A Quiet Vendetta (56 page)

I laughed. It was a pleasant thought. The image of myself and Don Calligaris as old men sitting beneath the olive trees in the warm evening sunshine.

I looked ahead at Victor and Ten Cent. Victor reached no higher than Ten Cent’s elbow, but Ten Cent was leaning down to listen to something Victor was telling him. I could hear the sound of laughter, of people sharing one another’s company, I felt the warmth of the atmosphere, the feeling that things were going to change, but change for the better; the feeling that despite everything that had gone before us we were still alive, we had made it through this far, and we were going to make it all the way. A sense of accomplishment perhaps; a sense of pride; of certainty that somehow all was well with the world.

Later, all I could remember was the light. The way the room seemed suddenly bathed in light. The sound did not come until much later, or at least that was the way it seemed at the time, but when it came it was ferocious, like a tidal wave inside my head, and then there was the glass, and then there were people screaming, and then I felt the slow-dawning realization of what had happened.

The sensation was one of something trying to escape through my ears and eyes, as if everything inside my head had built to such a pressure there was nothing for it to do but burst outwards.

I remember climbing over spread-eagled people as I ran to the door.

I remember shouting at Ten Cent to hold onto Victor.

I remember wondering if the children would be too excited to sleep once we arrived home.

Colors rushed together in a confusion and my eyes could not focus. I fell sideways and felt a sharp pain rushing through the upper part of my leg. Instinctively my hand reached for the gun in back of my waistband, but it was not there. This had been a time for my family. That’s all it had been. Surely something was wrong; surely these things – these sounds and feelings, the awareness of pain and destruction – belonged to someone else’s life?

I remember a man bleeding from the head, a sharp jag of glass jutting from his cheek, screaming for help at the top of his lungs. I remember all these things, but even those things faded when I fell out through the front doorway and saw the burned and obliterated wreck that was once Don Calligaris’s car.

Black and twisted metal, the smell of cordite and seared paint. The wave of disbelief as I realized I had somehow been thrown into someone else’s reality, for this was not happening, this was not how the evening was supposed to end, this was wrong . . . so wrong . . .

The heat was unbearable, and even as I tried to approach what was left of the vehicle I knew there was nothing I could do.

The sense of hopelessness was overwhelming. The sound inside my own head as my life collapsed.

My wife and my daughter.

Angelina and Lucia.

I fell to my knees on the sidewalk, and from my throat came a sound that was inhuman.

That sound went on for ever.

It seemed to be all I could hear for hours.

Even now I cannot recall how I made it away from that place, nor what happened to me that night.

‘I am sorry,’ Don Calligaris was saying. ‘I have pleaded with them. I have told them that I was the intended victim of this terrible thing, but there is nothing I can do.’

My head in my hands, my elbows on my knees, Ten Cent standing behind me with his hand on my shoulder, Don Calligaris ahead of me, his face white and drawn, tears in his eyes, his hands shaking as he reached out towards me.

‘I know that you have been with us all these years, and there is no question of your loyalty, and perhaps if Don Accardo was still alive he would have done something . . . but things have changed. I am no longer in possession of the influence I once had. Don Giovannetti is now in control. He does not feel that he can take an action so soon—’

Don Calligaris leaned forward and buried his face in his hands.

‘I hurt for you, Ernesto. I have done all I can. I have spoken with Don Giovannetti, and though he understands that you have been a loyal part of this family he feels that he cannot violate adherence to tradition. He is the new boss. He also has to earn his reputation and loyalties. Tradition says that we cannot avenge the death of someone who is not blood. You are Cuban, Ernesto, and your wife was the daughter of someone who was not part of this family, and though I have argued your case for hours there is nothing further I can do.’

I raised my head.

‘I have done everything I can, Ernesto . . . everything.’

I looked at Don Calligaris as if he was a stranger. ‘And me? What of me and Victor?’ I asked.

‘I have money . . . we have money, more money than you could need, but it is time for change, Ernesto, and you must make whatever decision you feel is best for yourself and your son.’

