‘The entire fucking hotel is wired,’ Schaeffer said. ‘There are five floors to this place and Perez is up on top. We have to use the stairs because the elevators have been immobilized. The first four floors are locked at all exits and entries. All the windows are sealed from within, and up on the fifth there are something in the region of twenty agents spread out in the corridors and the rooms on either side of Perez. Inside Perez’s room there are three agents who keep watch from the main room. Perez uses the bedroom, the bathroom adjacent to it, and sometimes he comes into the front to watch TV and play cards with our people. Food is brought to him from the kitchens in the basement, and it goes up the stairs just like everything else.’
‘You have created a fortress for him,’ Hartmann said.
‘Well, he sure as hell ain’t gonna get out . . . and no-one is gonna come in to get him.’
Hartmann frowned. ‘And who might want to come in?’
Woodroffe glanced at Schaeffer. Schaeffer shook his head. ‘I have no idea, Mr Hartmann, but this guy has been full of enough surprises so far that we just ain’t taking any risks.’
‘So it’s up the stairs we go,’ Hartmann said, and made his way across the foyer to the base of the well.
‘Mr Hartmann?’ Schaeffer called after him.
Hartmann slowed and turned.
‘I understand your reservations about this, and I can’t say that I believe this will accomplish anything, but we got a girl out there, a teenage girl who could be still alive, and until we know for sure what the hell happened to her we still have to do everything we can.’
Hartmann nodded. ‘I know,’ he said quietly. ‘I know that as well as anyone here, and I will do everything I can. The truth is that I feel this won’t accomplish anything for us . . . won’t accomplish anything for her.’
‘Just do your best, eh?’ Schaeffer said.
‘Sure,’ Hartmann said, and with that he turned and started up the stairs, two of the Feds from the foyer with him, and it wasn’t until he reached the fifth floor, wasn’t until he stood three feet from Perez’s door, that he understood the significance of what he was about to do. What he said now could serve to turn Perez against them, to make him unwilling to speak, and if he did not speak he would never finish telling them of his life, and Hartmann believed that that had been the entire purpose of kidnapping the girl in the first place.
From wanting to be somebody to believing he was somebody to a sense of loss that he was nobody once again.
Was this now nothing more than the last-ditch attempt of an old man, albeit crazy, to make something of himself before the lights went down for the last time?
Hartmann glanced at the expressionless agent beside him. ‘Let’s do it,’ he said quietly, and the agent leaned forward and knocked on the door.
From the bedroom came the lilting sound of a piano.
Hartmann frowned.
Inside the first room were three more of Schaeffer’s crew, all of them seasoned veterans by the look of them. The one nearest the door greeted Hartmann, shook his hand, introduced himself as Jack Dauncey. Dauncey seemed genuinely pleased to see someone from the outside world, perhaps someone who was not part of the FBI.
‘He’s inside,’ Dauncey said. ‘We told him you were coming over . . . you know what he asked us?’
Hartmann shook his head.
‘If you’d be staying for supper.’
Hartmann smiled. ‘A character, huh?’
‘A character? He’s one in a million, Mr Hartmann.’ Dauncey smiled and crossed the room. He knocked on the door and within a moment the music was lowered in volume.
‘Come!’ Perez commanded, and Dauncey opened the door.
The room had been assembled as both a sitting area and bedroom. The bed was pushed against the left-hand wall, and over on the right was a table, two chairs, a sofa and a music center. It was from this that the lilting piano was coming.
‘Shostakovich,’ Perez said as he rose from his chair and walked towards Hartmann. ‘You know Shostakovich?’
Hartmann shook his head. ‘Not personally, no.’
Perez smiled. ‘You people defend ignorance with humor. Shostakovich was a Russian composer. He died a long time ago. This piece is entitled “Assault On Beautiful Gorky”, and it was written in commemoration of the storming of the Winter Palace. It is beautiful, no? Beautiful, and altogether very sad.’
Hartmann nodded. He walked across to the table and sat down at one of the chairs.
