A Quiet Vendetta (14 page)

‘How will we know you when you come?’ Hartmann asked.

The man laughed. ‘Oh you will know who I am, Mr Hartmann. That, I can assure you, will be the least of your worries.’

‘And when will you come?’

‘Soon,’ the man said. ‘Very soon.’

‘And what about—’

The line suddenly went dead. Hartmann held the receiver against his ear even though he could hear the burring sound of a disconnected line through the speakers in the room.

He shuddered. He closed his eyes. He slowly replaced the receiver in the cradle and turned to look at Schaeffer.

Kubis appeared in the doorway, his face flushed, his eyes those of an agitated man. ‘Two blocks down,’ he shouted. ‘He was calling from two blocks down.’

Schaeffer moved far faster than his size should have permitted, but he was out of the room with three other agents running after him, and though they went out through the front doors of the Field Office at a run, though they would charge down Arsenault Street and nearly lose their lives as they cut through the traffic at the junction, though they would within three minutes stand at the very box from where the call had been made, they would find nothing. Schaeffer knew there would be no prints. He knew the impression of the caller’s ear, as telling as DNA, as individual as retina scans and fingerprints, would have been wiped from the receiver, and though he knew these things he nevertheless ordered the callbox taped and cordoned, he instructed the deployment of Criminalistics to go over the thing with a microscope, and yet in his heart of hearts he knew he was achieving nothing more than the exercise of protocol.

And then he returned. He shared words with Hartmann. He gave him his marching orders and instructed one of the agents to sequester Hartmann in the nearby Marriott Hotel.

And there Hartmann would be found, lying on the bed, smoking a cigarette and watching TV in the early hours of Saturday 30 August, a week to the day from when he was supposed to meet Carol and Jess. A week from the first real chance to rebuild his life.

Way to go
, he would think.
Way to go, Ray Hartmann
.

And after a while he would turn the volume right down and lie there watching the light from the screen flickering on the walls, and he would feel the tension in his chest, the sense of breathlessness and claustrophobia, and he would know – above all else he would know – that you never actually escaped from these things, because these things always came from within.

Such was the way of his world.

Brutally early hours of Saturday morning.

Hartmann drove through the Arabi District below the Canal Bayou Bienvenue and above the 39 Highway that followed the Mississippi all the way down to St Bernard. Here it became Highway 46 and took a straight route east towards Evangeline. With Lake Borgne to the south he pulled off the main freeway, slowed for a while with the window of his car open wide, and felt the breeze that came down off the water. Still New Orleans, but – as with all the districts inside the city limits – Arabi possessed a flavor and tempo all its own. A string of seedy and run-down clam bars and restaurants hunkered low along the shorefront, down where the warehousemen and yardhands split their palms on packing crates and drank their dreams through bottles without labels that came from beneath counters, half a dollar at a time. There were girls down there too, girls who walked from their waists and hips, not from their legs, girls with too much lipstick and too much liquor, brassy acts teetering in precarious heels and shamelessly bearing a resemblance to the men they serviced, twenty or thirty dollars a time.

Hartmann drove on. Rain coming down now. Escaped for a little while from the Marriott, while the world and all its cousins slept soundly in the knowledge that the madness that same world offered would still be there come daylight.

Found himself out near the airport. Left the car and stood near the fence that separated the fields from the runways, hands in his pockets, his collar turned up against the bitter slant of rain that seemed to take razor-slices from his skin. He watched as a damp piece of paper was caught by the wind and tossed towards the fence. It clung desperately to the wire for a moment and then, as if moving across a chessboard, it shifted an inch or two to the left. Pawn to bishop three, and through the gap it went like a rocket, spinning out over the tarmac like it was late for some life-or-death appointment. A sound pulled at Hartmann’s attention, and he turned to watch an Ozark internal flight slide upwards from the far runway like a silver bullet. The clouds swallowed it effortlessly, so effortlessly there was nothing but a thin breath of slipstream to remind him that it was ever there at all.

He tried to light a cigarette but it was useless. He turned his back on the runway and started walking towards the Moisant International Terminal, and in that moment felt like he was turning his back on a watershed.

He could have run.