I heard his words. They were swallowed into the vast dark silence that was my mind. I said nothing in return, for there was nothing to say.

Some days later I buried my wife and my daughter. Beside me stood my son, so in shock he had not spoken since the explosion. His sister and his mother had been murdered, by whom we did not know, but whoever it was had set their heart on killing Don Fabio Calligaris and had failed. Had Don Calligaris died there would have been retribution. Had Don Accardo still been boss perhaps he would have redressed the balance, because he knew who I was and would have made a case for me before the Council of
la Cosa Nostra
. But things had changed; there was a new godfather, and he believed that justice would be seen to be done in time. He was not a rash man; he was a strategist and a politician, and so early in his position he believed it would not be right to act on my behalf.

I never saw Don Giovannetti. I believed, and believe to this day, that he would not have been able to look me in the eye and tell me the lives of my wife and daughter meant nothing.

The following day, two days before Don Calligaris – fearing for his life – would leave for Italy, I boarded a family-owned ship bound for Havana. With me I took a suitcase crammed with fifty-dollar bills, how much in all I did not know, and beside me as we slipped away from the harbor was my eight-year-old son Victor.

He asked me only one question as we watched the land disappear behind us.

‘Will we ever come back home?’

I turned to look at him. I reached out my hand and finger-tipped away the tears from his cheeks.

‘Some day, Victor,’ I whispered. ‘Some day we will come home.’

‘And that,’ Hartmann said, ‘is possibly the best reason for not having been able to find the wife. Now we know that not only is she dead, but the daughter as well.’

‘But the son,’ Woodroffe said. ‘The son is still alive. Well, we can assume that he’s still alive. He would be what, born in June 1982 . . . he would be twenty-one by now?’

‘You thinking what I’m thinking?’ Hartmann asked.

‘That the killing of Gerard McCahill, at least the lifting of the body itself, could not have been done by Perez alone?’ Woodroffe asked.

‘Right,’ Hartmann said. ‘It has always bothered me that this whole thing was arranged and executed by one man . . . now there’s a good possibility that there were two of them.’

‘Speculation,’ Schaeffer interjected. ‘It’s nothing but another guess on our part. We don’t know anything about the son. He could be dead as well for all we know.’

‘I don’t disagree,’ Hartmann said, ‘but right now we have something to follow up on. We can assume from what Criminalistics and Forensics have told us that McCahill’s body could not have been lifted into the back of the car, and then again from the rear seat of the car to the trunk by someone alone.’

‘We can
assume
that, yes,’ Woodroffe stated.

‘And there was this thing about the scratches on the rear wing of the vehicle. Where’s the report?’

Schaeffer stood up and walked across the main room to a stack of bank boxes against the wall. He opened one, leafed through the pile of papers inside, and returned with Cipliano’s report.

‘Here,’ he said. ‘He says that there were some scratches on the rear wing of the car. He says they could be consistent with the rivets they put on jeans . . . you see Ernesto Perez wearing jeans?’

Woodroffe smiled. ‘Somehow I don’t think so.’

‘And the height?’ Hartmann asked.

‘Says that if the person who carried the body had used the rear wing for support, and if he’d been standing straight at the time, then his height would have been estimated at five-ten or eleven.’

‘How tall is Perez?’ Woodroffe asked.

‘About that height . . . but that tells us that his son could be about the same height as well.’

‘Maybe, maybe not,’ Schaeffer said. ‘I’m five-nine and my son is six-one-and-a-half.’

‘It’s something,’ Hartmann said. ‘It takes me in the direction of the son . . . well, at least someone other than Perez also being involved, and the son seems the most likely possibility.’

‘We ain’t gonna know until we know, that’s the real truth,’ Schaeffer said.

‘And we still have the wrong name – or what we can consider to be the wrong name. If the wife and daughter were called Perez then that name would have come up,’ Woodroffe said.

‘I’m having people follow up on the car bombing. Chicago, March of ’91. If it happened, there will be details – names, reports, documents that we can access. I imagine we will have word on it within the hour.’ Schaeffer leaned back in his chair and stretched his arms out beside him. He looked exhausted. ‘Don’t know about you guys, but I could manage a steak and whatever else comes with it. Feel like I haven’t had a decent meal in a week.’

