A Quiet Vendetta (72 page)

The subsequent weeks saw Victor burying himself in his schoolwork. He spoke with Emilie regularly, and I know that she wrote frequently because I was always there to see the mail arrive. But something was missing. The hope of when she would next come, the anticipation in our house as the weeks between her visits dissolved – that sense of promise had vanished. Victor was strong, and never again did he ask of me what he had asked that night. Nor did he question me about my past. It was as if we had all accepted the truth, and the truth – painful though it might have been – was now out in the open. It had evaporated, and there seemed to be no purpose in returning to it.

Towards the end of the year, my sixty-fifth birthday reminding me once again that time seemed to disappear effortlessly, more rapidly with each passing month, I resigned myself to the fact that the future of Victor and Emilie’s relationship had been consigned to destiny. We shared Christmas together, Victor and I, but ever-present was the awareness that this was our first Christmas in New Orleans without her. It was different, but Victor seemed in good spirits, and it appeared he was coping reasonably well. On Christmas Day she called him, and Victor spent more than an hour talking to her. I did not listen to their conversation, but every once in a while I could hear him laughing and this pleased me. She had not found someone else it seemed, and perhaps her patience and loyalty were of the same caliber as Victor’s.

I believed that everything would settle then. The New Year came, it was 2003; I was beginning to feel the weight of my years, that this life I had chosen could perhaps not have suited me better. I imagined that I would gradually fade out like a guttering candle, that I would be forgotten in the slow-motion slide of time and Victor would go on without me and find his own passage. He had done remarkably well with his schooling. He showed great promise and vision as an architect, and already there were possibilities opening up for him. He spoke of traveling to the east coast, that there were projects in Boston and Rhode Island he was interested in, and I encouraged him to go out there and make his mark, to make his own individual presence felt in the world. He had not become his father, for this I was grateful, and though he knew more of me than I would ever have wished, it did not change the fact that he loved and respected me. Whoever I had been before, Victor had never considered me anything other than his father.

It was then, in the early part of June, that the ghosts came back to find me.

I was alone that night, Victor was away with friends at the cinema and I did not expect him back until late.

I was in the back room smoking a cigarette, and now I cannot remember what I was thinking about. I heard a car passing in the street beyond the front door, and then the car slowed and started to reverse. What made me rise and walk through to the front I do not know, perhaps some preternatural sense of foreboding, but I did rise, and I did walk through, and there I drew back the curtain and looked out into the street.

My breath caught in my chest. I could not believe that I was awake, that this wasn’t some awful dream, some nightmare sent to punish me. Ahead of my house a car had come to a halt, a deep burgundy car, a 1957 Mercury Turnpike Cruiser, a car that had once belonged to Don Pietro Silvino and had been stored in a lock-up in Miami in July of 1968. A thirty-five-year-old memory surfaced like a dead body through black and turgid water.

The driver’s door opened. I strained to see who was getting out of the vehicle. I could barely stand when I saw him. I leaned against the edge of the window and started to breathe deeply. There, on the sidewalk, no more than ten yards from where I struggled to maintain my balance, was Samuel Pagliaro, a man I had only ever known as Ten Cent.

He turned, and though he could not have seen me there behind the curtain, it seemed he was looking right at me. I felt a cold rush of fear pass through my body, and for a time I could not move.

He started walking towards the house. I backed away from the window and made my way to the front door. I opened it before he reached the end of the path. He stopped in his tracks. This old man, a man who made me see how far we had come, stood there for a moment and then held his arms wide and smiled.

‘Ernesto!’ he said proudly. ‘Ernesto, my friend!’

I felt tears in my eyes. I stepped out onto the path. I walked towards him. I hugged him. I held him for some small eternity and then I released him and stepped back.

‘Ten Cent,’ I said. ‘Ten Cent . . . you are here.’

