Madison’s Accounting

“I’m sorry director, but there was not much oversight during your predecessor’s tenure, and, towards the end, he tended to alienate everyone so much we didn’t even want to ask.”

                  Cherise.  The Museum’s treasurer was only being honest and there was no reason to take it out on her.  Madison could only imagine what a corrupt tyrant Boyce must’ve been at the helm.

                  Be that as it may, the numbers didn’t lie.  The department and museum at large’s finances were in spectacular chaos.  Last year’s auction disaster appeared to be little more than the coup de grace.  Bad investments, several pricey trips to northern India and one to the Baffin Bay, several strange names on payroll that Madison couldn’t even identify and what were surely gratuitous personal expenditures that all added up to one bottom line . . . bankruptcy. . . that is, unless Madison could turn it all around.

                  Six million.  That’s what Madison would have to raise in the next few months if the Museum and his position were going to survive.

                  Of all the garbage and scribbled nonsense Boyce left behind (most of which was entirely useless) one piece of information seemed contrastingly clear.  Perhaps the only consistent message: Boyce was singularly fixated on recovering that box; Boyce at least seemed to think it was the key to solving the museum’s financial problems - - did it really hold that much value?

                  Even thinking of it left Madison uneasy - - the macabre thing had nearly killed him - - was that really the only key to saving the museum and his new career?  Unfortunately, it seemed to be the only thing that came close, and while the auction in a few months would undoubtedly raise some revenue, those pieces would all be brokered. 

                  He needed a valuable piece, one that the museum could keep all the revenue from - - while the museum’s interests had some promising longer term excavation sites, there was nothing else realistically within reach in the next three months that he has a lead on. He had no choice. He must recover the cube.

The Natural History Museum in New York, Late December 1981