A Quiet Vendetta (34 page)

‘You ready for this?’ Verlaine asked.

Hartmann shook his head. ‘No, and I don’t think I ever will be.’

‘Feeling’s mutual.’

Hartmann opened the door and stepped out. The clouds he’d seen on the horizon were now directly overhead. He shivered at the feeling that came with the smell, the breathlessness around him, the feeling that everything was tightening claustrophobically. This place had the power to invade the senses, to invade the mind and the heart. This place provoked images and sounds and memories that he had believed gone, but they were not gone, never had been, and he knew that Louisiana and all it represented would be eternally a part of who he was. Like a fingerprint on the soul. This was his past, and however hard and fast he might run from it, it would never leave him. The simplicity was that it was always one step ahead, and wherever he might turn it was there waiting.

‘You first,’ Hartmann said. ‘He knows you.’

‘Lucky for me,’ Verlaine cracked, but there was no humor in his tone. Once again Hartmann recognized that his companion was as scared as he was.

They took the path and cut through the trees. The light was bad, dense and forbidding, and Hartmann carried with him the image of Ernesto Perez sliding through this undergrowth on his way to the Shell Beach Motel.

. . .
Sometimes I went under, walking out along the bottom of some stagnant riverbed, and then I surfaced, my hair slicked to my skull, my eyes white against the blackness of my face . . . such a high . . . like smoking something dead
. . .

Hartmann felt a wave of nausea in his chest and clamped his hand to his mouth. He believed he had never been so afraid in his life.

And then Feraud’s place was ahead of them, a vast colonial mansion. There was a single lighted window visible on the ground floor, and up on the veranda a group of men stood talking and smoking. They carried carbines, they talked in low guttural Creole French, and when they saw Verlaine and Hartmann they stopped.

Half a dozen pairs of eyes watched them as they made their way up to the house.

None of them said a word, and this was in some way worse than being challenged. It meant that they were expected. That simple: he and Verlaine were expected.

One of the men stepped forward and held out his hand.

Verlaine turned to Hartmann. ‘My gun,’ he said quietly, and Hartmann didn’t even consider questioning him. Verlaine reached around back of his waist and released the catch on his holster. He handed over his .38 and waited patiently for their next instruction.

Another man stepped forward and frisked both of them, and then he turned and nodded.

The man who held Verlaine’s gun stepped forward and opened the front door of the house. He indicated with a swift nod of his head that they should go inside.

Rock and a hard place
, Hartmann thought, and walked into the house behind Verlaine.

They waited for minutes that appeared to stretch into hours. Somewhere the sound of a grandfather clock, its ticking like the beating of some heart, echoed through the seeming emptiness of the house. It was all dark wood and thick rugs, and even Hartmann’s breathing seemed to come back at him in triplicate.

Eventually, even as Hartmann believed he couldn’t take a second more of the tension, there was the sound of footsteps. Coincidentally, the sky above them seemed to swell and rumble. Thunder was starting up somewhere, perhaps a mile, perhaps two, from where they stood. Soon the rain would come, the lightning illuminating the surrounding countryside in bright flashes of monochrome, the trees set in stark white silhouette like skeletons against the blackness of the horizon.

A Creole appeared, middle-aged, his hair graying at the temples, and stood for a moment at the end of the hall that ran from the main entranceway.

Hartmann remembered Perez speaking of an old man called Innocent, a man that must have been dead a considerable number of years by now. Perhaps this was his son. Perhaps employment in this particular line was inherited.

‘Come,’ the Creole said, and though his voice was barely a whisper it carried through the building and reached Hartmann as if the man had been standing right beside him.

The entire ambience of the place was enough to make his skin crawl.

They followed the man and were shown into a room that Hartmann guessed must have been at the front of the building. It was from here that came the only light in the house, and that light stood in the corner and barely illuminated the place enough for them to see Feraud.

But he was there, no doubt of it. Hartmann sensed the man.

His eyes adjusted to the gloom, and then he caught the shape of a ghost rising from behind a high-backed chair. It was cigarette smoke, a plume of cigarette smoke that arabesqued in curlicues towards the ceiling.

The Creole nodded towards the chair, and then turned and left the room.

‘Gentlemen,’ Feraud said, and his voice was like something dead and buried and now crawling its way up through damp gravel.

