A Quiet Vendetta (45 page)

‘Jimmy fucking Hoffa . . . Christ al-fucking-mighty,’ Woodroffe said. ‘I remember it. I remember it happening. I remember all the speculation, the newspaper reports, the theories about what had happened to him.’

‘You must have been in your teens,’ Schaeffer said.

‘Regardless,’ Woodroffe said. ‘I remember it well. And when I came into the Bureau and started reading files that related to organized crime that name came up again and again. That was the big question . . . what the hell happened to Jimmy Hoffa? I can’t believe that Perez was the one who actually killed him. And that Charles Ducane, the fucking governor of Louisiana, knew about it . . . in effect sanctioned it—’

‘And was gonna send Gerard McCahill down to do it,’ Hartmann said, which seemed to him the most relevant point, and the one everyone seemed to be unwilling to face.

‘Enough,’ Schaeffer said. ‘We have no evidence of that.’

‘But we know that pretty much everything Perez has said so far has proven to be true,’ Woodroffe retorted.

‘Supposition,’ Schaeffer replied. ‘We do not know that everything he has said is true, and right now we are investigating Ernesto Perez, not Charles Ducane. As far as I am concerned Charles Ducane and his daughter are the victims of a crime, as is Gerard McCahill, and I don’t want to hear another word about it.’

‘There’s also the fact of how McCahill’s body was found,’ Hartmann said.

‘How so?’ Woodroffe asked.

‘The drawing on his back . . . the constellation of Gemini. That was the word they used when they referred to the hit on Hoffa . . . they referred to it as Gemini. I figure that must have been done to remind Ducane that his involvement had not been forgotten.’

‘Again supposition,’ Schaeffer said. ‘We don’t know anything for a fact. All we have to go on is the word of one man, and he’s as crazy as they come.’

‘Well shit,’ Hartmann said. ‘There goes one of life’s great mysteries,’ and that seemed to kill the subject stone-dead. There was silence for a moment. Hartmann looked out of the window. In the back of his mind he could see the image of the constellation glowing on McCahill’s back, and then he thought of Ernesto Perez standing over the dead body of Stefano Cagnotto. For a heartbeat he was back in the motel with Luca Visceglia, a motel out near Calvary Cemetery the night before an affidavit was due to be sworn. He knew how someone looked when they’d been forcibly overdosed.

‘Now we gotta find the wife,’ Schaeffer said. He looked over at Hartmann in the back seat. ‘See if you can’t get him to tell you something more about the wife. She’s gotta be around somewhere.’

‘And the kid . . . boy, girl, whatever, they’ve gotta be in their early twenties now,’ Woodroffe said.

‘I’ve got FBI Trace alerted,’ Schaeffer added. ‘They’ll find her, we just don’t have a realistic estimate on how long it will take. They’ll go back as far as they need to. Fact of the matter is that there’s no-one in this country who can’t be traced eventually.’

‘Except for Perez himself,’ Woodroffe said, and Schaeffer cut him a look that silenced him immediately.

‘I don’t think we can rely on Perez’s wife being any part of this,’ Hartmann said.

‘And what brings you to that conclusion?’ Schaeffer asked.

‘Perez is too smart to involve his own family. That would be too close to home.’

‘Regardless, it’s something,’ Schaeffer said, ‘and in this situation we follow everything, no matter how unrelated it might seem right now.’

‘And that includes Charles Ducane?’ Hartmann asked, and though it was a question it was as good as rhetoric because he knew how Schaeffer would respond.

Schaeffer just turned and looked at him. The expression on the man’s face was cold and aloof, but beneath that there was something tired and beaten. ‘You wanna get into this again?’ he asked Hartmann.

‘Do I
want
to?’ Hartmann asked. ‘No, I sure as hell don’t. I don’t
want
to get into any of it. In fact I’d much prefer to just step away from the whole thing and go back to New York right now.’

‘We find the girl,’ Schaeffer said.

‘And then?’

Schaeffer raised his eyebrows.

‘And then someone is talking to Ducane?’ Hartmann asked.

Schaeffer closed his eyes and sighed. ‘Whether or not someone talks to Ducane is entirely up to someone else,’ he replied.

‘And none of us here are gonna take any responsibility for that at all, right? You’ve heard what I’ve heard—’

Schaeffer raised his hand. ‘Enough already,’ he said. ‘I’m doing one thing at a time, I’m following the brief I’ve been given . . . and right now the only thing that bears any relevance to anything is Catherine Ducane.’

