House of the Rising Sun

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Jenny Porter’s apartment was a one-bedroom walk-up on the third floor of a four-story building, and on mornings like this she hated those two flights of stairs with a passion.

It was 4:30 AM.

A weather front had come in late last night and it was cold, wet, and miserable. The only security was a self-locking iron door across the building’s front entrance. Behind that was a wooden door with a busted lock. Its only purpose was to keep the weather out of the foyer.

Jenny stood in front of the security door, keys in hand, when she realized it wasn’t locked. Looking more closely at the dead bolt, she saw the bolt still extended from the cylinder. The door had been pried open. The spring hinge had pulled it shut, and the protruding bolt rested against the frame, leaving a narrow gap between the door and jamb.

She dropped her keys back into her purse and pulled the iron door open. One of the hinges gave a tortured squeak. She pressed her hand against the wooden inner door and pushed it open. A wide hallway ran down the center of the building with four apartments on each side. At the far end of the hallway was the stairway leading to the second floor.

Jenny stepped inside and pushed the wooden door closed behind her. Two big windows above the door illuminated the hall during the day, but before sunrise the only light came from an old chandelier that hung from the ceiling halfway down the hall. The apartment doors were set back about three feet from the hall, leaving a small alcove in front of each.

Why was the door open? Maybe the lock was broken and the building’s maintenance man had left it unlocked. But it hadn’t been like that when Jenny left at eight o’clock last night, right after her encounter with Hiram Gordo. If the lock was broken, the maintenance man would not have pried the door open and left it unlocked all night. He would have fixed it.

She looked at the double row of alcoves, each one hidden in shadow, and wondered if there was something or someone hiding in one of them. With her heart thumping against her chest, Jenny crept toward the stairs at the back of the building, peering into each shadow as she slid past it.

At the end of the hall, Jenny stood at the foot of the stairs and gazed up toward the second floor. A single lightbulb mounted high overhead cast a dull glow along the empty stairwell. No ghosts or goblins up there. At least none she could see. She started up the stairs, inching her way to the landing above.

By the time she got to the second floor, Jenny started to relax. She told herself she was acting like a foolish girl. There was no madman, no escaped convict with a butcher’s knife waiting to cut her down. Nothing but a dimly lit, empty stairwell.

And a pried-open front door.

One flight to go. As she padded up the steps toward the third floor, she couldn’t help looking over the banister to make sure no one was moving around in the hall below her, but there was no one there. Nothing but tricks of light and shadow.

Just before reaching the third floor, Jenny paused. Her apartment was the third door on the left, the second from the front of the building. She almost felt like calling out, half expecting that if she did, she would see Hiram L. Gordo’s big fat ass come slinking out from one of the alcoves. But she didn’t call out, and she didn’t see Hiram L. Gordo.

She crept down the center of the hall, trying to stay as far away from each shadowed doorway as she could. At the first pair of apartments, Jenny checked left and right, saw nothing. Then the second pair of doors, again, just empty shadows. She was starting to feel silly, but remembered that she had slept with a night-light on until she was almost out of high school.

The bogeyman wasn’t what she had been afraid of. Maybe as a little girl it was ghosts under the bed, goblins in the closet, kid stuff, but later, just after she hit puberty, she kept the night-light on because of her stepfather. His drunken visits to her room late at night, after her mom was asleep, were what really scared her.

In the middle of the hall, she edged past the corner of the alcove in front of her door. Something moved. It was on the floor but it was big. Her heart jumped into her throat. “Who are you?” she shouted.

The shadow moved again. She backed away, ready to turn and run, or scream and hope someone would call the police.

The shadow grew. Jenny’s back bumped into the wall opposite her door. It was almost a relief when she realized it was just a man and not a monster. Admitting to herself for the first time that she still half believed in the bogeyman. But it wasn’t Gordo, not big enough by half. An ax murderer? He was on the run from the cops and had broken into the building to escape. Now she had seen him, and he would have to kill her.

Jenny’s stomach twisted into knots. Should she scream for help or run? With heels on she probably couldn’t get down the stairs fast enough to get away. As the scream built in her throat and she opened her mouth to let it out, the shadow spoke. “You gonna let me in or what?” The voice sounded a lot like Ray Shane.

