A Quiet Vendetta (67 page)

He believed he’d never been so exhausted in his life.

He was there on the street in front of the hotel when the FBI transporters came. There were two of them, an older man, tall and heavy-set, almost too old to be in active service, and a much younger one, dark-haired, and had he been but a few years older they could have been stand-ins for himself and Perez. Agents such as these were specially assigned to tasks such as this – the passage of Ernesto Perez to Quantico, right into the heart of the Federal Bureau of Investigation Headquarters, and there – while he awaited whatever judicial procedure the Bureau had arranged for him – there would be a hundred profilers with a hundred different tests, all of them eager to ascertain the specific common denominator that linked all such people together. There was no one thing: Hartmann knew that from studying thousands of case files on all manner of killings. These people were human beings just like the rest of us, and Hartmann believed all people possessed the capacity and will to murder; it was merely a matter of environment, conditioning,
situational dynamics
as they were so often referred to, that precipitated that actual moment, the split-second heartbeat when the mind moved the hand and the hand pulled the trigger or buried the knife or tightened the cord around someone’s unsuspecting throat. It was not complicated; it could not be filed or classified or cataloged or cross-indexed; it was what it was, and what it was would always and forever come down to people. Guns were never the cause of death; thoughts and emotions and reactions were the
force majeure
. People killed people, and that was all there was to it.

So Ray Hartmann sat smoking his cigarette while the transporters made idle talk with the other agents present, and no-one seemed to possess the same degree of tenacity or drive about this thing. Perhaps they all subconsciously knew it was coming to an end. Perhaps they all believed that Catherine Ducane was dead, and thus there was nothing else worth fighting for.

Outside the hotel stood an armored four-by-four Humvee. Dark gray, mirrored windows, bulletproof tires, skirting between the wheels that was designed to prevent anything being rolled beneath the vehicle. It was in this vehicle that Perez would make his final journey from Louisiana. Once he climbed inside that car he would never come back. Of that Hartmann was certain. And himself? Would he ever come back? He believed not, for this had not only been a trial by fire, it had also served as some means of exorcism and catharsis. Perhaps Louisiana would always and forever hold his past, both his childhood, and this particular rite of passage.

He rose and crossed the foyer. He shared a few words with the transporters – the elder one, Warren McCormack, the younger one, David Van Buren. They were cold and businesslike; they were here to do something specific, something functional and precise. They had done this sort of thing a thousand times before, ferrying the worst the world could offer to their final destination, and they were hardened and matter-of-fact and eager to be on their way.

Hartmann left the Royal Sonesta and walked the long route back to the Marriott. He felt as if he were breathing New Orleans air for the very last time. Tomorrow he would be gone. Tomorrow he would fly back to New York and call Carol. He considered once more what she had said when he’d had Verlaine call her. That she’d expressed doubts.
Actions speak louder than words
, she had said, and he felt sure he could demonstrate the necessary actions if only he was given another chance. But how many chances had she given him already? And how many times had he let her down? He would speak with Jess again, he knew that, and it was something he could almost physically anticipate. He wanted that meeting so much, a meeting where they could talk about the possibility of making their lives together work. He felt the conflict then: the need to know about Catherine Ducane versus the desire to know nothing more. Perhaps that was the point he believed he could let go of it all. It was so much a part of him, as intrinsically his own as his fingerprints, the sound of his voice, the way his face looked when he stared at himself in the mirror. Perhaps he had let whatever held him within this go – finally, without question. Perhaps. Time would tell.

In his room he watched TV. Cartoons, ten minutes of some awful made-for-TV movie, a brief flash of news that reminded him that the world had gone on about its business without him. He’d been here eight days, all of thirteen or fourteen hundred hours, and whereas a week had just effortlessly slipped through his fingers in New York, this week had seemed like a hundred years all crammed together with no breathing space at all.

He turned the TV channel to the hotel radio and lay on the bed. Dr John played ‘Jump Sturdy’, and following on came Van Morrison singing ‘Slipstream’. He remembered the record, the album he and Carol had bought together so many years before.
Best record to make out to
, she’d told him, and then she’d laughed and told him they’d wear the grooves flat by the time they were finished. It was all there just inches back of his forehead – the faces, the names, the colors, the sounds, the places – everything they had shared together for the better part of a decade and a half. And then there was Jess, all of twelve years old, nothing less than a woman in her own right, and how she had made everything they had worked for seem truly and eternally worthwhile.

