A Quiet Vendetta (28 page)

‘You believe him? You reckon he’s got her somewhere and she’s starving to death?’

‘Christ only knows . . . I don’t know what to believe any more. He knows what he’s doing, and he’s obviously very organized. Despite all the power of the federal government we’re still no further forward in finding the actual location of this girl.’

Verlaine said nothing for a little while. ‘This means something to you.’ It was not a question, more a simple statement of fact.

Hartmann looked back at Verlaine. He frowned.

‘Something personal . . . I get the idea that this is in some way personal for you.’

Hartmann shook his head. ‘Personal is personal . . . that’s why it’s called personal.’

Verlaine smiled. ‘I understand that, but you’re asking me to do something here that is very personal to me.’

‘To you . . . whaddya mean?’

‘The fact that I might wanna stay alive a little longer. Feraud is not a man you cross. He’s not a man you ignore. He asked me to walk away from this, to not go looking, and to never speak of it to him again.’

‘And you’re gonna do what he says?’ Hartmann asked, a sense of challenge in his tone.

Verlaine smiled and shook his head. ‘Don’t come that shit with me . . . you wanna play your stupid mind games you go play it on the Feds. I got better things to do than fuck with something that ain’t my business.’

Hartmann was lost for words. He looked at the man facing him, the only man that could perhaps be an ally in this thing he had somehow managed to create for himself, and he realized that if he was to have any chance at all of getting some help he would have to tell the truth.

‘You wanna know why I want this to end?’

Verlaine nodded. ‘Try me, and if it’s good enough then I might consider giving you a hand.’

Hartmann felt as if he would collapse inside. He realized how tired he was, how worn around the edges, and despite all that had taken place, all that he had heard from Perez, the one thing there at the forefront of his mind was what would happen if he missed his Saturday meeting with Carol and Jess.

And so, understanding that there was nothing further he could tell Verlaine, he told him the truth.

And Verlaine listened, and did not interrupt, and did not ask questions, and when Hartmann was done Verlaine leaned back in his chair and folded his arms behind his head. ‘So you’re in the crap up to your fucking neck and you need me to bail you out?’

Hartmann nodded. ‘In the crap with this thing, with my wife and my kid, with my fucking job and everything else that matters a damn. I gotta see this through to the end. I gotta see it through, and on the one hand I cannot rush it, but on the other hand what happens with my wife and my daughter is one fuck of a lot more important to me than what happens to Catherine Ducane. I wanna see it done, I wanna see the girl back safe, but I need to get back to New York and see my wife before she gives up on me completely.’

Verlaine was quiet for a time. He looked at the wall above Hartmann’s head and seemed to be completely lost.

Hartmann could feel his heart beating in his chest.

Verlaine shook his head slowly and looked at Hartmann. ‘I get killed doing this and I am gonna be so fucking pissed you won’t believe it.’

Hartmann smiled. ‘You’re a cop first and foremost, John Verlaine, and I know that you might have some sense of willingness to help me out, but above and beneath everything else you’re in this to get the bad guys, right?’

Verlaine smiled. ‘Not just to get ’em,’ he said. ‘Wanna get the chance to shoot some motherfucker as well.’

Hartmann laughed. ‘So you’re gonna do this?’

‘Against my intuition, against every shred of better judgement, against every rule in the fucking book . . . but yes, I will do this.’

Hartmann, expecting to feel relief, felt instead a sense of fear gnawing at him. What was he doing? What the hell did he expect to happen when he went out there to see Antoine Feraud? He reminded himself of the reason for his action, and though this did nothing to assuage his apprehension, it nevertheless served to focus his mind. The intention was to get through this as fast as possible, to find the girl, to put the bad guy in the joint, to get the hell back to New York and salvage what he could of his marriage and his life.

‘Tomorrow evening?’ Hartmann asked.

Verlaine nodded. ‘Tomorrow evening it is.’

‘Time?’

‘Come for six . . . we’ll see what we can do.’

Later, alone once more in the Marriott Hotel, Hartmann watched TV with the sound up. Anything to drown out his thoughts. He understood that he was ignorant of the full consequences of his actions, but he believed in the inherent balance of the universe: that if one approached something with a good intention then that could often turn the tide in one’s favor. Had he believed sufficiently in the existence of God, he would have prayed. But he had seen far too much of the dark underbelly of humanity to consider that there was anyone out there taking any kind of responsibility for what was going on down here.

