House of the Rising Sun

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

Ray found Dylan Sylvester’s blue Buick four-door at a sprawling apartment complex off Bullard Avenue. A high iron fence surrounded the complex, and the front gate included a manned twenty-four-hour checkpoint. The security guard had not wanted to let Ray in.

“Who you here to see?” the guard said.

Ray was there early, just past six a.m., so he couldn’t say he was going to the leasing office to ask about an apartment.

“I’m picking a guy up for work,” Ray had said.

“Name and apartment number?” the guard asked.

Ray said the first number that popped into his head. “1141.”

“There is no 1141,” the guard said.

Ray swallowed hard.

“You mean 1101?” the guard offered.

Ray nodded. “That must be it. I get my numbers mixed up sometimes.”

“What’s the name?”

“My name?” Ray was trying to figure out if it was worth it to try an alias. The guard would probably record his license plate number-Jenny’s plate number. Maybe even ask for his driver’s license. Talk about looking suspicious, Ray tells the guy his name is Joe Smith, and then the guy looks at Ray’s license.

“No,” the guard said. “The person you’re going see.”

“Joe.”

“Last name?”

“I don’t know,” Ray said. “It’s just a guy from work. He called and asked me for a ride.”

The guard consulted a list on a clipboard. “There’s no one named Joe in 1101.”

“He lives with his girlfriend.”

“There’s a Yolanda Jackson in 1101.”

Ray snapped his fingers. “That’s it. That’s his girlfriend’s name, Yolanda.”

The security guard glanced at the telephone in the guard shack. Then at his watch. He pressed a button and opened the gate.

Cruising the parking lot in Jenny’s decade-old Firebird, Ray almost drove past the Buick. It was tucked into a tight spot, a pickup on one side, a Hummer on the other. He checked the license plate number. It matched the one in the police report, the one registered to Belinda Sylvester. He had found Dylan, the asshole with the tattoo and the bad teeth. Now what was he supposed to do?

Sylvester definitely had a gun. And he might not be alone. Maybe he had a girlfriend, maybe a couple of kids. Maybe he was holed up with another guy from the robbery crew. In that case they would have at least two guns.

Once again, Ray found himself in a situation in which he really needed a gun.

Back when he was on the job, if he went into an apartment after an armed robber, he would have put together a team of seven or eight cops. Everyone would have had a bulletproof vest. The team would have had a ram to smash the door, a ballistic shield to soak up any bullets that got thrown their way, and plenty of firepower.

Now he had to go in alone and unarmed. Thinking about it made him want to turn around and go home. Except he didn’t have a home to go to. He couldn’t go back to his apartment, Tony had seen to that. He couldn’t even go back to Jenny’s place.

Late yesterday afternoon, when Ray had come back from meeting with Charlie Rabbit, Jenny told him she didn’t feel safe in her apartment. She was afraid Tony might come back. When Ray asked where she wanted to go, she said she didn’t care. She just had to get out. A hotel in Metairie was what they decided on. Jenny charged it to her credit card.

On the way out of the Quarter, with Ray driving Jenny’s Firebird, they had been held up in a line of traffic on Rampart Street. Ray stuck his head out the window to see what the holdup was. Up ahead, about ten cars in front of them, was an old nun in a blue and white habit. She stood blocking traffic, a handheld stop sign raised over her head as a long line of children crossed the street. Some of the kids loped along on crutches. One scooted across in a wheelchair. At the rate they were moving it was going to take all day.

Ray leaned on the horn, giving the old lady and the kids a long blast.

“What is it?” Jenny asked.

“A nun and a bunch of kids crossing the street.”

Jenny stepped out of the car for a minute and looked over the top of the backed-up traffic. When she got back in, she said, “That’s Sister Claire. She runs a home for kids with special needs.”

Ray blew the horn again. “Well the sister needs to get the retards out of the way so we can get moving.”

Jenny crossed her arms in front of her chest and glared at him. “You’re such an asshole.”

Ray was confused. “What did I say?”

She didn’t answer, just faced forward, staring through the windshield.