‘That I am,’ he said. ‘And as this is such a special occasion I have brought you your car!’ He turned and indicated the Cruiser. It was the same as it had ever been. Three miles of silken paintwork and burnished chrome. My gift from Don Giancarlo Ceriano after the deaths of Pietro Silvino and Ruben Cienfuegos. I remembered everything, the past, all the things that had brought me here to this point, and I was overcome with emotion.

I started to cry, and then I was laughing, and then the two of us were walking into the house and closing the world out behind us.

We ate together, we drank wine, we spoke of things that had been, a little of things that were to come. Ten Cent asked after Victor; I showed him some of Victor’s work and Ten Cent was pleased and proud like an uncle would be of a talented and bright nephew. Ten Cent was family, had always been, would always be, but at the same time he represented everything that I had so much wanted to leave behind. I realized then that such things could never be left behind. They were always there, and it was simply a matter of time before they found you once again. The present, even the future – these things were always and forever only a mirror held up to the past. The man I once was had now been reflected, and though time had passed, though the mirror was aged and spotted with distortions and discolorations, it was still the same man who looked back at me: Ernesto Cabrera Perez, killer, absentee father, indirectly guilty of the deaths of two of the people whom he had loved most.

Later, three, four hours perhaps, Ten Cent was quiet for a moment. He looked at me seriously and I asked him what was wrong.

‘I came for a reason,’ he said. ‘I wanted to see you. I brought the car also. But there is another reason I came.’

I fell quiet inside. I could feel my heart beating in my chest.

‘Don Calligaris is dead,’ he said. ‘He died three weeks ago.’

I opened my mouth to ask what had happened.

‘He was an old man, and despite everything he survived all the world could throw at him. He died in his own bed, surrounded by the people who cared for him. It has taken me all this time and a great deal of money to track you down, Ernesto, but in his last moments Don Calligaris wished that I find you and tell you the truth.’

‘The truth?’ I asked, fear roiling up inside me like a tornado.

‘The truth,’ Ten Cent said, ‘about Angelina and Lucia . . . the night they died.’

I felt my eyes widen.

‘The bomb, as you know, was meant for Don Calligaris, and he did not tell you about it for fear of what you might do. But he is dead now, and before he died he wanted to know that you would discover the truth of who was responsible for their deaths.’

Ten Cent shook his head. ‘It all went back to Chicago, the friends we made back then, the people we were involved with. There were disagreements, people in New York who were unhappy with the way things turned out, and the responsibility for resolving the differences was given to Don Calligaris.’

‘Differences?’ I asked. ‘What differences?’

‘The differences between those within the family and those outside who we were involved with.’

‘What people?’ I asked.

‘Don Calligaris was charged with the responsibility of closing down any business agreements we had made with Antoine Feraud and his New Orleans operations.’

I looked at Ten Cent. I was struggling to understand what he was telling me.

‘Don Calligaris, as he died, wanted me to tell you who was responsible for attempting to kill him . . . who was responsible for the murder of your wife and your daughter.’

‘Feraud?’ I asked. ‘Feraud was responsible for the car bomb?’

Ten Cent nodded and then looked down at his hands. ‘Don Calligaris did not tell you, and made me swear that I would not tell you, because he feared that your vengeance might begin a war between the families that he would be held accountable for. Now he is dead, and he does not care what happens, and he loved you enough to want you to know the truth. He told me to tell you that you should take whatever action you felt was just in order to revenge the deaths of your wife and child.’

I sat back in my chair. I was emotionally and mentally overwhelmed. I could not find any words to describe how I felt, and thus I said nothing. I looked back at Ten Cent. He looked back at me unblinkingly, and then I nodded slowly and lowered my head.

‘You understand I will do what I have to,’ I said quietly.

‘Yes,’ Ten Cent replied.

‘And if I die doing this then it is not on your head.’

‘You will not die, Ernesto Perez. You are invincible.’

I nodded. ‘Perhaps so, but this thing I am going to do will be the undoing of everything. It will mean losing Victor perhaps, and it will mean trouble for the families.’

‘I know.’

‘But even so, you tell me this and you are prepared to let the cards fall where they may?’

‘I am.’

