A Quiet Vendetta (61 page)

On the last Saturday of that month, a day that would mark the beginning of the end in so many ways, I went up to my son’s room and sat on the edge of the bed. He did not look at me, he merely turned onto his side and went on reading his book.

‘Victor, listen to me,’ I said calmly.

He did not respond.

‘Victor, listen to me now. I am going to say something and you are going to listen.’

Again he did not move or turn his head towards me.

‘You want to go to America?’

There was a flicker of movement in his face.

‘If you want to speak to me of going to America then you will turn and face me and talk to me like a man.’

Victor moved sideways. He turned to look at me, his eyes almost without expression.

‘We will go to America,’ I said quietly. ‘We will do as you wish and we will go to America, but you must understand something.’

Victor sat up. He started to reach towards me. I raised my hand and edged backwards. ‘Listen to me, Victor, and listen well. I will take you to America, but you must understand that I had a life there before you were born, and there were things done and things said that I believe you could never comprehend. If you happen to hear of these things then you should come and talk to me before you assume they are true, and before you make any judgement of me. I am your father. I am the closest person you have in this world, and I love you more than life itself. But I will not have you judge me, Victor. I will not have you judge me.’

The fear was there, buried deep inside me, almost an integral part of my being. The fear of who I was, the fear of my son discovering the truth about his father. It was there, always had been, but I had been too afraid to face it.

Victor leaned forward and put his arms around my neck. He pulled me tight and hugged me. I inhaled slowly. I closed my eyes. I held him for some small eternity and I would not let go.

I did not want my son to see that I was crying.

The following day I made some calls to Chicago. I discovered that Don Calligaris, Ten Cent, some of the others, had moved back to New York in the summer of 1994. I found Ten Cent without difficulty, and when I told him I was planning on returning to New York he told me that he could arrange a private charter out of Havana that would bring me to the mainland of Florida, and there I could take a train or drive up to New York. There would be no need for papers or identification. There would be no need for anyone but the Alcatraz Swimming Team to know that Ernesto Cabrera Perez was coming to America once more.

Five and a half years I had been away. My son, all of eight years old when we had left, was now a teenager with a mind and a character and a vision all his own. New York would be filled with painful memories, and I knew the time would come when I would walk those same streets where I had walked with Angelina Maria Tiacoli so many years before.

But that was a different life. That was a different man altogether, and I swore to myself that this time,
this time
it would be different.

I could not have been more wrong, but as I boarded that small aircraft, as we taxied along the narrow runway and then watched through the windows as the ground was swallowed into obscurity beneath us, I imagined that I could return and still stay somehow disconnected from the past.

Truth be known the past had been there all along, and it was just waiting for me to come home.

Hartmann was not sure. Perhaps still stunned by the events of the previous night, perhaps frustrated at the fact that much of their evidence was now destroyed, and beneath that the feeling that whatever investigation might have been ongoing was bearing no fruit, it seemed that any sense of accomplishment or forward progress had been obliterated in one swift and effective act.

There was no way, at this early stage, to determine anything regarding the bombing of the Field Office, save that it had been done by someone who was aware of Perez’s existence, someone who wanted Perez to disappear and did not care who might disappear with him. Hartmann himself suspected Feraud. The man had the authority, the wherewithal, and the people to carry out such an attack, and Hartmann also believed that Feraud would have seen the deaths of innocent bystanders and federal agents alike as merely casualties of war, even as some sort of bonus. And then there was Ducane – Charles Ducane, the governor of Louisiana. And if Perez’s word was anything to go by, this man had been working hand-in-glove with organized crime for at least forty years. Ducane was now in his sixties, perhaps the same age as Perez himself, but had worked officially on the other side of the law, the acceptable side where everything as it actually was and everything as it appeared to be were very different. At least with people like Perez the world was black and white. What they did was straightforward: murder, extortion, blackmail, violence, drug-running, arms-dealing, pornography, prostitution, racketeering. In politics it was called public relations, fundraising, political leverage, lobbying, strengthening the vote and ‘exercising one’s peccadillos’. They were all the same thing, and Hartmann was not so naïve as to believe that people like Ducane were incapable of exactly the same things as Perez and his Alcatraz Swimming Team. It was not a difference of action, more a question of terminology.

