A Quiet Vendetta (33 page)

In early 1965 I heard of Che Guevara again. He had left Cuba to form guerrilla groups in Latin America. A handful of months later I would see a photograph of him dead. He looked no different than any other man. Castro still held sway in Cuba, but I did not care. Cuba was not my home, and I believed never would be again. America was a drug, and I was addicted.

I was twenty-nine years old when Richard Nixon said he would run for president. On the same day I killed a man called Chester Wintergreen. I garrotted him with a length of wire in an alleyway behind a pool hall. Now I do not remember why he died, and now it does not matter.

In March Robert Kennedy, the same man who had orchestrated the reversal of agreement between his own father and the heads of the families, announced he would run for president.

Don Ceriano spoke to me of this man, how he was the first attorney general of the United States to make any serious attempt to destabilize the hold of the families on organized crime and the labor unions. He mentioned a man called Harry Anslinger, referred to him as ‘Asslicker’, one-time US Commissioner of Narcotics, and how Anslinger believed that Robert Kennedy would hound the families until they were undone.

‘Asslicker speaks about Robert Kennedy like he’s a crazy man,’ Don Ceriano said. ‘He says that Kennedy holds these meetings, and where previous attorney generals have felt that their job was done if they merely called attention to the families, Kennedy goes down the list, one by one, and he names each and every significant figure in organized crime and asks the relevant officials what progress has been made in bringing them down. Asslicker doesn’t see eye to eye with Hoover. Hoover would always run the party line, tell the press and the government that there was no such thing as the Mafia, but after the Apalachin Conference in ’57 he had to change his tune.’

Robert Kennedy went on to win the first Primary in Indiana and the second in Nebraska. In June, after similar meetings in similar houses with similar gatherings as those in the fall of ’63, Robert Kennedy was shot dead in the Los Angeles Ambassador Hotel after winning the Californian Democratic Primary. The Kennedy era was over, the Nixon era was to begin, and Don Ceriano – with him Jimmy the Aspirin, Slapsie Maxie Vaccorini, others who had become part of the Alcatraz Swimming Team – well, Don Ceriano decided it was time for a change.

‘We’re going to Vegas,’ he told me in July of 1968, ‘where the money comes down on you like rain, where the girls stay beautiful for ever, and where people like us can’t break the rules because we were the ones who made them in the first place. And if anyone complains, well
chi se ne frega
, ’cause we’ve got Ernesto to take care of business, right?’

I nodded. I smiled. I felt a quiet sense of importance.

We didn’t drive. We went out to the airport in Tampa and we flew. The car, the Mercury Turnpike Cruiser that had once belonged to Pietro Silvino, was housed in a lock-up owned by the family. It would stay there for as long as it was necessary. I had no idea then that it would be more than thirty years before I would see it again.

I would follow Don Ceriano to the ends of the earth, and Las Vegas . . . well, Las Vegas was only half as far.

At first they spoke of nothing but Charles Ducane, how the present governor of Louisiana may have been instrumental in ordering the brutal killing of two people so many years before.

Schaeffer challenged Woodroffe and Hartmann, challenged them to say nothing beyond the confines of the FBI Office, but challenged also the veracity of the information given by Perez.

‘The guy’s a killer . . . not only a killer, but a psychopath, a homophobic fucking death machine,’ Schaeffer said, more venom and anger evident in his voice than Hartmann had ever heard before.

‘But he knows shit,’ Woodroffe said. ‘He knows about Ducane—’

‘And he knows who killed Kennedy,’ Hartmann said, and later he would think that he’d said it just to throw a further curve into the proceedings.

‘Aah fuck off!’ Schaeffer snapped at him, and tempers were thinner than ever, and emotions were frayed at the edges, and it seemed like all it would take was a single wrong word and everything would fall apart at the seams.

‘Why the hell not?’ Woodroffe said. ‘Someone knows who killed Kennedy . . . why not our man?’

‘Yes,’ Hartmann added. ‘Perez knows who killed John F. Kennedy.’

Schaeffer rose from his chair. ‘Enough!’ he snapped. ‘Enough already. We’re dealing with the present, the facts . . . we’re dealing with the kidnapping of Catherine Ducane. We’re dealing with nothing but those things that relate directly to what has happened to Catherine Ducane.’