I reached forward and took Ten Cent’s hand. I looked up at him and saw the washed-out pale blue color of his eyes: the eyes of a tired man.

‘You have done what Don Calligaris asked you to do,’ I said, ‘and for this I am grateful. Now I think you should leave, you should forget me and Victor and pay no mind to what happens now. This thing of ours is done.’

Ten Cent nodded. He rose from his chair. ‘Give me your car keys,’ he said. ‘I am leaving the car I brought and I will take yours. You do what you have to do, and do it with the blessing of Don Fabio Calligaris.’

‘I will,’ I said quietly, and my voice was nothing but a broken whisper. ‘I will do this thing, and that will be the end.’

I watched him drive away. With him went everything I had worked to maintain; the falsity of my present situation dissolved beneath the weight of this knowledge.

I felt ageless and indestructible. I felt the years roll away from me and vanish into nothing. I wandered through my house, my thoughts racing in circles, and I found myself challenging everything I had striven to become.

I was Ernesto Cabrera Perez. I was a murderer. I had reached the end of my life but there was now one more thing that had to be done. I would go to my grave knowing that justice had been served.

Like the Sicilians had told me so many years before:
Quando fai i piani per la vendetta, scava due tombe – una per la tua vittima e una per te stesso
.

Yes, I would dig two graves – one for Antoine Feraud, and one for myself.

I slept well that night, secure in the knowledge that my life had turned full circle. I would swallow my own tail, and finally, silently, irrevocably, everything I had been, everything I had become, would magically disappear.

I would find Angelina and Lucia once more, and this thing of ours would be done.

When Perez was done talking Hartmann leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms.

‘What was the saying you used? The one about revenge?’ he asked.

Perez smiled. ‘
Quando fai i piani per la vendetta, scava due tombe – una per la tua vittima e una per te stesso
.’

Hartmann nodded. ‘But in your case the other grave was not for yourself, right?’

Perez nodded.

‘One for Feraud and one for Charles Ducane . . . because these people were ultimately responsible for the deaths of your wife and your daughter.’

Perez said nothing; he merely reached for a cigarette and lit it. There was an air of satisfaction about his manner, perhaps a sense of completeness, as if now he had said all he intended to say and his business was closed.

‘It is some life you have had,’ Hartmann said.

‘It is not over yet,’ Perez replied.

‘You understand that you will spend the rest of your years in some high-security penitentiary facility.’

‘I imagine so.’

Hartmann was quiet for a moment, and then he looked across at Perez. ‘I have a question.’

Perez nodded.

‘Your son.’

‘What about him?’

‘Where he is, what he’s doing . . . does he have any real idea of what has happened here?’

Perez shrugged.

‘Does Victor know where you are, that you kidnapped the daughter of the governor of Louisiana?’

Perez shook his head.

‘But he knows enough of the life you have led—’

‘Victor knows that I was not prepared to kill Emilie Devereau’s father,’ Perez interjected, ‘and though he believed his love for her was strong enough to have carried the guilt of such a thing, he is still in some ways naïve. He knew enough of who I was to understand that I would have been capable of such a thing, but when he finally realized that I would not commit this murder for him he decided that he would have no more to do with me.’ Perez paused and shook his head. ‘In his mind he managed to convince himself that somehow I had betrayed him.’

‘Do you know where he is now?’

Perez shook his head. ‘He is out there somewhere, Mr Hartmann, and though I love him, love him more than any other person in the world, I am able to let him go. He will find his own way, I am sure of that, and though I will never see him again I know also that he will never become the man that I became.’

‘You’re sure of that?’

‘Yes, I am sure of it.’

‘You said something to me about Shakespeare, the two families that could never be together.’

‘I did.’

‘And this was what you meant . . . Victor, and Emilie Devereau?’

Perez nodded. ‘Yes.’

‘And when you could not give your son what he wanted you decided to seek revenge for the murders of your wife and your daughter.’

‘I did.’

‘Understanding that in closing that particular chapter of your life you would also see your own life come to an end?’