A Quiet Vendetta (46 page)

‘And you?’ Hartmann asked. ‘Do you love it or hate it?’

Perez laughed. ‘I am an anomaly and an anachronism. I am the exception that proves the rule. I have no feeling for it at all. I cannot love it and I cannot hate it. Now, having seen all I have seen, there is almost nothing to love or to hate in this world.’

‘And the second reason?’

‘Family,’ Perez said, and he spoke quietly, but there was such intention and emphasis behind this single word that it hit Hartmann forcibly.

‘Family?’ he asked.

Perez nodded. He reached forward and flicked his cigarette ash in the tray.

Hartmann shook his head. ‘I don’t understand.’

‘You do,’ Perez said, ‘perhaps better than anyone who’s involved in this. You understand the strength and power of family.’

‘How so?’

‘Come on, Mr Hartmann, you cannot deny what you know is true. What about your mother and father? What about Danny?’

Hartmann’s eyes opened wide. ‘Danny?’ he asked. ‘How the fuck d’you know about Danny?’

‘The same way I know about Carol and Jessica.’

Hartmann was speechless. He looked at Perez with an expression of abject incredulity.

‘Come, come, Mr Hartmann, don’t act so surprised. I am not a stupid man. You do not live the life I have lived and survive by being stupid. I may have done some things that you find difficult to comprehend, but that does not make me crazy or ignorant or unprepared. I am a methodical and systematic man. I am a planner, a thinker. I may have worked with my hands, but the work I have done has been for the greater part cerebral in its execution.’

‘A suitable turn of phrase,’ Hartmann said.

‘Execution? No pun intended,’ Perez said. ‘There are some people who are born for particular things, Mr Hartmann, things such as politics and art, even Shostakovich who managed to combine the two and have something of worth to say, and then there are some who fall into a path which is somehow not of their own choosing.’

‘And where would you place yourself?’

‘The latter, of course,’ Perez replied. He ground his cigarette out and lit another. ‘Events conspired perhaps, I am not sure. Perhaps when I die it will all become plain and evident and I will understand everything. Possibly events conspire to make us who we are, but then again I sometimes think that subconsciously we possess the power to influence events and circumstances around us, and in this way we actually determine, for the greater part, exactly what happens to us.’

‘I can’t say I have that philosophic a viewpoint about it,’ Hartmann said.

‘Well, consider it from this perspective.’ Perez leaned back in his chair. He seemed as relaxed as he could be. ‘Your own situation is a perfect example. Your father’s death, the death of your younger brother, the work you have done for most of your adult life. Are these things the factors that contributed to your difficulty, or was the difficulty there all along merely waiting for the necessary
force majeure
to cause it to surface?’

‘My difficulty?’

‘The drinking,’ Perez stated.

‘The drinking?’ Hartmann asked, once again unsettled by the degree to which Perez knew the details of his life.

‘The drinking, yes. The difficulty that you have struggled with for so many years, and the thing that finally prompted the departure of your wife and daughter.’

Hartmann felt disturbed and tense. ‘What about my wife and daughter? What do you know about them?’

Perez shook his head and smiled. ‘Do not worry yourself, Mr Hartmann. Your wife and daughter have absolutely nothing to do with this matter. I understand the sense of responsibility you feel towards them—’

‘Like your own wife and child, Mr Perez?’ Hartmann interjected, realizing that here was an appropriate opportunity to pursue this line of inquiry.

‘My wife and child?’ Perez asked. ‘We were not talking about my wife and child, Mr Hartmann, we were talking about yours.’

Hartmann nodded. ‘I know, but considering we are discussing this area I find the fact that you have a wife and child tremendously fascinating.’

Perez frowned.

‘Your line of work, the things that you did . . . how could you go home and look your wife in the face knowing that only hours before you had murdered someone?’

‘I imagine much the same way you managed it,’ Perez said.

‘Me? What do you mean? I never murdered anyone.’

‘But you lied and you deceived her, and you pretended to be something you were not. You made promises and then you broke them, I am sure. It is the same with anyone who carries a shadow, Mr Hartmann, whether it be alcoholism or gambling or infidelity. Whatever the shadow that might haunt them, they are still effectively leading a double life.’

