R. Ellory - A Quiet Vendetta

‘Less of the attitude,’ Schaeffer said.

Hartmann nodded. He did not tell them Fuck you and the horse you rode in on . He refrained from asking them Who the fuck do you people think you are ? He bit his tongue, held his temper, and rose slowly from his chair. There was a quiet and unspoken sense of pride in knowing that he would come through this and never have to speak to these people again.

And so he left – walked from the New Orleans FBI Field Office on Arsenault Street to the Marriott Hotel. Here there were no armed Bureau agents to watch over him. Here there was nothing more than a simple functional hotel room, a comfortable bed, a TV he could watch with the sound turned off as the day closed down around him.

He thought of Carol and Jess. He thought of Saturday 6 September. He thought of Ernesto Cabrera Perez and how a man like that would see this world. Not through the same eyes, and not with the same emotions. However polite and cultured and erudite the man might have seemed, he was as crazy as the rest of the sick bastards that seemed to have populated Hartmann’s life. Such was the life he had chosen, and such was the life he lived.

His sleeping hours were crowded with images, angular and disturbed. He imagined that it was Jess who had been kidnapped by this man, that Carol had been the one found in the trunk of the Mercury Turnpike Cruiser on Gravier Street only a week before. He imagined all manner of things, and when he was woken by a call from room service a little after eight he felt as if he had not slept at all.

He went down for breakfast and found Sheldon Ross waiting for him.

‘Take your time Mr Hartmann,’ Ross said. ‘They’ll be bringing Perez over to the office at about ten.’

‘Come have a cup of coffee with me,’ Hartmann said, and Ross sat with him, shared some coffee, and said nothing of why they were there.

‘You married?’ Hartmann asked.

Ross shook his head.

‘Any particular reason?’

‘Never took the time to address that particular area of my life.’

‘You should,’ Hartmann said. He reached for a piece of toast and buttered it.

‘Special kind of girl who would want to be married to the FBI,’ Ross said.

Hartmann smiled. ‘Don’t I know it.’

‘You’re married, right?’

Hartmann nodded. ‘Married, and still trying to stay married.’

‘Pressures of work?’

‘Indirectly, yes,’ Hartmann replied. ‘More the pressure of being a complete asshole fifty percent of the time.’

Ross laughed. ‘It’s good that you can be honest about it, but as far as I can see it cuts both ways.’

‘Sure it does, but like you said it’s a special kind of person who wants to spend their time married to the sort of thing we do.’ Hartmann looked across the table at Ross. ‘You live with someone or you live alone?’

‘I live with my mom.’

‘And your dad?’

Ross shook his head. ‘Dead a good few years now.’

‘I’m sorry.’

Ross waved the condolence away.

‘So you go home and tell your mom the kind of things you’ve had to look at all day?’

Ross laughed. ‘She’d have a freakin’ coronary.’

‘That’s the point, isn’t it? And with a wife, someone who’s even closer to you in some ways, and then add kids on top of that, and you got a somewhat untenable situation.’

‘So there’s no hope for me?’ Ross asked.

Hartmann smiled. ‘Maybe you should marry an FBI girl.’

‘Brutal,’ Ross said. ‘You seen the sort of girls that join the Bureau? They don’t exactly look like Meg Ryan.’

Hartmann laughed and ate his toast.

Half an hour later they walked together to Arsenault Street.

Woodroffe and Schaeffer were waiting. They said their respective Good mornings , and then Hartmann was shown once more into the small rear office where he had sat with Perez the day before.

A small coffee maker had been installed, as had a wheeled trolley upon which sat cigarettes, ashtrays, clean cups and saucers, a bag of jelly beans and a box of Cuban cigars.

‘What the man wants the man gets, right?’ Hartmann had commented to Schaeffer, who nodded and said, ‘Right to the point we nail his ass for the girl, and then he’s gonna get an eight-by-eight in gray steel-reinforced concrete and two hours of daylight a week.’

Hartmann sat down. He waited patiently. He knew when Perez had arrived in the building because he was accompanied by a good dozen or more FBI operatives, all of them awkward and nervous.

Perez appeared in the doorway of the small office and Hartmann instinctively rose from his chair.

Perez extended his hand. Hartmann took it and they shook.

‘You slept well, Mr Perez?’ Hartmann asked, at once feeling a sense of apprehension around the man, but at the same time a considerable degree of disdain.

‘Like the proverbial baby,’ Perez replied as he sat down.

Hartmann sat down also, reached for a packet of cigarettes on the trolley, offered one to Perez, took one himself, and then lit them both. He felt an unusual conflict of emotions – the necessity to be polite, to treat the man with some degree of respect, and at the same time hate him for what he had done, what he represented, and the fact that he had single-handedly jeopardized the only real chance Hartmann had to salvage his marriage. He looked at Perez closely; he believed there was nothing in his eyes, no light of humanity at all.

‘I have a question,’ Hartmann asked.

Perez nodded.

‘Why am I here?’

Perez smiled, and then he started laughing. ‘Because I asked you to be here, Mr Hartmann, and right now I have all the aces and none of the jokers. I am in the driving seat for this short while, and I know that whatever I ask for I will get.’

‘But why me? Why me of all people?’

Perez sighed and leaned back in his chair. ‘Did you ever read Shakespeare, Mr Hartmann?’

Hartmann shook his head. ‘I can’t say that I did.’

‘You should read him, as much as you can. The truth of the matter is that Shakespeare said that there were seven ages of man, and apparently just as there are seven ages of man, there are also only seven real stories.’

Hartmann frowned. ‘I don’t understand.’

‘Seven stories, and everything you read, every movie you might see, everything that happens in life is one of these seven stories. Things like love and revenge, betrayal, such things as this. Only seven of them, and each of those seven stories can be found in every one of William Shakespeare’s plays.’

‘And the connection?’ Hartmann asked.

‘The connection, as you so call it, Mr Hartmann, is that everything you could ever wish to know about me, about why I am here, about what has happened to Catherine Ducane and why I chose you to come home to New Orleans and listen to my story… all of the answers can be found in the words of William Shakespeare. Now pour us some coffee and we shall talk, yes?’

Hartmann paused for a moment and then he looked directly at Perez. He had been right. There was not the slightest spark of humanity in the man’s eyes. He was a killer, nothing more nor less than a killer. Hartmann reminded himself of what had been done to Gerard McCahill; he remembered Cipliano’s words, It’s hard to tell on the blows as well. So many, and all coming at different angles, like whoever did this was walking around the guy in circles while he whacked him . He pictured Ernesto Perez doing just that: walking around a bound and gagged man, hammer in his hand, raining blow after merciless blow down on the defenseless victim until shock and blood loss brought his life to an end.

Inside he shuddered.

‘You’re not going to give us anything, are you, Mr Perez?’ he asked.