. She thought she’d heard the beep of an incoming SMS in the form of the old Nokia Morse code alert, but Triton’s Samsung Galaxy smartphone was on the table beside him, and its screen remained dark.

“Is that your—?” she began, but Triton was already walking away from her, heading for the door, his Samsung now in one hand, the other reaching for something in the inside pocket of his jacket.

“Excuse me,” he said. “I’ll just be a moment.”

But he wasn’t only a moment. Minutes elapsed: five, then ten, and still without any sign of his return. Madeline was about to check that he was okay when Tanya Hook appeared by her side.

“What’s up?” Madeline asked.

“I don’t know,” she said. “Mark asked me to make his apologies and take care of Mrs. Douglas and her kids. He said he’d be in touch later.”

“Is he feeling ill?”

“A business problem. I know he respects you a lot. You’re friends, right?”

“We’re friendly, which isn’t quite the same thing.”

“It’ll do for now,” said Hook. “Mark and I were supposed to be having lunch with the Douglases at Boucherie,” she said. “I’m not sure I can deal with them alone. One of her sons keeps undressing me with his eyes. I swear, he’s halfway to being a sex criminal.”

“If you want support, I can join you. I’m used to flying the museum’s flag at social events.”

“You’d do that?”

“We’ve just received a generous donation, in part through the efforts of Triton Rarities. It seems like a small favor to do in return. Plus, I hear Boucherie is great.”

And , Madeline thought, who knows what I might learn?

“Then consider it done,” said Tanya, obviously relieved not to be left to handle the vagaries of the Douglas clan alone. “We’ll be leaving shortly. Our reservation is at two-thirty.”

“I just need to get some stuff from my desk. I’ll meet you outside.”

Hook returned to her post by the widow Douglas’s side as Madeline slipped away. Had Madeline’s back not been turned, she might have seen Tanya Hook smile.