The Soul of Viktor Tronko (Nancy Pearl’s Book Lust Rediscoveries)

by David Quammen

  Tigers remind him of termites, naturally. The unfinished book. Rather, the inchoate pile of pages that may or may not be a book, now sitting abandoned at home on his desk. Northbound traffic has tightened down to a slow grind and only at this point, finally, after half an hour, is Kessler crossing the river. He eats one of the fish sandwiches. On the basis of that one he decides he will save the other three for Barry. He eats all the french fries.

  The house is lit when Kessler pulls up, and Barry’s Subaru stands in the drive, two encouraging signs. He rings, peeks expectantly through the door’s leaded window, rings again, peeks. Barry does not appear. Kessler can see into the living room, bare of life signs and furniture just as it was last night. He puts his thumb back to the bell and tips his weight against it. By this hour of evening even a workaholic lawyer should be home. Unless he’s got a dinner date, unlikely, or has elected for reasons of self-castigation to spend another night on the floor of his office. Kessler tries the door. It is unlocked.

  The dirty plates and wineglasses are still in the sink. The gin bottle stands on the counter. Kessler touches the bottle: room temperature. Yesterday when he arrived it had been in the freezer, placed there expressly in expectation of Kessler’s martinis, no doubt, since Barry himself seldom drinks gin. Kessler sets the bag of cold sandwiches beside the warm bottle.

  “Barry? Yo, Barry. It’s Kessler.”

  He walks back to look in the bedrooms. At the master bedroom he knocks first. Nothing in there but a mattress, dirty socks crawling out of the closet, a suit jacket hung on a doorknob. The boys’ room is bare and clean. The little study contains only a card table, a mate to the one they ate on last night, though this one is covered with bills and bank statements and torn envelopes all in wild disorder, spilling onto the floor. I hate this, Kessler thinks. But he can’t stop now. He does the whole drill, the whole macabre search, even snatching aside the shower curtain while his pulse thumps loudly in his ears. Then he goes to the basement.

  Barry is there on a pallet of file boxes. His clothes are unchanged since Kessler last saw him, the same wrinkled gray trousers that go with the jacket upstairs, the same wrinkled blue shirt. He is in stocking feet, and if socks could be wrinkled too, Barry’s would be. There is hardly any blood. Barry’s right wrist is cocked around at an extreme angle. His hand is closed on the pistol in just that slightly awkward position required for getting the muzzle not merely into his mouth but all the way back to his soft palate. Behind where he lies there is an ugly mark on the wall. Nothing garish—just a chip out of the concrete, and a rusty spatter. The gun must be small, a .22 or some such.

  Kessler stands gazing at this for probably ten minutes. The muscles in his throat are clenched like a fist.

  Then he picks up the Cutty Sark bottle. It has been set on the floor beside Barry’s foot. Dead soldier, emblem of emptiness and despair. But Kessler happens to know that it was already empty, and lying on the carpet upstairs, before he left Barry alone.

  21

  DEXTER LOVESONG HAS taken up a position inside the dumpster in the darkened alley behind the National Rifle Association building, an excellent spot in that it allows him a view of the exit ramp from the underground lot on Scott Circle where Kessler has been parking his car, as well as a line of sight halfway up N Street toward the lights of the Tabard Inn. The dumpster is almost empty at one end, fortunately. Lovesong stands on a pair of cardboard peach crates which he has set into place for that purpose amid the fermenting funk. The peach crates came from a pile beside the dumpster, and Lovesong picked two that were fairly clean. With arched knuckles he supports the lid of the dumpster off the rim, leaving a gap of two inches through which he can see out. Knees bent, back hunched, he crouches there in the posture of a constipated skier on a subzero day. It is uncomfortable, but Lovesong doesn’t mind. What the NRA is doing with all those peaches, he has no idea. Buddyboy is looping the area in search of a parking space. With luck, Lovesong thinks, maybe he’ll have to drive all the way to Bethesda.

  It isn’t strictly a part of Lovesong’s assignment—preventing Michael Kessler from being killed. Merely a point of independent professional pride. It happens so fast, anyway, that Lovesong is functioning mainly on instinct.

