Back to Blood: A Novel

by Tom Wolfe

  “—and he has a secret studio in an old-age condominium in Hallandale, which is north of nowhere,” Cutler was saying, “and you can use that material, so long as (a) this guy was aware you were taping it, and (b) you don’t write it so that it looks like your sole purpose in going to all this trouble has been to expose Korolyov as a fraud.” He looked at John Smith and said, “I understand you’ve tried to get in touch with Korolyov, John.”

  ::::::“John” he calls him, and I know he’s never laid eyes on him before. But he sees him for what he is—a kid! A kid playing with fire! Just a kid!::::::

  “Yes, sir,” said John Smith. “I’ve left—”

  He broke it off because a cell phone began ringing somewhere in his clothes. He dug it out of the inside jacket pocket and looked at the caller ID. Before answering he bolted upright and—looked at Counselor Cutler and said, “I’m sorry… sir… but I have to take this.” He went to a corner of the office and nestled his face so closely into it that one cheek was mashed against the interior wall and the other against the exterior glass wall, even with the BlackBerry squeezed in between.

  The first thing they heard after “Hello” was John Smith saying, “Jesus!” in something close to a moan, a very much un–John Smithly “Jesus” and even more un–John Smithly moan. Then he went, “Oooooouh!” as if he had just been punched in the pit of his stomach. Nobody could imagine such sounds coming out of John Smith’s body. He stayed in the corner for what seemed like forever but was more likely twenty or thirty seconds. Then in a soft, polite tone, he said, “Thank you, Nestor.”

  John Smith had a pale complexion, but when he turned around, he was as white as a corpse. All the blood had drained from his face. He stood stock-still and said in a hopelessly defeated voice, “That was my best source. He’s in Hallandale. They just found Igor Drukovich dead at the bottom of a stairway. His neck was broken.”

  ::::::Damn!:::::: said Ed to himself. He knew what that meant… There was no way he could not run the story now… and Sergei Korolyov’s name was cut in stone on the front of the museum… and he had sat just two seats from him at dinner! ::::::And now there’s no way I can get out of risking my neck. Fearless Journalist Ed Topping… Damn! and damn again!::::::

  21

  The Knight of Hialeah

  Barely 6:45 a.m.—and all was uproar in the office of Edward T. Topping IV. Too many people in here! Too much noise! He hadn’t had time to take so much as a glance at that great symbol of his eminence, his glass-wall view of Biscayne Bay, Miami Beach, the Atlantic Ocean, 180 degrees of blue horizon, and a billion tiny glints flashing off the water as the great Heat Lamp above began to amp up the juice. He hadn’t even been able to sit down at his desk, not once, unless you counted leaning his long bony haunches against the edge of it from time to time.

  He had a telephone receiver at his ear and his eyes fixed upon the screen of his Apple ZBe3 computer. Impatient, frantic, even panicked calls, texts, tweets, twits, and e-screams were hurricaning in from all over the country… all over the world, in fact… from an anguished art dealer in Vancouver, where it was 3:45 a.m., some art fair impresario from Art Basel in Switzerland, where it was 12:45 p.m., an auction house in Tokyo, where it was a quarter of eight at night, and an anguished—no, panicked-to-the-point-of-screaming—private collector in Wellington, New Zealand, where it was just a few minutes from tomorrow, and every sort of news organization, including British, French, German, Italian, and Japanese television, quite in addition to every sort of old, cable, and inter network in America. CBS had a camera crew waiting in the lobby downstairs—at 6:45 a.m.!

  John Smith’s story had just broken. The Herald had published it online at six o’clock last night to establish priority—i.e., a scoop. Six hours later it came out in the newspaper’s first edition beneath two words in capital letters, two inches high and bold and black as a tabloid’s and stretching all the way across the front page:

  DEADLY COINCIDENCE

  Every hotshot in the Chicago Loop Syndicate who was desperate to be “where things are happening” had boarded one of the Loop’s three Falcon jets as soon as the story broke online and had taken off for Miami. Where things were happening was in the office of the Herald’s editor in chief, Edward T. Topping IV. In there right now were eight—or was it nine!—Loop executives, including the CEO, Puggy Knobloch, plus Ed himself, Ira Cutler, and Adlai desPortes, the Herald’s new publisher. For some reason the city editor, Stan Friedman, and John Smith, the man of the hour, had stepped out for a moment. The most intoxicating chemical known to man—adrenaline—was pumping through the room in waves waves waves waves, making the Loop troupe feel they had inside-the-belly box seats for one of the biggest stories of the twenty-first century: A new $220 million art museum, the anchor of a huge metropolitan cultural complex, is named for a Russian “oligarch” following his extraordinary gift of “seventy million dollars’ ” worth of paintings. Master masons have long since carved his name in marble over the entrance—THE KOROLYOV MUSEUM OF ART—and now, look at us at this moment, here in this office. We are the maximum leaders. It is our journalists who have just exposed this great “donor” as a fraud.

