“There were four of them.”
“I didn’t know the other two,” Ray said. “They were hired help.”
Priscilla started to get up. “I’m not listening to this bullshit anymore.”
Carlos held her down. He pointed to the French doors. “You move again, I’ll throw you through that glass door.” She sat back down, arms folded across her chest.
Carlos looked at Ray. “What about my brother?”
That was a subject Ray would rather skirt around. He was sure about Tony, but much less sure about Vinnie. Now was no time for speculation, but he couldn’t avoid the Old Man’s penetrating stare, so he gave the most neutral-and truthful-answer he could. “I don’t know.” It was probably the wrong answer.
Carlos’s face tightened and his lips barely moved as he spoke. “What the fuck do you mean you don’t know?”
“What I’m sure of is that Tony set up the robbery with people he could tie into me. Then he insisted I go after them. All the while he’s planning on putting the whole thing off on me. But as to whether your brother was in on it, that I don’t know.”
Carlos Messina was silent for almost a minute. Ray started sweating. He could smell it on himself. It smelled like fear. His whole life hung in the balance, waiting on the decision of an old man, sitting naked on a bed, his big belly hanging over his crotch. Meanwhile, Priscilla stared daggers at Ray.
Carlos looked down at the money in the bag, then nodded. “I’m going to kill that son of a bitch myself.”
Ray didn’t know if he was talking about Tony or Vinnie. He never found out because Priscilla Zello sprang across the bed, right over Carlos’s lap. She stretched out her long body and grabbed the Beretta pistol off the nightstand.
“Crazy bitch,” Carlos yelled as he wrapped his thick arms around her chest, squishing her bare breasts, but not able to stop her.
Ray sprang out of the chair, knocking it over behind him. He stepped to his right, toward the back door-a moving target is harder to hit-as Priscilla one-handed the pistol across the front of her body and fired at him.
Ray saw the flash, a yellow spurt of flame bursting from the muzzle, but adrenaline had diminished his sound perception, so he heard only a dull pop. Priscilla lay on her right side, sprawled on top of Carlos, who still had both arms locked around her and was trying to toss her off the bed. The Old Man had probably thrown her aim off just enough to save Ray’s life. Only six feet away, he didn’t expect her to miss again. With the Smith amp; Wesson thrust out in front of him, Ray yelled, “Drop the gun!”
Priscilla arched her back like a wrestler, pushing Carlos into the headboard. He held on to her with one arm and reached his other hand out, trying to grab the Beretta, but she moved it away from him like they were playing a game of keep-away.
Ray sidestepped all the way to the door. He yelled again, “Drop the gun!”
Priscilla rammed an elbow into Carlos’s gut. He grunted as his breath exploded through his lips. He dropped his hands. Priscilla rolled up onto her knees in front of Carlos, then leaned forward, bracing herself with one hand on the bed. She stretched the gun toward Ray.
Ray aimed the Smith. 40 and squeezed twice on the trigger-BOOM! BOOM! As far as he could tell the first shot missed, and the second whizzed under her hanging breasts and hit her in the thigh.
The Beretta flashed as Priscilla fired again. Ray heard the bullet THUNK against the wall behind him. He started pulling the trigger again-BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! The first shot caught her in the neck and lifted her onto her knees. The second one hit her low in the stomach, just above her dark patch of pubic hair. The third one missed and dug out a chunk of drywall just above the headboard. Priscilla fell back on top of Carlos, her eyes rolling up as one hand fell over the edge of the bed. Ray heard the Beretta clunk to the floor.
Carlos moaned. His breath was a wet sucking sound. Ray stepped to the side of the bed, his gun down by his leg. The Old Man’s eyes darted from side to side and although his mouth moved, all that came out was a gurgle. Blood bubbled from a hole in his chest, just above his left nipple.
Priscilla lay on her back, on top of Carlos, her smooth white skin punched through with three jagged black holes. The blood from her neck partially covered her breasts like a red bib, but her heart had stopped and so had the bleeding.
