A Quiet Vendetta (12 page)

The phone rang. It was as if someone had tied elastic to Ray Hartmann and suddenly snapped him back into the present.

He blinked twice, inhaled deeply, and then reached for the receiver.

‘Mr Hartmann?’ someone asked him.

‘Yes.’

‘We’re coming up to get you.’

‘Okay, okay,’ Hartmann replied, and then he replaced the receiver and walked through to the narrow bathroom to wash his face.

It was just after five p.m., evening of Friday the twenty-ninth. Outside it looked like a storm was coming.

Ray Hartmann’s first impression of FBI unit chiefs Stanley Schaeffer and Bill Woodroffe was of their seeming lack of individuality. Both in their mid to late forties, dark suits, white shirts, black ties, hair graying at the temples, furrowed brows and anxious eyes. These guys would spend the entirety of their working lives dressed for a funeral. The two Feds who’d flown out to New York to collect Hartmann had escorted him to the New Orleans FBI Field Office, signed him in without saying a word, walked him through a maze of corridors and then left him outside their door.

‘Inside,’ one of the agents said, and then the pair of them turned and walked away.

When Hartmann knocked it was Schaeffer who told him to come in, who greeted him, shook his hand, asked him to sit down, but it was Woodroffe who started talking.

‘Mr Hartmann,’ he said quietly. ‘I understand that you must be feeling some sense of confusion regarding the manner in which you have been brought here.’

Hartmann shrugged.

Woodroffe glanced at Schaeffer; Schaeffer nodded without looking away from Hartmann.

‘We have a case here. An unusual situation. A man has been murdered and a girl has been kidnapped, and we find ourselves requiring your services.’

Woodroffe waited for Hartmann to speak, but Hartmann had nothing to say.

‘The man we believe responsible for both the killing and the kidnapping has asked for you specifically, and this evening at seven he will call and he will speak to you. We believe he will make his demands known.’

‘What’s his name?’ Hartmann asked.

‘We have no idea,’ Schaeffer said.

Hartmann frowned. ‘But he knew my name? He asked for me specifically?’

Schaeffer nodded. ‘He did.’

Hartmann shook his head. ‘And you think I might be able to tell you who he is from the sound of his voice on the telephone?’

‘No, Mr Hartmann, we don’t believe that at all. We have studied your records, we know how busy you have been with the many hundreds of cases that have passed across your desk over the years. We don’t imagine for a moment that you’ll be able to identify the man by his voice, but we can’t help but think that he might be someone you have dealt with or come across at some point in the past.’

Hartmann nodded. ‘That would be logical, considering he asked for me by name.’

‘So we want you to take the call, to speak to him,’ Woodroffe said. ‘He may identify himself, he may not, but what we are hoping is that he will give us his terms and conditions for the return of the kidnap victim.’

‘And that would be?’ Hartmann asked.

Woodroffe once more glanced sideways at Schaeffer.

‘You know Charles Ducane?’ Schaeffer asked.

Hartmann nodded. ‘Sure, Governor Charles Ducane, right?’

Schaeffer nodded. ‘The kidnap victim is Governor Ducane’s daughter, Catherine.’

‘Holy shit,’ Hartmann said.

‘Holy shit exactly,’ Schaeffer said.

Hartmann leaned forward and rested his forearms on the edge of the desk. He looked at Woodroffe and Schaeffer, and then he closed his eyes for a moment and sighed.

‘You understand I am not a trained negotiator?’ Hartmann said.

‘We understand that,’ Woodroffe said, ‘but we find ourselves in a situation of being able to turn to no-one but you. Believe me, if there was some way we could avoid involving you we would. This is a federal matter, and though you are by necessity in the employ of the federal government we also appreciate that this is not the sort of thing you are suited to.’

Hartmann frowned. ‘What, you think I can’t take a phone call?’

Schaeffer smiled, but there was nothing warm in his eyes. ‘No Mr Hartmann, we know you are perfectly capable of taking a phone call. What we mean is that you are an investigator for the Judiciary Subcommittee on Organized Crime, not a field agent with years of training in hostage negotiation.’

‘But you guys are, and you figure between us we can get the guy and save the girl?’

Schaeffer and Woodroffe were silent for a moment.

‘A flippant attitude does not befit proceedings such as these,’ Schaeffer said quietly.

