R. Ellory - A Quiet Vendetta

So what’s with you ?

Just thinking, Ma .

Always thinking. You don’t eat enough vegetables to be thinking so much. Your skin will grow pale and you will dry up like a leaf and blow away .

He would turn his head, look out towards the streets where he’d grown up.

Stay and have some lemonade or something, why don’tcha ?

Sure Ma, sure… I’ll stay and have some lemonade …

The phone rang. It was as if someone had tied elastic to Ray Hartmann and suddenly snapped him back into the present.

He blinked twice, inhaled deeply, and then reached for the receiver.

‘Mr Hartmann?’ someone asked him.

‘Yes.’

‘We’re coming up to get you.’

‘Okay, okay,’ Hartmann replied, and then he replaced the receiver and walked through to the narrow bathroom to wash his face.

It was just after five p.m., evening of Friday the twenty-ninth. Outside it looked like a storm was coming.

Ray Hartmann’s first impression of FBI unit chiefs Stanley Schaeffer and Bill Woodroffe was of their seeming lack of individuality. Both in their mid to late forties, dark suits, white shirts, black ties, hair graying at the temples, furrowed brows and anxious eyes. These guys would spend the entirety of their working lives dressed for a funeral. The two Feds who’d flown out to New York to collect Hartmann had escorted him to the New Orleans FBI Field Office, signed him in without saying a word, walked him through a maze of corridors and then left him outside their door.

‘Inside,’ one of the agents said, and then the pair of them turned and walked away.

When Hartmann knocked it was Schaeffer who told him to come in, who greeted him, shook his hand, asked him to sit down, but it was Woodroffe who started talking.

‘Mr Hartmann,’ he said quietly. ‘I understand that you must be feeling some sense of confusion regarding the manner in which you have been brought here.’

Hartmann shrugged.

Woodroffe glanced at Schaeffer; Schaeffer nodded without looking away from Hartmann.

‘We have a case here. An unusual situation. A man has been murdered and a girl has been kidnapped, and we find ourselves requiring your services.’

Woodroffe waited for Hartmann to speak, but Hartmann had nothing to say.

‘The man we believe responsible for both the killing and the kidnapping has asked for you specifically, and this evening at seven he will call and he will speak to you. We believe he will make his demands known.’

‘What’s his name?’ Hartmann asked.

‘We have no idea,’ Schaeffer said.

Hartmann frowned. ‘But he knew my name? He asked for me specifically?’

Schaeffer nodded. ‘He did.’

Hartmann shook his head. ‘And you think I might be able to tell you who he is from the sound of his voice on the telephone?’

‘No, Mr Hartmann, we don’t believe that at all. We have studied your records, we know how busy you have been with the many hundreds of cases that have passed across your desk over the years. We don’t imagine for a moment that you’ll be able to identify the man by his voice, but we can’t help but think that he might be someone you have dealt with or come across at some point in the past.’

Hartmann nodded. ‘That would be logical, considering he asked for me by name.’

‘So we want you to take the call, to speak to him,’ Woodroffe said. ‘He may identify himself, he may not, but what we are hoping is that he will give us his terms and conditions for the return of the kidnap victim.’

‘And that would be?’ Hartmann asked.

Woodroffe once more glanced sideways at Schaeffer.

‘You know Charles Ducane?’ Schaeffer asked.

Hartmann nodded. ‘Sure, Governor Charles Ducane, right?’

Schaeffer nodded. ‘The kidnap victim is Governor Ducane’s daughter, Catherine.’

‘Holy shit,’ Hartmann said.

‘Holy shit exactly,’ Schaeffer said.

Hartmann leaned forward and rested his forearms on the edge of the desk. He looked at Woodroffe and Schaeffer, and then he closed his eyes for a moment and sighed.

‘You understand I am not a trained negotiator?’ Hartmann said.

‘We understand that,’ Woodroffe said, ‘but we find ourselves in a situation of being able to turn to no-one but you. Believe me, if there was some way we could avoid involving you we would. This is a federal matter, and though you are by necessity in the employ of the federal government we also appreciate that this is not the sort of thing you are suited to.’

Hartmann frowned. ‘What, you think I can’t take a phone call?’

Schaeffer smiled, but there was nothing warm in his eyes. ‘No Mr Hartmann, we know you are perfectly capable of taking a phone call. What we mean is that you are an investigator for the Judiciary Subcommittee on Organized Crime, not a field agent with years of training in hostage negotiation.’

‘But you guys are, and you figure between us we can get the guy and save the girl?’

Schaeffer and Woodroffe were silent for a moment.

‘A flippant attitude does not befit proceedings such as these,’ Schaeffer said quietly.

Hartmann nodded. ‘Sorry,’ he said equally quietly, and wondered how long the call would be, how long he would have to stay afterwards, and whether there would be a late flight back to New York that night.

‘So, we do this this evening,’ Hartmann said.

‘Seven o’clock,’ Schaeffer said.

Hartmann glanced at his watch. ‘I’ve got something over an hour to kill.’

‘You can study these,’ Woodroffe said, and rising from his chair he crossed the room to a small desk in the corner. He returned with a number of files and placed them in front of Hartmann.

‘All the details we have thus far, pictures of the murder victim, pictures of the girl, Forensics and Criminalistics reports, the usual things. Study these now, so when he calls you have some kind of idea of what we are dealing with here.’

Woodroffe stayed on his feet as he spoke, and then Schaeffer rose also.

‘We’ll leave you for a little while. Anything you need?’ Hartmann looked up. ‘An ashtray. And could someone get me a cup of coffee? Not some of this shit you get out of the machine, but like a real cup of coffee with cream?’

Schaeffer nodded. ‘We’ll see what we can do, Mr Hartmann.’

‘Thanks.’ Hartmann waited until they had left the room before he opened the first file and looked down into the trunk of a ’57 Mercury Cruiser with some beat-to-fuck dead guy inside.

It was the constellation that got him. Caught him like a fish on a hook. It meant nothing, at least nothing specific, but the mere fact that whoever had done this had taken the time to draw the constellation of Gemini on the vic’s back told Hartmann that here he was dealing with someone a little more sophisticated than the regular kind of thug. And then there was the heart. And then there was the simple fact that the girl who’d been kidnapped was Charles Ducane’s daughter. Perhaps it was then, seated in the plain office with the photos, the reports, the transcriptions of the two phone calls that had been made, the collective details of all that had occurred since the night of Wednesday 20 August in front of him, that Ray Hartmann believed he might not get away from this thing tonight.

And if not tonight, then when?

Why did this man wish to speak to him, to him in particular, and what would he require of him? Would it be something that would keep him in New Orleans?

And what of Tompkins Square Park at midday on Saturday?

Ray Hartmann sighed and closed his eyes. He leaned forward, his elbows on the table, his forehead against his steepled fingers, and behind his eyes he could see Carol’s face, the way she would look at him when he’d done something else to piss her off. And then there was Jess, the way she would greet him when he arrived home, her smile wide, her eyes bright, everything that ever meant anything to him all tied up in the lives of two people he couldn’t see…