Chapter 19

After an hour in the library, Bruno’s head felt stuffed with useless information. The more he read, the more convinced he became that the Quaker connection at Penn was confined to sports. A dead end.

Bruno squinted in the bright sunlight. The courtyard was littered with relics from the past: a brushed aluminum peace sign, 15 feet in diameter; a similarly oversized replica of a broken button; and a bright red and turquoise sculpture of the letters “L,” “O,” “V” and “E” stacked up like building blocks. Calculated silliness, which everyone seemed to ignore.

He watched the students loafing on the green. Not a care in the world. He felt depressed. There’s no worse feeling than a psychic whose intuition isn’t working. He pulled out his map and headed for the athletic buildings. The old basketball palace, The Palestra, maybe it would hold some clue.

As he left the green, the people assumed a more sober, businesslike manner. Crossing 34^th Street, he saw the biotech building, an ultramodern facility named after one of the pharmaceutical giants. Interesting coincidence? He wondered if Dr. Jurevicius or Dr. Fischer might have some connection here?

The Palestra struck out, as did Franklin Field. The fighting Quakers were nothing after all.

Crossing South Street, he spotted a building that looked like a temple with a rectangular fountain in front. Gazing at the murky water, Bruno realized it’d be good to make a pit stop before getting on the train back to Jersey.

He entered the building and found himself facing a great hall with gigantic statues of Ramses II. He couldn’t help but admire the scale and majesty of the art—in spite of its despicable origin. Ramses was the pharaoh who enslaved the Jews. He enslaved his own people too. Well, God punished him, didn’t he? Bruno thought back to countless Seders and tried to remember the list of plagues. What were they? Locusts. Death of the firstborn. Boils. Night. That was four. Murrain—he only remembered that one because he could never remember what it was. Five to go. I Love Lucy reruns. Beef liver. Wife shopping at Bloomingdale’s when there’s a big sale at Macy’s. Pants too tight. And of course, mother-in-law moves in—permanently.

Bruno approached Ramses defiantly. “Mazel tov, alter kocker—you old fart—you’re still famous, but so what? You should’ve stayed in the smaller house, the one with all the stairs and no extra bedroom!”

Then he wandered into the next gallery, feeling rather pleased with himself. The feeling didn’t last long. Thinking of mothers-in-law reminded him that he still needed to talk with his niece, Mimi. He wanted to see her, flesh and blood—and it could provide important leads. But her parents continued to put off Chief Black. Finding the victim had been traumatic enough. They couldn’t expose Mimi to another interview. And that shmuck, Bill McRae, her father was carrying on about his character. Where did he get off feeling so superior? Who gave him the right to judge?

Bruno’s indignation led to self-righteousness. Self-righteousness lapsed into sentimentality. And, inevitably, sentimentality devolved into self-pity: Why had this psychic stuff happened to him? He’d give anything to be free of it. It separated him from other people. His wife. His job. Look at him. Alone. Friendless. Trapped in a world that no one else could fathom or share.

Fortunately, this reverie was interrupted by a small, roundish figure in a uniform, with a walkie-talkie parroting amplified static from his belt.

“Huh?” said Bruno, not understanding what the man was saying to him.

“I get lonely here at night sometimes,” the guard drawled in an accent that was a dead ringer for Peter Lorre’s. “But I never get scared.”

“Scared. Why should you get scared?” asked Bruno. He tried keeping his cheeks sucked in while he spoke to see if he could reproduce the guard’s creepy manner of speaking. But he quickly abandoned the attempt. One Peter Lorre was enough.

The guard gestured toward the display cases. Bruno’s self-absorption had been so complete, he hadn’t noticed they were in the Gallery of Mummies. “A virtual necropolis,” panted the guard, reading the sign on the wall. No less than half a dozen mummies, in various stages—wrapped, partially wrapped, unwrapped—were on display. Human mummies. Mummified animals. There were also coffins, canopic jars and other paraphernalia of the mummifier’s art.

“Would you like me to show you around?” Peter Lorre leered. “I’ve heard the tour so many times, I can easily give it myself.”

Before Bruno could protest, the guard launched into his explanation. “It takes 70 days to make a mummy. First you remove the internal organs. Except the heart,” he gestured at Bruno’s chest, “… and the brain.” He touched Bruno’s forehead. “Then you put the body in a bed of natron, which is a kind of salt that’s only found in Egypt. Finally, you anoint the body with oil and spices.”

“Sounds like making lox,” Bruno joked. But the guard ignored him.

“The priests would pray and place golden amulets on the body. Then they’d begin wrapping the mummy in linen bandages.”

“Shmattes,” interrupted Bruno. “I’m expert in ancient Semitic languages and the technical term is shmatte.”

Peter Lorre ignored him. “When that was done, they’d place him, or her, in a series of coffins. Why did they do all of this? Because the ancient Egyptians believed that a person was made up of four different elements. Each of these needed a place to reside after death. The Akh goes up to live with the gods. The Ka is the person’s vital energy; that’s what all this stuff is for, because the Ka needs to keep eating and drinking in the afterlife.” Moving close to Bruno’s face, Peter Lorre opened his eyes as wide as they could go. “I guess that’s the scary part.” He giggled. “Running into a hungry Ka at night. The Ba is a human-headed bird that goes flying around. And the Ren, of course, is the name that needs to be preserved and repeated.”

Bruno went white. Hearing about the hungry Ka and the flying Ba had struck him with a new idea. “The name needs to be preserved and repeated.” He smacked his fist into his open palm. “Of course. I’m such a shmegegge.”

He ran out with the guard following him, yelling, “Hey wait, you haven’t seen the mistake carved into the Pharaoh’s throne. It’s the world’s oldest typo.”

Bruno ran all the way to the station. He caught the train back to Jersey, just as the sun’s rays turned bright orange in the polluted sky.