House of the Rising Sun

by Chuck Hustmyre

  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 & 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.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  “You got balls interrupting my fucking supper,” Carlos Messina said. The mouthful of half-chewed calzone made his words hard to understand, but Tony had no trouble understanding his tone. The Old Man was at a booth in the back of Carmine’s, sitting across from a thirtysomething redhead showing a lot of cleavage. His two bodyguards slurped spaghetti at a nearby table.

  If it weren’t urgent, Tony never would have come. The boss liked his privacy, especially when he was entertaining one of his girlfriends. Looking at the two of them—Mr. Messina and the redhead—Tony wondered what kind of woman wanted to go to bed with such a fat old man, even a powerful fat old man.

  Shane had disappeared, but Tony had one lead. A degenerate gambler who spent all of his nongambling time hanging out at bars in and around the French Quarter had called him, which is why Tony needed to see the Old Man right away.

  Carlos swallowed a chunk of calzone, then said, “What do you want?”

  Tony fidgeted beside the booth. “I’m sorry to bother you, Mr. Messina,” he said as he glanced down at the redhead’s tits, “but it’s business.” Using the code, saying they needed privacy.

  Carlos nodded to the woman. “Go powder your nose.”

  The redhead glared at Tony. “I don’t need to powder my nose.”

  The Old Man fixed her with one of his looks, a look that didn’t invite argument. “Take a piss, go to the bar, whatever you want to do, but give us a minute.”

  She made a sound through her nose, sort of a “hmmff,” but she got up and walked to the bar. Tony watched her ass as she left, wishing he’d gotten her name. No way the boss could keep a woman like that satisfied.

  “You finished looking?” the Old Man said.

  Tony turned back to the booth. He could feel his cheeks burning. “I was just making sure—”

  “Tell me what’s so fucking important.”

  “Shane’s disappeared.”

  The Old Man threw his napkin on the table. “That’s what you came here to tell me?”

  Tony shook his head. “No, sir.”

  “What else?”

  “A guy called me, said he saw him in Hobnobber’s yesterday.”

  “So find him. You ain’t got to tell me how you do it.”

  Tony lowered his voice so the bodyguards couldn’t hear. “He was in there with Charlie Rabbit.”

  Carlos Messina took a deep breath. For a second—just a second—Tony saw pain on his face, the pain of betrayal. Then it was gone. The Old Man raised his napkin and wiped his mouth. Then he took a sip of wine. “Who was it said that about Charlie?”

  “Guy who’s into me for five grand.”

  “How’s he know Shane and the Rabbit?”

  “He’s an old—” The boss was old. “He’s been around the Quarter a long time. I put it out I was looking for Shane, and he must have heard. Probably thinks I’ll give him a break on some of what he owes if he helps me out.”

  “Will you?”

  “Maybe.”

  “You believe him?”

  Tony nodded. “I sent Joey over there. The bartender knows Charlie and verified it.”

  The Old Man was quiet for a moment. Finally, he said, “Charlie’s worked for me a long time.”

  Tony nodded again.

  Carlos Messina took another sip of wine.

  Tony never liked Charlie. The Rabbit acted like he was better than Tony. Both of them were made men, but Tony ran the motherfucking House. Vinnie was there, but it was Tony who ran the day-to-day. The House was a huge moneymaker, and it was Tony who had made it that way. Charlie had whacked a few people, served some time, but that was all. He didn’t bring in any money; he was just a hired gun. That was old-school. When Tony ran things, everybody was going to have to pull their own weight; everybody was going to have to produce the green.

  Tony said, “You think maybe they’re working together?”

  The Old Man—he seemed to have aged ten years right in front of Tony’s eyes—looked up at the ceiling. “There’s no reason for Charlie to be talking to Shane.”

  “So what do we do?”

  “You know where Charlie lives?”

  Tony said, “No, sir.”

  Mr. Messina pulled a pen out of his pocket and drew a map on his cloth napkin. He handed it to Tony. “I don’t know the address, but this’ll get you there. You go ask the Rabbit what he was doing with Shane. Tell him I want to know.”

  Tony glanced at the map, saw it was out in Kenner, then slipped the napkin into his jacket pocket.

  Carlos said, “You taking Joey with you?”

  “Him and Rocco.”

  “Call me and tell me what Charlie says.”

  Tony turned and glanced at the bar. The redhead was there, looking pissy, sucking a fruity drink through a straw. Tony turned back to the Old Man. “You going to be near a phone?”

  Carlos looked toward the bar, then back at Tony. “I’ll be at home. I lost my appetite.”

  Charlie Rabbit was old but he was hard. It wasn’t going to be easy. Tony needed clarification. He couldn’t afford a mistake. “What if he doesn’t cooperate?”

  Carlos wiped a hand across his face. He almost looked like he was about to cry. “Do what you got to do, but I want answers.”

  That gave Tony a free hand.

  “Why are you going to see him?” Jenny asked.

  They were in the hotel room in Metairie. Ray sat on the dresser, his back against the mirror. “Because he’s the only one who’s not trying t
o kill me.”

  Jenny sat at the foot of the bed, facing him. “He’s still one of them.”

  “But I think he can help me. Help us.”

  “How?”

  Ray wasn’t sure. He had called Charlie’s cell. “Not on the phone,” Charlie told him. He gave Ray his address and said, “Come over around seven. We’ll figure out what to do.”

  Looking at Jenny, Ray said, “He can talk to Old Man Carlos for me, maybe straighten this out.”

  “Will he do that?”

  He shrugged. “I hope so.”

  “I’m coming with you.”

  Ray scooped the car keys off the dresser and walked to the door. “No,” he said over his shoulder.

  “I’m not staying here by myself.”

  He flipped the night latch open, then turned to look at her. “No one knows we’re here.”

  “It’s not that. If I stay here, all I’m going to do is worry. If I go with you, at least I’ll know what’s going on.”

  Ray shook his head. “No way.”

  She folded her hands across her chest. “It’s my car.”

  He felt like telling her tough shit. He needed her car, he had the keys, and he was going to use it, but he didn’t say that. They had been getting along so well, and he didn’t want to spoil it. “Jenny, I’ve got to use the car. I’ll be back in a little while.” He turned and opened the door.

  “I’ll report it stolen.”

  He looked at her again. “No you won’t.”

  She stepped toward the phone. “Try me.”

  Ray stared at her as the tension between them mounted. She was a tough girl, not given to idle threats. He wouldn’t get very far if she called the police and told them he had just stolen her car.

  He grinned, and she grinned back. The tension evaporated. Jenny grabbed her purse. “Plus, I’m hungry.”

  Ray pointed a finger at her. “You’re staying in the car.”

  She nodded. “After you talk to Charlie, we’ll get something to eat. You can tell me what he said, and we’ll figure out what we’re going to do next.”

  He only had about eight bucks on him. “Who’s buying?”