A Quiet Vendetta

much want, and he knows we will cater to him in every way we can in order to find that out.’

Woodroffe was nodding in the affirmative. ‘That’s my take on it,’ he said. ‘I’ve got people working on him already. We have his prints. We know what he looks like. They will trawl through every file and document we’ve got. They’ll go through CODIS, to VICAP Criminal Profiling at Quantico. Transcripts of what he tells us will be passed to the best people we have and if there’s anything to discover they’ll find it.’

Hartmann was not so sure there would be anything to find. He believed that Perez knew exactly what he was saying and how he was going to keep them running until the very last moment. For a second he even considered the possibility that the girl was already dead.

‘So motivation we don’t know, and are not likely to know until he tells us,’ Schaeffer said. ‘Until we have some kind of a handle on that there is nothing we can do but follow exact protocol. We have sufficient resources to follow any lead we might find, realistic or otherwise. If anything comes up from other areas we’ll go with it, but right now our main task is to keep this man talking, keep him on the subject as best we can-’

Hartmann smiled drily. ‘I believe he intends to tell us his entire life story. This is his unwritten autobiography, the opportunity of a lifetime to tell us everything that he’s done, everywhere he’s been, and everything he knows about everyone else. It would not surprise me if we didn’t encounter Governor Charles Ducane at some point along the line.’

There was silence for a moment from both Woodroffe and Schaeffer, and then Woodroffe leaned forward, rested his hands on the table and assumed a very serious expression.

‘I do not need to tell you that everything you hear both inside and outside this office is governed by the jurisdiction of the FBI. Not a word, not a single word will go out of here, you understand?’

Hartmann raised his hand. ‘I’m not in kindergarten, Agent Woodroffe-’

Woodroffe smiled. ‘I am well aware of that fact, Mr Hartmann, but I am also aware that you have had your own troubles in the past, a small area of difficulty regarding the way you have handled your own personal affairs, and it is not unknown to us that you have been registered with Alcoholics Anonymous, and have run into some significant difficulty with your wife and daughter as a result.’

Hartmann was incensed. He opened his mouth to speak but Woodroffe raised his hand.

‘It is of no matter to us,’ he said. ‘We understand that you have performed in an exemplary fashion for a considerable time in your job, and we also understand that you are here at the specific request of Perez and there is nothing we can do about that. All we are saying is that this is a matter of the highest national priority right now, and we need everyone on the same side and running after the same ball.’

Hartmann sighed inside. He did not wish to be there. He did not want to be having this conversation with these people. His native human instinct cared about Catherine Ducane as a human being and he did feel a certain sense of responsibility and duty to see this through. He would do what he had been asked to do, he would get it done as quickly as was possible, for every day that elapsed brought him a day closer to the possible resolution of the difficulty with his wife and daughter that Woodroffe had alluded to.

This was not a game, this was real life – rough edges, sharp corners and all. Hartmann had no mind to run up against these people, or to have them dictate his life and time any more than they absolutely had to.

‘You won’t have any difficulty with me,’ Hartmann said, willing himself not to lunge across the table and beat Woodroffe to a bloody pulp. ‘I am here to do this, and when it’s done I will disappear and you will never hear from me again. Now, if you don’t mind, I’m tired and I would like to go back to my hotel, because I imagine that we will all be gathered here once again tomorrow morning for the second chapter in this most fascinating story.’

‘Less of the attitude,’ Schaeffer said.

Hartmann nodded. He did not tell them Fuck you and the horse you rode in on. He refrained from asking them Who the fuck do you people think you are? He bit his tongue, held his temper, and rose slowly from his chair. There was a quiet and unspoken sense of pride in knowing that he would come through this and never have to speak to these people again.

And so he left – walked from the New Orleans FBI Field Office on Arsenault Street to the Marriott Hotel. Here there were no armed Bureau agents to watch over him. Here there was nothing more than a simple functional hotel room, a comfortable bed, a TV he could watch with the sound turned off as the day closed down around him.

He thought of Carol and Jess. He thought of Saturday 6 September. He thought of Ernesto Cabrera Perez and how a man like that would see this world. Not through the same eyes, and not with the same emotions. However polite and cultured and erudite the man might have seemed, he was as crazy as the rest of the sick bastards that seemed to have populated Hartmann’s life. Such was the life he had chosen, and such was the life he lived.

His sleeping hours were crowded with images, angular and disturbed. He imagined that it was Jess who had been kidnapped by this man, that Carol had been the one found in the trunk of the Mercury Turnpike Cruiser on Gravier Street only a week before. He imagined all manner of things, and when he was woken by a call from room service a little after eight he felt as if he had not slept at all.

He went down for breakfast and found Sheldon Ross waiting for him.

‘Take your time Mr Hartmann,’ Ross said. ‘They’ll be bringing Perez over to the office at about ten.’

‘Come have a cup of coffee with me,’ Hartmann said, and Ross sat with him, shared some coffee, and said nothing of why they were there.

‘You married?’ Hartmann asked.

Ross shook his head.

‘Any particular reason?’

‘Never took the time to address that particular area of my life.’

‘You should,’ Hartmann said. He reached for a piece of toast and buttered it.

‘Special kind of girl who would want to be married to the FBI,’ Ross said.

Hartmann smiled. ‘Don’t I know it.’

‘You’re married, right?’

Hartmann nodded. ‘Married, and still trying to stay married.’

‘Pressures of work?’

‘Indirectly, yes,’ Hartmann replied. ‘More the pressure of being a complete asshole fifty percent of the time.’

Ross laughed. ‘It’s good that you can be honest about it, but as far as I can see it cuts both ways.’

‘Sure it does, but like you said it’s a special kind of person who wants to spend their time married to the sort of thing we do.’ Hartmann looked across the table at Ross. ‘You live with someone or you live alone?’

‘I live with my mom.’

‘And your dad?’

Ross shook his head. ‘Dead a good few years now.’

‘I’m sorry.’

Ross waved the condolence away.

‘So you go home and tell your mom the kind of things you’ve had to look at all day?’

Ross laughed. ‘She’d have a freakin’ coronary.’

‘That’s the point, isn’t it? And with a wife, someone who’s even closer to you in some ways, and then add kids on top of that, and you got a somewhat untenable situation.’

‘So there’s no hope for me?’ Ross asked.

Hartmann smiled. ‘Maybe you should marry an FBI girl.’

‘Brutal,’ Ross said. ‘You seen the sort of girls that join the Bureau? They don’t exactly look like Meg Ryan.’

Hartmann laughed and ate his toast.

Half an hour later they walked together to Arsenault Street.

Woodroffe and Schaeffer were waiting. They said their respective Good mornings, and then Hartmann was shown once more into the small rear office where he had sat with Perez the day before.

A small coffee maker had been installed, as had a wheeled trolley upon which sat cigarettes, ashtrays, clean cups and saucers, a bag of jelly beans and a box of Cuban cigars.

‘What the man wants the man gets, right?’ Hartmann had commented to Schaeffer, who nodded and said, ‘Right to the point we nail his ass for the girl, and then he’s gonna get an eight-by-eight in gray steel-reinforced concrete and two hours of daylight a week.’