Carlos reached a hand out to Ray. Instinctively, Ray took it. Then he heard a rattle deep inside the Old Man’s chest as he breathed his last breath. Ray sank to the floor. He knew one thing for sure. He was fucked, absolutely fucked. No way, absolutely no way, could he get out of this. When the Guidos found out he had killed-
A thought, like a single razor-thin sliver of light sliced through Ray’s brain. The thought was nothing but a single word- IF. If they found out he killed Carlos Messina.
He looked at the two bodies. Naked bodies, entwined together in bed. Lovers caught in the act. Lovers shot dead. A crime of passion, a crime of insane jealously, a crime committed by an enraged husband.
Ray picked up the Beretta. He de-cocked the hammer and jammed the pistol in his waistband. The chair went back against the wall; then he wiped off the aluminum tubing with his shirttail. He looked for his footprints in the blood but didn’t see any. Once he got away, he would throw away his shoes just to be safe.
He backed toward the door, carrying Tony’s bag and the Smith amp; Wesson, scanning the room for any identifiable sign that he had been there. At the door, he used his shirt again and wiped off both sides of the handle.
Standing in the open doorway, Ray pulled Tony’s lighter out of his pocket, the ugly “Z” lighter Priscilla Zello had given her husband.
She bitches about my smoking. Says it ruins all her clothes.
Tony’s wife didn’t smoke. So it stood to reason that if Tony’s lighter was at Carlos Messina’s camp, Tony must have brought it. If it was on the floor, Tony must have dropped it. When he caught his wife in bed with Carlos and killed them both.
Ray smeared his palms over the metal surface of the lighter. Lab techs had to find smudges on things, otherwise those things looked planted. He tossed the lighter onto the floor, then closed the door behind him.
Ray tossed the Beretta in the swamp. Driving back toward the city, he stopped at the first gas station he came to on Highway 90. The station was closed. People out here went home early. The pay phone was attached to the corner of the building, over by the restrooms. He used his shirttail to hold the handset.
Ray told the 911 operator that he was a neighbor, out walking his dog when he heard shots coming from the Messina camp. No, he didn’t want to give his name. That’s why he was using a pay phone. Didn’t she know who Carlos Messina was? He didn’t want to get involved. He was just reporting what he had heard in case someone needed help.
Was anyone hurt? the operator asked.
He didn’t know for sure, Ray said, but he heard gunshots and didn’t that usually mean someone was hurt? Before he hung up, Ray told the operator one more thing: just after the shots, he had seen a man pulling away in a green car. He wasn’t sure what kind, but it was big, one of those luxury cars, maybe a Cadillac or Lincoln.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Ray pulled his Mustang into a parking garage next door to Harrah’s Casino. The six-story garage was well lit and had twenty-four-hour traffic and security. He opened the trunk and tossed in Tony Zello’s leather carryall.
Glancing around the garage, Ray spotted an old couple just stepping into the elevator. He slipped Dylan Sylvester’s Smith amp; Wesson. 40 caliber down the back of his pants and covered it with his shirt.
Ray took the elevator down, walked across Canal Street, and eased into the French Quarter.
After more than a decade of interviewing suspects and witnesses, at least half of them lying to him, Ray had faith in his ability to judge if someone was telling the truth, but it had to be face-to-face. Ninety percent of communication is nonverbal. Facial expressions, body posture, hand gestures, eye movements-those are the things
that give away the liar, and none of that comes through during a telephone conversation.
Interviewing someone over the telephone was like phone sex. She might sound like a twenty-two-year-old, 120-pound, blonde-haired, blue-eyed goddess, but odds were she was a fifty-year-old, 300-pound hag, with thinning hair and bad breath.
He had to talk to Vinnie face-to-face.
Ray wasn’t sure where Tony was, but he had to assume he was probably at the House. From a doorway alcove across the street and half a block away, Ray spent twenty minutes watching the front door of the House, making sure Tony wasn’t dicking around outside, greeting customers, acting like a big shot. The key to Ray’s plan was to get in and out without running into Tony.
Getting in turned out to be easier than Ray thought. He just strolled in. The new doorman, a guy Ray had never seen before but who definitely looked Italian, even opened the door for him.
