He always had trouble closing the specimen cabinet doors at the Metropolitan Museum of Natural History. The problem was that they slid on tracks located several feet above his head, and would only close if a pair of metal pins on the cabinet frame were precisely aligned with a supposedly matching set of grooves on the door itself.
“Can I help you with that, Mac?” came a voice from behind. It was Patricia Wynters, the resident artist in the Department of Vertebrate Zoology.
“Oh, hi, Patricia,” he responded, stepping aside. “I think these pins are bent. This one’s not going to close anytime soon.”
“Let me give it a try,” the tiny brunette responded. He’d been associated with the museum, in one capacity or another, since high school and, as always, Patricia was right there whenever he needed a helping hand. Within seconds she slid the four-foot-wide door into place and locked it. “You and prehistoric horses? That’s a new one. What’s this about?”
“Oh, just a little something I can’t stop thinking about,” Mac said, smiling. Then he glanced down at his watch. The band, he thought. Dammit, I’m late.
Mac and Patricia exited the specimen room together. After a “thanks” and a “see you later” Mac bolted down the fifth-floor hall toward the elevators. After a quick jog across Central Park West, then along a tree-lined trail, he stopped outside the Central Park Menagerie. A jazz band was already playing. The “experiment” was under way.
MacCready bypassed the ticket line and headed straight for the bored-looking security guard standing just past the entrance turnstiles.
“Hey, Carl,” MacCready said.
“What’s cookin’, Mac?” the guard responded, waving him through. “Nice to have you back for a change. Oh, and Yanni’s a real sweetheart.”
“Yeah, thanks. Nice to be stationed in the city,” Mac replied. He motioned in the direction of the music. “Sounds like they started without me. Gotta run.”
“Better you than me,” Carl responded, but by then Mac had already sprinted off, accompanied by the incongruous sound of a jazzy foxtrot.
Mac found a crowd of zoo visitors standing behind the bars of the fenced-off, outdoor portion of the Elephant House. Inside the enclosure stood two elephants, their forelimbs manacled to short sturdy chains attached to pegs that had been cemented into the ground. Standing just out of stomping distance, a mook in a three-piece suit was blowing his trumpet into the trunk of one of the elephants. The animal seemed to be enjoying the attention—gently touching the instrument and rocking back and forth in time with the music.
Looking far less relaxed, the head elephant keeper, who was wearing a long blue jacket and police-style cap, stood close by—alert for any sign of trouble. Completing his ready-for-a-riot attire, the keeper held a cop’s baton—this one outfitted with a nasty-looking metal hook. Behind the trumpeteer, another musician played a stand-up snare drum, while a third wrung notes out of a saxophone. Off to one side, several lab-coat types were taking notes. Mac recognized one of them, a Professor Arthur Carrington from Atlantic Tech. At second glance, he could see that Carrington was actually posing for one of the photographers snapping away at the weirdness.
MacCready could also see Yanni Thorne, standing apart from the freak show. She was comforting the second elephant, which looked like a mountain of wrinkles compared to the svelte young lass being serenaded by the band. Still, the tired-looking creature watched the bizarre proceedings with seeming amusement. Yanni, on the other hand, who was stroking the ancient elephant’s ear, seemed to be sharing Mac’s growing feelings of disgust.
The song ended and one of the scientists hurried over to address the crowd, which was already beginning to wander off. “Ladies and gentlemen, what you have seen here today was a scientific experiment to determine the effect of music on the beasts of the jungle.”
“You call that music?” someone heckled, eliciting a burst of laughter from the crowd.
The man in the lab coat, who was not laughing, cleared his throat and continued, explaining how the response they had just witnessed was proof that these brutes could remember their days performing with circus band accompaniment.
Mac turned away. “Science experiment, my ass,” he muttered to himself. “Definitely a publicity stunt.”
Moving along the fence, he could see Yanni and another keeper leading their enormous wards through the barn-size doors of the indoor enclosure. He checked his watch, grateful that she’d be getting out of work soon.
The jazz band had packed up and left, and Mac and Yanni were sitting on a park bench. She was dressed in street clothes now, tight-waisted slacks and a collared cotton top. Her long dark hair was pulled back in a ponytail. “If you think that was a horror show, Mac, be thankful you missed the Monkey House concert.”
He flipped a peanut toward a gray squirrel, who was watching their conversation with apparent interest. “So music doesn’t soothe the savage beast?”
“The monkeys threw their shit at those guys. Pelted them.”
Mac laughed. “Well, there’s a breakthrough: ‘Science discovers a new species of music critic.’”