Hartmann and Woodroffe looked at one another, and then at Schaeffer. There was something unspoken between the three of them – the knowledge that Ducane was in this as much as Perez himself, the belief that unless someone way up high curtailed it there would be an in-depth inquiry into Ducane once his daughter had been found . . .

It was there. No-one said a word. It didn’t need to be said.

‘I don’t wanna hear another word about Charles Ducane and what he might or might not have done or been involved in God knows how many years ago,’ Schaeffer said, ‘and I sure as fuck don’t wanna hear
anything
about John Kennedy or Marilyn fucking Monroe, or anyone else for that matter, okay?’

He glared at both Hartmann and Woodroffe. Neither of them challenged him.

‘Now will someone get Kubis in here?’ Schaeffer said, his teeth gritted, his fists clenched.

Woodroffe rose and left the room.

A moment later Kubis stood beside the desk.

‘Exactly,’ Schaeffer said. ‘What did he say
exactly
?’

Kubis looked down at the sheaf of papers in his hand. He cleared his throat. ‘The road is long, Mr Hartmann, and she is already at the very end of it. We play this game the way I wish it to be played. We follow my rules . . . and perhaps, just perhaps, the Ducane girl might see daylight again,’ Kubis said.

Schaeffer turned towards the larger office behind him and shouted for Sheldon Ross.

Ross appeared within moments.

‘Ross, get me a map of New Orleans, something that covers all the roads and highways. I mean every road and every goddamned highway running into, through and out of the city.’

Ross nodded and disappeared.

‘You reckon he’s given us something?’ Woodroffe asked.

Schaeffer shrugged. ‘Christ almighty knows. Seems to me he’s the sort of person who only says something if he means to say it. He said that she would not be heard even if she screamed continuously at the top of her voice, and then he says this thing about the road being long and that she was at the very end of it, and that if we follow his rules she might see daylight again.’

‘Buried?’ Hartmann asked. ‘You figure he’s hidden her underground?’

‘Could be nothing more than an expression,’ Woodroffe said.

‘We check it out,’ Schaeffer said. ‘Whatever the fuck it is we check it out.’

Ross returned, in his hand a map which he passed to Schaeffer. Schaeffer spread the map out before them, took a pen from his shirt pocket and began to scrutinize the network of lines that indicated every road in and out of New Orleans.

‘What makes you think she’s even in the state?’ Hartmann asked.

Schaeffer waved his question away as inconsequential. He had his mind on something, and he would not be diverted.

‘Write these down,’ Schaeffer said to Woodroffe, and Woodroffe took a sheet of paper, his pen suspended over it, and waited for Schaeffer to speak.

‘From where we sit we go north,’ Schaeffer said. ‘You got Highway 18 out through Mid City, becomes Pontchartrain Boulevard and goes all the way out to Lakeshore West. Cutting across that and heading west you got Highway 10 out towards Metairie. South-east you got the Pontchartrain Expressway to the Greater New Orleans Bridge, heading across the river into Algiers and McDonoghville. East you got Florida Avenue. South you’ve got the Claiborne Avenue which cuts back up towards Carrollton, but you gotta take into consideration the area all the way down through the University district and as far as Audubon Park. That’s five zones in all.’

Schaeffer looked up at Woodroffe. ‘You got that?’

Woodroffe nodded.

‘So how many people we got altogether?’

‘Fifty, maybe sixty at a push,’ Woodroffe replied.

‘Divide them up equal, ten or twelve men to a unit. Separate them into twos. Section each of the five zones equally and map out every road and highway, every dirt track and footpath that heads out towards the Mississippi River or Lake Pontchartrain, everything that takes you as far as the land will let you go. Have them drive the routes, check out every empty house, every motel and truckstop, anything that could be considered the end of the road, so to speak. And tell them to look in basements and outhouses, anyplace that looks like it might go underground.’

‘You really think—’ Hartmann started, but stopped dead when Schaeffer raised a warning hand.

There was a moment’s silent tension as Schaeffer looked first at Hartmann, then at Woodroffe.