Perez followed him, sat facing him, and but for the music they could have been seated once more in the FBI Field Office.
‘Perhaps we should conduct our interviews here from now on,’ Perez said. ‘It would save all the trouble of ferrying me back and forth surrounded by all these federal people, none of whom, I can assure you, have the slightest shred of humor, and it would be so much more comfortable, no?’
Hartmann nodded. ‘It would. I’ll suggest it to Schaeffer and Woodroffe.’
Perez smiled and reached for his cigarettes. He offered one to Hartmann. Hartmann took it, retrieved his lighter from his jacket pocket and lit them both.
‘How are they bearing up?’ Perez asked.
‘Who?’
‘Mr Schaeffer and Mr Woodroffe.’
Hartmann frowned. ‘Bearing up?’
‘Sure. They must be feeling the stress of the situation, yes? They have found themselves in perhaps the most uncomfortable set of circumstances of their collective careers. They must be feeling a tremendous amount of pressure, with the girl gone and all manner of high and mighty people breathing down their necks demanding results, results, results. I can only begin to imagine how they must feel.’
‘Stressed,’ Hartmann said, ‘like the Brooklyn Bridge.’
Perez laughed. ‘You are good, Mr Hartmann. I knew very little of you before we met, very little indeed, but since we have been spending this time together I have grown to like you.’
‘I’m flattered.’
‘And so you should be . . . there are very few people I can say that I honestly like in this world. I have seen too many crazy things in my time, things people have done for no apparent reason at all, to make me believe that human beings are all as equally lost as one another.’
‘Why me?’ Hartmann asked.
Perez leaned back and looked at Hartmann. ‘This question intrigues you. I have seen it playing amongst your thoughts from the first day. You want to know why it was that I asked you to come down here and listen to me when I could have asked any number of people and any one of them would have come?’
Hartmann nodded. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Why did you choose me?’
‘Three reasons,’ Perez stated matter-of-factly. ‘First and foremost, because you are from New Orleans. You are a Louisianan, just like me. I am of Cuban descent, granted, but irrespective of that I was born here in New Orleans. New Orleans, like it or not, has always been my original home, my place of origin. And there is something about this place that only those who were born here, only those who have spent their formative years here, can truly understand. It has a voice and a color and an atmosphere all its own. It is like no other place on earth. There is such a blend of people here, faiths and beliefs, languages and ethnic strains, that makes it truly unique. In a way it possesses no singular identifying characteristic, and thus it cannot be easily identified. It is a paradox, a puzzle, and people who visit can never really grasp what makes it so different. It is a place you either love or hate, and once you have decided your feelings for it there is nothing that can change them.’
‘And you?’ Hartmann asked. ‘Do you love it or hate it?’
Perez laughed. ‘I am an anomaly and an anachronism. I am the exception that proves the rule. I have no feeling for it at all. I cannot love it and I cannot hate it. Now, having seen all I have seen, there is almost nothing to love or to hate in this world.’
‘And the second reason?’
‘Family,’ Perez said, and he spoke quietly, but there
was such intention and emphasis behind this single word that it hit Hartmann forcibly.
‘Family?’ he asked.
Perez nodded. He reached forward and flicked his cigarette ash in the tray.
Hartmann shook his head. ‘I don’t understand.’
‘You do,’ Perez said, ‘perhaps better than anyone who’s involved in this. You understand the strength and power of family.’
‘How so?’
‘Come on, Mr Hartmann, you cannot deny what you know is true. What about your mother and father? What about Danny?’
Hartmann’s eyes opened wide. ‘Danny?’ he asked. ‘How the fuck d’you know about Danny?’
‘The same way I know about Carol and Jessica.’
Hartmann was speechless. He looked at Perez with an expression of abject incredulity.