  Decibels above the hubbub and the buzz of any place where things are happening, Ed could hear Puggy Knobloch’s loud, ripe honk honking out, “Haaaghh—the old lady thinks ‘the Environment’ is the name of a government agency!?” Haaaghh! was Puggy’s laugh. It was like a bark. It drowned out every other sound—for about half a second—as if to say, “You think that’s funny? Okay, here’s your reward: Haaaghh!”

  Oh, the adrenaline pumped pumped pumped!

  Another voice rose above the rumble and the roar. Attorney Ira Cutler’s. You couldn’t miss it, not that voice. It was like the whine of a metal lathe. He was holding up the newspaper, with its gigantic DEADLY COINCIDENCE, before the eyeballs of Puggy Knobloch.

  “Here! Read the lead!” said Ira Cutler. “Read the first two paragraphs.”

  He tried to hand the newspaper to Knobloch, but Knobloch raised his big meaty hands, palms outward, to reject it. He looked offended. “You think I haven’t read it?”—in a tone that said, <<>>

  But that didn’t stop Cutler for a second. He had immobilized the maximum leader with his laser stare and his ceaseless, insistent, rat-tat-tat-tat-tat of words. He jerked the newspaper back and said, “Here! I’ll read it for you.

  “ ‘Deadly Coincidence,’ it says, and right below that, ‘By Dusk, He Claims He Forged Museum’s Treasures. By Dawn—He’s Dead’… and then the byline, ‘By John Smith.’ And then it says, ‘Just hours after Wynwood artist Igor Drukovich called the Herald claiming he forged the estimated $70 million in Russian Modernist paintings now in the Korolyov Museum of Art—the core of its collection—he was found dead this morning at dawn. His neck was broken.

  “ ‘His body lay sprawled headfirst at the bottom of a flight of stairs in a senior citizens condominium in Hallandale—where he maintained, the Herald has learned, a secret studio, under the name Nicolai Kopinsky.’ ”

  The pit bull lowered the newspaper, gleaming with self-commendation. “You get it, Puggy?” he crowed to Knobloch. “Got the picture now? You follow the strategy? We don’t accuse Sergei Korolyov of anything. The museum that owns the pictures just happens to bear his name, that’s all.” Cutler gave a mock shrug. “Not much we could do about that, was there. You get the key word: claim? I had a hard time getting it across to John Smith. He wanted to use words like Drukovich revealed the forgery or confessed or described how or other words that might indicate we assume Drukovich is telling the truth. No, I saw to it we used a word that can more easily be taken to mean we’re skeptical: He claims he forged them… that’s what he claims… It took me an hour to knock some sense into the kid.”

  Oh, Ed remembered all that. ::::::We—me included—put poor John Smith through a real nosebleeder.:::::: A nosebleeder was what you called i
t when everybody is leaning over the shoulder of the reporter as he writes. If he should suddenly lift his head up straight, he would give somebody a bloody nose.

  Ah, but the adrenaline pumps pumps pumps pumps for the unknown as well—combat! How will the con man respond? How will he fight? Who will he attack—and with what?

  Shortly before 8:00 a.m. the intoxication of being where things are happening was pumping up to the max, when Stan Friedman popped back into the room. This time he was not thrilled. He was carrying a white envelope… and his face had turned very glum. He brought that grim visage and the envelope straight to the Herald’s publisher, Adlai desPortes, who until that moment had been enjoying the greatest adrenaline high of his life. Friedman immediately ducked out of the room again. Publisher desPortes read the letter, which was apparently not long, and very soon he brought the letter and his own glum face straight to Ed. Ed read it and ::::::Jesus Christ! Exactly what does this mean?:::::: he took the letter and his glum—no, not glum, petrified—face straight to Ira Cutler, and the room began to grow quiet. Everyone realized that Gloom had entered the room, and it grew quieter still.

