regarding his additional thoughts about Ducane’s real motive for coming to New Orleans. He didn’t say a word regarding his belief that Ducane seemed less like a grieving and distressed father than any distressed father he’d seen before. Such things were for himself alone, and no purpose would be served by voicing them.
Hartmann looked at both Woodroffe and Schaeffer in turn; neither of them were going to say a word about what had actually happened in that room.
An agent appeared in the doorway and nodded at Schaeffer.
Schaeffer nodded back. ‘He’s gone,’ he said, the relief evident in his tone. ‘Let’s get this done, okay?’
Hartmann rose from where he was seated and left the room. They went upstairs together – all three of them – and there was a moment’s silence when they reached Perez’s room.
Hartmann knocked on the door, identified himself, and the door was unlocked. Hartmann passed inside and waited for the outer door to be locked. He crossed the carpet, and without hesitating, opened the inner door and went inside.
‘Mr Hartmann,’ Perez said. He rose from a chair near the window. The room was hazy with smoke, and Hartmann noticed how tired Perez seemed to be.
‘We are coming to a close,’ Perez said as Hartmann walked towards him. ‘Today I will tell you about New York, tomorrow how I came home to New Orleans, and then we will be done.’
Hartmann did not reply. He merely nodded and sat down at the table facing Perez.
‘It has been a long journey for both of us, no? And we have nearly come to an end that you might not have heard had the attempt on my life been successful. I have upset some people, it seems.’
Hartmann tried to smile. He could barely manage any facial expression. He felt as if everything meaningful had been torn out of him and was being held in suspension somewhere. He might get it back, he might not: no-one had told him yet.
‘It has been a life of sorts,’ Perez said, and he laughed gently. ‘It has not been the life I perhaps imagined for myself, but then I imagine that this is the way it is for most of us, wouldn’t you say, Mr Hartmann?’
‘I guess so,’ Hartmann replied. He reached into his jacket for his cigarettes. He lit one, set the box on the table, and leaned back in his chair. He wanted to tell Perez that Ducane had been downstairs only minutes before, but he did not. Every muscle in his body ached. His head felt like an overripe pumpkin, swollen with acidic fluid, ready to burst at the slightest provocation.
‘You are not well, Mr Hartmann?’ Perez asked.
‘Tired,’ Hartmann said.
‘And this difficulty with your wife and daughter?’
‘In limbo,’ Hartmann replied.
‘It will go well, I am sure,’ Perez said encouragingly.
‘There is always a way through these things, of that I am certain.’
‘I hope you’re right.’
‘So we shall begin,’ Perez stated, and he too lit a cigarette and leaned back in his chair.
From the other side of the room they would have looked like two friends sharing old times, perhaps having seen little of each other for years they were reminiscing, nostalgic half-memories creeping back towards the present as they talked through the years of their very different lives. Perhaps, despite everything, they could have been father and son, for their ages were a generation or so apart, and in the dimly-lit hotel room it was difficult to distinguish their features clearly.
The last thing they appeared to be was interrogator and subject, for their manner appeared too relaxed, too friendly, too familiar altogether.
That was it surely. They were old, old friends, and after all this time they had collided in some unknown corner of the world, and for a few hours, no more, they had the chance to share their lives with one another and walk away enriched.
‘Returning to New York after all those years,’ Ernesto Perez said quietly, ‘was like going back in time.’
TWENTY-FIVE
Everything had changed, and yet everything had stayed the same.
The house on Mulberry, the Blue Flame on Kenmare Street, Salvatore’s Diner on the corner of Elizabeth and Hester. All these places were familiar to me, but the atmosphere was different. I had gained as many years as the city, but the city had lost its spirit.
It was October of 1996. I had left this place in November of 1982, with a wife and two small babies, almost fourteen years before; left this place for another city called Los Angeles believing that what I had found here in New York would always be mine.
Desire and reality could not have been more distant.
The people I knew here were gone also. Angelo Cova, Don Alessandro’s boy Giovanni, Matteo Rossi and Michael Luciano. Carlo Gambino was gone, as were Frank Tieri and Anthony Corallo. Thomas DiBella, head of the Colombo family, had been deposed by Carmine Persico, and Caesar Bonaventre, the youngest head of the Bonanno family, had been replaced by Philip Rastelli after Rastelli’s release from jail. Stefano Cagnotto was gone of course, because I had been the one to kill him.
Ten Cent was there to meet us at the train station, and I introduced him to Victor as Uncle Sammy. Ten Cent grinned and hugged me and kissed my cheeks, and then he did the same to Victor. Ten Cent had brought a toy bear with him, and when he saw the size of Victor and realized that he was no longer a child he laughed at himself. We all laughed, and for a moment I believed everything would be alright.
The Mulberry Street house was still there, and Ten Cent drove us down to meet with Don Calligaris. While his housekeeper fed Victor in the kitchen, Don Calligaris took me aside and sat with me near the window in the front room.
‘We have become old men,’ he said, and in his voice I could hear the fatigue and broken promises. ‘I have come back to America. I cannot die alone away from my family. And this thing… this thing that happened with Angelina and Lucia-’
I raised my hand. ‘These things belong to the past,’ I said, and said it merely because I could not face talking of it. Despite the years that had intervened, it was still something that hung over me like a black shadow.
‘It is the past, yes, Ernesto, but all these years you have been away I have carried a weight of guilt about that night. We still, to this day, have nothing more than rumors about what happened. It is clear that whoever killed your wife and daughter intended to kill me. Some men have died in our attempts to find out, and we are still looking. This thing was more than five years ago, but people like us never forget the wrongs that have been done to us. Now you are back we can work on this together, we can find out who was behind it and take our vengeance.’
‘I have come here as an old man, to have my son see America,’ I said. ‘I will take him places, show him some of the things that I saw, and then, more than likely, I will return to Cuba to die.’
Don Calligaris laughed. He seemed out of breath for a moment and took some seconds to clear his throat. The lines and wrinkles in his face said everything that needed to be said. He was older than me by some years, and where a regular man would have retired – moved to Florida and spent his months fishing and walking and having his grandchildren visit him in the sunshine – Fabio Calligaris held onto his life with a vice-like grip. This territory was all he had, and to let it go would have seen him welcome the end of all that mattered. He was a tough man, always had been, and he would rather have died right there in the house on Mulberry Street than see his life’s work passed over to someone younger.
‘We do not talk of dying,’ he said quietly, and he smiled. ‘We do not talk of dying, and we do not talk of giving up. These are the subjects of conversation for weak and spineless men. We may be old, but we can still take what we want from this world for the years we have remaining to us. You have a boy, and he needs his father to be there for him until he is himself a man. He has lost a mother and a sister, and to lose you would break him before he has had a chance.’
‘I will be around for some years yet,’ I said. ‘There is no question about that. But with him beside me there is no way I can once again become part of this life.’