He believed it was all there, every single moment of it, and now all he had to do was say the right thing at the right moment and he could take it all back.

And so he slept, once again fully clothed but for his shoes, and when he woke it was a little after six in the morning, and he stood on the balcony of his hotel room and watched as the sun rose and warmed and then bleached the landscape of shadows. This was the Big Easy, the Big Heartacher. New Orleans, where they buried the dead overground, where the guidebooks recommended you walk in groups, where everything slid over-easy, sunny-side down, where the Big George fell on eagles nine times out of ten.

This was the heart of it, the American Dream, and dreams never really changed, they just became faded and forgotten in the manic slow-motion slide of time.

Sometimes, out there, it was easier to choke than to breathe.

‘So you’re up for the last show,’ Schaeffer said as Hartmann appeared in the hotel room doorway.

Hartmann looked at Woodroffe and Schaeffer; they appeared as worn-out as he felt.

‘What happens when he’s done?’ he asked.

‘We got a couple of transporters who’ve come down,’ Woodroffe said. ‘Didn’t catch their names but they’re here from Quantico. That’s where he’s going after all is said and done.’

‘You were told that was gonna happen?’ Hartmann asked.

‘We were informed that people would be coming, of course,’ Schaeffer said. ‘They don’t send names or dates or anything, just that people would be coming to take Perez.’

Hartmann frowned.

Schaeffer laughed drily. ‘You don’t work for the FBI,’ he said. ‘Everything, and I mean
everything
, is on a strictly need-to-know basis. We’re just the babysitters. We’re just here to make sure he sings like a canary and doesn’t fly the coop. When our job’s done we get to go home and someone else takes Perez wherever the fuck he’s supposed to go.’

‘You’ll go with him to Quantico?’ Hartmann asked.

‘Sure we will,’ Woodroffe said. ‘I ain’t letting the guy disappear outta my life without saying goodbye.’

‘Me and Woodroffe will go with them,’ Schaeffer said, ‘and you, Mr Hartmann, you get to go back to the real world and fix this business with your wife.’

‘Any more news on Feraud and Ducane?’ Hartmann asked.

‘I haven’t heard anything else,’ Schaeffer said. ‘I imagine we’ll catch something on the news sooner or later.’

‘A statement will come from Ducane’s office that he has been taken ill and his doctor has consigned him to complete bed rest for a month. The month will pass by and another statement will come that he has been slow to recover, and this unfortunate situation has required him to graciously offer his resignation from the office of Governor of Louisiana.’

‘You are a dark-minded cynic, Bill Woodroffe,’ Schaeffer said.

‘No, I am a realist,’ Woodroffe said. ‘Even in the face of something like this these people will protect their own. Indirectly, of course, they will in fact be protecting themselves.’

‘These people, as you so diplomatically put it,’ Schaeffer said, ‘are the same people that sign your paycheck.’

Woodroffe shook his head and sighed. ‘I’ve had enough for one week,’ he said quietly. ‘I wanna go home and see my wife, eat a proper meal, watch a game on the tube, drink three cans of beer and sleep in my own bed.’

Schaeffer smiled. He turned and looked at Hartmann. ‘You call me in a couple of weeks,’ he said. ‘Call me at my office and I’ll tell you what I can about what happens with Perez, okay?’

‘Appreciated,’ Hartmann said.

‘And here we go,’ Schaeffer said, as a commotion of voices and noise was heard from the corridor.

Hartmann rose slowly from the chair. It seemed that every muscle, every bone, every sinew and nerve in his body was screaming at him to lie down. He fought the urge. He put one foot ahead of the other. He made it as far as the doorway, walked down the hallway and turned left.

He paused for a moment, closed his eyes for just a fraction of a second, and then he stepped into the room.

‘Mr Hartmann,’ Ernesto Perez said quietly.

‘Mr Perez,’ Hartmann replied.

‘I believe this will be the very last time that we speak face to face.’