Hiring the car had been easy enough. A single call to room service. A credit card number. Forty-three minutes later a car appeared outside the front of the hotel. And then he was inside, had started the engine, felt the thing turn over as he changed gear and pulled away. Could’ve just kept on going. Could’ve taken 39 or 46 or any other highway. And Schaeffer and Woodroffe wouldn’t have realized he was gone for a good two or three hours. They would’ve found him. Of course they would. Only so many places he could’ve gone. Would have
definitely
found him. No question about it.

He walked back from the Terminal to his car and climbed in. Sat there for a while with the engine running, asking himself why he had already decided to stay. Perhaps for the girl, for Catherine Ducane. But then weren’t his own wife and daughter far more important than Catherine Ducane would ever be? Of course they were. So why was he staying? Duty? Obligation? Because these people could take away his job, his livelihood? Hadn’t he been waiting for something to do just that? To give him no choice but to walk out into the big wide world and find something else to do? Sure he had.

So why was he staying?

He closed his eyes, leaned back against the headrest and exhaled. Truth was he didn’t know.

An hour later Ray Hartmann was back in his room at the Marriott. He had taken off his wet clothes, showered, dressed once again, and by the time he called room service for coffee it was close to six in the morning.

Soon they would come, and when they came they would bring with them the worst the world could offer.

*

Schaeffer and Woodroffe didn’t even have the decency to come themselves. They sent one of their agents, a young Ivy League-looking kid of no more than twenty-two or three, pressed white shirt, immaculately knotted tie, shoes Hartmann could see his reflection in. He possessed the bold brass of naive self-importance, the brightness of eye that told Hartmann this kid had yet to see what was out there. Stand over the bloodied and battered corpse of some eight-year-old kid, walk through the aftermath of a fast food restaurant drive-by shooting, smell the rank odor that emanated from a drowned cadaver, hear the sound of gases erupting from a swollen stomach as the ME sliced it open like an overripe watermelon . . . Walk a mile or two in Ray Hartmann’s shoes and that bold brass and bright eye would grow tarnished and blunted and cynical and dark.

‘Mr Hartmann, they’re ready,’ the kid said.

Hartmann nodded, and rose from where he’d been sitting on the edge of the mattress.

He followed the kid out to the front of the hotel where a dark gray sedan sat like a well-behaved animal.

‘You want me to drive?’ Hartmann asked, and truth be told he asked merely to see the flash of anxiety and uncertainty in the kid’s eyes.

‘I’m here to drive you, Mr Hartmann,’ the kid said, and Hartmann smiled and shook his head, and said, ‘My name is Ray . . . you can just call me Ray.’

The kid smiled, seemed to relax a little. ‘I’m Sheldon,’ he said. ‘Sheldon Ross.’

‘Well Sheldon, let’s get the fuck outta here and find the bad guy, eh?’

Hartmann got in the passenger side.

‘Belt,’ Sheldon said as he climbed into the driver’s seat.

Hartmann didn’t argue. He reached behind his shoulder for the belt and buckled in. Sure as shit the kid wouldn’t drive more than forty miles an hour; the law was the law, and as far as Sheldon Ross was concerned the law was all there was. For now.

Schaeffer and Woodroffe were present and correct when Hartmann arrived. They were seated in an office off the furthermost corner of the main room. Agent Ross walked Hartmann down, left him standing there at the door and seemed to disappear without a sound. Schaeffer looked up, smiled as best he could, and waved Hartmann in.

‘So we wait,’ Schaeffer said. ‘We wait for your caller to show his face, it seems.’

Hartmann pulled a chair from against the wall and sat down. ‘Just a thought,’ he said, ‘but I don’t think it would do any harm for me to speak to the people that dealt with this from the beginning. A new viewpoint perhaps.’

Woodroffe shook his head. ‘I don’t see that such a thing would really serve any purpose,’ he said, and in his tone was the defensive territoriality that came with agencies crossing each other’s paths. He would in no way be pleased for Hartmann to find something they might have missed.

Hartmann shrugged nonchalantly. ‘Just figured it would be better than sitting around with nothing to do,’ he said. He turned and looked absent-mindedly out of the small window to his right. He assumed the manner of one who could not have cared less. The rain had stopped some while back but there were dark thunderheads along the horizon. He couldn’t tell if they were coming or going.

