House of the Rising Sun Page 4

  Again, silence on the other end. Then Jenny said, “That’s what I need to talk to you about.”

  “I don’t want to talk.”

  “But, Ray—”

  “Jen, I’m tired and my head hurts. I’ve got to work tonight and I need some sleep.”

  “I’ve got work, too, goddamn it. I called because I need to tell you something.”

  “I work on my feet. You work on your back.”

  The telephone clicked in his ear as she hung up.

  Ray reached toward the overturned crate and grabbed his half-empty pack of Lucky Strikes and his Zippo. He shook out a cigarette and stuck it between his lips. It took four flicks before he got the lighter to work. He had to remember to get a new wick. As he touched the sputtering flame to the end of the cigarette and sucked in a lungful of smoke, Ray closed his eyes and waited for the rush. He started coughing instead.

  It took a minute for his hacking to subside enough so he could catch his breath, and when he finally pulled some fresh air into his lungs, they felt like they were on fire. Eventually, he managed to suck in enough air to spit a glob of phlegm into the wastebasket next to the bed. Then he took another deep drag on the Lucky Strike. It was always good to get that first coughing fit out of the way.

  What the hell did Jenny want? Why was she always trying to talk to him? Whatever it was, he didn’t want to talk about it. He had nothing to say to her, and he didn’t want to hear anything she had to say to him. The past was the past. It didn’t have any effect on the future unless you let it.

  Sitting quietly in his manmade darkness, smoking his cigarette, Ray heard the sound of rain striking the tin roof of the boathouse just outside. He crawled out of bed and treaded across the room. He flicked his ashes on the bare wooden floor on his way to the window. Since he worked at night and slept during the day, one of the few changes Ray had made to the boathouse apartment had been to pull down the gossamer-thin curtains and nail up a thick blanket in their place. He needed darkness to sleep.

  Ray pulled the blanket aside and looked out the window. A hard rain was falling. He glanced out at the choppy brown water of Lake Pontchartrain. Then at the gray sky. Far away on the horizon, the two melded so seamlessly it was impossible to tell where one ended and the other began. When he had gone to bed, the sun had been out and the storm clouds were just beginning to roll in. He thought about how his father had been right—Red sky at morning, sailor take warning.

  Just below the window was the back half of the boathouse. The tin roof stretched out fifteen feet toward the lake and had a slight downward slope. Ray stared at the rain as it pounded the corrugated tin. The water ran down the slope in evenly spaced rivulets, then shot off the edge of the roof, plunging ten feet into the New Orleans Yacht Club marina below.

  In the kitchenette, Ray pulled a glass from the cabinet. He tossed in some ice, then filled it from a half-empty bottle of Jameson that stood on the counter. He had seen the clock, it was after twelve, and by anyone’s standards it was a decent hour to start drinking.

  He took a sip and felt the Irish whiskey burn the back of his throat as it slid down. Two hours wasn’t nearly enough sleep, but he didn’t have to work until ten o’clock tonight. Plenty of time to watch a football game, have a few drinks, then take a nap. Things would probably be tense at the House for a while, but eventually they would cool down. Some of the mob’s tough guys would figure out who took the place down, and they would play catch-up. You didn’t rob the fucking Mafia and get away with it. It just wasn’t done.

  Ray had more immediate problems. His TV remote was missing. After crawling around for a few minutes, he found it under the bed. Even though his apartment was more or less a dump, he had a nice television. A thirty-two-inch plasma with a built-in DVD player. It sat on two beer crates next to the door. He didn’t believe in TV stands. You watched the TV, not the stand.

  Working for wiseguys had advantages. He had gotten the television brand-new, in the box, for a hundred bucks. One of those items that fell off the back of a truck. Cable was something else. Ray couldn’t afford it, but his neighbor could. A buddy who used to work at Radio Shack had hooked Ray up with a homemade digital converter. All Ray had to do was cut into his neighbor’s cable and splice in a signal splitter, and he had all the channels in digital hi-def. Including the premium movie package.

  Back on his bed, Ray set the near-empty glass of whiskey on the crate, then stuck another cigarette in his mouth. This time his Zippo flared on the second strike. He tossed the lighter down and punched the POWER button on the remote.

