House of the Rising Sun

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Just past 11:00 PM, Ray wobbled up the flight of wooden steps that led to his apartment above the boathouse. At the top of the stairs he was a little unsteady on his feet and breathing hard, so he lingered on his deck, one hand on the rail.

After almost a full day of driving through parking lots in New Orleans East-and not finding the blue Buick he was looking for-Ray had stopped uptown at Cooter Brown’s to have a drink. One drink had turned into two, then three. There might have been a fourth.

Standing on his deck, Ray let go of the railing and dug out a cigarette and his Zippo. It took half a dozen flicks to get enough of a flame to light a Lucky Strike. As he took a long drag, a slight breeze drifted off the lake behind him. There was a chill in the air. The sky was clear. The stars were out.

Ray decided to grab a bottle of Jameson and a glass from inside. He would pour some whiskey over a couple of cubes of ice and sit on the deck and enjoy the night air.

A glass-top patio table stood on the porch with three plastic chairs around it. Ray grabbed the back of one of the chairs and tilted it forward, dumping the puddle of rainwater out of the seat. He would need to bring a towel out with him to dry it before he sat down.

Ray flicked his cigarette butt over the railing and into the lake. Then he dug his keys out of his pocket and walked across the deck. The inside of his apartment was dark. With his keys in one hand, Ray stood in the doorway and slid his other hand against the wall, feeling for the light switch.

Something heavy smashed against his head.

The blow sent a bolt of blinding white light through Ray’s skull. The thunderous clap of pain that exploded inside his head an instant later dropped him to his knees. Somewhere in the distance he heard his keys clatter to the ground. Then he pitched forward, facedown on the wooden floor.

The sound of voices came to him. At least two people. They sounded far away, too far away for him to understand the words, but he understood their menace. Someone grabbed his wrists and dragged him all the way into the apartment. The door slammed shut behind him.

A foot cracked against his ribs.

“Roll him over,” a voice commanded.

Someone kicked him over onto his back. The room was still dark. The shadow of a man stood near the door. “Get him up,” the shadow said. “He tries anything, crack him with that steel pot again.”

Two guys, one on each arm, pulled Ray to his feet. At least three of them in the apartment. Still he couldn’t make out any faces. His ribs felt like they were on fire. The pain sucked the air out of his lungs. With his head spinning and his lungs unable to draw a breath, Ray’s knees turned to jelly. The hands clutching his arms were all that held him up.

“He’s too heavy,” the one on the right said.

“I think we hurt him,” the one on the left said.

The shadow in front of Ray let out a sigh. He walked away from the door and dragged a chair over from Ray’s garage-sale dinette set. The two guys on either side dropped him into the chair.

The dark image walked back to the door and flicked on the light switch. As the light seared into Ray’s head, doubling his pain, he squeezed his eyes shut and tried to block it out. Something trickled down the side of his head and dripped into his ear.

After a couple seconds he opened his eyes, blinked them clear, then found himself looking at Tony Zello. Tony was leaning against the door, ten feet away, hands in his pants pockets, looking cool in a charcoal gray suit with blue pinstripes, a maroon handkerchief folded in the breast pocket, and a green paisley tie. “How you doing, Ray?”

“What the fuck do you want?” Ray croaked, his tongue thick in his mouth. When he glanced up to his right, he saw Rocco looming over him. Another big steroid guzzler named Joey stood to his left. Both of them were pushing down on his shoulders to keep him in the chair. On the floor lay a two-quart steel cooking pot. When he left this morning, it had been on the stove.

Tony Zello slipped one hand out of his pocket as he stood up straight. He jabbed a finger at Ray. “You’re stupid, Shane. You know that?” He stepped closer. “You’re just like every other cop I know. You want to be a player, but you ain’t got the balls.”

The chair in which Ray had been dumped was one of three he kept around his breakfast table, molded plastic with four aluminum legs and no arms. The weight of the two goons pressing down on his shoulders kept him planted in the seat.

As Tony got near him, Ray swung his right arm up and smashed it into Rocco’s forearm, but it was like striking a telephone pole.

“Hold him still, goddamn it,” Tony said.

Ray dropped his left shoulder and tried to squirm out from under Joey’s hand, but the two goons just drove his shoulders down harder and grabbed his arms with their free hands.

“You ain’t going nowhere, you dumb fuck,” Tony said as he stepped in and landed a solid punch just above Ray’s left eye. “You thought you were smart, huh? Thought you could take our fucking money.”

Ray had a sick feeling in his stomach, a fluttering, like being on a roller coaster as it plummeted down a steep drop. He could tell by the way they were acting, the set expressions on the faces of the two goons, that they were going to kill him. The fact that Tony thought Ray had done something wrong was enough to kill him. These guys had a very low burden of proof.

“Tony, what the fuck are you talking-”

The next punch almost knocked Ray out of the chair, despite the two goons. Blood ran into his eye, then down the side of his face.

Through his bloodied vision, Ray saw that Rocco and Joey were both staring at Tony, their mouths set tight. Both worked at the House, both were young. There was a good chance neither had ever made his bones, been directly involved in killing someone. Ray didn’t want to be their first.

He had always been a good talker. Once he had spent nearly an hour talking to an enraged Mexican who was brandishing a machete. The guy had come home from work, found his wife on all fours, the clerk from the neighborhood grocery mounted up behind her. Ray, still working uniform patrol, got to the scene first and cornered the husband in the bedroom, the chopped-up bodies of his wife and the grocery clerk still in the bed. Every other cop wanted to shoot the guy.

