A Quiet Vendetta (22 page)

Schaeffer and Woodroffe met with Hartmann after Perez had been escorted away.

‘What d’you think?’ Schaeffer asked him.

‘About what?’

Schaeffer rolled his eyes and looked discouragingly at Woodroffe.

‘About the New York Knicks’ chances this fucking season, Hartmann . . . what the fuck do you think I’m talking about?’

‘Perez or the girl?’

‘Okay, Perez,’ he said. ‘First Perez.’

Hartmann said nothing for a time. ‘I think he knows exactly what he’s doing. I think he’s planned this down to the last detail. I think day by day he will tell us only so much as he wants us to know, that he will give us little bits and pieces of this and make us work very hard to see the whole picture. His motives? I have no idea. Perhaps that won’t come until the very last piece falls into place. Right now he has the upper hand. He has something we very much want, and he knows we will cater to him in every way we can in order to find that out.’

Woodroffe was nodding in the affirmative. ‘That’s my take on it,’ he said. ‘I’ve got people working on him already. We have his prints. We know what he looks like. They will trawl through every file and document we’ve got. They’ll go through CODIS, to VICAP Criminal Profiling at Quantico. Transcripts of what he tells us will be passed to the best people we have and if there’s anything to discover they’ll find it.’

Hartmann was not so sure there would be anything to find. He believed that Perez knew exactly what he was saying and how he was going to keep them running until the very last moment. For a second he even considered the possibility that the girl was already dead.

‘So motivation we don’t know, and are not likely to know until he tells us,’ Schaeffer said. ‘Until we have some kind of a handle on that there is nothing we can do but follow exact protocol. We have sufficient resources to follow any lead we might find, realistic or otherwise. If anything comes up from other areas we’ll go with it, but right now our main task is to keep this man talking, keep him on the subject as best we can—’

Hartmann smiled drily. ‘I believe he intends to tell us his entire life story. This is his unwritten autobiography, the opportunity of a lifetime to tell us everything that he’s done, everywhere he’s been, and everything he knows about everyone else. It would not surprise me if we didn’t encounter Governor Charles Ducane at some point along the line.’

There was silence for a moment from both Woodroffe and Schaeffer, and then Woodroffe leaned forward, rested his hands on the table and assumed a very serious expression.

‘I do not need to tell you that everything you hear both inside and outside this office is governed by the jurisdiction of the FBI. Not a word, not a single word will go out of here, you understand?’

Hartmann raised his hand. ‘I’m not in kindergarten, Agent Woodroffe—’

Woodroffe smiled. ‘I am well aware of that fact, Mr Hartmann, but I am also aware that you have had your own troubles in the past, a small area of difficulty regarding the way you have handled your own personal affairs, and it is not unknown to us that you have been registered with Alcoholics Anonymous, and have run into some significant difficulty with your wife and daughter as a result.’

Hartmann was incensed. He opened his mouth to speak but Woodroffe raised his hand.

‘It is of no matter to us,’ he said. ‘We understand that you have performed in an exemplary fashion for a considerable time in your job, and we also understand that you are here at the specific request of Perez and there is nothing we can do about that. All we are saying is that this is a matter of the highest national priority right now, and we need everyone on the same side and running after the same ball.’

Hartmann sighed inside. He did not wish to be there. He did not want to be having this conversation with these people. His native human instinct cared about Catherine Ducane as a human being and he did feel a certain sense of responsibility and duty to see this through. He would do what he had been asked to do, he would get it done as quickly as was possible, for every day that elapsed brought him a day closer to the possible resolution of the
difficulty with his wife and daughter
that Woodroffe had alluded to.

This was not a game, this was real life – rough edges, sharp corners and all. Hartmann had no mind to run up against these people, or to have them dictate his life and time any more than they absolutely had to.

‘You won’t have any difficulty with me,’ Hartmann said, willing himself not to lunge across the table and beat Woodroffe to a bloody pulp. ‘I am here to do this, and when it’s done I will disappear and you will never hear from me again. Now, if you don’t mind, I’m tired and I would like to go back to my hotel, because I imagine that we will all be gathered here once again tomorrow morning for the second chapter in this most fascinating story.’

‘Less of the attitude,’ Schaeffer said.