“You almost gave me a fucking heart attack!” Jenny said, sitting across the kitchen table from Ray. The breakfast nook was small, but it was her favorite room in the apartment. Light, airy prints hung on the walls, creating a Mediterranean theme. The table was square, with a bleached wooden frame and the top made from Mexican tiles. Jenny’s heart still beat like a machine gun. “What happened to your face? My God, you look like you got hit by a fucking truck.”

Shane put a hand up to the cut above his eye. “I don’t think I ever heard you use the word fuck before. You just used it twice in the same sentence.”

Jenny took a deep breath to steady her nerves. “It wasn’t the same sentence. Same paragraph, maybe, but not the same sentence.” She was just glad it hadn’t been Gordo hiding in the shadows, waiting to try another run at her. Still, she was wondering why Ray had been camped out in front of her door.

“I don’t think it’s a paragraph if you say it.” Ray’s eyes were closed as he massaged his temples with the fingers of both hands.

“What?”

He looked at her across the table. “It’s not a paragraph if you say it. You write it down, then you got a paragraph. If you say it, several sentences I mean, you got a…”

“Yeah?”

“I don’t know what you’ve got, but I know it’s not a paragraph.”

“You an English teacher now?”

He shook his head. “I read a lot in prison, does that count?”

“No.”

“I was just trying to make a point.”

She laid both hands on the table and leaned toward him, speaking slowly so he wouldn’t misunderstand. “You have no fucking point to make because you’re a fucking asshole for fucking scaring me like that.”

He stared at her.

Jenny held up three fingers. “Now that’s three times in one sentence, so you can quit worrying about whether or not it’s a paragraph.”

The seconds ticked by on the clock mounted beside the kitchen door, Ray just looking at her, no expression at all. Then all of a sudden his banged-up face broke into a grin.

She couldn’t help smiling back at him.

He laughed, a deep belly laugh. Then winced in pain as he held his hands against his ribs.

She looked at the dried blood matted into his hair. “What happened to you?”

“Your boyfriend again.”

She glared at him and stabbed her finger toward the door. “If you’re going talk to me like that, get out of my apartment.”

Shane gave her a crooked smile. “ Your apartment. I remember when it used to be our apartment.”

She dropped her hand but kept her eyes locked on his. “Now it’s just my apartment. It was your choice, Ray.”

He nodded once, an almost imperceptible movement, but it was there.

Jenny’s anger started to slip. There was something in his eyes she hadn’t expected to see-defeat. Like he had been beaten, not just physically, but emotionally. Ray had never looked that way before, not even when he was on his way to prison. Maybe everything that had happened to him had finally taken its toll, had finally worn him down. They had both fallen so far from where they had been that there was probably no going back.

She watched as he probed at his torn scalp with his fingertips. “I’ve got nowhere to go, Jen,” he said.

“Tell me what happened.” She pointed a finger at him. “But I’m warning you, you say something like that again, I don’t care if you’ve got to sleep in the street, I’m kicking you out.”

Even though she realized it was a mistake, that it would stir up old feelings, Jenny fished under the kitchen sink for a first-aid kit while Ray told her what had happened at his apartment.

She spread the kit out on the table. When she touched the cut over his eye, he winced. “What did he want?” Jenny asked.

“To kill me.”

“Why?”

“He thinks I somehow stole that money.”

“What money?”

“From the robbery.”

“Why would he think that?” She wiped a cotton ball soaked with rubbing alcohol over his split eyebrow.

Ray’s head jerked back. “Ouch!”

“Quit your whining. You want this cleaned or not?” He nodded and she kept wiping. “Why does he think it was you?”

“I guess he figures there had to be somebody on the inside.”

“Was there?”

He nodded.

There was no way to bandage his scalp without shaving it, so Jenny just cleaned the cut as best she could with a Q-tip. The split over his eye had started bleeding again, so she made him press a towel against it until it stopped, then covered it with a gauze bandage.

“This one needs stitches,” she said, pressing the last piece of tape into place along the edge of the bandage.

“I can’t go to a hospital. Too many questions.”

Jenny set her gauze and tape down on the table. “Suit yourself, but if you don’t get it sewn up, you’re going to have a hell of a scar.”

