The Last Good Man

by A. J. Kazinsky

  “The question is, why didn’t I realize it earlier?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Niels. He was number thirty-five.”

  She had lost him. She could clearly see that. She stepped inside the bathroom and carefully took Niels by the hand.

  “What it is?”

  “Turn around.”

  Cautiously, she turned him around in front of the mirror. She picked up a small mirror from the sink and handed it to him. “Use this.”

  At first he couldn’t see it. Then he did. A mark had appeared on his back. Not yet very clear. It looked almost like eczema. But the shape was unmistakable. He dropped the mirror, and it shattered on the tile floor. Seven years of bad luck. He dashed out of the bathroom.

  “Niels?”

  He was gone. He slammed the door to the bedroom behind him. She called after him, “The two of you found yourselves. It’s obvious. You’re the only ones who would listen.”

  She could hear him rummaging around in the bedroom. “You’re the only ones who would listen,” she repeated to herself. Niels tore open the door. Wearing a new shirt with a suitcase in his hand. The suitcase that he’d packed long ago—the one that hadn’t wanted to leave. But it did now.

  85

  Ospedale dell’Angelo—Venice

  Commissario Morante was holding Tommaso’s cell phone in his hand. Heavy. That was exactly how the responsibility felt. Heavy. A responsibility that he had neglected. It felt like a lump in his lungs, something that was reducing his ability to inhale oxygen. Responsibility can be weighed like an actual physical weight, the commissario managed to think before Flavio interrupted him by saying, “I should have listened to him.”

  Morante looked at Flavio, who was sitting on one of the pink plastic seats in the hospital. They were waiting for the doctor to come and get them so they could ask him a few questions. A Swedish tourist had found Tommaso dead in the men’s bathroom. From what they’d been told, the tourist’s screams could be heard through the whole train station.

  “He said we were in danger. That someone was in danger,” Flavio explained.

  “When?”

  “At the train station. I thought he was ill. You said he’d been suspended after all.”

  “I did? So it’s my fault? Is that what you’re saying?”

  Flavio gave the commissario a surprised look. He’d never heard his boss shout before.

  Morante tried to stand up straight and look composed in spite of his outburst. There would have to be an investigation, he knew that. He would be interviewed. Why had he suspended Tommaso? Should he have paid more attention to what the man was saying? The medics had tried to revive Tommaso in the men’s room. That was when they saw his back. When they had cut off his jacket in order to use the defibrillator on his heart, they saw the bizarre mark, stretching from one shoulder to the other. His skin was swollen with patterns. One of the medics had said, “His back was hot, like it was on fire.”

  The doctor stuck his head out the door and yelled, “Come with me!”

  Nobody ever spoke to the Venice police chief in that tone of voice. Maybe this was a foretaste of what was in store for him. Demotion. Humiliation. Perhaps derisive articles printed in the newspapers.

  Even in a situation with a dead colleague, the foremost thing on Commissario Morante’s mind was his own status.

  The morgue—Venice

  A single garland adorned the entrance. It was Christmas here, too, in the medical examiner’s domain.

  The body of Tommaso di Barbara lay with the head slanting down on the ice-cold steel table. But it wasn’t just a body on the table. It was a decorated body.

  The commissario took a step closer to examine Tommaso’s back. “What’s that?”

  “I was hoping you could tell me.” The doctor remained next to the window with an accusatory look on his face. As if this whole situation were Morante’s fault.

  “How would I know?”

  The doctor shrugged.

  “This is what Tommaso was talking about.” Flavio’s voice was barely audible. He looked down at the floor and went on. “He talked about people who had died with marks on their backs. That case he kept babbling about. The package from China. All his newspaper clippings. We just didn’t believe him.”

  Silence settled over the autopsy suite.

  “What was the cause of death?” asked the commissario.

  The doctor shrugged. “Until somebody tells me what that is, I would say murder.”

  “Murder?”

  “Murder by poison. I don’t know what else could have caused that.”

  A deep breath. Flavio had retreated to the far side of the room. “Flavio,” called Commissario Morante.

  “Yes, sir?”

  “Get hold of Tommaso’s secretary. She knows a lot about the case. Tommaso used to ask her to translate things for him.”

  “Okay.”

  “And let’s get in touch with Interpol.” Morante looked at the doctor and then at Flavio. “It’s important to act promptly. And that means now.”

  Part II

  THE BOOK OF THE RIGHTEOUS

  And Abraham drew near and said, Wilt thou also destroy the righteous with the wicked?

  Peradventure there be fifty righteous within the city: wilt thou also destroy and not spare the place for the fifty righteous that are therein?

  And the Lord said, If I find in Sodom fifty righteous within the city, then I will spare all the place for their sakes.

  —Genesis 18:23–24, 26

  1

  Vesterbro—Copenhagen

  The snow crunched under Niels’s shoes as he trotted over to the parking lot. He couldn’t hear Hannah, but he knew she was there. “Niels!”

  He gave up trying to pull the suitcase through the fallen snow and picked it up to carry it. There was something protective about the heavy suitcase. Almost like an oversize bulletproof vest.