Sylvester’s blue Buick was parked in front of building fourteen. Ray pulled Jenny’s car up to the curb at the side of the building, out of sight of the front doors. Building fourteen was just like all the others: two-story, with eight apartments, all the doors facing the front, two wrought-iron stairwells leading to the second-floor balcony, one on each side of the building.

Which one was Sylvester’s apartment? The parking spots weren’t numbered. The Buick was parked directly in front of the bottom unit on the far left, but also in front of a stairway. That could mean something, or it could mean nothing. People were basically lazy; they liked to park in front of their own door, if possible. Maybe Sylvester lived in the bottom-left apartment. Or maybe he lived on the second floor and parked as close as possible to the stairs.

It could also mean Sylvester took the only spot available when he got home. About the only thing Ray was sure of was that Dylan Sylvester wasn’t going to stick his head out of the door and invite him in for coffee. Ray had to do something, so he decided to do the same thing he did when he was a cop: knock on doors. He went to the bottom left first.

A sleepy-looking black girl answered. Ray said, “I’m here to pick up Dylan for work.”

She sighed and rubbed a hand across her face. “You got the wrong apartment.” She raised a finger and pointed upward. Ray went up the stairs to apartment 1405, second floor, all the way on the left. He put his thumb over the peephole and knocked. Not a gentle tap but not a police pounding either. A business knock.

A voice on the other side said, “Who is it?”

“Security,” Ray said.

“What?” came the answer.

“Security. I need to talk to you about your car.”

The dead bolt turned. Ray glanced around. No one was in sight.

I sure wish I had a gun.

The door opened a crack. The chain was on. Ray slammed his shoulder into the door and tumbled through.

In the den, a long-haired white guy staggered backward. The door had smacked him in the forehead. He held his head with one hand, a pistol with the other. The longhair raised the gun. Ray knocked the gun aside, stepped in real close, and smashed his elbow into the longhair’s jaw.

The guy dropped hard and the gun clattered to the floor. Ray kicked the door shut, then scooped up the pistol. A. 40 caliber, stainless-steel Smith amp; Wesson. The man lay on his back, shirtless, with a blood-soaked bandage covering a wound on the left side of his stomach. The bandage was held in place by a wide gauze wrap that encircled his torso. He wore a pair of black sweatpants. Across the back of his right hand stretched a spiderweb tattoo.

Hello, Dylan Sylvester.

Ray stomped his heel on the wound, bringing a sharp cry from Sylvester and fresh blood seeping from the edges of the bandage. “That’s for shooting at me the other night.” Ray stomped again, more cries, more blood. “And that’s for trying to shoot at me just now.” Ray knew he had been lucky. This could easily have gone the other way, with him lying on the floor bleeding. It reminded him of something Sergeant Landry used to say, It’s better to be lucky than good… But when your luck runs out, you better be good.

Holding the Smith amp; Wesson in one hand, Ray grabbed Dylan Sylvester’s tangled mass of hair with his other hand and dragged him across the floor to the sofa. “Get up,” he said as he kicked the wounded man’s shins and forced him to his feet, then shoved him back onto the sofa.

Sylvester had both hands pressed against the bloody bandage. Slouched down on the sofa, he rocked back and forth, moaning as Ray stood in front of him with the pistol pointed at his face. He wanted Sylvester to get a good look at the muzzle, just the way Ray had the other night. “I don’t have time to fuck around,” Ray said. “You answer my questions, I’ll let you live.”

“Fuck you.” Dylan Sylvester spit his words through clenched teeth.

Ray jammed his foot down on the man’s stomach.

Sylvester howled in pain as he curled into a ball and started coughing. After a few hacks he was spitting up blood.

“In a minute,” Ray said, “you’re going to feel some real pain.”

When the coughing stopped, Sylvester sat up and eased his hands into the air, surrendering. “Okay, okay. What do you want to know?”

“Your crew, who else was in it?”

Sylvester shook his head. “What crew? I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Ray had to give Sylvester credit. He had guts, although it looked like some of them had leaked out. Ray leaned forward and clubbed Sylvester on the head with the pistol. As the guy started screaming, Ray snatched up a sofa cushion and shoved it into Sylvester’s face, pinning the armed robber’s head to the back of the sofa. If the neighbors heard him, they might call the cops.