Instead of shooting, Ray holstered his gun and walked into the bedroom. An hour later he led the man out in handcuffs, the two of them talking like old friends. He had a way with words. It was a gift. But when he needed them most, to save his own life, he couldn’t think of anything to say.

Tony raised one foot and stomped it down on Ray’s stomach. The kick doubled Ray over as he fought for breath. If it weren’t for the two bruisers holding him in place, he would have been curled up on the floor sucking wind.

“I figured it was you all along,” Tony said. “It had to be. Then, when I found out you knew those two guys…”

How the hell had Tony found out about Michael Salazaar and Dylan Sylvester? Ray had just learned about them himself, and he hadn’t even found Sylvester yet. In short gasps, he said, “I don’t know… who you’ve been talking to… but I don’t know those guys… I arrested them is all.”

He had explained the same thing to Jimmy LaGrange.

Tony kicked him again. “I take back what I said about cops ain’t got no balls. What you did took balls, but like I said, it was stupid.”

Ray tried to speak but only managed a dry heave. Finally, he got the words out. “It wasn’t me.”

Tony slid a small revolver from under his suit coat. Ray recognized it as a Smith amp; Wesson. 38, the Chief’s Special model with a two-inch barrel, just like the one Ray had carried in an ankle rig while he was on the job.

“You fucked up, Shane. Now you got to fess up. This is going to go down one of two ways, easy or hard. It’s your choice.” Tony laid the muzzle against Ray’s knee. “Either way, you’re going to tell me everything.”

“I didn’t take your money,” Ray croaked.

Tony grinned. “That’s what I thought you’d say.” He cocked the hammer.

“Hey, Tony.” Rocco’s voice was nervous. “Ain’t you gonna call Vinnie? You know, like he said.”

Tony stared up at Rocco, his concentration broken. He lifted the gun off Ray’s knee and waved it around, gesturing with it as he spoke. “No, I ain’t gonna call Vinnie, you dumb fuck. I’m gonna straighten this out myself.”

The other knuckle-dragger said, “Yeah, but I still think you should at least call-”

Tony’s face flushed beet red as he screamed, “Vinnie told me to handle this, and that’s what I’m fucking doing.” Then he leaned into Joey’s face, spittle flying from his lips as he shouted, “If you ain’t got the stomach for this kind of work, go back to being a fucking busboy and a dishwasher.”

For just a second, no one was paying attention to Ray. The pressure from the two goons on his shoulders had eased, same with their grip on his wrists. Words weren’t going to work. There was no way to talk his way out of this. He had to make a move, and he had to make it right now.

Ray lashed out with his right foot and kicked Tony in the balls. Tony grabbed his scrotum and fell to his knees, his revolver clattering to the floor. For an instant the two goons were distracted, and Ray came out of the chair. He made a grab for the. 38 but couldn’t reach it.

Rocco and Joey clawed at Ray but they missed. Ray threw a right hook into Tony’s jaw that knocked him onto his back.

The door was ten feet away, just three steps. But it was too far and Ray knew it. The two musclemen would drag him down from behind before he made it halfway. There was another way out. The window. Three feet wide and four feet tall, it overlooked the back half of the boathouse below his apartment. Beyond that was the marina, and beyond that, Lake Pontchartrain. The two goons were blocking his path.

Ray had to move now or die, so he dropped his head and rushed straight at Rocco. He buried his right shoulder in the big man’s stomach and drove his legs hard, drove them like pistons, drove them the way Coach Ramsey had made him do it on the practice field at Tulane. Rocco clawed at him but couldn’t get a grip. The muscle-bound moron was off balance. His upper body was moving backward toward the window faster than his legs. Joey spun toward Ray and caught the back of his shirt, but he didn’t grab enough to stop him. Ray was moving too fast.

With his eyes clamped shut and his chin tucked into his chest, Ray used Rocco’s body for a shield as he shoved the big ape through the window. Rocco’s back shattered the glass just as his legs hooked on the windowsill and slammed him down on the roof. Ray used his momentum to tumble headfirst over Rocco, but he landed so hard on his back it knocked the wind out of him.

Lying on the sloped, corrugated tin roof, with his feet pointing down toward the marina, Ray couldn’t move or catch his breath. Just behind him, Rocco moaned, while inside the apartment, Joey shouted for his partner to grab Ray before he got away.

After a second, Ray managed to suck enough air into his starved lungs to roll over. He raised himself on all fours and glanced back through the busted window. Joey was trying to pull Tony Zello to his feet, Tony cussing him the whole time. Rocco was hung up on the windowsill like a bull caught in a tangle of barbed wire, groaning as he tried to free himself, his big hands pawing at the backs of his thighs. Jagged pieces of glass stuck up like shark’s teeth along the bottom edge of the window frame, and twin streams of blood flowed down the roof from beneath Rocco’s legs.

With Joey tugging at him, Tony hobbled to his feet, but was so unsteady he had to hold on to Joey to keep from falling. Tony looked through the window and locked eyes with Ray. Tony’s hand came up. In it was the. 38 revolver. He pointed it at Ray and fired.

Ray dropped to his belly, spun around, and scampered to the edge of the roof. As he peered down at the black water twenty feet below, he heard another shot behind him. The bullet banged against the roof not two feet from him and whizzed past him as it ricocheted into the night air.

Ray pitched headfirst off the roof.