  “You’ve known all along, Niels.”

  She was right behind him now.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “It’s you, Niels.”

  “Can’t you hear how ridiculous that sounds?”

  “Ridiculous?”

  He slowed down.

  “Is it because it now has to do with real people? Is that what makes it ridiculous?” She caught up with him and grabbed hold of his arm. “Wasn’t that what you said to me?”

  Niels didn’t reply. They had reached the car.

  “When was the last time you traveled anywhere?”

  Niels avoided looking at her. He refused to answer the question. Hannah raised her voice. “Answer me! If it’s so ridiculous, you might as well answer.”

  Niels was searching his pockets.

  “Is this what you’re looking for?” She held up the car key.

  “Dammit. It’s your car.”

  “Exactly. Shall we go?”

  She unlocked the doors. Niels tossed the suitcase into the backseat next to the small cardboard box containing all the documents regarding the murder cases. Then he got into the driver’s seat and slammed the door. Hannah climbed in beside him. “Okay, Niels Bentzon,” she said. “Where are we going?”

  She looked at him, waiting for him to say something. Finally, he did. “I’m not a doctor,” he said tensely. “But I’ve heard of psychosomatic reactions. Bewildering sensory perceptions. Abnormal states of consciousness. Take the phenomenon of stigmata, for instance.”

  Niels’s brain was working feverishly. The memory of a TV program came to his rescue. “St. Francis of Assisi.”

  “What about him?”

  “During the last years of his life, he walked around with constantly bleeding hands and feet. It came from inside of him. Or what about that other man—what’s his name?” Niels buried his face in his hands as he replayed the TV program in his mind. “A short, fat monk. Was he Italian? They’ve even put a statue of him underwater off the Tremiti Islands. Padre Pio! Have you heard of him? He’s from t
he twentieth century. For over fifty years he suffered from stigmata. The human body can produce the most inexplicable phenomena. That’s what we’re dealing with here. It can’t have any other meaning.”

  “Why are you talking about meaning?”

  Niels didn’t reply.

  She persisted, “Who says there has to be a meaning? Is there a meaning behind the fact that the planets move in an ellipse around the sun? Or that—”

  “I’m not a religious person, Hannah. For me, there has to be a natural explanation.”

  “Yes. And we’ve found the natural explanation. We just don’t understand it. That’s how all discoveries start out.”

  He shook his head.

  “Think of it as the phenomenon behaving like a law of nature.”

  “A law of nature?”

  “The definition is something like this: a well-founded connection between physical entities. Essentially, a law of nature cannot be altered. You can scream and cry, Niels, but you can’t do anything about it. Look at me.”

  He complied. Without saying a word.

  “Why is it so unthinkable that the phenomenon follows a specific pattern?”

  “How is that possible?”

  “It’s like in mathematics. At first chaos seems to rule. You can’t make heads or tails of it. But suddenly—when you’re able to get some distance, when you crack the code—the system becomes apparent. The system emerges from the chaos. Coincidences dissolve right before your eyes. Things, numbers, converge and can be inserted into formulas. That’s something that every mathematician knows.”

  “Hannah.”

  She refused to let him speak. “The whole thing may look random, Niels. The way you were brought into the case. Tommaso. Your meeting with me. But it all fits. It’s all part of the system. The law of nature.”

  “That’s too far out there for me,” Niels said, but he was really talking to himself. Shaking his head.

  “None of you can travel,” she went on. “You’re all like cell-phone towers waiting for a signal. And then suddenly, you do something. You take action. A deed that is part of something larger.”

  “Something larger?”

  “Like the soldier who released the prisoners and in that way made them have faith in—”

  “That’s just one example,” Niels interrupted her. “What about the Russian?”

  “He saved the mother and her children in the theater. Who knows what will result from that? Or from the boy who was given unapproved medicine and then survived? All of you are like little islands, Niels. You’re bound to specific geographic locations. That’s where you act as protectors.”

  “Protectors!” Niels gave her a scornful look. “I can’t even protect myself.”

  “That’s not true. You told me yourself that you’re the one they call whenever people have had enough and try to commit suicide. You’re just like the other thirty-five. Doctors, human rights defenders. Just think about that Russian in the theater who volunteered to be shot instead of the young mother and her children. That’s exactly what you do. From the very beginning, you’ve taken the threat seriously. You’re the only one who has.”

  He noticed that she was holding his hand tightly. She loosened her grip but didn’t let go. “There’s an old proverb that goes like this: ‘The devil’s greatest stroke of genius was’—”

  Niels finished the sentence: “—‘convincing people that he existed.’ ”

  “The biggest mistake we can make is to think that we’ve figured the whole thing out. The people I know who are the greatest skeptics, who are least certain about how the world and the universe work, are also the most intelligent. The most brilliant.

  “God does not exist. It started with the Big Bang. We can turn the temperature up or down, like a thermostat.” She shook her head and smiled at him. “Absolute certainty is only for stupid people. It requires a certain intelligence to realize how little we actually know.”

  “That’s why we don’t know what’s happening to me? Is that what you mean?”