‘Sounds good,’ Woodroffe said. He stood up and retrieved his jacket from the back of his chair.

Hartmann rose also. He figured no harm could be done. What else would he do? Head back to the Marriott, watch TV, fall asleep in his clothes thinking about Jess and Carol and wake in the early hours of the morning with a bitch of a headache?

‘Any suggestions?’ Schaeffer asked. ‘This is more your town than ours.’

‘Vieux Carre . . . old New Orleans side of the city. They have some great restaurants.’

‘Good enough,’ Woodroffe said. ‘We’ll leave Ross here. I’ll make sure he has all the numbers and tell him to call as soon as he gets word back on the Chicago bombing.’

The three of them left by the front entrance. Ross was located and briefed on the situation, the information that was expected.

He and three other agents stayed behind in the office to take calls, to inform Schaeffer and Woodroffe if anything came up that would require their attention. Once again, the obvious absence of so many of the field operatives reminded Hartmann of the money and manpower that were being devoted to this. Those teams had been out for days, and not one of them had come back with anything substantial.

‘Bring me a take-out or something, eh?’ Sheldon Ross called after Hartmann, and Hartmann turned and raised his hand.

‘Next time you come with us,’ Hartmann called from the doorway. ‘And we’ll talk about how to find you an FBI girl that looks like Meg Ryan!’

Ross laughed and waved as Hartmann disappeared. He turned back and headed for the central office within the complex.

They took Schaeffer’s nondescript gray sedan, as much an advertisement for the Bureau as a red Pontiac Firebird, but still they insisted on using them. Hartmann sat up front, Woodroffe in the back, and Hartmann directed Schaeffer away from Arsenault towards the old side of the city.

There was much for him to remember, although he tried his best not to. Thoughts came thick and fast, with them images: he and Danny, his mother, even a memory of his father that he believed he’d forgotten. It was close to the bone, always had been perhaps, but Hartmann had somehow managed to bury it in the believed importances of his own life. Roots were roots, weren’t they?
Everybody has roots
, he thought, and then remembered that that had been a line from a poem by William Carlos Williams that Carol had been so fond of. He believed there was a fragment of hope for his marriage, and certainly there was no lack of love from his daughter. She
missed
him. She had said that, as clear as daylight. She missed him. His heart soared when he thought of her, the sound of her voice still echoing inside his head. But Carol had
doubts
. She’d said that. That she had
doubts
. She said he should call her when he got back to New York, and then she would see how she felt. Looking from the window along the streets of his past, he could hear her voice as if she had been sitting right behind him, almost as if he could have turned and looked right back at her in that very moment . . .

The memory of her voice and the image of her face were broken up then, and at first it seemed that he was imagining something. They had just taken a left turn towards Iberville and Treme, and the sound that came up behind them was like a tidal wave. There was no way to describe it, but it took Hartmann’s attention by surprise, and he turned suddenly and involuntarily to look out of the rear window.

Woodroffe was looking too. They saw it together, and though there might have been words to describe what they saw those words were never voiced.

Smoke seemed to rush upwards from the ground like a tornado in reverse. And then there was another sound, like a hundred thousand cannons going off at once, and Schaeffer slammed on the brakes and hit the curb with force.

‘What the living fu—’ he started, and then there was something like a slow-motion dawning realization, and after that came a sense of recognition, and close on the heels of everything came an awareness that none of them could even begin to comprehend.

‘Ross,’ Schaeffer said, but it was more like a sound than someone’s name, and he slowed the car, pulled it into reverse, skidded one hundred and eighty degrees in the middle of the street and started back the way they had come. He hit sixty or seventy by the time he reached the junction at the end, Hartmann leaning forward to see through the windscreen. Woodroffe was behind him, his hands gripping the rear of the passenger seat, and the nearer they got to Arsenault Street the more they realized that whatever was waiting there for them was not something they wished to see.