Inside, the first floor was packed. On the stage, a couple of the girls were doing their oiled-up, titty-rubbing routine. No one even looked at Ray as he drifted past the bar, past the empty stool where he used to sit, and climbed the stairs. The pistol wedged into the back of his pants felt heavy.
Same thing on the second floor. From the stairwell, Ray saw the players jammed around the tables, throwing down money and chips.
On the third floor, he caught the eye of one of the girls draped across a chaise. The refurbished and resized rooms where the girls got down to work were spaced along a central hallway, but the area near the stairs was set up as a lounge. If a guy couldn’t find a girl in the strip club or casino, all he had to do was go up to the third floor and he could find one waiting for him on a love seat or reclining on a sofa. Vinnie liked to keep two or three girls there all the time.
When the girl on the chaise looked at him, Ray didn’t know what else to do, so he pressed a finger to his lips, pleading for silence. She shrugged and rolled her head back against the cushion.
On the fourth floor, Ray crept down the hall to the sitting area outside Vinnie’s apartment. A leather couch and two wingback chairs were arranged around a coffee table. Ray checked his watch. Five minutes past midnight. Vinnie wasn’t much of a night owl, so the odds were good that he was tucked in for the night, with or without the missus, depending on whether it was bridge night.
The door to Vinnie’s suite was solid, made of dark wood, and heavy, the kind normally found on the exterior of a house. An old-fashioned brass knocker was centered just below the peephole. Ray glanced around the sitting area, hoping for some inspiration, some idea how to get the door open. Knocking was out of the question. Even if Vinnie didn’t know about his brother yet, as soon as he saw Ray standing outside his door, he would at least call Tony, or, at the very least, if Tony was out, summon a couple of muscle heads up to put the grab on Ray until he could find Tony.
No inspiration came. Ray thought about the lock-picking kit he used to carry around in his briefcase. He had carried it for years, maybe used it twice. Now that he really needed it, he couldn’t remember what he had done with it. When you get arrested, denied bond, then later sent to prison, your possessions seem to have a way of disappearing.
He raised his foot and kicked. The door flew open. Whoever had remodeled the place had hung the heavy door on the hotel’s original door frame. The cheap wooden jamb splintered as the lock’s strike plate tore through it.
Ray had been in Vinnie’s penthouse before and rushed straight into the bedroom. In the light that spilled from the open bathroom door, Ray saw Vinnie sitting up in bed, eyes wide, wearing a just-woken-up-in-the-middle-of-the-night look on his face. The spot next to him was empty.
Ray held both hands out and open, imploring Vinnie to stay put. He left the Smith amp; Wesson tucked against his back. Last time he had pulled it out things hadn’t gone so well. “Where’s your wife?”
Vinnie glanced at the spot beside him. “Playing bridge,” he said, not fully awake enough yet to demand what Ray was doing breaking into his house in the middle of the night.
“I’m just here to talk, Vinnie. All I’m asking for is two minutes.”
Vinnie tensed and shot a glance at the nightstand beside him. There was a telephone on top. Below that a single drawer. Ray didn’t think it was the telephone Vinnie was thinking about grabbing.
“Vinnie, I have a gun, so if you’re thinking about reaching into that drawer for a piece, don’t. You’re not going to make it.” Ray waved his open hands back and forth. “I just want to talk.”
Vinnie was old, fat, and slow. He looked toward the nightstand one more time, then sighed. He slouched against the headboard and looked up at Ray. “So talk.”
Ray backed up and dropped into a chair that sat next to the wall, just inside the bedroom door. From Vinnie’s point of view, having a man towering over you while you sat in your bed wearing a pair of silk pajamas had to be intimidating. Ray didn’t want to intimidate him. He really did just want to talk. He wanted to find out the truth.
“I didn’t kill your son,” Ray said.
Vinnie didn’t respond, just stared across the room at Ray with a pair of sad eyes.
Ray went on. “But I’ve got to ask you something.”
“What?”
“Why was there so much money in the counting room that night?”