“You afraid it’s going to ruin my good looks?”

“Don’t be an asshole.”

He whistled. “You picked up some rough language working at that place.”

She retook her seat across the table from him and looked into his eyes. “Did you do it, Ray?”

He looked surprised. “How the hell can you ask me that?”

Not letting go of his eyes, she asked again, more demanding this time, “Did you do it?”

Ray sighed, but he kept his eyes on hers. “No, I didn’t.”

Living with him had taught her how to tell when he was lying, and she knew he was telling her the truth. “Then who was it?”

He shrugged. “Hector was probably involved, but he wasn’t smart enough to pull it off by himself.”

“Tony?”

He looked away. “I don’t know.”

“You’re holding something back, Ray. What is it?”

“Just some things I heard…”

“About what?”

“About Vinnie.”

Not at all what she was expecting. “What about him?”

“He might have had a motive.”

“His son was murdered.”

Ray rested his elbows on the table. “Somebody got carried away.”

“Carried away?” she said. “They blew off his head.”

“And whoever did it has got to make damn sure they cover it up.”

“You really think it was Vinnie?”

A shrug. “It’s possible.”

“Why?” she said. “What’s the motive you’re talking about?”

“Same reason people do everything.” He rubbed his thumb and index finger together. “Money.”

She shook her head, thinking he was way off about this. “You’re projecting. Not everyone thinks like you.”

“What do you mean?”

Jenny took a deep breath. “Your problem is you’re greedy.”

He eyed her like she was crazy. “What the hell are you talking about? I’m trying to tell you the reason Vinnie might have robbed his own place, and you want to turn it around and tell me I’m greedy?”

“I’ve known you a long time.”

“So?”

Jenny could tell he was getting pissed, but that was too bad. This was something he needed to hear. “Why did you go to prison, Ray?”

“Because somebody ratted on us.”

She shook her head. That was the answer she expected. “No, Ray, I’m asking you why you went to prison.”

“The feds tried to make a deal with me. I could have gotten off with probation, but I told them no, that I don’t snitch on my partners.”

Was he just being hardheaded or did he really not get it? Knowing Ray the way she did, Jenny believed it was the first option. He was hardheaded. As long as she had known Ray, she could never remember him admitting he had made a mistake. He bulled his way through everything, always convinced he was right.

“Listen to me, goddamn it!” she almost shouted. “I’m talking about why you went to prison, what you did that sent you there.”

He stared at her, his face set so hard it looked like stone, but that very look is what gave him away. Because in that look she saw that he knew exactly what she was talking about. He just refused to admit it, just like always.

Jenny rubbed her fingertips together just like he had. “Greed is why you went to prison, Ray. Not because somebody ratted on you, not because you sacrificed yourself for your partners, but because you wanted money. You saw morons like Tony living like kings. You had a cop’s salary but wanted to be one of the kings, and for a while you were, but then you got caught.”

Ray’s face turned red. “You think you got me figured out? You think you know what makes me tick? You think every problem can be fixed with some pop-psychology bullshit from an episode of Oprah?”

Some wounds never heal. Jenny felt her throat tighten, felt the tears forming at the corners of her eyes. “Maybe some things can’t ever be fixed, Ray, but I know one thing.”

“What’s that?” His voice was ice-cold.

“People can change.”

He stared at her, his bright blue eyes boring into her for so long she felt like looking away, but she didn’t. He wasn’t playing stare-down, he was thinking, probably about what she had said. She hoped he had really listened to what she had said. When he finally spoke, his voice was thick. “You think that’s true, about people changing?”

His hands were spread out on the table, palms turned down. Gently, she laid a hand on top of one of his. “Yeah, I-”

Someone pounded on the door.

Jenny spun around in her chair. She glanced at her watch, 5:30 AM . Who the hell could be at the door at this time of morning? Gordo. It had to be. As she looked back at Ray she put a finger to her lips.

He nodded.

Then she got up and stepped to the door. She looked through the peephole but couldn’t see anything. There was no light coming through. Whoever was outside probably had his finger on it. “Who is it?” she shouted.

From the other side a man said, “It’s me. Open the fucking door.”

Tony Zello.