Verlaine went first, walking slowly towards the window, Hartmann a step or two behind him. When they reached the end of the room Hartmann could see that two chairs had been set against the wall, evidently for their audience with Feraud. The man was like Lucifer’s Pope.

Verlaine sat down first, Hartmann followed suit, and when he looked up he was shocked by the appearance of the old man before him. Feraud’s skin was almost translucent, paper-thin and yellowed. His hair, what little there was, was thin and frail, like strands of damp cotton adhering to his skull. The wrinkles on his face gave the impression of a man burned and healed, the lines deep and irregular and almost painful to see.

‘I asked you not to come back,’ Feraud said, and as he spoke smoke issued from his nose and his mouth.

Verlaine nodded. He glanced at Hartmann but Hartmann was transfixed by Feraud.

‘You did this thing for me?’ Feraud asked.

‘I did,’ Verlaine said. ‘The case will never reach the Circuit.’

Feraud nodded. ‘An eye for an eye.’

‘This is Ray Hartmann,’ Verlaine started.

Feraud raised his hand and smiled. ‘I know who it is, Mr Verlaine. I know exactly who Ray Hartmann is.’

Feraud turned his eyes towards Hartmann, eyes like small dark stones set into his face. ‘You have come home, I understand,’ Feraud said, which was the second time someone had made that comment. The first time it had been Perez, right there on the telephone while Hartmann was in the FBI Field Office.

‘It doesn’t leave you, does it, Mr Hartmann?’

Hartmann raised his eyebrows.

‘New Orleans . . . the sounds and the smells, the colors, the people, the language. It is a place all its own, eh?’

Hartmann nodded. The man was voicing thoughts he had possessed only a little while before. He felt as if Feraud could see right through him, that the man had an ability to wear his skin, to see what he was thinking, to know what he was feeling right in that very moment. Antoine Feraud and Ernesto Perez were perhaps more like brothers than he and Danny had ever been.

‘So you have come with your ironic name to find out what I know,’ Feraud said.

Hartmann frowned and shook his head.

‘Hartmann,’ Feraud said. ‘Hart-man . . . your name. You have come down here to find our heart man.’ Feraud laughed at his own play on words. Ray Hartmann felt ready to puke.

‘And what makes you think I know any more than what I have already told Mr Verlaine?’

Hartmann took his heart in his hands. ‘Because we have spoken with Mr Perez . . . Ernesto Perez. You remember him, Mr Feraud?’

Feraud smiled. ‘Perhaps, perhaps not. I am a very old man. I have met a very great many people throughout my life and I cannot be expected to recall every single one.’

‘But this one I think you do remember, Mr Feraud . . . because he came down here many years ago and did some things for you and Charles Ducane that it would be difficult to forget.’

Feraud nodded. He seemed to be acknowledging the fact that what Hartmann was saying was true.

‘And what is it that you think I can tell you?’ Feraud asked.

‘Why he’s come back,’ Hartmann said. ‘Why he’s done this . . . kidnapped Charles Ducane’s daughter, what he has done with her.’

Feraud shook his head. ‘What he has done with her I do not know. Why he has done this? That is an altogether simpler question.’

‘And the answer?’ Hartmann asked.

‘The answer you will have to get from Mr Perez.’

‘Mr Perez is taking a great deal of time arriving at that answer, Mr Feraud, and I am not sure we have that much time.’

Feraud smiled. ‘I am sure that if Mr Perez is anything close to the man you think he is he knows exactly what he is doing and how it will transpire. Perhaps Mr Perez has already killed the girl . . . perhaps he has already sunk her body into the everglades and he is just biding his time, seeing how long he can keep you people interested before he tells you what he’s done. I understand that he has killed someone else already, a man found in the trunk of a car some days ago.’

Hartmann nodded. ‘Yes, that’s right . . . well, as far as we can gather Perez was the one who killed this man.’

‘Don’t underestimate him, Mr Hartmann. That is all I am able and willing to tell you. You have a dangerous man here in New Orleans, and I am sure that if his reputation is anything to go by he is capable of an awful lot more than just the killing of one man.’

‘And you are not willing to help us?’ Hartmann asked.