Some hours passed, and as New Orleans greeted midnight Hartmann fell asleep fully clothed. He dreamed of Carol and Jess, he dreamed of himself and Danny running through the streets of New Orleans; dreamed of sailing away in a paper boat big enough for two, its seams sealed with wax and butter, their pockets filled with nickels and dimes and Susan B. Anthony dollars . . .

Dreamed of these things, and yet beneath them, crawling in the shadows and the darker corners of his mind, he dreamed of a man lying dead in a pool of blood in a Havana motel cabin.

Monday morning, the first day of September. Incipient fall, and soon the wind would chill, the leaves would turn, and winter would make its gradual way towards even this part of America.

Hartmann arrived at the FBI office a good half an hour early. The tension was almost tangible, something perceivable from the street. They were all aware of the fact that they were together for no other reason than Perez and the kidnapping of Catherine Ducane, and they were acutely aware that Perez could be so easily wasting their time. The girl could be dead already.

‘We got the facts on this Pietro Silvino,’ Schaeffer told Hartmann, but Hartmann was of the belief that Perez was telling them nothing more or less than the facts as he knew them. He believed that Perez was here for his own catharsis, for the cleansing and absolution of his own conscience. It would serve no purpose to tell them lies, at least no purpose he could discern.

‘Found dead in a Havana motel room in February of 1960,’ Schaeffer said. ‘No-one was ever charged or convicted of the killing.’

Woodroffe nodded slowly. ‘I reckon there’s gonna be an awful lot more like that,’ he said. ‘He’s started right at the beginning and we’ve gotta listen to all of it before we even get an idea of what he’s done with Catherine Ducane.’

‘And for what?’ Schaeffer asked, the frustration evident in his tone. ‘Only to find out that the girl was dead a half hour after he took her?’

‘You cannot think that way,’ Woodroffe said, but in his voice Hartmann could tell that he had thought that way also. All of them had. It was inevitable and inescapable. They really had no idea who they were dealing with, and no real indication of which way this would go.

‘I’ll tell you something—’ Hartmann began, but suddenly there was a hubbub behind them, and looking down the length of the open-plan office he saw the first of the FBI escort team that would bring Perez in.

‘Well, we’ll see what he has to say for himself today,’ Hartmann said, and he turned and made his way towards the small office at the back of the building.

Perez seemed subdued when he sat down. He looked at Hartmann but said nothing at first. He reached for a polystyrene cup and filled it with water from a jug on the trolley. He drank slowly as if quenching his thirst, and then he set the cup down on the table and leaned back in his chair.

‘It is different now,’ he said. ‘You live this life, you do these things, and it is only when you talk about them that you feel anything at all. I have never spoken of these things before, and now I am hearing them I am beginning to understand that there were so many choices, so many directions I could have taken.’

‘Is it not the same with all of us?’ Hartmann asked, thinking at once of his own brother, of Carol and Jess.

Perez smiled. He took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. ‘I think I am tired. I think I am old and tired, and I will be relieved when this comes to an end.’

‘We could end it now,’ Hartmann said. ‘You could tell us where you have hidden Catherine Ducane, and then you would have all the time in the world to confess.’

Perez laughed. ‘Confess? Is that what you think I am doing here, Mr Hartmann? You think I have come to confess to you like a priest?’ He shook his head. ‘I am not the penitent one, Mr Hartmann. I have not come here to tell the world of my own sins, but to tell of the sins of others.’

Hartmann frowned. ‘I don’t understand, Mr Perez.’

‘You will, Mr Hartmann, you will. But everything will come in its own time.’

‘But will you give us no indication of how much time we have?’

‘You have as much time as I am prepared to give you,’ Perez replied.

‘That is all you will say?’

‘It is.’

‘You understand the importance of this girl’s life?’

Perez smiled. ‘It is all leverage, Mr Hartmann. If I had taken a New Orleans restaurant waitress then you and I would not be sitting here in this room. I know who Catherine Ducane is. I have not done this without thought or planning—’

Perez fell silent.

Hartmann looked up.