  Ed realized how weak and confused this made him look. Owww. It was time for him to step forward and show leadership. He raised his voice and said in what he intended to be the key of casual and lighthearted: “Hey, everybody, Ira here has some late-breaking news.” He waited for and never got a reaction to the casual and lighthearted mot—late-breaking—left over from the twentieth century. “We have word by messenger from the other side!” No sign of casual, light hearts in the room. “Ira, why don’t you read that letter out loud for us.”

  The room didn’t seem anywhere near as blasé as Ed meant that to sound.

  “Oh, kaaay,” said Cutler. “What have we here?” It was always a surprise to hear the high pitch of the pit bull’s voice, especially in front of this many people. “Let’s see… let’s see… let’s see… what we have here is… This communication seems to be from… the law firm of Solipsky, Gudder, Kramer, Mangelmann, and Pizzonia. It is addressed to Mr. Adlai desPortes, Publisher, the Miami Herald, One Herald Plaza et cetera, et cetera… hmmmm… hmm… and so forth.

  “ ‘Dear Mr. desPortes, We represent Mr. Sergei Korolyov, subject of a front-page article in today’s edition of the Miami Herald. Your scurrilous and highly libelous depiction of Mr. Korolyov has already been repeated worldwide in print and electronic media. With patently false data and unconscionable insinuations, you have maligned the reputation of one of Greater Miami’s most civic-minded, generous, and highly respected citizens. You have relied heavily upon the fabrications, and, quite possibly, hallucinations, of an individual known to be suffering from an advanced stage of alcoholism. You have used your high position in a reckless, malicious, totally irresponsible way, and, depending upon the validity, if any, of certain assertions, felonious, as well. If you will publish an immediate retraction of this calumny-laden “story” and an apology for it, Mr. Korolyov will regard that as an ameliorating factor. Yours very truly, Julius M. Gudder, of counsel, Solipsky, Gudder, Kramer, Mangelmann, and Pizzonia.’ ”

  Cutler narrowed his eyes and surveyed the room with a poisonous little smile on his lips. He was in his element. Let’s you and him fight! I’ll provide all the slurs you’ll need to bite him in the ass with… His eyes settled upon the official recipient of this slap across the face, Publisher Adlai desPortes. Publisher desPortes did not seem to be in any rush to avenge the honor of the Miami Herald. In fact, as his presumed French ancestors might have put it, he seemed decidedly hors de combat. He seemed dumbfounded, very much including the word’s literal meaning: speechless. My God, being publisher of the Miami Herald wasn’t supposed to involve such shit as felonious! It was supposed to involve going out to three-hour lunches with advertisers, politicians, CEOs, CFOs, college and foundation presidents, patrons of the arts, long-term celebrities, but also fifteen-minute stars hot off national TV dance shows, music shows, quiz shows, reality shows, and body shows, and TV dance-show, music-show, and game-show winners, all of whose presence demanded a suave, perpetually tanned, perpetually gregarious host, whose small talk never clicked and clacked because too many marbles got in the way, and whose very face brought out the most obsequious welcomes by name and aims to please by maître d’s and owners of all the best restaurants. There was nothing suave about him at this moment, however. His mouth hung slightly open. Ed knew precisely what desPortes was asking himself… Have we committed a terrible blunder? Have we done what scientists call hopey-dopey research, in which the hope for a particular outcome skews the actual findings? Have we relied on the word of a man who we ourselves know to be a pathetic drunk? Was Drukovich’s wall-full of forgeries missing for no other reason than that he had stored them somewhere else—if, in fact, they were forgeries at all? Have we hopey-doped Korolyov’s every move… when, in fact, he was innocent of any duplicitous intent? Did he, Ed, know precisely what was running through the mind of the grandly named Adlai desPortes because that was precisely what was running through Edward T. Topping IV’s mind, too?

  Like a good pit bull, always spoiling for a fight, Cutler seemed to look through the hides of all the Eds and Adlais before him and see all the limp spines. So it fell to him, the task of stiffening them and making them stand up straight.

  “Beautiful!” he said, grinning as if the most jolly game in the world had just begun. “You gotta love it! Have you ever heard a bigger bagful of hot air in your life?… masquerading as a missile? Try to find one fact in our story that they deny… You won’t find it, because they can’t, either! They can’t deny specifically what we have accused Korolyov of doing—because we haven’t accused him of anything! I hope you know,” he said, “that the moment they file a libel suit, they’re inviting a real strip search.”