That evening, the evening of Saturday 6 September, a day that marked the two-week disappearance of Catherine Ducane, a day that should have seen him in Tompkins Square Park with his wife and daughter, Ray Hartmann – he of the bruised heart and broken mind – lay on his bed in the Marriott Hotel. He could have transferred to the Royal Sonesta just as Schaeffer and Woodroffe had done, and it was not the threat of another bombing that had kept him away. It was simply the fact that he was attempting, seemingly against all odds, to maintain some distance between himself and what was happening. If he woke, showered, shaved and dressed in the same hotel where he had to speak with Perez, then it would feel as if that was all there was to his life. The Marriott was not home, could never have been anything even close, but at least it gave him the impression that there was a division between what he was doing and who he was. Now he believed that even if he had been given the choice to walk away he could not have done so. Even if someone had called and told him it was okay, that he could go back to New York and see his wife and daughter today, he imagined there would have been a question in his mind as to whether that was the right course of action to take.

Nineteen murders. Ernesto Perez had detailed to them nineteen different murders. Right from the encyclopedia salesman here in New Orleans to the Cuban constabulare who had been stabbed and burned in September of 1991, there were nineteen lives, nineteen people who no longer walked and talked, who no longer saw their husbands, wives, girlfriends, brothers, sisters, parents, children. Nineteen people who had vanished from the physical reality of life, who would never come back, who would never have another thought or feeling or emotion or passion. And beyond that, there were the additional eleven unnamed victims that had been summarily despatched when Perez worked for Giancarlo Ceriano. All killed by one man. Ernesto Cabrera Perez. A psychopath, even a homophobe, but at the same time strangely eloquent and cultured, considerate of feelings and the necessity for family, the power of loyalty and the giving of one’s word. A paradox. An anachronism. A mystery.

Hartmann found that all he believed in had been in some way challenged. The importance of his job, his so-called career. The value of friendship. The necessity to be trusted, to trust others, to make a promise and keep it. Just as Jess had asked him – would he now keep his promises? He believed he would. The deaths of Ross and the others, even the deaths of those who had been murdered by Perez, seemed to do nothing but highlight the importance of making every moment count for something, however insignificant it might seem at the time.

He had been an asshole, and it had not been because of his father, and it had not been because of genetics or some hereditary trait; it had been because of himself, he alone.

Perez had asked him whether circumstance governed choices, or if choices governed circumstance. Hartmann, now – perhaps in the most meaningful change of heart he had experienced since Carol and Jess had left him – believed it was the latter. He had made choices: to work, to stay late, to give too little credence and weight to the little things that Carol and Jess had considered important; and he had chosen to drink, whether it had been with Luca Visceglia or alone, he had nevertheless been in a situation where he could have said no. But he had not. Despite his word he had not. And this was the price he had paid. Choice governed circumstance, of that he was sure, and he knew that now, after all of this, his choices would be different.

During those early hours of Sunday morning, as New Orleans went through its routines; as people walked and laughed and danced down Gravier and through the districts of Arabi and Chalmette; as they ate at Tortorici’s Italian and Ursuline’s; as they drove along Chef Menteur Highway and the South Claiborne Avenue Overpass; as they talked their words out, expressing what was in their hearts and minds and souls; as they ran barefoot through Louis Armstrong Park, slowing down as they passed Our Lady of Guadalupe Church because they could not be sure, could
never
be sure that there wasn’t a God, and God didn’t mind the drinking, but the blaspheming and rowdiness around His house might just piss Him off enough to fly a thunderbolt through your heart; as they lived life in the vague hope that there might be something better just around the corner, and if not that corner then perhaps the next one, and everything came to those whose tongues were silent, whose hearts were patient, whose thoughts were pure and clean and simple; as people throughout the city went about the business of being frail and uncertain, impulsive and cautious, headstrong, passionate, unfaithful, honest, loyal, childlike, innocent and hurt . . . as all these things unfolded in darkness around him, Ray Hartmann believed that possibly – in some small and awkward way – what had happened here in New Orleans had been a second chance. If he came out of here alive, if he just remembered to keep breathing, then there might be a chance he could rescue his life from the depths to which it had fallen.