  “Yes. But we can see a system. It’s the same way with gravity. We have no idea why it works the way it does. But we do know that the ball will come back down when we throw it up in the air. No matter what you do, Niels, no matter what, you’re going to end up at the National Hospital six days from now. On Friday.”

  Niels didn’t reply. He turned the key in the ignition. There was something liberating about putting an end to the silence.

  “Where are we going?” Hannah asked.

  He looked at her and said, “On vacation. I need a break.”

  Heading west

  Snow began sweeping over the road as they drove out of Copenhagen. At first they headed north. The high-rise apartment buildings gave way to single-family homes. The houses got bigger and bigger, eventually becoming mansions before nature took over.

  “No.” Niels changed his mind. “Let’s drive west.”

  He took the exit for Odense. He wanted to get as far away as possible. On the radio, agitated voices were discussing the climate conference fiasco. Obama had left by now. Some callers claimed the world was doomed. “And maybe we don’t really deserve to be here. Human beings. The destroyers.” The words on the radio flew through the air like the snow outside the car windows.

  “Look at that,” said Hannah quietly, almost as if speaking to herself. She was staring with enchantment at the billions of snowflakes they were driving through. “I wonder if this is what it’s like to float through space.”

  The car’s headlights lit up the snow-covered fields on either side. “We need to listen to some music.” Niels rummaged through the stack of CDs. Milli Vanilli and Nina Hagen in a broken case.

  “Keep your eyes on the road.”

  “Don’t you have any Beatles? Or Dylan?” he asked Hannah. “Something from before 1975?”

  “I only have music that I never listened to while Johannes was alive.”

  He looked at her. “Part of your so-called project?”

  “Exactly. But watch out!”

  They started to skid. For just a few seconds, Niels lost control of the car.

  “I told you to keep your eyes on the road.”

  Niels smiled. Hannah lit two cigarettes and handed one to him. She rolled down the window.

  “Thanks.” He turned on the music. A monotone pop tune that somehow suited the moment. “But it doesn’t really matter, does it?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “If the car skids off the road. Or if I have an accident. You said yourself that it’s a law of nature that I’m going to end up at the National Hospital on Friday. No matter what I do.”

  “I’m not the one deciding that. It’s the system. It’s mathematics. But it doesn’t apply to me. And I’m not sure that I’m ready to—”

  Niels looked at her. “I’m not, either.”

  They drove through little hamlets that all looked alike. The same view from the car windows: streetlamps, a train station, a grocery store, a pizzeria, a newsstand, designed by the same architect who had designed all Danish provincial towns. He must have been a busy man.

  They stopped for a red light. Not a soul in sight. No lights on in any of the windows. Not in the veterinarian’s office or the community health clinic. Nor in the pharmacy or pub.

  “The light’s green.”

  Niels didn’t move.

  “Niels?”

  He pulled over to the side of the road.

  “What’s going on? Where are we?”

  “Somewhere or other.”

  “Somewhere or other?”

  “That’s a good enough name for this place, don’t you think?”

  “Niels. Why are we stopping?”

  He looked at her. “To defeat your mathematics.”

  2

  Somewhere in Sjælland

  Kathrine usually said that there were two types of people. The ones who felt reassured when they went to see a doctor, and the ones who were terrified. Niels belonged to the se
cond category. Doctors in any medical setting: health centers, hospitals, and clinics. He did everything possible to avoid them. He always tried to postpone any sort of contact until it was absolutely necessary. Six years earlier, he had pushed his luck too far. A harmless respiratory infection that could have been cured in a matter of a few days with a dose of penicillin had almost cost him his life. Because he’d refused to do anything about it, the infection had spread to his pleurae, lung tissues, and alveoli. When Niels agreed to be admitted to the hospital, he was in such a weakened condition that the doctors at first guessed he might be suffering from aggressive lung cancer. Kathrine was furious with him. Why hadn’t he gone to see a doctor earlier? “I belong to the second category” was the only thing he could say.

  At first nothing happened when Niels slammed his elbow through the glass pane. Then the alarm started up. An ugly sound. A loud, shrill shrieking. His hand was bleeding, and he hesitated. Then he began rummaging through drawers and cabinets, trying to read the labels in the dark. Prednisolone, albuterol, aspirin, Terbasmin. What was morphine called? He scanned the labels: Sedative. Sleeping pills. Laxative. Antihistamine. Most ended up on the floor, but anything that might have a tranquilizing effect got stuffed into his pockets. How much time had passed? It could take ten minutes for the police to arrive on the scene. At least. This type of break-in wasn’t given high priority. In his mind, Niels could hear the officers down at the station when they received the call. “Fucking drug addicts!” They might just have a little more coffee. Because what use would it be? What officer wanted to go out in the dark, in the middle of a snowstorm, to deal with a desperate junkie probably infected with HIV? There would always be more poor souls ready to swallow a handful of pills—it didn’t matter what kind—in the hope of suppressing the cravings. Cortisone, baclofen, bromhexine. Some Niels tossed on the floor, others went into his pockets, before he found some of the good stuff: two different brands of morphine.