‘But you killed people. You went out with the intention to murder and you did so. I think that is very different from having a drink problem.’

Perez shrugged. ‘Depends on your personal philosophy . . . whether you consider that events conspire to make you who you are, or if you are someone who believes that Man possesses the ability to determine events by his own power of mind.’

‘We are getting off the subject,’ Hartmann said, at once intrigued and very uncomfortable.

‘Indeed we are,’ Perez said, ‘though I must admit that I believe family to be as important a subject of discussion as you do.’

‘Okay then,’ Hartmann said. ‘What about the girl?’

Perez looked up. ‘What
about
the girl?’

‘She is part of someone’s family. She has a mother and a father.’

‘And a cat and a dog. And she can play the piano, and she likes talking to her girlfriends about boys and clothes and cosmetics.’

‘Right . . . what about her? What about
her
family?’

‘What about them?’

‘You profess to believe in the necessity and importance of family. Have you considered how they must feel?’

Perez smiled once more and leaned forward. He rested his hands on the table and steepled his fingers together. ‘Mr Hartmann, I have considered everything.’

‘So?’

Perez raised his eyebrows.

‘So is how they feel important?’

‘Of vital importance, yes,’ Perez replied.

‘So is what you are doing perhaps not the most disturbing and upsetting thing that you could do?’

Perez laughed, but there was seemingly nothing malicious in his tone. ‘That, Mr Hartmann, is precisely the point of the exercise.’

‘To upset Charles Ducane and his ex-wife as much as possible?’

Perez waved his hand. ‘The wife, Eve I believe her name is, how she feels is of no significance to me. But Charles Ducane . . . he is a different story altogether.’

‘How so?’

‘Because he is as guilty as I, and yet here he is, governor of Louisiana, sitting up there in his mansion with the world protecting him, and I am here, ensconced within a small fortress, protected from the world by the might of the FBI, and having to justify my existence to you, an alcoholic paralegal who is ashamed of the fact that he was born in New Orleans.’

Hartmann reached for another cigarette. He believed he needed to change the pitch of the discussion before Perez became angry. ‘I find it remarkable that you were responsible for the death of Jimmy Hoffa.’

Perez nodded. ‘He died, someone had to have killed him. Why not me?’

‘Did you shoot Kennedy as well?’

‘Which one?’

Hartmann smiled. ‘You did them both?’

‘Neither, though I believe that I would have gotten away with it, unlike Oswald and Sirhan Sirhan, neither of whom were ultimately responsible whatever J. Edgar Hoover and the Warren Commission might have reported. The assassination of John Kennedy, the resultant mystery that has surrounded his death for the last forty years, has to be the most spectacular and successful example of government disinformation propaganda that has ever been achieved. Adolf Hitler would have been proud of what your government has accomplished with that. Wasn’t it he who said that the greater the lie the more easily it will be believed?’

‘It’s your government too,’ Hartmann said.

‘I am selective . . . it is the lesser of two evils. The United States or Fidel Castro. I am still trying to make a decision as to which one I would prefer to be allied to.’

Hartmann was quiet for a moment. He smoked his cigarette.

Perez broke the silence between them. ‘So you did not come here to visit or to have supper, or to smoke my cigarettes, Mr Hartmann. I believe you came here with a proposal.’

‘How do you know that?’

‘It is about time for the attorney general to play his best hand, and like I said before, you do not live the life I have lived and survive by being stupid. So out with it. What is it they are prepared to offer me?’

‘Clemency,’ Hartmann said, believing that the entire conversation had been predicted and determined by Perez from the off. This was not the way Hartmann had wanted to handle it, but it had become something out of his control. He had believed his cards were hidden, but he had sat down at the table unaware that his cards had been chosen for him by his opponent.

‘Clemency?’ Perez asked. ‘Mercy? You think this is what I came here to ask for?’

Hartmann shook his head. ‘No,’ he said. ‘I don’t.’

‘I came here of my own volition. I handed myself in to you people with no resistance. I could have continued to live my life, could have done nothing. Had I not called the FBI, had I not spoken with these people, had I not asked for you to come here, then we would not be having this conversation. I could have taken the girl, I could have killed her, and no-one would ever have been any the wiser.’

‘They would have found you,’ Hartmann interjected.