“I gave you a job when you got out. I paid you good money. I even trusted you.”
“Vinnie, I didn’t do it. If I did, I wouldn’t be here right now. I’d have taken the money and disappeared.”
Vinnie folded his hands across his paunch. “Tony warned me about-”
“Fuck Tony! He’s the reason I’m in this mess.”
“What do you mean?”
“Why was there so much money in the counting room?”
Ray watched Vinnie’s eyes. They moved up and to Vinnie’s left, the analytical side of the brain, searching for a memory; not toward the right side, the creative side, the side where lies came from. It was something Ray had learned in interview and interrogation class.
Vinnie said, “This year Halloween fell on a Friday. We figured we would get real busy. We were right.”
“Whose idea was that?”
Again, Vinnie’s eyes cut up to his left as he pulled down a memory. “Tony said we needed extra cash.”
Bingo.
“Tony’s the one who set this up. He’s the one who got your boy killed.”
“Bullshit,” Vinnie barked. His eyes cut to the nightstand drawer.
“Think about it, Vinnie. Who was it who was really doing the pushing to have me work this thing?” Ray was guessing, but he could tell by the way Vinnie’s face changed that he was guessing right. “When we thought Hector might know something, Tony shot him. When I started tracking down the four gunmen, they all turned up dead before I could get to them.” Except for Dylan Sylvester. He wasn’t dead before I got to him, but that’s another story. “What you said was right, you gave me a job and you pay me well. I got no complaints, and I got no reason to violate your trust.”
Vinnie stared straight ahead. His face soft. He was thinking about it. “The money is reason enough,” he mumbled, but it sounded more like a reflex. “Everybody needs money.”
Ray thought about something Tony had said, Vinnie couldn’t afford to buy a grilled cheese sandwich. Telling him about Vinnie’s financial problems. “Tony set it up so it looked like I did it, and then he led me around by the nose until he had me thinking it was you.”
“Me!”
“He told me Pete’s school was tapping you out. That and your wife’s shopping. You were basically broke.”
“Tony’s been telling me it was you who set it up and got my son killed.”
“He told me it was your decision to have so much money that night.”
“That’s bullshit.”
“And whose idea was it to skip a couple of pickups?” “Tony said picking up bags of cash with so many people in the club was too tempting, like asking for trouble. So we cut back som
e that night.”
“Which left a lot more in the counting room.”
Vinnie nodded.
Ray said, “He was planning to put it off on both of us.”
“Why would he do that?”
Ray wondered if Vinnie could really be so stupid that he didn’t see the ambitious fuck he had working for him. “He wants to run the House. At least that’s what he wants right now, no telling what he’s going to want later.”
“Tony is family.” Vinnie voiced the words, but the conviction in them was absent.
Ray glanced at the empty spot in the bed beside Vinnie.
“You said your wife was playing bridge?”
Vinnie nodded. “Twice a week.”
“That’s a lot of bridge.”
“What do you mean?” Vinnie’s voice was low and defensive.
Ray glanced at the telephone on the nightstand and thought about the carnage at the Old Man’s cabin. Any minute that phone could ring. He didn’t want to be here when Vinnie got the word his brother was dead. “I have to go, Vinnie.”
“Where the fuck you going?”
Ray was sure Vinnie was telling the truth. Tony had duped Vinnie just like he had duped Ray.
Now Ray had to get out of here. If he could lie low until the news broke about Carlos and Priscilla, and once the cops started hunting Tony down for murder, Ray could resurface. He could hand Tony’s bag full of money to Vinnie and say he found it at Dylan Sylvester’s apartment. Vinnie wasn’t going to look too closely at the logic of Tony leaving the money with a tweaked-out stickup man, not when Vinnie had all the money back in his hands, not when he was the last man standing and the new boss of New Orleans.
But first Ray had to get out of here and disappear, just for a few hours, until the storm out on Lake Catherine blew over. “I think I can get the money back,” Ray said.
Vinnie’s eyes narrowed with suspicion. “How?”
Ray looked at his watch. It was almost twelve thirty. “Give me until noon.”
“Why?”
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