‘So we’re gonna let it all slide once we find the girl?’

Woodroffe leaned forward. ‘Ray . . . just drop it for now, okay? We go do this meeting with Perez, we do everything we have to do until we’ve got the girl back, and then—’

Hartmann interjected. ‘It’s okay. I’m not saying anything else. It isn’t my job to decide who runs this country anyway.’

Schaeffer didn’t respond; figured it was better that he didn’t. This was a circular conversation, and right in the middle of it was a great number of things that none of them really wanted to know.

The journey was brief, made longer simply by the rainfall; the streets were flooding against the storm drains, and here and there Hartmann saw people hurrying through the downpour in some vain effort to avoid the worst of it. It was hopeless, the heavens had opened wide, and everything that was available was being focused on New Orleans. Perhaps God, in His infinite wisdom, was attempting to clean the place up. It wouldn’t work: too much blood had been spilled on this land for it to be anything other than a small reflection of Hell.

The convoy pulled up outside the Royal Sonesta. Hartmann was out and running towards the front entrance, and there he was met by three federal agents. Inside there were four more, all of them armed, all of them clones of one another, and Hartmann realized how much attention and money was being devoted to this operation.

Now he was being placed in a supremely untenable position. He knew, with more certainty than most other things in his life, that Perez was not here to barter for the life of the girl. That was the very least of his interests. Perez was not here to avoid jail or the death sentence or anything else the justice community could throw at him. Perez was here to tell a story and to make a point. What that point was, well that was anybody’s guess. Hartmann had reconciled himself to giving it the best he had, and if the best wasn’t good enough then they could have someone else come in and do the job.

One of the agents took his overcoat and handed him a towel.

‘Fucked-up weather,’ Hartmann said and started to dry his hair and the back of his neck.

The agent just looked back at him implacably and said nothing.

Where the fuck do they get these people
? Hartmann wondered.
Maybe they have a factory out near Quantico where they just breed them from the same stem cells
.

Hartmann returned the towel and straightened his hair.

Woodroffe appeared beside him, Schaeffer close behind.

‘You gonna give me a wire?’ Hartmann asked.

‘The entire fucking hotel is wired,’ Schaeffer said. ‘There are five floors to this place and Perez is up on top. We have to use the stairs because the elevators have been immobilized. The first four floors are locked at all exits and entries. All the windows are sealed from within, and up on the fifth there are something in the region of twenty agents spread out in the corridors and the rooms on either side of Perez. Inside Perez’s room there are three agents who keep watch from the main room. Perez uses the bedroom, the bathroom adjacent to it, and sometimes he comes into the front to watch TV and play cards with our people. Food is brought to him from the kitchens in the basement, and it goes up the stairs just like everything else.’

‘You have created a fortress for him,’ Hartmann said.

‘Well, he sure as hell ain’t gonna get out . . . and no-one is gonna come in to get him.’

Hartmann frowned. ‘And who might want to come in?’

Woodroffe glanced at Schaeffer. Schaeffer shook his head. ‘I have no idea, Mr Hartmann, but this guy has been full of enough surprises so far that we just ain’t taking any risks.’

‘So it’s up the stairs we go,’ Hartmann said, and made his way across the foyer to the base of the well.

‘Mr Hartmann?’ Schaeffer called after him.

Hartmann slowed and turned.

‘I understand your reservations about this, and I can’t say that I believe this will accomplish anything, but we got a girl out there, a teenage girl who could be still alive, and until we know for sure what the hell happened to her we still have to do everything we can.’

Hartmann nodded. ‘I know,’ he said quietly. ‘I know that as well as anyone here, and I will do everything I can. The truth is that I feel this won’t accomplish anything for us . . . won’t accomplish anything for her.’

‘Just do your best, eh?’ Schaeffer said.

‘Sure,’ Hartmann said, and with that he turned and started up the stairs, two of the Feds from the foyer with him, and it wasn’t until he reached the fifth floor, wasn’t until he stood three feet from Perez’s door, that he understood the significance of what he was about to do. What he said now could serve to turn Perez against them, to make him unwilling to speak, and if he did not speak he would never finish telling them of his life, and Hartmann believed that that had been the entire purpose of kidnapping the girl in the first place.

From wanting to be somebody to believing he was somebody to a sense of loss that he was nobody once again
.