Perez started laughing. ‘You think so, Mr Hartmann? You really think they would have found me? I am nearly seventy years old. I have been doing this for the better part of five and a half decades. I was the man who killed your Jimmy Hoffa. I put a piano wire around his neck and pulled so hard I could feel where the wire stopped against the vertebrae of his neck. I did these things, and I did them all over this country, and these people didn’t even know my name.’

Hartmann knew Perez was right. He had not lived this life and survived by being stupid. If he had wanted to kill Catherine Ducane he would have done, and Hartmann imagined the murder would have gone unsolved.

‘Okay,’ Hartmann said. ‘So this is the deal . . . you give us the girl, you are extradited to Cuba, and the United States Federal Government will not further any information about your past to the Cuban Justice Department. That’s the deal, take it or leave it.’

Perez leaned back in his chair. He looked pensive for some time, said nothing, and when he turned his eyes towards Hartmann there was something cold and aloof in them that Hartmann had not seen before. ‘You will come back tomorrow night,’ he said. ‘We will meet in the morning as planned. I will tell you some more things of myself and my life, and when we are done we will return here for dinner, you and I, and I will give you my answer.’

Hartmann nodded. ‘Can you tell us one thing?’

Perez raised his eyebrows.

‘The girl. Can you assure us she is still alive?’

Perez shook his head. ‘No, I cannot.’

‘She is dead?’

‘I didn’t say that.’

‘You are saying nothing?’

‘That is right, I am saying nothing.’

‘If she is dead it makes this whole thing rather pointless,’ Hartmann said.

‘It is only pointless to those who do not yet understand the point,’ Perez replied. ‘Now, if you don’t mind, I am tired. I would like to rest. I have an appointment in the morning, and if I am tired I do not concentrate well.’

Hartmann nodded and started to rise from his chair.

‘It has been a pleasure, Mr Hartmann,’ Perez said. ‘And I trust that things work out for yourself and your family.’

‘Thank you, Mr Perez, though I do not necessarily feel I can reciprocate the sentiment.’

Perez waved Hartmann’s comment aside. ‘It is of no matter to me what you think, Mr Hartmann. Some of us are more than capable of making our own decisions and allowing life to intervene as little as possible.’

Hartmann did not reply. There was nothing more he could say. He walked back to the door of the bedroom and let himself out.

Behind him the music increased in volume – Shostakovich’s ‘Assault On Beautiful Gorky’ – and Hartmann looked at Dauncey with a somewhat bemused and mystified expression.

‘Like I said before, a real character,’ Dauncey said, and opened the hotel suite door to let Hartmann out into the corridor.

The rain finally stopped around ten. Hartmann sat on the edge of his bed in the Marriott Hotel and considered the awkward slow-motion war-zone of his life. Carol and Jess were not happy with him; Schaeffer and Woodroffe, Attorney General Richard Seidler and FBI Director Bob Dohring were not happy with him either. By now Charles Ducane would surely know Hartmann’s name, and believe him to be the man responsible for the safe return of his daughter. And what
about
Charles Ducane? Had he really been involved with these people? Organized crime? The murder of Jimmy Hoffa? The killing of McLuhan and the two people in the Shell Beach Motel back in the fall of ’62? Was Charles Ducane as much a part of this as Ernesto Perez?

Hartmann undressed and took a shower. He stood beneath the water, as hot as he could bear, and stayed there for some time. He thought of Carol and Jess, of how much he would have given to hear their voices now, to know they were safe, to say he was sorry, to tell them that he was in some way undergoing a catharsis, an exorcism of who he had once been, and that from this point forward it would be different. It would all be
so
different.

Ray Hartmann, for a short while, was overcome with a sense of desperation and despondency. Was this now his life? Alone? Hotel rooms? Government inquiries and investigations? Spending his days listening to the worst that people had to offer and trying to make deals with them?

He sat in the base of the unit. The water flooded over him. He could hear his own heart beating. He felt afraid.

Later, lying on the bed, he fought with a sense of restless agitation and did not sleep until the early hours of Thursday morning. His mind was punctuated with strange images, images of Ernesto Perez carrying Jess’s lifeless body out of a swamp while Shostakovich played the piano in the background.