He hoped so. God, he hoped so.

And it was with that thought that finally, gratefully, he folded down into sleep.

Sunday morning Sheldon Ross did not come to collect him from the Marriott, because Sheldon Ross was dead.

That, above all else, reminded Ray Hartmann of the transient fragility of it all.

Hartmann arrived at the Royal Sonesta alone, but in ample time for his appointment with Perez. Yet even as he approached the front of the building he sensed that something was very different. There were cars outside that he had not seen before, men also – two of them, dark-suited, one with sunglasses – but there was something about their manner that told Hartmann they were not part of Schaeffer’s little family. He paused on the other side of the street, intuition telling him that something was altogether awry. The taller of the two men watched him intently as he cleared the road and started down the sidewalk. When he reached the main entrance of the hotel a federal agent stepped out and raised his hand at the two men and Hartmann passed inside.

‘New kids on the block?’ Hartmann asked.

The agent smiled warily. ‘You don’t even wanna know,’ he said, almost under his breath, and indicated that Hartmann should speak to a second agent at the reception desk.

‘First floor, second room to the right,’ Hartmann was told. ‘Mr Schaeffer and Mr Woodroffe are up there waiting for you.’

Hartmann paused once more. He looked at the man behind the desk but it was obvious there was nothing further to say.

Hartmann crossed the lobby and started up the stairs. He made it to the first floor landing, and as he turned he could hear voices. There was no-one in the corridor, and he hesitated before making himself known.

‘—don’t know. That’s the plain truth of it . . . we just don’t know yet.’

It was Schaeffer’s voice – clear as anything.

‘But Agent Schaeffer,’ another voice said, ‘you are paid to know. That is the entire purpose of your existence . . . to know things that no-one else knows.’

Hartmann frowned and took another step towards the doorway of the hotel room.

The second voice started up again, the sort of voice that belonged to someone who very much liked the sound of it.

‘You have entrusted almost every chance of success to a burned-out alcoholic from New York—’

The hairs on Hartmann’s neck rose to attention.

‘—and this man, this Ray Hartmann, has already failed to secure a deal with this maniac Perez. I don’t understand it, Agent Schaeffer. I just don’t understand how a man of your background and experience could have entrusted the most important and delicate aspect of this matter to someone such as Hartmann.’

‘Because Ray Hartmann has earned Perez’s confidence, Governor—’

Hartmann, standing there in the narrow hotel corridor, no more than three feet from the room where these people were speaking, realized who was inside. Ducane. Governor Charles Ducane.

‘And when you are dealing with a man such as Ernesto Perez,’ Schaeffer went on, ‘you use whatever leverage or foothold you can find. We are not dealing with a rational man, Governor. We are dealing with a multiple murderer, a homicidal psychopath. The laws and rules and regulations that dictate the manner in which business is undertaken at Capitol Hill do not apply to situations such as this. What we have here is an entirely different world—’

‘I do not appreciate the facetious attitude, Agent Schaeffer. I am here because my daughter has been kidnapped, and I am in personal communication not only with the attorney general himself, but also the director of the FBI. I can assure you that there will be no quarter given if it is discovered that any aspect of this operation has been mishandled by yourself or the men under your command—’

‘And I can assure you, Governor Ducane, that every single thing that can be done is being done.’