House of the Rising Sun

CHAPTER SIX

Ray called three times and left three messages. Jimmy didn’t call him back. Ray decided to go in person.

The New Orleans Police Department headquarters building is an ugly, 1960s-era, five-story block of cement and smoked glass that stands between the jail and municipal court. As Ray crossed the open plaza in front of the dilapidated building, he passed the dry, weed-choked memorial fountain and tried not to look at the memorial wall.

Set in a corner of Sirgo Plaza, the fallen-officers memorial was the only modern edifice in the entire jail-court-police complex. The memorial wall was a seven-foot-tall pane of thick glass, surrounded by a rectangular concrete frame. Etched into the glass were the names of all of the New Orleans police officers who had been killed in the line of duty. When he was a rookie cop, Ray used to stop and stare at the glass wall. He would get choked up thinking about the fallen heroes whose names were inscribed there. This time he raced past it, too ashamed to look.

Just inside the main door to headquarters, angled off to the left, was a security desk, almost always manned by a cop who was on light duty, usually one recovering from an injury. Two rope lines and a red carpet guided people to the security desk, but Ray slipped to the right as soon as he got inside. The officer on duty was busy with a couple of visitors and didn’t notice as Ray passed the elevator and glided toward the back stairs.

On the third floor, Ray opened the door marked CRIMINAL INVESTIGATION BUREAU. A window made of bullet-resistant glass was set in the wall of the tiny waiting room. There was a small circular talking device mounted in the window. It looked like some sort of aluminum speaker. No one was behind the window, so Ray rang the old-fashioned metal bell that sat on the ledge in front of the glass.

Several seconds later, a fat female civilian support officer strolled up to the window. She stared at Ray for a second, giving him that bored civil-service look, then said, “Yeah?”

“Is Detective LaGrange here?” Ray asked.

She smacked a wad of gum a couple times while she looked him over. “Hold on,” she said as she turned and walked away.

While he waited, Ray looked at the artwork on the waiting room walls. Cheap frames around police public awareness pictures. One was a stark black-and-white photo of a chalk outline drawn on the street where a body had fallen. A superimposed image in the lower right-hand corner showed a close-up shot of a young hand holding two rocks of crack cocaine. At the bottom of the poster, in big block letters, was the legend CRACK KILLS.

Another framed picture showed kids on a playground. Printed at the bottom of the picture were the words CHILDREN SHOULD BE SEEN NOT HEARD , but a red line ran through the word heard, and printed over it in red letters, in what was supposed to look like handwritten graffiti, was the word shot. The detective office was a cheerful place to hang out.

An electric solenoid buzzed. Ray turned to the window and saw the fat civil servant pointing to the door. He pushed it open just before the buzzing stopped and stepped inside the Detective Bureau. Detective Jimmy LaGrange was walking toward him. In his early forties, LaGrange was thicker around the middle and thinner on top than the last time Ray had seen him. He wore a shirt and tie and was slipping into a sport coat.

“Hey, Jimmy,” Ray said, and stuck out his hand.

The detective brushed past him without taking it. “I figured it was you.” He pointed toward the door. “Outside.”

The door hadn’t even closed behind Ray before LaGrange was through it. Ray turned and followed him out into the hall. As he caught up to the cop at the elevator, Ray asked, “What’s wrong, Jimmy? You don’t have time for an old friend?”

The detective looked up and down the hall. They were alone. “What are you doing here?” he said in a loud whisper.

The elevator door opened. Inside stood a uniformed lieutenant and a sergeant. Ray followed LaGrange as he stepped into the elevator. Neither of them spoke. On the first floor Ray followed LaGrange out the front door. They turned left. They crossed the street that ran between headquarters and the sheriff’s building, finally stopping near a Dumpster.

Ray said, “Jimmy, what the hell’s wrong with you?”

“Me?” LaGrange looked shocked. “Have you lost your fucking mind?”

“You didn’t return my calls.”

The detective glanced at his watch. “I figured you’d get the point.”

“What point?”

“I can’t be seen talking to you.”

“I’m in a jam and I need some help.”

“You mean police help?”

Ray nodded.

“Then call a cop.” He turned back toward headquarters and started walking.