‘I believe so.’

‘It has been a fascinating week, has it not?’

‘Not my choice of words, but I understand the sentiment.’

Perez smiled and reached for a cigarette. He lit it, inhaled, and then allowed the tendrils of smoke to escape from his nostrils. ‘And you . . . you will be returning to New York?’

Hartmann nodded. ‘Yes. I plan to leave for home as soon as we are done.’

‘Home?’ Perez asked, almost a rhetorical question. ‘I asked you whether you had managed to convince yourself that New York was your home, didn’t I?’

‘You did. Home is where the heart is, Mr Perez . . . and my heart is in New York.’

Perez looked down, and then turned slowly to the left. He spoke without looking directly at Hartmann, almost as if he was speaking to someone only he could see. ‘Age is a judge,’ he said quietly. ‘It is a judge and a court and a jury, and you stand before yourself and view your own life as if it was all evidence for a trial. You cross-examine yourself, you ask questions and wait for answers, and when you are done you deliver your own verdict.’

Hartmann was silent. He waited for Perez to continue. He watched him almost without breathing, for he did not wish to disturb the man. It was as if Perez had slipped into a reverie, viewing all that he had done, all he had spoken of, and was now allowing matters to reach their own natural conclusion.

‘I cannot say I have been right, and I cannot say I have been wrong,’ Perez said at last. ‘I find myself somewhere in between, and from this standpoint I can see how everything might have been different. Hindsight also is a judge, but he is biased and slanted towards a perspective that cannot be achieved without the luxury of hindsight. It is a paradox, Mr Hartmann, indeed it is.’

He turned back to face Hartmann. ‘We see everything so clearly once it has passed, do we not? I am sure there must be a hundred decisions you have made, and if given the time again you would have decided very differently. I am right?’

Hartmann nodded.

‘So we live our lives for the moment, it seems, and we base our decisions on the information we have, but it seems that at least fifty percent of the time the information we are given is incorrect or false, or based on someone’s opinion, someone with an ulterior motive or a vested interest. Life is not fair, Mr Hartmann. Life is neither just nor equitable, and unfortunately we are not provided with a guidebook or a manual of rules regarding how it should be lived. It seems a shame, does it not, that in fifty thousand years of history we have yet failed to understand even the simplest aspect of ourselves?’

Hartmann looked away himself then. Perez was right, and despite the horrors that Hartmann had listened to, despite the violence and bloodshed that Perez had both instigated and condoned, there was something about the man that seemed to command an element of respect. Abhorrence and repulsion had in some small way become supplanted by a degree of acceptance. For all that had been done, Perez had never pretended to be anything other than himself. Unlike Ducane, unlike even Feraud, Perez had worn his heart on his sleeve; he had shown his colors; he had cheated and deceived and murdered, but never failed to recognize that that was what he was doing. Even his wife had been aware of the man he was, and though they had never spoken openly of his life he had never directly lied to her.

Perez looked across the table at Hartmann. Hartmann looked back. There was silence between them for some seconds, but that silence was neither awkward nor tense. It seemed, after all these things, that each had accepted the other. This thought did not disturb Hartmann. He did not question his allegiances nor his feelings. It was what it was. Perez had spoken the truth, and for this, perhaps this alone, he had earned Hartmann’s respect.

‘So,’ Perez eventually said, his voice clear and precise. ‘Let me tell you what happened when
I
came home to New Orleans.’

And so at last I had come full circle.

Ouroboros: the snake that devours its own tail, finally to disappear.

Here was everything I was, everything I became, everything I would ultimately be. Here was the beginning of every thought and deed, every action, every dream that soured and died some quiet and lonely death in the darkened shadows of my mind.

I arrived in New Orleans 6 April, 2000. The Mardi Gras was bursting the streets at their seams. The Vieux Carré was alive and throbbing with the sound of music and voices, the fireworks of color along rues d’Orléans, de Toulouse, de Chartres, de Sainte-Anne, de Sainte-Philippe, de Bourbon and de Bourgogne, the Halls of Preservation and Dixieland: the rolling syncopations of jazz blended with deep Southern gospel blues, and amidst all of this, my memories . . .