‘Yes I do, Mr Hartmann. Whatever you were gonna say, yes I do. You don’t take the calls from the director of the FBI, who is all too eager to tell me what Governor Ducane is telling him every hour on the hour. You don’t have to file reports at the end of every six-hour shift detailing what we are actually doing. Not what we are
thinking
about doing, but what we are
actually
doing. If you wanna take the calls, if you wanna explain yourself, then fine, you come back to me with something better. Seems to me that in this situation we can either wait for Perez to tell us or we can do something proactive.’

Schaeffer once again looked at them both in turn, and then added, ‘So, any questions, or do we do something effective?’

‘We do this,’ Woodroffe said, and rose from his chair.

Hartmann nodded and leaned back.

‘Right. No more fucking about,’ Schaeffer said. He rose also, and before he left the table he turned and looked at Hartmann.

‘There isn’t a great deal more you can do,’ he said. ‘I’d go back to the hotel if I were you and sit tight.’

Hartmann nodded. ‘Maybe you should ask for some more people. Seems to me sixty men ain’t an awful lot to cover the kind of territory you’re talking about.’

‘I got what I got,’ Schaeffer replied. ‘If they send me some more then so be it. Right now I gotta use what resources have been assigned and that’s just the way it is.’

Hartmann nodded. He felt for the man. He stood up slowly and silently thanked God he was not in Stanley Schaeffer’s shoes. ‘If you need me, if there’s anything I can do, you know where I am.’

‘Appreciated, Mr Hartmann.’

Schaeffer turned and walked away. Already Hartmann could hear the hubbub of voices gathering in the corridors as Woodroffe organized the briefing that would take place.

Hartmann left as inconspicuously as he could. He went on foot, walked down to the junction and turned right. No-one, as far as he knew, saw the way he went, and for this he was grateful.

He reached Verlaine’s Precinct at five after six. The evening was swollen with humidity; evidence of a storm on the way. Across the horizon loomed an ominous wide band of gray-green cloud. The atmosphere reflected Hartmann’s state of mind. He had listened to Perez speak of things he’d done here in New Orleans. He knew the Shell Beach Motel, no more than a mile or two from where he now stood, and the thought that this man had walked through this country just a handful of years before Hartmann himself was born, years when his mother was alive and within walking distance of what had happened, unnerved and disturbed him. Perhaps the reason Perez had chosen him was because they had both been born here, because they both understood something of the nature of Louisiana, for this country was owned by nothing but itself. Whatever was built here could be sucked right back into the filthy earth if Louisiana so desired.

Verlaine was waiting in the foyer.

Hartmann opened his mouth to speak and Verlaine shook his head. He crossed the foyer and showed Hartmann out of the building and down the steps. Only when they reached the sidewalk did he speak.

‘This isn’t happening,’ he said quietly. ‘You never came here and we never did this, understand?’

Hartmann nodded.

Verlaine took Hartmann’s arm and hurried him across the road and down half a block to where his car was parked. He climbed inside, released the catch for Hartmann to get in the passenger side, and then started the engine and pulled away. Twice he looked back over his shoulder, as if he was ensuring he wasn’t being followed.

‘You got your audience with Feraud,’ Verlaine said, ‘but I had to pay a tribute.’

‘A tribute?’

Verlaine nodded. There was tension in his voice, fear in his tone. ‘I had to make something disappear quietly, you get me?’

Hartmann realized what had happened: Verlaine had made a trade with Feraud.

‘Better that I don’t know anything,’ he said.

‘Too damned right,’ Verlaine replied, and eased the car off the main freeway and down a slip road that would take them towards Feraud’s territory.

Within half a mile Hartmann felt it: Feraud’s presence.
Smells like Cipliano’s office, he thought. Smells like dead bodies, bloated and rank, and no matter if the air-con has been running all night it’s a smell that you can’t escape. Even when you leave it’s there on your clothes
.

A quarter-mile from Feraud’s house and Hartmann felt a sudden and necessary urge to turn back, to tell Verlaine that he had been wrong, that he didn’t want to do this, that he’d decided it wouldn’t be a good idea to do anything that might jeopardize the federal investigation. The thought was there but the words didn’t come . . . and later he would think that even though he felt these things he also knew, in his heart of hearts, that he was prepared to do almost anything to see this come to an end.

And so he said nothing, and Verlaine kept driving, and before long they were slowing down and shuddering to a halt at the side of the mud-rutted road that ran alongside the edge of Feraud’s property.