Ray shouted after him, “You owe me, Jimmy.” LaGrange kept walking. Ray shouted louder. “You remember Vice?”

LaGrange spun around and came back to Ray at a run. “Keep your voice down.”

“I ask you for help and you just walk away,” Ray said. “It’s like I told you, you owe me.”

“I’m sorry about what happened to you,” LaGrange said. “I feel bad, but it’s not my fault. I don’t owe you anything.”

“Think again.” Ray leaned against the Dumpster. “They wanted every one of us.”

Jimmy LaGrange looked around. “I don’t want to talk about this.”

Ray sprang away from the Dumpster. “I don’t give a damn what you want to talk about.” The detective took a step back. Ray stepped closer. “Internal Affairs, the FBI, the U.S. Attorney’s Office-all of them tried to make a deal with me. They practically offered me a walk. All I had to do was testify against everybody in Vice. They were looking for racketeering charges. They wanted headlines, the kind of headlines that come with cops getting life sentences.”

“Ray, I appreciate what you did-”

“You appreciate it?” Ray spit out the words. “You don’t even know what I did.”

LaGrange stared at him.

“Fitz, Conner, and Two-Gun made deals.” Ray could feel himself getting worked up. “Conner and Fitz got eighteen months. Two-Gun only got twelve months. But Sarge and I didn’t make any deals. I kept my mouth shut and did almost five years.”

“I’m sorry, Ray, but I told you, it’s not my-”

“Sarge got a hundred and twenty months. That’s ten goddamn years. I get out and what do I hear? That you’re still a detective. Like nothing ever happened.”

“I’m a detective in name only. They got me buried in the Crime Analysis Section, going over records, looking for crime patterns.”

“You know where they had me buried? Have you ever been to Terre Haute? You know how cold it gets in Indiana?”

LaGrange shook his head.

“Now I come back and say I need some help, and you treat me like some scumbag off the street.”

LaGrange sagged. “I’m sorry. You surprised me is all. I got a new wife and a little girl, a three-year-old.” He fished his wallet out of his back pocket and opened it.

Ray saw the picture holders and held up his hand. “I don’t want to see photos of your family. I told you I’m in a jam and need help.”

LaGrange stuffed his wallet back into his pocket. “Sure, Ray.” He took a deep breath. “What do you need?”

“The Pete Messina murder.”

“Oh, shit.” LaGrange’s shoulders sunk. “I heard you were working for them.”

“I needed a job.”

“Is it true they got taken off for a lot of dough?”

Ray nodded.

“The Eighth District report says it was an unsuccessful robbery, resulting in a homicide,” LaGrange said.

“That’s Tony Zello’s cover story.”

“How did he keep a lid on what was going on upstairs?”

“He didn’t let anybody go upstairs, not even the Homicide dicks. He claimed the robbery crew stayed downstairs the whole time. He said they were trying to rob the strip bar, but when one of them shot Pete, they got scared and took off.”

“None of the detectives even tried to go upstairs?”

Ray shook his head. “Tony said the second and third floors were nothing but storage and that the fourth floor was a private residence.”

LaGrange arched his eyebrows. “And that stopped them?”

“Tony put in a call to their captain.”

“How much did they get?”

“Three hundred large.”

LaGrange let out a low whistle. “How are you involved?”

“I’m supposed to find them.”

“The perps?”

Ray nodded.

“How are you supposed to do that?”

“Vinnie has this crazy idea that since I was a detective, I should be able to find four armed robbers.”

“Makes sense, I guess.”

“To a moron.”

They stared at each other.

“What do you need from me?” LaGrange said.

“A lead,” Ray said. “Somewhere to start.”

“I told you, I’m not a real detective anymore. I’m a paper pusher.”

“You’ve got access to all the reports, right?”

LaGrange nodded.

“Then get me copies of everything that’s been written on what went down at the House.”

“Jesus Christ,” LaGrange said. “Do you know what you’re asking?”

“I’m asking for your help, partner.”

LaGrange started to say something. Then he looked away. When he looked back, he said, “I’ll see what I can do.”

“I need to find Hector,” Ray said.