Hartmann nodded. He did not tell them
Fuck you and the horse you rode in on
. He refrained from asking them
Who the fuck do you people think you are
? He bit his tongue, held his temper, and rose slowly from his chair. There was a quiet and unspoken sense of pride in knowing that he would come through this and never have to speak to these people again.

And so he left – walked from the New Orleans FBI Field Office on Arsenault Street to the Marriott Hotel. Here there were no armed Bureau agents to watch over him. Here there was nothing more than a simple functional hotel room, a comfortable bed, a TV he could watch with the sound turned off as the day closed down around him.

He thought of Carol and Jess. He thought of Saturday 6 September. He thought of Ernesto Cabrera Perez and how a man like that would see this world. Not through the same eyes, and not with the same emotions. However polite and cultured and erudite the man might have seemed, he was as crazy as the rest of the sick bastards that seemed to have populated Hartmann’s life. Such was the life he had chosen, and such was the life he lived.

His sleeping hours were crowded with images, angular and disturbed. He imagined that it was Jess who had been kidnapped by this man, that Carol had been the one found in the trunk of the Mercury Turnpike Cruiser on Gravier Street only a week before. He imagined all manner of things, and when he was woken by a call from room service a little after eight he felt as if he had not slept at all.

He went down for breakfast and found Sheldon Ross waiting for him.

‘Take your time Mr Hartmann,’ Ross said. ‘They’ll be bringing Perez over to the office at about ten.’

‘Come have a cup of coffee with me,’ Hartmann said, and Ross sat with him, shared some coffee, and said nothing of why they were there.

‘You married?’ Hartmann asked.

Ross shook his head.

‘Any particular reason?’

‘Never took the time to address that particular area of my life.’

‘You should,’ Hartmann said. He reached for a piece of toast and buttered it.

‘Special kind of girl who would want to be married to the FBI,’ Ross said.

Hartmann smiled. ‘Don’t I know it.’

‘You’re married, right?’

Hartmann nodded. ‘Married, and still trying to stay married.’

‘Pressures of work?’

‘Indirectly, yes,’ Hartmann replied. ‘More the pressure of being a complete asshole fifty percent of the time.’

Ross laughed. ‘It’s good that you can be honest about it, but as far as I can see it cuts both ways.’

‘Sure it does, but like you said it’s a special kind of person who wants to spend their time married to the sort of thing we do.’ Hartmann looked across the table at Ross. ‘You live with someone or you live alone?’

‘I live with my mom.’

‘And your dad?’

Ross shook his head. ‘Dead a good few years now.’

‘I’m sorry.’

Ross waved the condolence away.

‘So you go home and tell your mom the kind of things you’ve had to look at all day?’

Ross laughed. ‘She’d have a freakin’ coronary.’

‘That’s the point, isn’t it? And with a wife, someone who’s even closer to you in some ways, and then add kids on top of that, and you got a somewhat untenable situation.’

‘So there’s no hope for me?’ Ross asked.

Hartmann smiled. ‘Maybe you should marry an FBI girl.’

‘Brutal,’ Ross said. ‘You seen the sort of girls that join the Bureau? They don’t exactly look like Meg Ryan.’

Hartmann laughed and ate his toast.

Half an hour later they walked together to Arsenault Street.

Woodroffe and Schaeffer were waiting. They said their respective
Good mornings
, and then Hartmann was shown once more into the small rear office where he had sat with Perez the day before.

A small coffee maker had been installed, as had a wheeled trolley upon which sat cigarettes, ashtrays, clean cups and saucers, a bag of jelly beans and a box of Cuban cigars.

‘What the man wants the man gets, right?’ Hartmann had commented to Schaeffer, who nodded and said, ‘Right to the point we nail his ass for the girl, and then he’s gonna get an eight-by-eight in gray steel-reinforced concrete and two hours of daylight a week.’

Hartmann sat down. He waited patiently. He knew when Perez had arrived in the building because he was accompanied by a good dozen or more FBI operatives, all of them awkward and nervous.

Perez appeared in the doorway of the small office and Hartmann instinctively rose from his chair.

Perez extended his hand. Hartmann took it and they shook.

