Martin McMurray – Inside-Outsider Artist, Mad Genius
The Lineup: Close, Mr. Davie, but we’ve been doing a little “research” of our own and have uncovered quite a bit of dirt on this McMurphy fellow. Our current intelligence assumption is that Mr. McMulbry is actually a high-level actuary for a major American insurance company based either — depending upon who you believe — in Topeka, Kansas, Lincoln, Nebraska, or Forest Hills, New York, and we are following a lead that may place the suspect — correction, “artist” — in Cambria, California at some point between March 19, 1964 and October 29, 1998. The accused, I mean, the “artist” in question, Mr. Mulchin McMomprey, sometime in 1987, “went up river,” as they say in the insurance industry, launching his own Quixotic bid to eliminate risk (his italics) from the planet by embarking on a project he dubbed “Operation Christian Licorice.” I needn’t point out to you, sirs and madams, what a risk-free planet would mean to the insurance industry — let alone what “Christian licorice” would mean for the separation of church and state in this fair country; let’s just say that Mr. MacMumbly’s superiors were none too pleased to learn of his “plan,” and decided that it needed to be terminated. With extreme prejudice. Notice that I used the word “it”, as in the Plan, rather than Mr. McMurvin himself — these titans of industry were very careful not to suggest even a whiff of foul play. Be that as it may, play soon turned foul, and our scapegoat, I mean our hero, Mr. McMoisty, wisely (insanely) decided to “go underground” and pass himself off as a different person in a different occupation. And what occupation does a highly-placed insurance actuary choose if he wants to disappear from the world? Why, he becomes an “outsider artist,” of course. Oh, the things we’ve turned up in Cambria alone would make your skin crawl, ladies and gentlemen, laddies and lovelies. [see Appendix B.3i, "The Incident at Freestyle Flowers by Cindalee," for just one such harrowing account involving a massive order placed by the accused for hydrangeas, lillies, oleander leaves, hemlock, lilac, daisy, carnation, and acacia pollen that was supposed to be collected into giant bales and wrapped in acres of brown "military grade" corduroy fabric to be procured on spec from Betty's Fabrics of Santa Maria, California. Cindalee Freemason, the proprietress of Freestyle Flowers by Cindalee, immediately notified the authorities under the auspices of the USA Patriot Act, and that's how we picked up the putrid scent of Mr. McMurriver's trail, but his ultimate aim in procuring these items remains, at this time, a mystery even to our most senior and world-weary field agents.] Again, I use the term “outsider artist” loosely, in quotes, to demonstrate the indeterminate nature of this crime — correction, “career” — in the life of our protagonist, Mr. McMuffin. For instance, the term “artist” has itself undergone such a radical transformation since the mid-ninth century B.C., that in this day and age just about anyone with a staple gun, a spatula, and a fondness for tarantulas is labeled an “artist” by someone or other. So we’ll leave that alone for now and concentrate on the even more enigmatic word “outsider.” First our meth-addled chief investigators had to ask, “outside of what?”, to which one wag, now facing disciplinary charges, responded, “Outside the law.” He he he. But that’s neither here nor there (in fact, it’s both, but that’s another issue for another memo on another day by another investigator working for another agency representing another multinational conglomerate with another five hundred billion dollars at stake. But there’s one point that we must make clear right now: in the 1958 motion picture The Linup, starring Eli Wallach & Robert Keith (see film still at top of this memo), Mr. Wallach’s character is made to utter at one point, “When you live outside the law you have to eliminate dishonesty.” This surreal interpretation of planetary legalese was later and most cruelly transmogrified into the following by a minor troubadour by the name of Bob Dillon in a tune called “Absolutely, Sweet Meredith”: “But to live outside the law, you must be honest.” We believe it was this latter interpretation of the phrase that the agent in question was referring to in his most ill-conceived outburst, and again, I reiterate, disciplinary action is taking place as we write.). To get down to the brass tacks in this case, by putting Ms. Feemason into a variety of humiliating social circumstances at the suggestion of Scty. Rumpsfeld, we gleaned valuable information that allowed us to track Mr. McMuzzie’s trail to the Hobby Bunker, located at 22 Pleasant Street in Malden, Massachusetts 02148, where he may or may not have been masquerading as the proprietor, Matthew Murphy. [The Hobby Bunker address is an extremely important piece of the puzzle, because it corroborated another snippet of song lyric we found encoded in Cyrillic in one of Mr. McMurrple's old actuarial tables, a song by one Tim Bucklie (who we'd never heard of, but reports indicate he may have been a transsexual whose real name was Phyllis Davenport -- we're checking on this), called Pleasant Street: "All the stony people / Walking 'round in Christian licorice clothes / I can't hesitate / And I can't wait / For Pleasant Street" -- you see, there's the fateful phrase "Christian licorice," the name of Mr. McMulberry's great "Plan" for eliminating all risk on planet earth.] Our agents immediately infiltrated and ransacked the odious Pleasant Street establishment which glorified the basest gaming predilections of adolescent males, but we found not a trace of Mr. Murrian. However, we did find one important clue: stapled (again, how vile) to a bulletin board in the Hobby Bunker was a brownish post card featuring a painted representation of a man in a humiliating position, and at the bottom was the handwritten words “Martin McMurray,” and it advertised on the reverse a mysterious “solo exhibit” by the said Mr. McMurray occurring tonight on the opposite side of the country at a suspicious establishment called “Gallery 16” (our finest cryptanalysts are hashing this one right now in a mobile unite careening up I-5 near the San Joaquin valley town of Tipton, CA) in San Francisco, California. We strongly believe that the viper of our story, Mr. McMustard, may now be running scared and hiding behind the moniker “Martin McMurray,” and we may be able to finally apprehend him this evening. Needless to say, our agents will be out in force, and we’ve invited the public to attend and cheer us on, as we finally settle an old score and force Mr. McMumble to eat a little of his own Christian licorice and see how he likes the taste a life without risk and thus, cover your ears dear squeamish one, without the need for insurance. I hope to see you there in your finest lederhosen, kilts, and cornucopias.
Respectfully,
Agent Sam Samuel Sammy Samantha Samurai Gant
Director of Field Operations
Office of the Directorate of Insurance Liaison Commissariats
East Tumbler
Rockefeller Tar Pits
Bloomville