  Then the phone rang. Ray stared at it, thinking, hoping really, that it would stop. But it rang again.

  What did she want now? He snatched up the phone and answered it without looking at the screen. “Don’t ever hang up on me again!”

  Tony Z’s voice barked in his ear. “Shut the fuck up, Ray.”

  Ray shut the fuck up.

  “Vinnie wants to see you.”

  Ray pressed MUTE on the remote. “Now?”

  “No. Just whenever you can squeeze him into your schedule.”

  “Huh?” Ray not catching Tony’s sarcasm.

  “Of course right now, you fucking moron!”

  The hair on the back of Ray’s neck stood up. It was an autonomic warning system left over from the caveman days. There was danger here. Vincent Messina didn’t want to see him so he could congratulate Ray for doing such a good job this morning. “Where?” Ray asked.

  “In his office.”

  Ray paused.

  “You there, dipshit?” Tony said.

  “I’m on the way.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  A young legbreaker led Ray into Vinnie’s fourth-floor office. The kid wasn’t wearing a suit, which was a sign of the times. When Ray had been in Vice, he never saw a wiseguy who wasn’t wearing a suit. These days it was different. The new generation of wiseguys didn’t have the same respect for the old ways, for tradition, as the previous generation. The kid who let him in had more of a casual mobster look, dressing down, wearing khaki pants and a pullover golf shirt. He was big, offensive tackle size, and after opening the door to the office, he stepped aside to let Ray go in first.

  The office was a deep rectangle, with Vinnie’s oversize desk and chair at the far end, facing toward the door. The room was laid out like a great hall with Vinnie Messina as a feudal prince seated on his throne, eyeing his supplicants. Floor-to-ceiling windows on the long exterior wall looked out over the French Quarter.

  The young legbreaker put a hand on Ray’s back and guided him toward a leather sofa set at an angle in front of the big desk. Tony Z. sat in a leather wingback next to the sofa. Tony looked fresh, decked out in another Italian suit, his hair oiled and combed, not a strand out of place. Ray wondered if he ever slept.

  There were two other guys in the office. One was another young arm-twister, dressed casual like his partner in khakis and a knit shirt. He sat in a hard-backed chair in the far corner, between the desk and the windows. The second guy was Charlie Liuzza, the man everyone called Charlie the Rabbit. Charlie was in his early sixties, but looked trim, like he kept in shape. He sat at the end of the sofa, dressed in a suit and tie, but not the expensive Italian kind Tony wore, more like one you would find hanging on the rack in a decent department store.

  Charlie had nothing to do with the House, so why was he here? Ray wondered.

  As Ray dropped onto the end of the sofa, opposite Charlie Liuzza, he wondered why he was here. This office made him nervous. On the floor he saw several large rugs, rugs big enough to roll up a body in. The offensive linemen–looking ape who had guided Ray into the room took a seat in the near corner. He and his twin looked like a pair of goombah bookends with Vincent Messina in the middle.

  “We’ve been waiting for you, Ray,” Vinnie said in his high-pitched nasally voice. He was fiftysomething and fat, with a bald head he tried to hide under an absurd comb-over.

  Ray didn’t know if he was being reprim
anded for not getting here quickly enough, or if Vinnie was just making polite conversation. Right after Tony’s call, Ray had showered, dressed, gulped down another glass of Jameson to settle his nerves, then slipped into a sport coat and left. Fifteen minutes and two cigarettes later, he pulled his eight-year-old Mustang into the parking lot on Decatur, two blocks from the House.

  “I got here as soon as I could,” Ray said.

  Vinnie stared at him, his eyes dark and cold and set deep in his jowly face. The look made Ray wonder if he was going to get out of here alive. He glanced again at the two young goons, but neither of them looked like they were getting ready to make any kind of move against him. Squeezed into the chairs like they were, if they did make a play for him, he would have at least a few seconds to react.

  Ray relaxed a bit as Vinnie pointed to Charlie Liuzza. “You know Charlie, don’t you? He works for my brother. Charlie is here, at my brother’s invitation, to make sure we don’t screw this up.”