‘You slept well, Mr Perez?’ Hartmann asked, at once feeling a sense of apprehension around the man, but at the same time a considerable degree of disdain.

‘Like the proverbial baby,’ Perez replied as he sat down.

Hartmann sat down also, reached for a packet of cigarettes on the trolley, offered one to Perez, took one himself, and then lit them both. He felt an unusual conflict of emotions – the necessity to be polite, to treat the man with some degree of respect, and at the same time hate him for what he had done, what he represented, and the fact that he had single-handedly jeopardized the only real chance Hartmann had to salvage his marriage. He looked at Perez closely; he believed there was nothing in his eyes, no light of humanity at all.

‘I have a question,’ Hartmann asked.

Perez nodded.

‘Why am I here?’

Perez smiled, and then he started laughing. ‘Because I asked you to be here, Mr Hartmann, and right now I have all the aces and none of the jokers. I am in the driving seat for this short while, and I know that whatever I ask for I will get.’

‘But why me? Why me of all people?’

Perez sighed and leaned back in his chair. ‘Did you ever read Shakespeare, Mr Hartmann?’

Hartmann shook his head. ‘I can’t say that I did.’

‘You should read him, as much as you can. The truth of the matter is that Shakespeare said that there were seven ages of man, and apparently just as there are seven ages of man, there are also only seven real stories.’

Hartmann frowned. ‘I don’t understand.’

‘Seven stories, and everything you read, every movie you might see, everything that happens in life is one of these seven stories. Things like love and revenge, betrayal, such things as this. Only seven of them, and each of those seven stories can be found in every one of William Shakespeare’s plays.’

‘And the connection?’ Hartmann asked.

‘The connection, as you so call it, Mr Hartmann, is that everything you could ever wish to know about me, about why I am here, about what has happened to Catherine Ducane and why I chose you to come home to New Orleans and listen to my story . . . all of the answers can be found in the words of William Shakespeare. Now pour us some coffee and we shall talk, yes?’

Hartmann paused for a moment and then he looked directly at Perez. He had been right. There was not the slightest spark of humanity in the man’s eyes. He was a killer, nothing more nor less than a killer. Hartmann reminded himself of what had been done to Gerard McCahill; he remembered Cipliano’s words,
It’s hard to tell on the blows as well. So many, and all coming at different angles, like whoever did this was walking around the guy in circles while he whacked him
. He pictured Ernesto Perez doing just that: walking around a bound and gagged man, hammer in his hand, raining blow after merciless blow down on the defenseless victim until shock and blood loss brought his life to an end.

Inside he shuddered.

‘You’re not going to give us anything, are you, Mr Perez?’ he asked.

Perez smiled. ‘On the contrary, Mr Hartmann, I am going to give you everything.’

‘About the girl though,’ Hartmann said. ‘You’re not going to give us anything about the girl.’

‘All in good time,’ Perez replied.

‘And you can assure us she is safe and well, and that no harm will come to her?’

Perez looked away towards the corner of the room. His face was implacable, and Hartmann believed a man such as this must have spent the greater part of his life withholding as much as he could from everyone around him. A man like this would stand on a subway platform, in a queue at a coffee shop, biding his time patiently as he waited in line at a supermarket checkout, and no-one would have had an inkling of who he was.

‘I can guarantee nothing, Mr Hartmann. Even as we speak Catherine Ducane might be choking to death on the ropes that have been used to tie her. She may have attempted to work herself free and be suffocating even as we speak. She does not have a lot of time, and thus any time you spend attempting to solicit information from me is indirectly contributing to her demise. It’s the rule of threes, Mr Hartmann—’

‘The what?’

‘The rule of threes. Three minutes without air, three days without water, three weeks without food. Catherine Ducane has already been in my possession since Wednesday the twentieth . . . that’s the better part of a week and a half already.’

In his possession
, Hartmann thought.
That’s the way he thinks of her, that she is in his possession
. Hartmann closed his eyes for a moment. He tried not to think of her. He tried not to comprehend the combined frustration of every federal operative that was now directly, and indirectly, involved in this situation. He tried to focus his mind, tried so hard to focus, but no matter how hard he concentrated he could not pull away from the image of a starved and frightened young woman tied somewhere to a chair, all the while believing that this man would return only to kill her.