Hartmann nodded. ‘Sorry,’ he said equally quietly, and wondered how long the call would be, how long he would have to stay afterwards, and whether there would be a late flight back to New York that night.

‘So, we do this this evening,’ Hartmann said.

‘Seven o’clock,’ Schaeffer said.

Hartmann glanced at his watch. ‘I’ve got something over an hour to kill.’

‘You can study these,’ Woodroffe said, and rising from his chair he crossed the room to a small desk in the corner. He returned with a number of files and placed them in front of Hartmann.

‘All the details we have thus far, pictures of the murder victim, pictures of the girl, Forensics and Criminalistics reports, the usual things. Study these now, so when he calls you have some kind of idea of what we are dealing with here.’

Woodroffe stayed on his feet as he spoke, and then Schaeffer rose also.

‘We’ll leave you for a little while. Anything you need?’ Hartmann looked up. ‘An ashtray. And could someone get me a cup of coffee? Not some of this shit you get out of the machine, but like a real cup of coffee with cream?’

Schaeffer nodded. ‘We’ll see what we can do, Mr Hartmann.’

‘Thanks.’ Hartmann waited until they had left the room before he opened the first file and looked down into the trunk of a ’57 Mercury Cruiser with some beat-to-fuck dead guy inside.

It was the constellation that got him. Caught him like a fish on a hook. It meant nothing, at least nothing specific, but the mere fact that whoever had done this had taken the time to draw the constellation of Gemini on the vic’s back told Hartmann that here he was dealing with someone a little more sophisticated than the regular kind of thug. And then there was the heart. And then there was the simple fact that the girl who’d been kidnapped was Charles Ducane’s daughter. Perhaps it was then, seated in the plain office with the photos, the reports, the transcriptions of the two phone calls that had been made, the collective details of all that had occurred since the night of Wednesday 20 August in front of him, that Ray Hartmann believed he might not get away from this thing tonight.

And if not tonight, then when?

Why did this man wish to speak to him, to
him
in particular, and what would he require of him? Would it be something that would keep him in New Orleans?

And what of Tompkins Square Park at midday on Saturday?

Ray Hartmann sighed and closed his eyes. He leaned forward, his elbows on the table, his forehead against his steepled fingers, and behind his eyes he could see Carol’s face, the way she would look at him when he’d done something else to piss her off. And then there was Jess, the way she would greet him when he arrived home, her smile wide, her eyes bright, everything that ever meant anything to him all tied up in the lives of two people he couldn’t see . . .

He started when someone knocked on the door.

Ray Hartmann opened his eyes and lowered his hands.

The door opened, and Bill Woodroffe, same expression as before, stepped inside and nodded at Hartmann.

‘Ten minutes,’ he said, ‘We’re gonna take the call out here where we have other agents on additional lines.’

Hartmann rose from the chair, walked around the table and followed Woodroffe.

They passed down the corridor and took the second door on the right. The room looked like mission control at Houston: banks of computers, gray free-standing dividers separating dozens of desks one from another, floor-to-ceiling maps on three of the walls, endless rows of file cabinets, and in amongst this a good dozen Bureau men, all of them in white shirts and dark ties.

‘Hold up!’ Woodroffe shouted over the murmur of voices.

The room fell silent. Could have heard a pin drop.

‘This is Special Investigator Ray Hartmann from New York. He is part of the Judiciary Subcommittee on Organized Crime up there. This is the guy that’s gonna take the call.’

Woodroffe let his words sink in for a moment.

Hartmann felt a dozen pairs of eyes watching him.

‘So when the call comes we take it in three stages. Feshbach, Hackley and Levin are gonna take the first pick-up on line one, Landry, Weber and Duggan the second, finally Cassidy, Saxon and Benedict on line three. When all three teams have picked up, Mr Hartmann will take line four right here. If there is the slightest sound from anyone in the room when the call has been connected through the speakers they will take a two-week unpaid suspension. This is a young girl’s life we’re talking about, gentlemen, understood?’

There was a hushed series of acknowledgements across the room.

‘So that’s the game plan. Mr Kubis will trace the call and record it as per protocol. So take your seats, gentlemen, and wait it out.’