Was this now nothing more than the last-ditch attempt of an old man, albeit crazy, to make something of himself before the lights went down for the last time?

Hartmann glanced at the expressionless agent beside him. ‘Let’s do it,’ he said quietly, and the agent leaned forward and knocked on the door.

From the bedroom came the lilting sound of a piano.

Hartmann frowned.

Inside the first room were three more of Schaeffer’s crew, all of them seasoned veterans by the look of them. The one nearest the door greeted Hartmann, shook his hand, introduced himself as Jack Dauncey. Dauncey seemed genuinely pleased to see someone from the outside world, perhaps someone who was not part of the FBI.

‘He’s inside,’ Dauncey said. ‘We told him you were coming over . . . you know what he asked us?’

Hartmann shook his head.

‘If you’d be staying for supper.’

Hartmann smiled. ‘A character, huh?’

‘A character? He’s one in a million, Mr Hartmann.’ Dauncey smiled and crossed the room. He knocked on the door and within a moment the music was lowered in volume.

‘Come!’ Perez commanded, and Dauncey opened the door.

The room had been assembled as both a sitting area and bedroom. The bed was pushed against the left-hand wall, and over on the right was a table, two chairs, a sofa and a music center. It was from this that the lilting piano was coming.

‘Shostakovich,’ Perez said as he rose from his chair and walked towards Hartmann. ‘You know Shostakovich?’

Hartmann shook his head. ‘Not personally, no.’

Perez smiled. ‘You people defend ignorance with humor. Shostakovich was a Russian composer. He died a long time ago. This piece is entitled “Assault On Beautiful Gorky”, and it was written in commemoration of the storming of the Winter Palace. It is beautiful, no? Beautiful, and altogether very sad.’

Hartmann nodded. He walked across to the table and sat down at one of the chairs.

Perez followed him, sat facing him, and but for the music they could have been seated once more in the FBI Field Office.

‘Perhaps we should conduct our interviews here from now on,’ Perez said. ‘It would save all the trouble of ferrying me back and forth surrounded by all these federal people, none of whom, I can assure you, have the slightest shred of humor, and it would be so much more comfortable, no?’

Hartmann nodded. ‘It would. I’ll suggest it to Schaeffer and Woodroffe.’

Perez smiled and reached for his cigarettes. He offered one to Hartmann. Hartmann took it, retrieved his lighter from his jacket pocket and lit them both.

‘How are they bearing up?’ Perez asked.

‘Who?’

‘Mr Schaeffer and Mr Woodroffe.’

Hartmann frowned. ‘Bearing up?’

‘Sure. They must be feeling the stress of the situation, yes? They have found themselves in perhaps the most uncomfortable set of circumstances of their collective careers. They must be feeling a tremendous amount of pressure, with the girl gone and all manner of high and mighty people breathing down their necks demanding results, results, results. I can only begin to imagine how they must feel.’

‘Stressed,’ Hartmann said, ‘like the Brooklyn Bridge.’

Perez laughed. ‘You are good, Mr Hartmann. I knew very little of you before we met, very little indeed, but since we have been spending this time together I have grown to like you.’

‘I’m flattered.’

‘And so you should be . . . there are very few people I can say that I honestly like in this world. I have seen too many crazy things in my time, things people have done for no apparent reason at all, to make me believe that human beings are all as equally lost as one another.’

‘Why me?’ Hartmann asked.

Perez leaned back and looked at Hartmann. ‘This question intrigues you. I have seen it playing amongst your thoughts from the first day. You want to know why it was that I asked you to come down here and listen to me when I could have asked any number of people and any one of them would have come?’

Hartmann nodded. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Why did you choose me?’

‘Three reasons,’ Perez stated matter-of-factly. ‘First and foremost, because you are from New Orleans. You are a Louisianan, just like me. I am of Cuban descent, granted, but irrespective of that I was born here in New Orleans. New Orleans, like it or not, has always been my original home, my place of origin. And there is something about this place that only those who were born here, only those who have spent their formative years here, can truly understand. It has a voice and a color and an atmosphere all its own. It is like no other place on earth. There is such a blend of people here, faiths and beliefs, languages and ethnic strains, that makes it truly unique. In a way it possesses no singular identifying characteristic, and thus it cannot be easily identified. It is a paradox, a puzzle, and people who visit can never really grasp what makes it so different. It is a place you either love or hate, and once you have decided your feelings for it there is nothing that can change them.’