R. Ellory - A Quiet Vendetta

The world had fallen apart behind him as he’d left Louisiana. Ducane was dead, Feraud also; and though all efforts were being made by the federal and intelligence communities within the mainland United States, Hartmann truly believed that Perez, his son Victor, Catherine Ducane and Samuel ‘Ten Cent’ Pagliaro had already left the United States behind. Perhaps they were in Cuba, or South America – it didn’t matter. What mattered was that they were gone. And Ducane was a man who had died with his own reputation intact. He was acknowledged in the newspapers, on the TV; he was applauded as a man of vision, a man of the future. He went to his grave with his image unsullied by the ugly truth, for there were people above and behind him who knew that nothing would be gained by revealing that truth to the world. Charles Ducane had been murdered at the behest of Antoine Feraud, and now Feraud himself was dead. His son would be swiftly processed through the judicial system, and would irrevocably disappear. This was politics, the same politics that had given America Watergate and Vietnam, the deaths of two Kennedys and Martin Luther King. It was the public face of Charles Ducane that would be worn for the world: husband, father, governor, martyr.

These things did not concern Ray Hartmann. The sole and prevalent thought in his mind was his meeting at four p.m. in Tompkins Square Park. A little more than eight months he had been separated from his family. Jess would be different. It never ceased to amaze him how fast children ceased to be children and became young men and women. Carol would have changed too. You cannot spend two-thirds of a year away from your husband, away from the familiarity of the family you have created, and not be somehow changed. But he had changed too; Ray Hartmann knew that, and he hoped – against everything that previous experience had taught him – that he had changed enough.

He had called Carol earlier, from New Orleans. She had said nothing for a good three or four minutes while he poured out every thought and feeling, every reason he believed they should meet again. He had apologized for Saturday ten, twelve, perhaps twenty times, and finally, exhausted perhaps, she had said, ‘Okay Ray… for Jess. Same place, Tompkins Square Park at four. And don’t fuck this up, Ray… please don’t fuck this up again. Right now I don’t give a damn about how I feel, but I can’t have Jess upset any more, okay?’

Earlier, still aloft, Hartmann had glanced at his watch: it was gone twenty after two. Fifteen minutes, and the New Orleans-New York internal would land; he would be processed through the check-out desks and by three he would be on his way. He’d taken the earliest flight he could. There were questions to answer, even more to ask, and by the time John Verlaine had been given leave to drive Hartmann to the airport his nerves had been shredded.

‘You gonna fix this for keeps, right?’ Verlaine had asked him.

Hartmann had nodded but said nothing.

Verlaine had not pushed the issue. Everything that needed to be said would be said in New York. And so Verlaine had spoken of Perez, of the girl, of how everything they had imagined to be the truth had been nothing but a masquerade. They had been clever, they had planned everything down to the last detail, it seemed, and where the FBI had failed Perez had been quick to take advantage.

‘You think they bombed the FBI office themselves?’ Verlaine had asked. ‘You think the older guy and the son waited until Perez wasn’t there and then bombed it just to throw as much confusion into the situation as they could?’

Hartmann had shrugged, his eyes on the signposts along the highway that told him the airport was fast approaching.

‘It doesn’t make sense that it was Feraud,’ Verlaine had continued. ‘Feraud’s intelligence would have told him that Perez would leave the office during the day and would go back to the Sonesta.’

Again Hartmann had been noncommittal in his response.

‘I figure it was the son who bombed the office,’ Verlaine had concluded. ‘The son and the other guy… what was his name?’

‘Ten Cent,’ Hartmann had replied, and when he’d said the man’s name he’d felt as if he had known him, as if this character from Perez’s past was now as much a part of his own. Perhaps all of them would reside somewhere three inches back of his forehead forever. It had been a journey, that much at least; he had done what he’d been asked to do and he could not have been faulted for his co-operation and willingness. But the thing was over. It was done. And if they found Ernesto Perez they would take whatever action was required and Hartmann would not have to be involved.

In some small and strange way he hoped that the man would never be seen again.

And then Verlaine had taken a turn into the airport sliproad, and before they knew it they were at the Moisant International Terminal and Verlaine was saying something about coming back down to New Orleans some time, that it had been good meeting Hartmann, that he should stay in touch, give him a call…

And Ray Hartmann, feeling some sense of kinship and fraternity for this man, had looked at John Verlaine and smiled.

‘I won’t be coming back,’ he’d said quietly.

Verlaine had nodded. ‘I know,’ he’d said. ‘But you gotta say these things, right?’

‘Right,’ Hartmann had replied, and then he’d taken Verlaine’s hand and shaken it firmly, and then he’d gripped his shoulder and said, ‘It was good to have you in on this, and hell… you’ll have something to tell your grandchildren.’

Verlaine had laughed. ‘As if,’ he’d said, and then he’d let go of Hartmann’s hand and turned to walk back to his car.

‘Remember the trick,’ Hartmann had called after him.

Verlaine had paused and turned. ‘The trick?’

Hartmann had smiled. ‘The trick, John Verlaine, is to keep breathing.’

The flight had been brief. New Orleans to New York. A handful of hours over Alabama, Georgia, South and North Carolina, and then the east coast across Virginia to Maryland, and then Hartmann could see the Atlantic to his right, and the flight attendants were giving them an ETA on their landing.

Ray Hartmann tried to remember how he had felt when he’d returned to New Orleans. He tried to convince himself that now he was really going home, but he knew he was not. Louisiana was there, there rooted in everything he was, and though he truly believed that he would never return out of choice, he also knew that he had those roots. Uproot, and the channels those roots left behind were still there, like fingerprints in the earth. The earth remembered, reminded you of your heritage no matter how far you traveled. He tried to persuade himself that home was not a location, but a state of mind. He tried to think of this a hundred different ways, but it would always stay the same. Perez had been right. New Orleans would always be a part of him, no matter where he went.

By the time he collected his bags from the carousel and made his way to the exit gates it was gone quarter after three. He hurried out and hailed a cab, told the driver he needed to be across the Williamsburg Bridge and to Tompkins Square Park in East Village no later than ten minutes of four. The driver, whose name was Max, sighed and shook his head.

‘You’ll be wantin’ a helicopter then,’ he said. ‘Williamsburg is jammed end to end. Truck took a spill about a third of the way down, took me the better part of an hour to make it across last time I tried. Might be better if we went up to the Queensboro and down Second Avenue through Stuyvesant.’ Max shook his head. ‘No, that way for sure will take us more than an hour. We’ll take a risk, eh? Let’s hope the Virgin Mary has a blessing for you today.’