Tony peered over the top of the newspaper he held in front of his face. “What?”

“I’ve been trying to track him down and can’t find him.” Tony stuck his hand out to his side, palm down, and held it three feet above the ground. “You talking about the little guy at the door?”

“Yeah,” Ray said. Hector wasn’t three feet tall, more like five five. He was Mexican or Central American, some kind of Latin, but he tried to act Italian. “He hasn’t been at work since the robbery,” Ray said. “I just came from his apartment and his girlfriend says she hasn’t seen him.”

Tony was stretched out in an overstuffed chair on the fourth floor of the House, in a sitting room just outside Vinnie’s office. Down the long hall was another sitting room and the door to Vinnie and Mrs. Vinnie’s penthouse apartment. Tony’s newspaper was folded to the sports page. “What do I care if his girlfriend doesn’t know where he is?” Tony said.

Ray hadn’t wanted to come back to the House. Tony had already made it clear that Ray didn’t have to work his regular shift. His new job was to find the four masked gunmen. Nothing else. Earlier, on the phone, Tony had said, “You weren’t worth a shit preventing the robbery. Let’s see if you’re any good at solving it.”

While waiting for Jimmy LaGrange to come up with copies of the police reports, Ray decided to do what he would have done were he still a detective. That meant interviewing witnesses. The first person he wanted to talk to was Hector, to find out why the little taco bender just happened to be AWOL at the exact moment the bad guys showed up. But Hector hadn’t shown up for work.

Hector lived uptown. When Ray got there, he found out the diminutive doorman’s apartment was inside a big two-story house off Magazine Street. The once-elegant home had been converted into a rooming house with five tiny efficiencies on each floor. Ray found Hector’s girlfriend but not Hector.

With no other leads, Ray had gone back to the House, but talking to Tony was making him regret that decision. “You understand what I’m saying?” Ray asked. “I haven’t seen Hector since he told me he was going take a piss and asked me to cover the door for him.”

“So what?” Tony said. “You know how unreliable beaners are. The whole damn city is filled with them. They’re the only ones who will even take a job, though. Trouble is, half the time they don’t show up.”

“I know you’re not that bright, Tony, so it’s probably good that Vinnie put me on this thing instead of you. But if you have any idea where Hector is-”

Tony tossed the newspaper aside and jumped to his feet. “You need to shut up while you have a chance, Ray. The way you’re acting, and the fact you’re still standing here instead of getting out on the street and really searching for the little wetback, you must think it’s just a coincidence that he’s disappeared?”

“I don’t believe in coincidences,” Ray said.

Tony jerked his thumb toward the stairs. “Then why don’t you get your ass out there and find him?”

“Tony, has your hair gel seeped into your brain? Can you even understand what I’m telling you? Hector is missing. In my old business we used to call that a clue.”

Tony’s eyes narrowed but he didn’t fire back. Ray thought that was unusual. He wondered where Rocco was. Usually you didn’t see Tony without his big goon nearby. He thought about locking an arm around Tony’s neck and giving him a Chinese haircut. The kind you gave as a kid, raking your knuckles against another kid’s scalp until he screamed. Ray would bet money that Tony would scream like a little girl.

“What do you want, Shane?”

Ray pointed at the closed door to Vinnie’s office. “I want to talk to Vinnie, find out what he knows about Hector. It’s not like you guys keep personnel files, but somebody has to know the kid. Somebody hired him.”

“I’m not going to bother Vinnie with that crap.” Tony poked a finger into Ray’s chest. “You want to know where Hector is, go find him.”

Nodding at the closed door, Ray said, “What happened, Tony? Vinnie got tired of having your nose stuck up his ass? He sent you out to play all by yourself?”

Tony’s face flushed and his lips tightened into a thin line. He took a step forward.

Ray dropped his right foot back and brought his hands up. “Be careful, Tony. Your butt-boy isn’t here to protect you. It’s just you and me this time.”

Tony stopped. His eyes stared straight into Ray’s. His face had turned red, and a vein bulged in his forehead. But he didn’t swing. Instead, he spoke in a low hiss. “It’s just a matter of time, Shane.”

Ray grinned. “You’re right about that.”