After Sylvester quieted down, Ray pulled the cushion off his face. The wounded man held both hands to his head, and Ray saw a trickle of blood running between his fingers and down past one ear. Payback is a bitch. Ray jammed the sofa cushion against Sylvester’s left knee and pushed the barrel of the gun into it. “Homemade silencer,” Ray said. “I’m going to start with your knees.”

Sylvester’s face showed panic. “I… I’m the only one left.”

Ray had a feeling he might be telling the truth. “Who were the others?”

Dylan Sylvester’s Adam’s apple bobbed up and down. Then he said, “Scooby, Wop… and Eddie.”

“Where’s Wop and Eddie?” Ray already knew where Scooby was.

“Dead.”

“What happened?”

“There wasn’t supposed to be any shooting. Nobody was going to get hurt.”

Ray turned the pistol around in his hand and looked down the muzzle, remembering how it had looked pointed at his face, remembering how it had sounded as the man in the skull mask fired at his head while he lay on the floor feeling like his skull had been caved in. Ray flicked his hand out and cracked the barrel against Sylvester’s head again. “That’s for Pete.”

Sylvester rocked backward, squeezing his head in both hands. “That was Scooby who shot that guy.”

Ray watched Sylvester roll around on the sofa in agony for a minute. Then he said, “Tell me the whole thing, from the beginning.”

Sylvester looked up at him. “You’re gonna kill me, aren’t you?”

Ray shook his head. “Not if you tell me what I want to know.”

Sylvester stopped moving but kept his hands alongside his head. “A dude I know named Scooby-he’s the one set it up-he came to me and said he had an easy score for us. Said it was all arranged and we were gonna make big bucks off it. He even got money up front.”

“How much?”

“Five thousand. Me and Scooby took fifteen hundred apiece, split the rest between Wop and Eddie.”

“What do you mean it was arranged?”

“Somebody inside had it all set up. There wasn’t going to be no resistance. We just had to go in hard to make it look real.”

“Who set it up?”

Sylvester shrugged. “That was Scooby’s contact.”

Ray raised the pistol over his shoulder like a club.

Sylvester screamed, “I don’t know. I don’t know. I swear.”

The shitbird’s eyes said he was telling the truth. Ray lowered the gun. “What about me?”

“What about you?”

“You recognized me, didn’t you?”

“Yeah, but I had no idea you were going to be there. If I had known, I swear on my momma’s life”-Sylvester made the sign of the cross-“I never would have taken the job. You think I want to pull something where a cop who arrested me is working a detail?”

“I wasn’t working a detail.”

But Sylvester hadn’t heard him. “I wouldn’t have done it if I had known you were there. I swear.”

“You tried to put a bullet in my head.”

“I’m sorry about that.” Sylvester folded his hands in front of him, pleading. “I didn’t mean it. I swear to God. The gun just went off by itself. I never hurt nobody in my life.”

“What happened after?”

Sylvester looked relieved when Ray didn’t hit him again. He relaxed, dropping his hands into his lap. “Next night we were supposed to meet the guy and give him the money. Scooby said we’d get twenty grand out of the deal. He wanted me to drop the money, take Wop and Eddie as backup.”

“If it was his contact, why didn’t he go?”

Sylvester shrugged. “Now that I know what happened, it don’t make no sense him not going. But at the time all I was thinking about was them Benjamins.”

Ray nodded. He understood doing stupid things for money.

Sylvester said, “Scooby said the guy knew exactly how much we took and not to try and short him. I was supposed to turn over all the money to him. I had it in a canvas bag. And he would count out our share and give it to me.”

Pointing to Sylvester’s bandaged stomach, Ray said, “I’m guessing things didn’t go according to plan.”

“In the back of my head I knew something wasn’t right,” Sylvester said. “We were supposed to meet at the end of Esplanade, by the dock. I was driving, Wop had the money, and Eddie had a shotgun just in case the shit went bad. When I pulled up, there was nobody there. I turned the car around so we could get out in a hurry. That’s what saved my life.