  Ray didn’t know what to say, so he just nodded his head at Charlie, acknowledging the man’s presence.

  “But I’m going to handle this my own way,” Vinnie said, giving Charlie a sideways look, “and with my own people.”

  An anxious silence enveloped the room. Ray tried to break it. “Handle what?”

  Vinnie waved a dismissive hand in the air. “I want you to know that in no way do I hold you responsible for what happened this morning.” He glanced at Tony. “No matter what some people might say.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Messina,” Ray said. “I want to tell you personally how sorry I am about—”

  “But I want you to find them,” Vinnie said.

  Silence.

  Finally, Ray said, “Find who?”

  “The people who shot my son.”

  Ray looked around the room. There had to be a way out of here. Everyone was staring at him. “Mr. Messina . . . I can’t do that.”

  Tony clapped his hands together. He was looking at Vinnie. “I told you.”

  Ray chimed in. “It’s not that I don’t want to. I’d do anything to help you. Pete was like a kid brother to me. But I just can’t do this. I don’t have . . . the ability.”

  Vinnie shot him a hard stare. “What do you mean you don’t have the ability? You were a goddamn detective. You sure as shit know how to find people who don’t want to be found.” He leaned forward, keeping his eyes fixed on Ray. “I’m asking you to find the motherfuckers who murdered my boy.” Vinnie choked on the last word and had to cover it with a cough. He was a Mafia big shot, but still a man who had just lost his only son.

  Ray felt a lump in his own throat. He glanced out the nearest window. Pete had been a good kid, simpleminded but sweet. An innocent kid. Ray swallowed the lump. There was a lot at stake here. This was no time to get sentimental over a dead half-wit, he told himself. He looked back at Vinnie Messina. “I used to be a detective. Now I’m just an ex-con.”

  “That’s even better,” Vinnie said. “Don’t you see that? You know both sides of the street. Plus, now you’re not constrained by all that legal bullshit. I’m not asking you to kill these guys. I’m asking you to use your street smarts and your contacts at the police department to find them. We’ll take care of the rest.”

  Ray cleared his throat. “I don’t have any contacts left. I was in prison for almost five years. I’d be as welcome at Tulane and Broad as clap in a convent.”

  “What did I tell you?” Tony said. “He’s a fucking coward.”

  Ray ignored him. He kept his eyes on Vinnie. “To work it like a cop, you need access to information—lab reports, ballistics, criminal histories, driver’s license information—stuff I can’t get.”

  Tony jabbed a finger at Ray. “We lost that money because of you, Shane. You’re either going to find the guys who did this, and get back our three hundred G’s or—”

  “Three hundred!” Ray said, turning toward Tony.

  “You heard me.”

  “We never have that much cash in—”

  Vinnie pounded his fat fist on his desk. “I don’t give a shit about the money. I want the motherfuckers who shot my son.”

  This was getting dangerous, Ray thought. Very dangerous. Looking back at Vinnie, he said, “I understand what you want done, but I’m on parole. One screwup and my P.O. will put me back inside.”

  “Are you saying you won’t help me?” Vinnie said. His voice was low and had lost a lot of its nasal sound. Now it sounded menacing.

  “You got guys at the Eighth District who can get you any kind of background information you’d need,” Ray said.

  Tony snorted. “Cops are always the last ones to know what’s going on. The scumbags who did this, you don’t find them inside a fucking computer, you got to find them on the street. The street always knows. All you got to do is know how to ask it.”

  Vinnie rubbed a hand across his face, but his eyes never left Ray. “I don’t want the police getting their hands on these bastards.”

  “We might own half the Eighth District, but those cops are only going to go so far,” Tony said. “They got pensions to protect.”

  “That’s why we’ve got to do it ourselves,” Vinnie said.

  Ray glanced at Charlie Rabbit, an old-timer with a reputation as a cold-blooded killer, and at the two beefed-up bone-breakers sitting like stone statues of sumo wrestlers. He felt his heart thumping in his chest and a cold knot of fear growing in his belly. “I still think they can do you more good than I can. The Eighth District cops, I mean. But if you bring me into the picture, they may not be willing to work with you.”