Feraud waved Hartmann’s question aside as if it was of no significance at all. ‘And for what reason? What reason on God’s green earth could I have for wanting to help you and your Federal people?’

‘Because he might have come down here to seek an audience with you also?’ Hartmann asked.

Feraud laughed. ‘This man of yours, he would not get within a hundred yards of me.’

‘Anyone can be killed, Mr Feraud . . . anyone at all, even the president of the United States can be killed if the killer is willing to stake everything on such a venture.’

‘I am sure, Mr Hartmann, that if your Mr Perez had it in his mind to kill me he would have made his attempt before turning himself over to you. I understand that you have him safe and secure in the city, that he is guarded at all times by a significant number of federal agents. First of all he would have to find his way out of there, and then he would have to come through my people to reach me. The likelihood of Mr Perez accomplishing such a thing is a matter for dreams, not for reality.’

‘So you are not willing to divulge any further information, Mr Feraud?’

‘Divulge any further information, Mr Hartmann? You speak as if you believe I know more than I am telling you.’

‘I am convinced of it.’

‘Be convinced,’ Feraud said. ‘Be as convinced as you like. They are your thoughts and you are more than welcome to them . . . now, if you don’t mind, I am very tired. I am an old man, I know nothing more of this man Perez, and even if I did I can imagine that you would be the very last people on the earth I would want to share such information with.’

‘And what about Ducane himself?’ Hartmann asked.

Feraud turned and looked at him. He blinked slowly, like a lizard, and he pinned Hartmann to the spot with an unerring gaze. ‘What about Charles Ducane?’

‘Your involvement with him,’ Hartmann said matter-of-factly. ‘The fact that you and he have known each other for a great many years, that you have transacted certain business arrangements . . . that certain favors have been granted.’

‘You assume a great deal, Mr Hartmann,’ Feraud said.

‘I assume nothing, Mr Feraud. I merely make reference to certain things that have been forthcoming in my conversations with Mr Perez.’

‘And you believe everything he is telling you?’

Hartmann nodded. ‘I believe something unless it is challenged or proven wrong.’

‘That is a very trusting attitude, Mr Hartmann . . . and an attitude that will accomplish little but your own downfall if you apply it to Ernesto Perez.’

‘And Charles Ducane?’

Feraud shook his head. ‘I have nothing further to say.’

‘You think I should apply my trusting attitude to him, Mr Feraud? You know him, have known him for all these years . . . you’re probably more qualified to make a judgement on Charles Ducane’s trustworthiness and honesty than anyone else, right?’

Feraud smiled and nodded his head. He raised his right hand and pressed his index finger against his lips.

‘We made a deal,’ Verlaine said suddenly. ‘We made a deal that I would take care of this thing you asked of me, something that jeopardizes my job, and you would speak with us.’

Feraud lowered his finger from his lips. His smile rapidly vanished. ‘What are we doing right now, Mr Verlaine? We are speaking, are we not? I said I would speak with you, and as always I have kept my word to the letter. Now again, if you don’t mind, I would like to rest.’

Thunder rolled outwards above the house. Somewhere to Hartmann’s right he heard the sound of footsteps, and when he turned he saw the Creole standing there waiting for them to leave.

‘I will not forget that you have failed to keep your word, Mr Feraud,’ Verlaine said.

Feraud looked at Verlaine, his eyes cold and hard and unforgiving. ‘Be careful, Mr Verlaine . . . be careful or I might choose not to forget you.’

Hartmann felt the skin crawl up his back and tighten at the base of his neck. His hands were sweating, his whole body was sweating, and he wanted nothing more than to leave the house, to make it safely to the car, to drive back to the city and never once look over his shoulder.

They walked back the way they had come, the Creole ahead of them, and once they were again on the veranda Verlaine’s gun was returned.

Neither of them said a word as they walked to the car, and only when they had finally reached the sliproad that ran to the freeway did Verlaine say something.

‘Never again,’ he said, and his voice was almost a whisper.

Hartmann opened the passenger door and climbed inside.

Verlaine started the engine and pulled away.

‘Guy scares the living fucking Jesus outta me,’ Verlaine said. His voice was hoarse. It cracked mid-sentence and Hartmann noticed how tightly he was holding the steering wheel. His knuckles were white and stretched.