“Soon as we stepped out of the car, them dudes must have been hiding already ’cause they started shooting. I only saw one guy, but there must have been more. The one I saw had a pistol and was back up against that big cement wall they got by the river, and he just kept shooting. I got hit, fell back inside the car. That’s when I saw Wop and Eddie on the ground. I just threw it in drive and got the hell out of there.”

“What about Scooby?”

“He’s dead, too. After the shit went down, I drove home. I can’t go to no hospital. Besides that, I’m safe here. Nobody knows where I live. I just moved here, not even Scooby knew about this place. I got home, found out the bullet went right through.” He pointed to the blood-soaked bandage. “I patched it up and been here ever since. I heard about Scooby on the news.”

“The guy you saw, what did he look like?”

Sylvester shook his head. “It was dark. He was backed up to that wall.” Sylvester raised a hand like he was touching the top of something tall. “That big…”

“Retaining wall,” Ray said.

“Yeah, the retaining wall. He must have been there when we pulled up ’cause like I said, soon as we got out of the car he started shooting.”

“Where’s the money?”

“Wop had it.” Sylvester shrugged. “I guess they got it now.”

“Who are they?”

“Them guys shooting at us.”

“Why do you think there was more than one guy at the river?”

“Seemed like too much shooting, but I guess it could’ve been just one guy.” Sylvester took a deep breath, pain showing on his face. “If it was just one guy, he was a good fucking shot.”

“You sure they’re dead-Wop and Eddie I mean?”

“I seen that on the news, too,” Sylvester said.

Ray never watched the news.

“What happens now?” Sylvester asked, leaning over on the seat cushions.

Good question, Ray thought. Charlie Liuzza said to call him if Ray needed help.

I sure as hell need help now.

Ray saw a telephone on the wall in the kitchen. He backed toward it, keeping the Smith amp; Wesson aimed at Sylvester. The telephone had no dial tone. “What’s wrong with your phone?” he asked Sylvester.

“I couldn’t afford the deposit, so I never got it hooked up.”

So much for calling Charlie. As he walked back to the sofa, Ray thought of another option. He could drive Sylvester to the House. Make him repeat what he had just told Ray. But who could he tell? Vinnie? Vinnie was probably in on this, and if so, he hadn’t done it alone. The guy at the dock, the one doing all the shooting, that sure as hell wasn’t Vinnie. So who was it? Tony, Rocco, Joey? It could have been anybody. Vinnie had access to a lot of shooters. For all Ray knew, it could’ve been Hector.

Charlie Rabbit had said, Find out who really did it and get some proof. Then all Ray had to do was take the proof to the Old Man.

Dylan Sylvester was the proof.

Ray looked down. Sylvester was sitting up against the backrest with a gun in his hand. A. 25-caliber automatic. A piece of shit that cost about twenty dollars on the street.

I forgot to search the goddamn sofa.

Ray had the Smith down by his right leg. Somehow between the couch and the kitchen, he had dropped his guard. Too much thinking.

He dropped to the floor, angling left as he fell. The. 25 auto flashed and popped. Ray felt something whiz past his right ear. He raised the Smith and jerked the trigger. The heavy gun bucked in his hand. The floor knocked the wind out of him. He had to lie there for a few seconds until he caught his breath.

When Ray crawled to his feet, Sylvester was still sitting upright on the sofa. The. 40-caliber bullet had hit him just above his top lip, right below that little piece of skin that separated his nostrils. His eyes were wide-open, staring at the wall.

Dylan Sylvester was deader than shit.

Looking down at the body of the man who had tried to shoot him three times, Ray remembered what Sylvester had said about the bullet that had buried itself in the floor of the House, the one that had almost buried itself in the back of Ray’s head. “Sorry about that, Dylan. The gun just went off by itself.”

Ray tucked the Smith. 40 into his pants, then grabbed a hand towel and wiped off everything inside the apartment he might have touched.

Outside, with the door locked, Ray rubbed the towel over the knob and the peephole where he had pressed his thumb. Then he walked down the stairs to Jenny’s car. The hand towel would go in the first trash can he saw.