  Tony jabbed his finger at Ray again. “It’s his mess. He needs to clean it up. If he wasn’t such a chickenshit and had done his job in the first place, none of this—”

  “Vinnie’s right,” Charlie Liuzza said. “Money is not important. Blame is not important. Not now.” He pointed to Vinnie. “This man lost a son. Carlos lost a nephew. Blood demands blood. Later, Carlos will deal with the other matters.”

  Vinnie’s face flushed. He leaned over his desk, the edge cutting a crease in his bloated belly. “You tell my brother I run the Rising Sun, and I make the decisions here.”

  Charlie raised his hands toward Vinnie, palms out, gesturing for peace. “He wants these men found and punished for what they did to your son. Nothing else. We can always make more money.”

  Looking somewhat mollified, Vinnie sat back in his chair. “Pass my thanks on to my brother.”

  As Charlie nodded, Tony jerked his thumb toward Ray. “What about him?”

  “What about him?” Charlie said. “Vinnie asked for his help.”

  Charlie took in a deep breath. “I’ve heard some good things about Ray. Let’s give him time to think about it. I’m sure he’ll come up with something that can help us.”

  “Think about it,” Tony snapped. “We let our people think about whether or not—”

  Vinnie pounded his desk again. “Tony!”

  Tony’s eyes narrowed, but he closed his mouth. The two goons shifted in their seats. For the first time they looked uncomfortable.

  “Everyone’s upset,” Charlie said. “Everybody’s tired. Let’s put off any further discussion until tomorrow. By then I’m sure Ray will have come up with something, at least a general direction for us, based on his years of investigative experience.”

  Tony slid forward in his seat and rested his elbows on his knees. He fixed his eyes on Charlie. His face was hard, his tone challenging. “What’s your involvement in this?”

  The older man was cool, not letting Tony get to him. His answer was like his style, slow and steady. “A tragedy happened here that involves every one of us. We’ve come together to do what’s best for the family, just like always.”

  Vinnie looked at Ray. “Then I guess you have until tomorrow.” He made it sound like a temporary stay of execution.

  Ray nodded.

  “You played it smart in there,” Charlie said.

  “What do you mean?” Ray
asked, wondering why Charlie Rabbit had wanted to talk, wondering if Charlie was buying him a farewell drink before killing him, like giving a condemned man a last cigarette as he stood before the firing squad.

  After the meeting in Vinnie’s office broke up, Charlie had bumped Ray’s elbow and jerked his head in a “follow me” motion. They went downstairs and out the front door of the Rising Sun without saying a word. Now they were across the street, sitting at the bar in the Hog’s Breath Saloon.

  “I’m talking about that prick Tony,” Charlie said. “You didn’t let him get to you. That was good.”

  Ray took a drag of his Lucky Strike, then sipped at his whiskey, wishing he knew why he was here.

  “Where did you do your time?” Charlie asked.

  “Terre Haute.”

  “How was it?”

  “Long,” Ray said, swirling his glass and watching the ice spin.

  “You did about four years, didn’t you?”

  Ray looked up. “Four years, three months.”

  Charlie lit a cigarette. “I know what you mean about it being long. I’ve been down twice.”

  “Where?” Ray asked. He was warming to the old man’s soft-spoken, easy style. Warming to it as long as it didn’t end with a bullet behind his ear.

  “First stretch was state time at Angola. You talk about a miserable shit-hole. That was the worst place I’ve ever been. Got lucky, though. I drew a double sawbuck, but I beat the case on appeal and got out after three years. Later, I did nine years’ fed time in Atlanta.”

  Ray stubbed out his cigarette butt in the ashtray. “I don’t think I could have done nine years.”

  “I said the same thing after I did my three at Angola, but everything is relative.” Charlie took a sip of his drink. “You know the best way to do a long stretch?”

  “How?” Ray asked, flicking his Zippo three times to get a flame. Then he lit another Lucky Strike.

  “Just like you do the short ones . . .” Charlie held his glass up.

  Ray smiled. He raised his glass and clinked it against Charlie’s. “Day by motherfucking day,” he said at the same time Charlie did. Then they downed the rest of their drinks.