‘Come, come, Mr Hartmann, don’t act so surprised. I am not a stupid man. You do not live the life I have lived and survive by being stupid. I may have done some things that you find difficult to comprehend, but that does not make me crazy or ignorant or unprepared. I am a methodical and systematic man. I am a planner, a thinker. I may have worked with my hands, but the work I have done has been for the greater part cerebral in its execution.’
‘A suitable turn of phrase,’ Hartmann said.
‘Execution? No pun intended,’ Perez said. ‘There are some people who are born for particular things, Mr Hartmann, things such as politics and art, even Shostakovich who managed to combine the two and have something of worth to say, and then there are some who fall into a path which is somehow not of their own choosing.’
‘And where would you place yourself?’
‘The latter, of course,’ Perez replied. He ground his cigarette out and lit another. ‘Events conspired perhaps, I am not sure. Perhaps when I die it will all become plain and evident and I will understand everything. Possibly events conspire to make us who we are, but then again I sometimes think that subconsciously we possess the power to influence events and circumstances around us, and in this way we actually determine, for the greater part, exactly what happens to us.’
‘I can’t say I have that philosophic a viewpoint about it,’ Hartmann said.
‘Well, consider it from this perspective.’ Perez leaned back in his chair. He seemed as relaxed as he could be. ‘Your own situation is a perfect example. Your father’s death, the death of your younger brother, the work you have done for most of your adult life. Are these things the factors that contributed to your difficulty, or was the difficulty there all along merely waiting for the necessary force majeure to cause it to surface?’
‘My difficulty?’
‘The drinking,’ Perez stated.
‘The drinking?’ Hartmann asked, once again unsettled by the degree to which Perez knew the details of his life.
‘The drinking, yes. The difficulty that you have struggled with for so many years, and the thing that finally prompted the departure of your wife and daughter.’
Hartmann felt disturbed and tense. ‘What about my wife and daughter? What do you know about them?’
Perez shook his head and smiled. ‘Do not worry yourself, Mr Hartmann. Your wife and daughter have absolutely nothing to do with this matter. I understand the sense of responsibility you feel towards them—’
‘Like your own wife and child, Mr Perez?’ Hartmann interjected, realizing that here was an appropriate opportunity to pursue this line of inquiry.
‘My wife and child?’ Perez asked. ‘We were not talking about my wife and child, Mr Hartmann, we were talking about yours.’
Hartmann nodded. ‘I know, but considering we are discussing this area I find the fact that you have a wife and child tremendously fascinating.’
Perez frowned.
‘Your line of work, the things that you did . . . how could you go home and look your wife in the face knowing that only hours before you had murdered someone?’
‘I imagine much the same way you managed it,’ Perez said.
‘Me? What do you mean? I never murdered anyone.’
‘But you lied and you deceived her, and you pretended to be something you were not. You made promises and then you broke them, I am sure. It is the same with anyone who carries a shadow, Mr Hartmann, whether it be alcoholism or gambling or infidelity. Whatever the shadow that might haunt them, they are still effectively leading a double life.’
‘But you killed people. You went out with the intention to murder and you did so. I think that is very different from having a drink problem.’
Perez shrugged. ‘Depends on your personal philosophy . . . whether you consider that events conspire to make you who you are, or if you are someone who believes that Man possesses the ability to determine events by his own power of mind.’
‘We are getting off the subject,’ Hartmann said, at once intrigued and very uncomfortable.
‘Indeed we are,’ Perez said, ‘though I must admit that I believe family to be as important a subject of discussion as you do.’
‘Okay then,’ Hartmann said. ‘What about the girl?’
Perez looked up. ‘What about the girl?’
‘She is part of someone’s family. She has a mother and a father.’
‘And a cat and a dog. And she can play the piano, and she likes talking to her girlfriends about boys and clothes and cosmetics.’
‘Right . . . what about her? What about her family?’
‘What about them?’
‘You profess to believe in the necessity and importance of family. Have you considered how they must feel?’
Perez smiled once more and leaned forward. He rested his hands on the table and steepled his fingers together. ‘Mr Hartmann, I have considered everything.’
‘So?’