  He has watched patiently as Kessler appeared, walking up the ramp into the amber street lighting. He has noticed the shorter man in the rust-colored jacket emerging from darkness beyond the Scott statue, converging with Kessler’s path like a panhandler stalking a mark. As the two of them exchanged words, Lovesong has become mildly curious. What, a new contact? Another little bird, eager to sing into Kessler’s notebook? But now Kessler begins backing away. The movements don’t look right. When he sees Kessler fall, Lovesong stands straight up, lifting the dumpster lid with his head.

  He vaults out of the garbage and breaks into a sprint up the alley, making no particular effort to stay quiet. He gets angry as he runs, and angrier with each stride, gathering speed on adrenaline carburetion. This sort of business here, this bullshit, he takes it as a personal affront. He pushes the pace, he leans. For all his belly, for all his age, Lovesong in a cheap suit and wing tips and with a full head of anger can still move as fast as a linebacker.

  Kessler has tumbled sideways into a bush. Gotten himself tangled in there, but he seems to be still alive because Lovesong can see his feet thrashing, kicking out desperately toward the shorter man, as this man comes back in close. From twenty yards off Lovesong notes the quick little arm movement that seems to indicate a knife, though the knife itself he cannot yet see. Kessler will be liverwurst in a second or two so Lovesong, at full gallop, shouts: “Hey, asshole. You”—thereby surrendering the advantage of surprise. The shorter man turns and now Lovesong sees the wink of a blade and Lovesong dips low, like a runaway bobsled, hitting the man in the groin with his head.

  They both go ass-and-teakettle into the shrubbery. Unfortunately Lovesong’s aim was imperfect, or the knife man had time for half a step, and Lovesong has merely given him a hard bruising blow on the hip instead of a hernia and heart failure. Lovesong rolls onto the man and tries to pin his arms with a bear hug, the only option since Lovesong can’t see the knife and doesn’t know whether or not the man has kept hold of it. At the same time Lovesong jacks his knee up and down and up again, hoping to do more damage in the man’s groin. Lovesong would prefer to concentrate on the throat and the eyes but can’t dare release his hug. This asshole in the rust-colored jacket is meanwhile grunting and snarling in a language Lovesong doesn’t recognize, not English and not Spic and not, if Lovesong knows anything, Russian. Okay, just another of Washington’s many East European muggers—except that Lovesong doesn’t believe for a minute that this guy is a common mugger; the coincidence would be strained and there are just too many other wallets in the city besides Michael Kessler’s. The asshole gets an arm free and delivers a stunning smack across Lovesong’s cheekbone, a serious right hook that recaptures his full attention.

  But during the instant it takes Lovesong to absorb that stroke, he feels Asshole squirming to pull himself away, lurching and wiggling like he needed only inches for a touchdown, stretching that free arm toward the sidewalk. So aha, the knife is gone. Thank you. Lovesong loosens his hug in favor of jamming a hand up under Asshole’s chin, grabs the throat and squeezes it like a tennis ball, driving the man’s head down backward into the snapping bush stubble, if possible to plant it there permanently. Then from somewhere comes a very quick chop at the point of his own chin that slams Lovesong’s jaws together with a nasty jarring porcelain clack and could have done far worse if the range had been maybe an inch less. He might have bit off his own tongue like pastrami, he might have had a mandible shard driven halfway into his brain. This blow has made Lovesong very much angrier. It has also served notice that he is dealing with a dangerous bastard, likely a professional. Lovesong bears down harder on the throat, but now a problem arises—his own arms are so tired that they have gone almo
st numb. He can hardly hold his grip. Lovesong is an old fart, after all, who can’t carry on this way indefinitely. Asshole on the other hand seems to be young, or at least in excellent physical shape, besides which he hasn’t just run a hundred-yard dash. Lovesong wishes dearly that there was something hard and heavy, preferably with edges, to hit this guy with.

