A Quiet Vendetta

‘What would I like? Oh, I don’t know. I could use some more make-up, and I need a new purse, and there’s a couple of CDs I’d like. I’ve hinted enough times to Mom so if I don’t get those then I’ll know she’s really lost the plot-’

‘Jess?’ Hartmann asks. ‘Who’s on the phone, honey?’

Jess turns and smiles. ‘Some friend of yours,’ she says, and then she adds, ‘Here’s my dad… nice to talk to you, and have a good Christmas yourself, okay?’

Jess holds out the receiver and he walks towards her and takes it.

‘Hello?’ Hartmann says. ‘Who is this?’

He sees it for what it is; an endless stream of circumstance, coincidence, of decisions and choices.

‘Mr Hartmann.’

Ray Hartmann feels his skin go cold, as if someone has doused him with ice water. The hairs on the nape of his neck stand to attention and he knows all the color has drained from his face.

‘Perez?’

‘You have a bright daughter,’ Ernesto Perez says. ‘I am sure with your care and guidance she will grow into a fine young woman, Mr Hartmann.’

‘Wha-’

‘You do not need to say anything, Mr Hartmann… nothing at all. I just wanted to make sure you were okay, and that you had worked things out with your family. It seems you have, and here we are, Christmas Eve, and you are all together.’

‘If you think-’

‘Enough, Mr Hartmann. It was merely a social call. A call to wish you well, to give you my blessing at this special time of year. I wanted you to know that I appreciated all you did for me, the way you listened, the time we shared, and to make sure you were back on the right track. My mind will rest now, because I think you understand this as well as I. If you can’t give your children what they want, then what is the worth of your life?’

Hartmann doesn’t speak; cannot say a word.

‘I called to make sure that something good came from all of this. Aside from the death of your people… that was never meant to happen. There was never meant to be any more killing, Mr Hartmann, but the men that died in New Orleans, that was an error in judgement. People were still in the building when it was believed the building was empty-’

Hartmann closes his eyes; he can see the face of Sheldon Ross.

‘Such is the way of war, Mr Hartmann, but I am sorry for their deaths, sorry for their families and how they must have grieved. And perhaps I called also to answer a question for you… a question you asked me a very long time ago.’

Perez pauses again as if for effect, and it was almost as if Hartmann could hear him smiling at the other end of the line.

‘You asked me why I chose you, remember?’

Hartmann makes a sound, like a murmur.

‘There was a case,’ Perez continues. ‘A very interesting case, and you had a witness. It was November if I recall correctly, a cold November some time ago. It was the night before your witness was to be presented before the Grand Jury, and she was found in a motel on Hunters Point Avenue near the Calvary Cemetery.’

Hartmann feels the tension rising in his chest. Even as Perez speaks he can see the scene unfolding before his eyes, the way the woman had been found, the sense of complete despair that had accompanied him and Visceglia as they’d realized their entire investigation was undone.

‘There was a certain element of creativity to her demise, don’t you think, Mr Hartmann? I can now assure you that that was something of which I was aware, and though not directly involved in her departure from your case, it was nevertheless something I followed with great interest. Let us say that my advice was requested as to how to resolve that particular detail.’

Hartmann can see the woman’s spread-eagled form across the cheap motel bed, the way her arms and legs are bruised, the cocaine around her nose and mouth, the way one hand is tied and the other left free to create the possibility that she could have self-administered the lethal quantity of drugs.

And then, after that, Hartmann remembers the very moment he broke his promise to Carol and Jess, how he had assuaged some small aspect of his rage and frustration in the company of Jack Daniels, how he’d staggered home and fallen through the front door of his Stuyvesant Town walk-up, as drunk as a man could be and still conscious, how he’d collapsed in a heap on the kitchen floor and lain there until Jess had found him.

Perez speaks again, and Hartmann tenses every muscle in his body. It is everything he can do not to hurl the receiver against the wall.

‘Remarkable that no matter her life beforehand, no matter how respectable and well-mannered she had been, she will always be remembered as a woman with a penchant for gang-bangs and nose-candy.’

Hartmann cannot say a word.

‘I was there, Mr Hartmann… there in a car across the street watching as you and your friend came away from that motel. I can recall, almost as if it were yesterday, the expression on your face, the sheer horror and disillusionment you carried as you walked away from that building. It made me stop for a while, Mr Hartmann. It made me think of things I had not considered before… and, curiously, after all I had done, after this life I have led, that single incident made me feel as if I owed something to you.’

There is silence for a second. Hartmann wants to say something – anything – but there is absolutely nothing he can say.

‘I wish you all a good Christmas, Mr Hartmann, you and your very special family,’ Perez says quietly. ‘And this thing… this thing of ours is done.’

The line goes dead.

Ray Hartmann stands there for some moments before he gently replaces the receiver in the cradle.

He walks out back to the kitchen and stands there for a moment watching his wife and his daughter unload groceries.

He sees it in a different light, and this time his eyes are open.

Carol looks up at him and frowns. ‘What is it?’ she asks.

Hartmann smiles and shakes his head. ‘Happy Christmas,’ he says.

‘Happy Christmas to you too.’

‘I love you, Carol.’

Carol Hartmann pauses with a watermelon in her hand. She looks at Jess. Jess is frowning and smiling at the same time.

‘What the hell’s gotten into you?’ she asks. ‘You gone soft in the head or what?’

Hartmann shakes his head. He looks down at his shoes, and then up at his wife and his daughter.

‘So you gonna stand there like a retard or you gonna help us with the groceries?’

‘I’m gonna help with the groceries,’ Ray Hartmann says, ‘and then maybe we go see a movie together and bring some pizza home.’

‘Good deal,’ Jess says.

‘Good deal,’ replies her father, and believes that life defines itself in circles, and where we start, there we also find our own conclusions, and this is the nature of the world we have created and all we have become.

He steps into the kitchen and lifts a grocery bag from the floor.

He watches his wife, and when she turns towards him he looks away. He smiles to himself. He feels complete; perhaps for the first time in his life he feels complete.

There are things done, and things said, but somehow all these things are lost in the slow-motion manic slide of time. Lost, but never truly forgotten.

Ray Hartmann believes in faith, and faith – perhaps after all this time – finally, unconditionally, believes in him.

R. J. Ellory