‘Yes,’ Hartmann said. ‘I’ve heard of it.’
‘That’s what we are going to do, you and I. We are going to spend some time together, and I will tell you some things that perhaps your federal people won’t want to hear. And this is the deal. I’m coming in. I want to be treated with dignity and respect. I will tell you what I want you to know. You can do anything you wish with the information I give you, and then when we are done I will tell you where you can find the girl.’
‘Catherine Ducane.’
‘No Mr Hartmann, Marilyn Monroe. Of course Catherine Ducane. Catherine Ducane is what this is all about.’
‘And she is okay?’
‘She’s as okay as could be expected under the circumstances, Mr Hartmann, and that is all the information you will get from me this evening. As I said, I will be coming in, and when I am there I will tell you what you need to know, and that will be our business.’
‘How will we know you when you come?’ Hartmann asked.
The man laughed. ‘Oh you will know who I am, Mr Hartmann. That, I can assure you, will be the least of your worries.’
‘And when will you come?’
‘Soon,’ the man said. ‘Very soon.’
‘And what about-’
The line suddenly went dead. Hartmann held the receiver against his ear even though he could hear the burring sound of a disconnected line through the speakers in the room.
He shuddered. He closed his eyes. He slowly replaced the receiver in the cradle and turned to look at Schaeffer.
Kubis appeared in the doorway, his face flushed, his eyes those of an agitated man. ‘Two blocks down,’ he shouted. ‘He was calling from two blocks down.’
Schaeffer moved far faster than his size should have permitted, but he was out of the room with three other agents running after him, and though they went out through the front doors of the Field Office at a run, though they would charge down Arsenault Street and nearly lose their lives as they cut through the traffic at the junction, though they would within three minutes stand at the very box from where the call had been made, they would find nothing. Schaeffer knew there would be no prints. He knew the impression of the caller’s ear, as telling as DNA, as individual as retina scans and fingerprints, would have been wiped from the receiver, and though he knew these things he nevertheless ordered the callbox taped and cordoned, he instructed the deployment of Criminalistics to go over the thing with a microscope, and yet in his heart of hearts he knew he was achieving nothing more than the exercise of protocol.
And then he returned. He shared words with Hartmann. He gave him his marching orders and instructed one of the agents to sequester Hartmann in the nearby Marriott Hotel.
And there Hartmann would be found, lying on the bed, smoking a cigarette and watching TV in the early hours of Saturday 30 August, a week to the day from when he was supposed to meet Carol and Jess. A week from the first real chance to rebuild his life.
And after a while he would turn the volume right down and lie there watching the light from the screen flickering on the walls, and he would feel the tension in his chest, the sense of breathlessness and claustrophobia, and he would know – above all else he would know – that you never actually escaped from these things, because these things always came from within.
Such was the way of his world.
SEVEN
Brutally early hours of Saturday morning.
Hartmann drove through the Arabi District below the Canal Bayou Bienvenue and above the 39 Highway that followed the Mississippi all the way down to St Bernard. Here it became Highway 46 and took a straight route east towards Evangeline. With Lake Borgne to the south he pulled off the main freeway, slowed for a while with the window of his car open wide, and felt the breeze that came down off the water. Still New Orleans, but – as with all the districts inside the city limits – Arabi possessed a flavor and tempo all its own. A string of seedy and run- down clam bars and restaurants hunkered low along the shorefront, down where the warehousemen and yardhands split their palms on packing crates and drank their dreams through bottles without labels that came from beneath counters, half a dollar at a time. There were girls down there too, girls who walked from their waists and hips, not from their legs, girls with too much lipstick and too much liquor, brassy acts teetering in precarious heels and shamelessly bearing a resemblance to the men they serviced, twenty or thirty dollars a time.
Hartmann drove on. Rain coming down now. Escaped for a little while from the Marriott, while the world and all its cousins slept soundly in the knowledge that the madness that same world offered would still be there come daylight.
Found himself out near the airport. Left the car and stood near the fence that separated the fields from the runways, hands in his pockets, his collar turned up against the bitter slant of rain that seemed to take razor-slices from his skin. He watched as a damp piece of paper was caught by the wind and tossed towards the fence. It clung desperately to the wire for a moment and then, as if moving across a chessboard, it shifted an inch or two to the left. Pawn to bishop three, and through the gap it went like a rocket, spinning out over the tarmac like it was late for some life-or-death appointment. A sound pulled at Hartmann’s attention, and he turned to watch an Ozark internal flight slide upwards from the far runway like a silver bullet. The clouds swallowed it effortlessly, so effortlessly there was nothing but a thin breath of slipstream to remind him that it was ever there at all.
He tried to light a cigarette but it was useless. He turned his back on the runway and started walking towards the Moisant International Terminal, and in that moment felt like he was turning his back on a watershed.
He could have run.
Hiring the car had been easy enough. A single call to room service. A credit card number. Forty-three minutes later a car appeared outside the front of the hotel. And then he was inside, had started the engine, felt the thing turn over as he changed gear and pulled away. Could’ve just kept on going. Could’ve taken 39 or 46 or any other highway. And Schaeffer and Woodroffe wouldn’t have realized he was gone for a good two or three hours. They would’ve found him. Of course they would. Only so many places he could’ve gone. Would have
He walked back from the Terminal to his car and climbed in. Sat there for a while with the engine running, asking himself why he had already decided to stay. Perhaps for the girl, for Catherine Ducane. But then weren’t his own wife and daughter far more important than Catherine Ducane would ever be? Of course they were. So why was he staying? Duty? Obligation? Because these people could take away his job, his livelihood? Hadn’t he been waiting for something to do just that? To give him no choice but to walk out into the big wide world and find something else to do? Sure he had.
So why was he staying?
He closed his eyes, leaned back against the headrest and exhaled. Truth was he didn’t know.
An hour later Ray Hartmann was back in his room at the Marriott. He had taken off his wet clothes, showered, dressed once again, and by the time he called room service for coffee it was close to six in the morning.
Soon they would come, and when they came they would bring with them the worst the world could offer.
Schaeffer and Woodroffe didn’t even have the decency to come themselves. They sent one of their agents, a young Ivy League-looking kid of no more than twenty-two or three, pressed white shirt, immaculately knotted tie,