Perez raised his eyebrows.
‘So is how they feel important?’
‘Of vital importance, yes,’ Perez replied.
‘So is what you are doing perhaps not the most disturbing and upsetting thing that you could do?’
Perez laughed, but there was seemingly nothing malicious in his tone. ‘That, Mr Hartmann, is precisely the point of the exercise.’
‘To upset Charles Ducane and his ex-wife as much as possible?’
Perez waved his hand. ‘The wife, Eve I believe her name is, how she feels is of no significance to me. But Charles Ducane . . . he is a different story altogether.’
‘How so?’
‘Because he is as guilty as I, and yet here he is, governor of Louisiana, sitting up there in his mansion with the world protecting him, and I am here, ensconced within a small fortress, protected from the world by the might of the FBI, and having to justify my existence to you, an alcoholic paralegal who is ashamed of the fact that he was born in New Orleans.’
Hartmann reached for another cigarette. He believed he needed to change the pitch of the discussion before Perez became angry. ‘I find it remarkable that you were responsible for the death of Jimmy Hoffa.’
Perez nodded. ‘He died, someone had to have killed him. Why not me?’
‘Did you shoot Kennedy as well?’
‘Which one?’
Hartmann smiled. ‘You did them both?’
‘Neither, though I believe that I would have gotten away with it, unlike Oswald and Sirhan Sirhan, neither of whom were ultimately responsible whatever J. Edgar Hoover and the Warren Commission might have reported. The assassination of John Kennedy, the resultant mystery that has surrounded his death for the last forty years, has to be the most spectacular and successful example of government disinformation propaganda that has ever been achieved. Adolf Hitler would have been proud of what your government has accomplished with that. Wasn’t it he who said that the greater the lie the more easily it will be believed?’
‘It’s your government too,’ Hartmann said.
‘I am selective . . . it is the lesser of two evils. The United States or Fidel Castro. I am still trying to make a decision as to which one I would prefer to be allied to.’
/> Hartmann was quiet for a moment. He smoked his cigarette.
Perez broke the silence between them. ‘So you did not come here to visit or to have supper, or to smoke my cigarettes, Mr Hartmann. I believe you came here with a proposal.’
‘How do you know that?’
‘It is about time for the attorney general to play his best hand, and like I said before, you do not live the life I have lived and survive by being stupid. So out with it. What is it they are prepared to offer me?’
‘Clemency,’ Hartmann said, believing that the entire conversation had been predicted and determined by Perez from the off. This was not the way Hartmann had wanted to handle it, but it had become something out of his control. He had believed his cards were hidden, but he had sat down at the table unaware that his cards had been chosen for him by his opponent.
‘Clemency?’ Perez asked. ‘Mercy? You think this is what I came here to ask for?’
Hartmann shook his head. ‘No,’ he said. ‘I don’t.’
‘I came here of my own volition. I handed myself in to you people with no resistance. I could have continued to live my life, could have done nothing. Had I not called the FBI, had I not spoken with these people, had I not asked for you to come here, then we would not be having this conversation. I could have taken the girl, I could have killed her, and no-one would ever have been any the wiser.’
‘They would have found you,’ Hartmann interjected.
Perez started laughing. ‘You think so, Mr Hartmann? You really think they would have found me? I am nearly seventy years old. I have been doing this for the better part of five and a half decades. I was the man who killed your Jimmy Hoffa. I put a piano wire around his neck and pulled so hard I could feel where the wire stopped against the vertebrae of his neck. I did these things, and I did them all over this country, and these people didn’t even know my name.’
Hartmann knew Perez was right. He had not lived this life and survived by being stupid. If he had wanted to kill Catherine Ducane he would have done, and Hartmann imagined the murder would have gone unsolved.
‘Okay,’ Hartmann said. ‘So this is the deal . . . you give us the girl, you are extradited to Cuba, and the United States Federal Government will not further any information about your past to the Cuban Justice Department. That’s the deal, take it or leave it.’
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