  Cutler not only smiled, he began rubbing his hands together as if he couldn’t imagine any prospect more delightful. “This is all bluster. Why are they sending this thing—by hand—so early in the morning?” He scanned all the faces again, as if someone might get it immediately… Silence… Stone… “It’s pure PR!” he said. “They wanna get on the record about how ‘scurrilous’ this all is, so that no more news stories will go out without their all-threatening denial included. That’s all we’ve got here.”

  Ed felt the need to demonstrate his leadership by commenting in some trenchant way. But he couldn’t think of anything to say in any way, trenchantly or otherwise. Besides, the letter was addressed to desPortes, wasn’t it? It was up to him, right? Ed stared at Adlai desPortes. The man looked as if he had just been poleaxed at the base of the skull. He was a blank, out on his feet. Ed knew what he, the publisher, was thinking, because he, Ed, was thinking the same thing. Why had they let this ambitious juvenile, John Smith, have his way? He was a boy! He looked like he never had to shave! His whole case was based on a sudden burst of “truth” from the breast of a hopeless drunk—who was now dead. With this lawyer Julius Gudder brandishing the scalpel, Korolyov and Company would reduce Igor Drukovich’s reputation and veracity to a stain on a bath mat.

  Publisher desPortes came to life and, so to speak, took the words right out of Ed’s mouth: “But Ira, aren’t we relying awfully heavily on the testimony of a man with a couple of serious handicaps? One, he’s dead and, two, he was dead drunk when he was alive?”

  That drew some laughs, and thank God for that! Signs of life among the undead!

  The pit bull, however, wasn’t having any of it. His voice hit only higher, harsher, more haranguing tones as he said, “Not at all! Not at all! The man’s sobriety or lack of it has nothing to do with it. This is a story about a man who led a double life, one open, one completely secret, and he’s found dead—conceivably murdered—under mysterious circumstances. Whatever he says on the eve of his puzzling death becomes highly relevant, even if the facts cast a shadow on others.”

  Well put, Counselor! But it did nothing to slow Topping’s tachycardia. Just then Stan Friedman came into
the room with a very sad-looking John Smith in tow. Ed felt like addressing the whole group and saying, “Why, hello, Stan. Managed to get your ace investigative boy reporter back into the room, have you? But why? He’s such a child, he can’t even stand to listen to what he’s done to us all for the sake of his own childish ambition. Couldn’t even show enough backbone to stay in the room and listen to how it’s turned out, could you? Short Hills, St. Paul’s, Yale—yaaaaaagggh!… So this is what the paneled mahogany life turns out these days—weaklings who nevertheless think they have the birthright to do what they please, no matter how much it hurts mere commoners. No wonder you’re hanging your head like that. No wonder you’re afraid to look at anybody.”

  The little bastard, led, practically by the hand, by Stan, was heading straight for Ira Cutler. The entire room was quiet. Everybody, every shaken body, wanted to know what this was supposed to be about. Even Ira Cutler looked bemused, something he tried never to look. Stan left John’s side and went to the pit bull’s and said something, quite a bit, in fact, in a very low voice. After a while both glanced at John Smith, whose head was hanging down so low, he probably couldn’t see them.

  Stan said, “John—”

  John Smith walked toward the two of them, hangdog all the way. He nodded feebly at Cutler and said something to him in not much more than a whisper. From a pocket inside his blazer he pulled several sheets of paper and handed them to Cutler. They seemed to be handwritten. Cutler studied them for what seemed like ten minutes—then the whine of the metal lathe and Cutler said, “I think John wants me to apologize for him for ducking out of the room so much. He had his phone on vibrate and had to keep stepping outside to take these calls. Gloria, at Stan’s desk, had his phone number so she could reach him. So far he’s had queries”—Cutler raised the sheets of paper as evidence—“queries from literally all over the world, and they’re all panicked about the same thing. In the relatively short time since the Korolyov Museum of Art opened, they have bought tens of millions of dollars’ worth of paintings—or maybe not worth—from dealers representing Korolyov. And that’s just the ones who have called the Herald. God knows what the total will be. I never knew he was selling pictures on the side.” Cutler looked about the room… Nobody else had, either.