A Quiet Vendetta

people were capable of.’

‘And now?’ Hartmann asked.

‘Now? Well it ain’t what it used to be,’ Visceglia said. ‘Things ain’t never the same as they was in the old country… whaddya know, huh? Give it a name, forgeddaboudit, right?’

Hartmann had laughed. Visceglia, despite everything, despite the pictures, the stories, the lives lost, the deaths witnessed, despite everything he carried on his shoulders, somehow managed to retain an element of dry humor. Visceglia wasn’t married, and one time Hartmann had asked him why.

‘Married? Someone like me? Wouldn’t be fair to drag someone into this who hadn’t asked to be part of it.’

Hartmann had appreciated the sentiment, and believed – perhaps – that he possessed sufficient strength of character to maintain an air of separation and objectivity. He believed he could live two lives, one at work and one at home, and it would only be in time that he would see how insidiously one could silently invade and unsettle the other.

Complex and almost indecipherable, incestuous and nepotistic, the Mafia was a many-headed Hydra that had survived all attempts to wipe it out. It was not something that existed in any real or tangible sense. It was a spectre, a series of interconnecting and yet separate shadows. Grasp for one facet and another would slip irretrievably out of reach. It was This Thing of Ours, and those whose thing it was were perhaps more loyal than any officially recognized body that faced them.

And Hartmann, despite the hours of reading files and transcripts, despite the tapes he’d listened to, the court reports he’d fallen asleep over, had never really managed to grasp the true meaning of this ‘family’. These people did indeed seem to be the worst the world could offer, and many were the times he’d asked himself if he shouldn’t just step away from the edge, take three paces back and turn the other way. And yet even in his darkest times, even when he understood that carrying the weight of this was a major contributory factor to his drinking, and understood also that drinking would be the thing that could irretrievably take his wife and his child away from him, he nevertheless found himself unable to avert his eyes. Morbid interest became fascination became obsession became addiction.

And so he lay there on his hotel bed, the echo of the conversation he’d held earlier that evening still echoing in his mind, and the thoughts that came with it, the thoughts that such a thing would carry, were shadowed and oppressive and almost too heavy to bear.

‘You’re here for the duration, my friend,’ Schaeffer had told him with a simple matter-of-factness that allowed for no rebuttal. ‘You are an employee of the federal government whichever way this comes, and as such you are now working within our jurisdiction. What we say goes, and that is the only way it can be. We are dealing with a girl’s life, not just a girl, but the daughter of one of the country’s most significant politicians. Charles Ducane has been a personal friend of the vice-president since they attended college together, and there is no way in the world any of us would say No to the vice-president. You understand this, Mr Hartmann?’

Ray Hartmann had nodded. Yes, he understood, understood that he had no choice in the matter. He watched Schaeffer’s face as he talked, as the words issued from his lips, and yet all he could see were the faces of his wife and child when they appeared at Tompkins Square Park the following Saturday and he was not there. That was all he could see. He could hear something as well, and what he heard was Jess’s voice as she asked Where’s daddy gone? Why isn’t he here? He said he’d be here, didn’t he, Mommy?

And Carol would have to explain once more how daddy wasn’t really running with the same program as them, that daddy had a very important job to do, that daddy never meant to not be there and there had to be a good explanation for his absence. But in her mind Carol would be cursing him, telling herself that she’d been a fool to believe he would ever keep his word, that despite being apart for these months nothing had changed, that Ray Hartmann was still the same self-centered, disorganized, alcoholic loser that he’d always been.

But that wasn’t the truth. He hadn’t always been self-centered, hadn’t always been disorganized, and sure as hell he hadn’t been, and wasn’t, an alcoholic. It was this that had made him this way, this life, these people, and now he was falling right back into the same patterns all over again despite promising himself that this year, this year, would be the one he left this crazy bad business behind.

Hartmann turned over and buried his face in the pillow. New Orleans was out there, the same New Orleans he had left with a vow never to return. But return he had, and in returning he’d carried with him all the suitcases he believed he’d left behind. He had never really set them down, that was the truth, and whatever was inside them, whatever it was that scared him so much he dared not look, had been right there all along. You never really let things go, you just fooled yourself into believing that you had grown out of them. How could you grow out of them when they were, always had been, and always would be an intrinsic part of exactly who you were?

He felt the tension in his chest, a difficulty in breathing. He turned over and stared at the ceiling, watched the trace-lines of car headlights as they turned at the end of the street beneath his window and wound their way out into the darkness. Out there he would find simpler people with simpler lives. Yes, they told lies, they cheated, they failed one another and possessed their regrets, but those things belonged to them; they were not so crazy as to try to carry their own burdens and the burdens of the rest of the world as well.

Perhaps it would never be easy. And no-one had ever told him it would be easy. But sure as hell they’d never let on it was going to be this hard.

Hartmann sat up and reached for his cigarettes. He lit one and flicked on the TV with the remote. He let the sounds and images blur together in his mind until he had no idea what he was watching or why. It worked for a minute, perhaps two, but always present was the sound at the other end of the phone, the way the voice had seemed to crawl down the wire and invade his head right through his ear.

And the way those first words sounded, and how they could not have been worse.

‘Mr Ray Hartmann… welcome home to New Orleans…’

A chill edge of fear crawled along his spine. It settled at the base of his neck. He reached up with his right hand and massaged the muscles that were knotting into small fists.

Hartmann opened his mouth. He looked sideways at Schaeffer. Nothing came forth. Not a word.

‘You are well, Mr Hartmann?’

Schaeffer nudged him in the shoulder.

‘As can be,’ Hartmann replied.

‘I understand that you have been dragged all the way home from New York… or did you manage to convince yourself that New York was now your home?’

Hartmann was silent.

Schaeffer nudged him again. Hartmann wanted to lunge from the desk and drive the receiver right into Schaeffer’s face. He didn’t. He sat stock-still and felt the sweat break out on the palms of his hands.

‘I don’t think I did that,’ Hartmann said.

‘Then you and I have something in common, Mr Hartmann. Despite everything, all these years, all the places I have been, I am like you… I could never get New Orleans out of my blood.’

Hartmann didn’t reply.

‘Anyway, I can imagine Mr Schaeffer and his federal agents are busy trying to trace this call. Tell them it doesn’t matter. Tell them that I am coming in. I am coming in to speak with you, Mr Hartmann, to tell you some things.’

‘Some things?’

The man at the other end of the line laughed gently. ‘You and I, we shall be like Robert Harrison and Howard Rushmore.’

Hartmann frowned. ‘Like who?’

‘Harrison and Rushmore… you do not recall those names?’

‘No, I don’t. Should I?’

‘Robert Harrison and Howard Rushmore were the men who published Confidential magazine. You know, “Uncensored and off the record”, “Tells the facts and names the names”. You have heard of