Schaeffer leaned forward and rested his forearms on the table. ‘I don’t see that it would do any harm. Was there anyone in particular you felt you should speak to?’

Hartmann shrugged again. ‘I don’t know, the ME perhaps, what was his name?’

‘Emerson,’ Woodroffe said. ‘Jim Emerson, the assistant medical examiner.’

‘Right, right,’ Hartmann replied. ‘And then there’s the coroner and the Homicide guy as well.’

‘Cipliano, Michael Cipliano, and the detective was John Verlaine.’

Hartmann nodded. ‘Yes, those three. Figured I should at least go over their reports with them and see if there’s anything else they remember.’

Schaeffer rose from the table and walked to the open doorway. ‘Agent Ross!’

Sheldon Ross came hurrying down the room and stopped just short of the door.

‘Get hold of the assistant ME Jim Emerson, County Coroner Cipliano and John Verlaine from Homicide. Pull whatever strings you have to and get them down here.’

Ross nodded. ‘Sir,’ he said, and turned to hurry away.

Schaeffer came back and sat facing Hartmann. ‘So – you have any thoughts about our caller, Mr Hartmann?’

Hartmann shook his head. ‘Nothing comes to mind, no. Can’t say I place his voice, and there’s nothing about what he said that makes me feel I know him.’

‘But he knows you,’ Woodroffe interjected.

‘And you guys as well,’ Hartmann replied. ‘Seems he knows an awful lot more about us than we do about him.’

For a moment there was an awkward silence.

Hartmann could sense the reaction to what he’d implied: that information was making its way out of their office. Such a thing was unlikely, very unlikely indeed, but if these assholes wanted to play hardball then he would give them a run for their money.

‘The names of agents in most branches of law enforcement are not withheld from the public,’ Woodroffe said matter-of-factly. Again there was that element of defense in his tone. Here was a man who’d perhaps violated protocol a few too many times and taken a rap from someone upstairs. Here was a man destined to be careful for the rest of his life.

‘True,’ Hartmann said, ‘but there must have been a specific reason for him to request my presence.’

‘No question about that,’ Schaeffer said. ‘And if he comes in, or should I say
when
he comes in, perhaps he will tell us.’

Hartmann looked up. Ross stood in the doorway.

‘Here within half an hour, all three of them,’ he told Schaeffer and Woodroffe.

Schaeffer nodded. ‘Good work, Ross.’

Ross did not smile, merely nodded and left the room once more. Hartmann watched him go and felt a sense of sympathy, even
empathy
, with the kid. One day Sheldon Ross would wake up and realize he was like the rest of them, and within
them
Hartmann included himself. One day he would wake up, and find that no matter how hard he rubbed his eyes, no matter how many times he sluiced his face with cold water in the bathroom, it would seem as if he was looking at the world through a gray film. Colors were duller, less bright and vivid; sounds always gave off an element of alarm; meeting people became a game of guessing what their motive or intent might be, and whether you were prepared to risk your own life, the well-being of your family, by getting to know them; all these darker aspects and shadows crept up on you insidiously, and then they were there; they were as much a part of you as the sound of your own voice, the color of your eyes, your own darkest secrets.

He closed his eyes for a moment.

‘Tired, Mr Hartmann?’ Woodroffe asked.

Hartmann opened his eyes and looked back at the man. ‘Of life? Yes I am, Agent Woodroffe. Aren’t you?’

Emerson and Cipliano were straightforward enough, as were the vast majority of those in Forensics and Criminalistics. They were scientists, doctors, morticians with three degrees from Harvard and an insatiable appetite for facts. The physical evidence was what it was. The condition of the body, the map of lines on the back, the knife wounds and adhesive tape, the rope burns and hammer blows. All these things had been investigated as thoroughly as could be, and the documents were typed and copied and filed and numbered.

Verlaine, however, was a different story, and in John Verlaine Hartmann recognized a little of himself.

‘Sit down, Detective,’ Hartmann said, and Verlaine shed his coat and hung it over the back of the chair before he complied.