R. Ellory - A Quiet Vendetta

I looked across at Don Evangelisti. He was smiling too.

‘You’re not from Chicago, are you?’ I asked.

Don Calligaris shook his head. ‘No, we’re not from Chicago.’

‘You don’t work for Sam Giancana, and you are not his cousin?’

Calligaris smiled once again. ‘Sam Giancana is an asshole, a shoeshine boy in a five-hundred-dollar suit. Sam Giancana will be dead before the year is out. No, we do not work for him, and no I am not his cousin. We work for people who are an awful lot more powerful than Sam Giancana, and you can come work for us if you wish.’

I was quiet for a moment. With the death of Don Ceriano there was nothing for me here. I was the hired hand, part of the wet-job crew, and for all I knew Slapsie Maxie, Johnny the Limpet and the rest of the Alcatraz Swimming Team were as dead as Don Ceriano somewhere in Vegas.

‘There is nothing for me here,’ I said. ‘I can come to New York.’

They both smiled. Don Evangelisti said something in Italian and they laughed some more.

Don Calligaris walked towards me. He reached out his blood-spattered hand and I shook it. ‘Welcome to the real world, Ernesto Perez,’ he said quietly, and then he released my hand, and started walking, and I followed him back to the warehouse where a car was waiting for us.

I looked back as we drove away, saw the tractor as it raised Don Ceriano’s car high above the ground and then let it fall into the crusher. I closed my eyes and said a prayer for his soul, even now on its swift and inevitable passage into Hell.

I turned around and looked forward, because forward was the only way I could look, and if New York was my destination then so be it.

I was thirty-six years old. I was alone. I was no longer part of this family. I took what was given to me and there seemed no choice.

By the time I boarded an aircraft, in my hand a single case holding all my possessions, I had separated myself from all that had come before, and prepared to start over again.

This was how it had to be done, for to look back was to see the past, and the past was too painful to see.

New York beckoned; I flew out of Las Vegas towards it with hope in my heart.

‘We have the salesman… we don’t have a body, but we have a confession,’ Woodroffe said.

They were seated in the main office of the building, he and Hartmann and Schaeffer; it was early evening, an hour or so after Perez had been escorted back to the Royal Sonesta.

Hartmann had a headache the size of Nebraska. He was drinking too much coffee, smoking too many cigarettes; felt as if he had been cornered in a nightmare of his own worst devising.

‘We have the murder of Gerard McCahill, Pietro Silvino, this guy McLuhan, two people in the Shell Beach Motel and this Chester Wintergreen, whoever the fuck that might be. Now there’s the three Puerto Ricans and Giancarlo Ceriano in Vegas. We believe that we can verify at least six of these killings, and we have no reason at all to suspect that Perez is not guilty.’

Hartmann looked across the table at Schaeffer. Schaeffer’s expression was black, the expression of a tired and desperate man, and Hartmann believed that there was nothing in the world that could help him. They were all in the same predicament, the same tortured reality that Perez had so effortlessly created, and at the same time the three of them were ultimately responsible for what might happen as a result.

‘So?’ Hartmann asked.

Woodroffe looked at Schaeffer; Schaeffer nodded and Woodroffe turned back to Hartmann.

‘The men we sent out have still found nothing.’

Hartmann looked down. ‘Perhaps she is not even in New Orleans,’ he suggested, a thought that he imagined had been present in all their minds from the very start. Perez had been ahead of them by days, and he could have driven the girl halfway across the United States and they would have been none the wiser.

‘So we have the authority to make a deal with him,’ Woodroffe said, and even before he had explained his rationale Hartmann started to smile. He smiled like the similarly tired and desperate man he was.

‘We have authority from both FBI Director Dohring and the attorney general himself, Richard Seidler, to make a deal with Perez,’ Woodroffe went on. ‘And we want you to go over to the Sonesta and speak with Perez and see if he is willing to trade.’

‘And what would the proposal be?’ Hartmann asked.

Once again Woodroffe glanced at Schaeffer.

‘At least six counts of murder,’ Schaeffer said. ‘Six counts of murder that Perez has confessed to and that we can find evidence to corroborate, and in exchange for information on the whereabouts of the girl and her safe return-’ Schaeffer looked down at his hands. He paused for a moment and then looked up once more. ‘In exchange for the girl he walks.’

‘He walks ?’ Hartmann was astounded.

‘Well, he walks as far as the United States justice community is concerned. He will be extradited back to Cuba, and if the Cuban government wants to make something of whatever crimes were committed on Cuban soil, then that’s their business. We would not be willing… well, let’s just say that we would not put ourselves in a co-operative position as far as forwarding any evidence to them is concerned.’

‘And if she’s already dead?’ Hartmann asked. ‘If she’s already dead, and this wasn’t just a kidnapping but a seventh murder you can corroborate?’

Schaeffer shook his head. ‘That is a gamble we are prepared to take.’

‘We?’ Hartmann asked, his tone a little accusatory. ‘Don’t you mean you, or Dohring and Seidler, and back of them Charles Ducane with whatever pressure he’s brought to bear through his political connections?’

Woodroffe leaned forward. He rested his hands flat on the table. ‘We are operating on the assumption that the girl is still alive,’ he said. ‘We have simply been granted the authority to put this proposal forward to Perez, and seeing as how he chose you to come down and hear him out we are choosing you to go over and tell him what we are prepared to do.’

‘You’re wasting your time,’ Hartmann said, ‘and in all honesty I don’t think you’ll accomplish anything but pissing him off. Don’t you see, this isn’t about the girl? It isn’t even about the kidnapping, and it sure as hell ain’t about Perez murdering Gerard McCahill or anyone else. This is about Perez’s life… it’s about the things he’s done and the people who told him to do them-’

‘Aah for Christ’s sake Hartmann, you’re talking out of your ass,’ Woodroffe snapped.

‘Am I?’ Hartmann interjected. ‘You really think you understand what’s going on inside this man’s head?’

‘No… but I suppose you do,’ Schaeffer said.

Hartmann sighed; this was going to be a circular and pointless confrontation. ‘I believe I do,’ he said. ‘At least a little of it.’

‘Then please enlighten us,’ Schaeffer said, ‘because right now it seems we are no closer to understanding anything about what happened to Catherine Ducane than we were a week last Saturday.’

‘It’s about being someone,’ Hartmann said. ‘It’s about being no-one at all, and then becoming someone, and then realizing that you’re no-one at all once more.’

‘Come again?’ Woodroffe said.

‘Ernesto Perez was a nobody… some beaten-to-shit kid with a crazy father, and then his father kills his mother and he’s gotta get out of the US. So he heads to Cuba, and there he meets people with money, people who want him to be whatever he is, and he does these things and he has money, reputation, he has people afraid of him, and now I believe he has been excommunicated from that life. He has found himself in a situation where the people who were supposed to be his friends, his family if you like… well, they’ve turned their backs on him and he finds himself alone.’