‘She is not somewhere where she will easily be found, Mr Hartmann. She will be found when I decide to have her found. Where she is she will not be heard even if she screams continuously at the top of her voice. And if she does that she will only wear herself out and shorten her own lifespan. The road is long, Mr Hartmann, and she is already at the very end of it. We play this game the way I wish it to be played. We follow my rules . . . and perhaps, just perhaps, the Ducane girl might see daylight again.’

Perez paused for a moment, and then he looked up and smiled. ‘So we shall continue, eh?’

Hartmann nodded, and closed the door once again.

Miami is a noise: a perpetual thundering noise trapped against the coast of Florida between Biscayne Bay and Hialeah; beneath it Coral Gables, above it Fort Lauderdale; everywhere the smell of the everglades – rank, swollen and fetid in summer, cracked and featureless and unforgiving in winter.

Miami is a promise and an automatic betrayal; a catastrophe by the sea; perched there upon a finger of land that points accusingly at something that is altogether not to blame. And never was. And never will be.

Miami is a punctuation mark of dirt on a peninsula of misfortune; an appendage.

And now – of all places – my home.

Cuba was behind me, and with it the trials and tribulations of a land that still wrestled with its own conscience. 1960 folded up behind us, and looking back I saw events that somehow scarred a people’s history, Castro vacillating indecisively between the promise of a dollar-rich hedonistic west and the validation of political ideology presented by the USSR. Castro seized US-owned properties and made further agreements with communist governments. He agreed to buy Soviet oil, even as John Fitzgerald Kennedy assumed the presidency of the United States in January of 1961 and sanctioned the cessation of diplomatic relations with Cuba. On 16 April 1961 Fidel Castro Ruz declared Cuba a socialist state. Three days later, backed by CIA funding and US military support, one thousand three hundred Cuban exiles invaded Cuba at a southern coastal region called the Bay of Pigs. Khrushchev promised Castro all necessary aid. The United States government incorrectly assumed the invasion would inspire the people of Cuba to rise up and seize power from Castro, to instigate a coup d’état, but they assumed wrong. The Cuban populace supported Castro without question. The invaders were captured, and each of them was sentenced to thirty years in jail.

The United States, in its continued infinite wisdom, went on pouring the nation’s hard-earned dollars into military support for South Vietnam.

In February of ’62 Kennedy imposed a full trade embargo on Cuba. Two months later Castro offered to ransom one thousand, one hundred and seventy-nine of the Bay of Pigs invaders for sixty-two million dollars. Kennedy sent the Marines into Laos. Sonny Liston K.O.’d Floyd Patterson in two minutes and six seconds.

October brought the discovery that Castro was permitting the Soviets to establish long-range missile launch sites in Cuba, ninety miles from the American mainland. A blockade of Cuba was instigated that Jack Kennedy had every intention of maintaining until Khrushchev agreed to remove the missiles. Castro announced his commitment to a Marxist-Leninist ethos; he nationalized industry, confiscated property owned by non-Cuban nationals, collectivized agriculture and enacted policies designed to benefit the common man. Many of the middle classes fled Cuba and established a large anti-Castro community in Miami itself.

On 28 October, after thirteen days during which the entire world dared not to blink, Khrushchev announced that all missile-launching sites on the island would be dismantled and returned to the USSR. On 2 November Kennedy lifted the Cuban blockade.

In December, the United States paid a fifty-three-million-dollar ransom and the Bay of Pigs invaders were freed.

I watched the events of those months unfold from a house in downtown Miami. I was twenty-five years old by the time the world exhaled once more, and though I had paid attention to these things it was as if they were merely moments of radio interference interrupting the soundtrack of my life.

And this
was
now my life. I had arrived here with no more mention than I deserved. In some small way I was myself an appendage, an addition to something so much bigger than myself, and though I was absorbed into the extant operation that existed in Miami, there was always the awareness that I was different. These people – people with names like Maurizio, Alberto, Giorgio and Federico, who all seemed to have secondary names like Jimmy the Aspirin (because he made Don Ceriano’s ‘headaches’ go away), Johnny the Limpet and Slapsie Maxie Rosenbloom – were part of a crew nicknamed the Alcatraz Swimming Team. They drank plenty, they laughed more, they spoke in broken Italian-American, and every other phrase seemed to be ‘
Chi se ne frega
’, which meant ‘Who gives a damn!’, and I believed they didn’t, and never had, and never would.