Woodroffe indicated that Hartmann should take a seat at the desk ahead of him. Hartmann did so. He glanced at the wall clock. Four minutes to seven. He could feel the tension in his throat and chest. His hands were moist, and beneath his hairline beads of sweat were breaking out. This was not what he had intended to be doing this evening.

At six-fifty-eight someone sneezed. Woodroffe ordered the man from the room.

The place was deathly quiet.

Hartmann could feel his heart thudding in his chest. He wanted to close his eyes for a moment, open them and find that all of this had vanished, that it had been nothing more than some strange non-sequitur dream. He did not dare close his eyes. He could not appear to be unsettled by this in any way. Like Woodroffe had so clearly stated, a young girl’s life was at risk.

Six-fifty-nine.

Hartmann glanced up at Woodroffe. Woodroffe looked back dispassionately. This was business, nothing more nor less than business. Hartmann’s presence would naturally be resented. He may have been bound by the same legal and judicial code of practice, but sure as shit he wasn’t family.

He looked back at the phone and willed it to ring. He wanted to know. He wanted to hear this man’s voice, to know instantly who it was, to turn to Woodroffe and tell them exactly where they would find him and how to rescue the girl . . .

He wanted to be back on a plane to New York knowing that he would see Carol and Jess next Saturday.

He inhaled.

The phone rang and Hartmann nearly left his skin.

‘Line one,’ Woodroffe barked.

‘Line two.’

Hartmann’s heart thudded like a derailed freight train in his chest.

‘Line three . . . go!’

A moment’s pause, a moment that stretched out for ever.

Woodroffe’s hand on his shoulder.

Hartmann watching his own hand as it reached for the receiver ahead of him.

Now
, Woodroffe mouthed, and Ray Hartmann – he of the broken heart and bitterness, he of the regrets and darker aspects, his mind filled with nothing more than the wish to see his wife and daughter next Saturday noon – lifted the phone.

‘Yes?’ he said, his voice subdued, almost cracking.

‘Mr Ray Hartmann,’ the voice at the other end of the line returned. ‘Welcome home to New Orleans . . .’

Later, the lights out, through the window from the street the faint glow of New Orleans as it ached in slow-motion through the chilled hours of early morning, Ray Hartmann asked himself why he had chosen this life.

A life of crime, if you like; others’ crimes, but crimes all the same.

Just as with the police, the FBI, the county coroners and medical examiners, all those whose lot it was to scour the underbelly of America, to turn over the stones, to search out the darker shadows and find what lurked within, he had somehow – through fate or fortune – found himself charged with this duty. The killers, the serial rapists, the hitmen, the murderers, the child molesters, the assassins, the psychopaths, the sociopaths, the guilty, the tormented, the tortured and depraved. Here, in all its resplendent glory, was the worst the world could offer, and he – he of all people, wishing now for nothing more than safety and sanity for himself and his family – was once again walking along the edge of the abyss, looking down, tempting equilibrium, challenging his own sense of balance to see if this time,
this
time, he would fall.

Back in New York, in the office complex he shared with Luca Visceglia and the crew, were the details of a hundred thousand lives wrecked by a collection of truly crazy people. Even the FBI’s January 1997 release of fifteen thousand pages of documents relating to the Mafia, the death of Kennedy, of Jimmy Hoffa, the workings of the Teamsters’ Union and the killing of their associates and cohorts, gave no indication of the extent to which the government and its many systems had been infected by corruption and Machiavellian dishonesty. Even Hoover, perhaps the most shrewd and conniving hypocrite of them all, had once commented, ‘I never saw so much skullduggery . . .’

Ray Hartmann had spent hundreds of hours immersed in the history and heritage of these people. He remembered vividly the conversations he and Visceglia had started and never seemed to finish in the small office they had first shared. Back then Hartmann had believed himself cognizant of the methods and motives of these people, but Visceglia had illustrated his naivety.

‘Never really been anything other than the Gambino and Genovese crime families,’ Visceglia had told him. ‘Those families were established many generations before any of the stuff we have to deal with. Those people divided New York like it’d always belonged to them . . . like it had always been their own.’

Visceglia chain-smoked, he drank too much coffee. He possessed an air of philosophical resignation regarding his place in life. He seemed to carry the weight of this darkened world on his shoulders, and those shoulders would bow and strain beneath the pressure, but they would never give.