  He raises all his weight up over the fork grip on Asshole’s throat. He loosens the grip for a second with the notion of changing hands, and in that second Asshole delivers another flashy cross that blinds Lovesong and makes him momentarily stupid and, he realizes at once, has almost certainly broken his nose. Now Lovesong himself is snarling in a language he doesn’t understand. He lets go with both hands and tries to stand. The idea, in so far as there is one, is to jump up and down on Asshole’s face. But Lovesong stumbles, tripped by the branches. Asshole is up faster. He shoves Lovesong headfirst back into the shrubbery. He takes a delicate little prance backward to set himself, strides forward, and kicks a forty-yard field goal against the padding of Lovesong’s stomach. Then he jogs off down Massachusetts Avenue, this athletic stranger, ignoring and ignored by Buddyboy, who kneels in the grass wrapping a cotton handkerchief around Kessler’s arm.

  “You’re bleeding too,” says Buddyboy.

  Lovesong wipes the back of a hand across his nostrils and glares at the blood. He says nothing.

  “And your nose is crooked,” Buddyboy tells him.

  Lovesong touches it. “Broke. That’s the fourth time. Wonderful. Where were you, Buddyboy? If I might ask.” But Lovesong doesn’t hear the answer because he has been wrenched over double with another spate of vomiting, his second in three minutes. When that’s finished, he wipes his mouth on his sleeve. “Where were you? You worthless goddamn twerp.”

  “Helping Kessler. He’s got a pretty bad wound here, Dexter. Stop horsing around and give me a hand.”

  “Helping Kessler. And I was doing aerobics.”

  “Come on. We should get him to an emergency room.”

  “That again.” Lovesong spits. “Kessler, how did you get so accident-prone all of a sudden? You’re keeping us busy.”

  “It seems that way, doesn’t it?” says Kessler. His voice is unsteady.

  Lovesong notices that Kessler has gone pale as wood putty and his good hand is trembling wildly on Buddyboy’s arm. Evidently unnerved by the sight of his own blood in these quantities. But Lovesong doesn’t think Kessler is in danger. Not from this particular wound, anyway. Lovesong ignores him, turning back to Buddyboy.

  “Dammit, you should have jumped in. Use your head. I wanted that guy, Buddyboy. Wanted to mount him on a board. Now we got nothing. A mashed nose and a cut arm. Empty hands. Nice piece of work.”

  “Give me your handkerchief,” says Buddyboy. “If it’s clean.” Lovesong digs, then thrusts out a blue bandanna roughly the size of a dish towel. “The car is back up on New Hampshire,” says Buddyboy.

  “Who was he?” says Kessler and now, with a glance traded quickly, they both ignore him.

  Lovesong doesn’t know the answer himself, though he could hazard a few plausible guesses. If he did know, there would be no particular reason for telling Kessler. He helps Buddyboy steady Kessler to his feet, in the process getting a large smear of blood on his own jacket.

  “Maybe you can tell us.”

  “Later,” says Buddyboy. They move off along Massachusetts Avenue with Kessler balanced gingerly between them. Buddyboy can sprint ahead for the car if he wants to but Lovesong himself is damned if he’ll volunteer.

  “There’s something I don’t understand,” says Kessler, whose voice is still weak and shimmery.

  “What.”

  “Aren’t you wearing a gun?”

  “Of course.” Lovesong swings back his lapel to flash the ivory grip, gleaming moon-yellow under the streetlights. While he’s at it, he straightens back the holster strap. Miracle of good luck that the damn piece didn’t fall out into that asshole’s hand.

  “Why didn’t you use it?”

  “You can’t solve everything with violence,” Lovesong says.

  22

  IT’S THE SAME DOCTOR tonight, with the same crooked wire-rim glasses and the same curly hair.

  “But you got a haircut,” says Kessler.

  “Hello, Mr. Kessler. What is it now? Oh Jesus, that’s a nice one. How long have you been bleeding? Come in here.”

  The questions continue while the doctor and one nurse give Kessler’s exposed gore a good irrigation, douse it with some sort of benign blue solution, and then wrap the whole thing temporarily in a very thick swaddling of gauze. Kessler is seated on a chair next to a scrub sink. He is slightly dizzy but the interrogation keeps him occupied and he avoids looking at the place where his pulpy pink muscle tissue smiles out at him from deep near the bone and from which blood still flows like summer rain.

  “How did you do it?”

  “Uh. Um, a knife,” Kessler says stupidly, trying hard to focus but wondering in his haze how much he should tell.

  “You cut yourself like this on a knife?”

  “No. No, I had help.”

  “Was it a clean knife or a dirty one?”

  “I didn’t get time to ask.”

  The doctor’s face floats down to the level of Kessler’s and hovers there like a balloon on a string. Young as this doctor is, he nevertheless seems to despise nothing so much as a wasted minute. “Who helped you? What happened? Mr. Kessler, don’t jerk me around. We’re busy people in this hospital.”

  “I was attacked,” Kessler says. “Mugged. On the street, right near my hotel. I’ve been stabbed, for Christ sake. I’m a stab victim, is what.” Now Kessler himself is getting a little hot. “What’s going to happen to my arm? Will the hand still work?”

  The doctor says: “That’s what we’re about to find out.”

  Yes, Kessler can move his left hand at the wrist. He demonstrates. Yes he can make a fist. He does. Again, says the young doctor, who this time lays three of his own fingers across Kessler’s palm. Do you have any strength? Show me how much. Kessler squeezes feebly on the fingers. He would like to crush them like breadsticks but he is afraid his own blood and sinew might come splashing and popping out through the gauze. Some bit of force, not much, says the doctor to the nurse, and she writes on a clipboard. All right, now open it wide, he tells Kessler. Wider. Kessler spreads his hand out flat. He turns it this way and that. It seems to be functioning almost normally, praise God. After a few more simple tests (can Kessler feel the touch of this Kleenex on the back of his hand? does he feel one caliper point or two?) the doctor says: “Okay, I think it’s good news. The muscle isn’t severed. Not quite. The nerve doesn’t seem to be either.”

  “Just a flesh wound, as they say. Just flesh.”

  “You were lucky, Mr. Kessler.”

  “I know I was, Doctor. I couldn’t agree more.”

  “Now we’ll get you sewed up.”

  Forty-five minutes later Kessler is all stitched and gauzed and taped back together. His shirt sleeve has been cut away just above the elbow. He has been advised to do no strenuous pushing or reaching and to let the arm simply dangle as much as possible. He should be gentle with it, go easy, use common sense. There’s no need for a sling. He has gotten a tetanus booster and been given a prescription for some fancy antibiotic. He is under instructions to return tomorrow afternoon for a second exam. He has taken ninety dollars in cash out of his wallet, clumsily, using only his right hand, and presented the money to a nurse at a desk. You can bill me for the rest, yes, fine. He has shoved her receipt, crumpled, into his right trouser pocket. Lovesong and Buddyboy are still there, at the far end of the corridor, sitting patiently on plastic chairs. Lovesong hasn’t bothered, evidently, to have anyone look at his nose.

  Kessler is eager to leave. He wants to go. He wants to get out of this hospital and this city.
He has no intention whatsoever of coming back here tomorrow, though he has promised solemnly that he will. He just wants to go. To get in a car and drive. The young doctor emerges from another examining room in time to catch Kessler gently by the elbow, the right one, pulling him aside into a doorway where they are out of the gurney traffic and beyond earshot of Lovesong and Buddyboy and the admitting nurse. He looks Kessler soberly in the eye—a favorite tactic of this particular young doctor. He should get an optician to straighten those frames, Kessler thinks.

  “May I say something, Mr. Kessler?”

  “Okay.”

  “It isn’t my business. Except it is, really. Trying to keep people healthy. Keep people alive.”

  Kessler waits. The doctor glances off down the corridor, hikes his chest for a deep breath, shuffles his loafers.

  Then says: “The drug trade can be very unhealthy. Serious people out there. Bad dudes. I’m sure you know. It can be honest-to-God fatal.”

  “I know it can,” says Kessler. “But I’m not in it.”

  The doctor comes back at him with a sad man-to-man skeptical smile, so Kessler adds: “Honest to God. That’s not who’s trying to kill me. I’m a journalist. Not an importer.”

  “Then who is?”

  “You wouldn’t believe me. You’d think I was just being snotty.”