Charlie Hustmyre: House of the Rising Sun

“Why does he have such a hard-on for me? I get paid to stop drunks from pawing the girls and to keep strangers from going upstairs. Protecting the cage was Bobby’s job.”

“Because Tony is a fucking turd. He’s covering his own ass and Bobby’s. Bobby is on his crew, same as those other two muscle heads. Tony put Bobby in the cage, so if Bobby catches any blame, that puts blame on Tony, and he’s not going to let that happen.”

Ray took a sip of his drink. Then he said, “Tony blames me, but Vinnie trusts me to help him. Am I missing something?”

“What you said in Vinnie’s office was right. We got the captain of the Eighth District in our pocket. We’re practically sending his kids to college.”

“Then why does Vinnie need my help?”

“Because our friend the captain can’t do us any good.”

“He’s the district commander. He can do anything he wants.”

Charlie shook his head. “The Public Integrity Bureau is crawling up his ass. He’s scared.”

“I can understand that,” Ray said. “PIB crawled up my ass and sent me away for four years.”

“So the captain told Tony to pound sand.”

“I bet Tony loved hearing that.”

Charlie shrugged. “What’s he gonna do? The man’s a police captain.”

“And I’m the next best thing?”

“Believe it or not, Vinnie likes cops. If he wasn’t born a wiseguy, he probably would have been a cop, one of those fat doughnut-eating cops, but still a cop. He’s the one told his brother to bring you on after you got out of the joint. Cops got a better education than your average goombah, anyway, so Vinnie probably figures you got a better shot at catching these punks than any of our guys.”

“But I’m not a cop anymore,” Ray said. “I tried to explain that to him. I’m an ex-con. That means I’m blacklisted for life. I’m like a leper. Where I show up, other cops run so they don’t catch anything from me. All I am now is an unarmed security guard. I can’t go after a crew of armed robbers and murderers without a gun, but if I even get near one, I’m violating my parole.”

“Nobody’s asking you to take them down. Just help us find them.”

Ray steeled his resolve. “What if I say no?”

Charlie’s face got hard. “Then you’ll be a problem.”

They had another round. This time Ray paid.

As they were leaving the bar, Charlie slipped a napkin into Ray’s hand. “My number’s on it. You need help, give me a call. I’ll see what I can do.”

“You think that asshole is going to do it?” Tony asked, leaning against the wall next to one of the big windows in Vinnie Messina’s fourth-floor office.

Vinnie, his ass sunk into the sofa, munched on peanuts from a jar. He nodded as he dropped another handful into his mouth. “He’ll do it.”

Tony eyed the empty chair behind Vinnie’s desk. Pushing away from the wall, he strolled over and sat down, listening with satisfaction as the rich leather creaked under his weight. The casters rolled easily on the hardwood floor as he slid up to the desk and propped his elbows on the lacquered top. “You didn’t see him with that cop downstairs. I don’t think he’s bullshitting when he says he ain’t got no friends on the department anymore.”

Vinnie upended the jar, pouring the last of the peanuts directly into his mouth. When he finished crunching them, he said, “My brother’s gonna think it’s funny if I don’t put Shane on the job.”

Tony knew that Vinnie lived in his older brother’s shadow. He also knew Vinnie didn’t like it, but there was nothing Vinnie could do about it. He wasn’t tough enough to really stand up to his brother. Old Man Carlos put up with a certain amount of posturing from his kid brother, but that was it. Vinnie wasn’t his own man. He certainly would never be able to replace his brother. Someone else would have to do that. “Then why did you let that prick Charlie Rabbit talk you out of it?” Tony said.

Vinnie set the empty peanut jar down on the end table. “He didn’t talk me out of it. I agreed that Shane could think about it until tomorrow.”

“Since when do we let our guys think about whether or not they’re going to do what we tell them?”

“We don’t tell anybody anything,” Vinnie snapped. “I tell them what to do. And they’re not our guys. They’re my guys.”

Now wasn’t the time to argue. Patience, Tony told himself. He had to have patience. “That’s what I meant.”

“I know you got a beef with him over that broad downstairs, but-”

“I don’t give a shit about her,” Tony snapped. “She’s just a piece of tail, like half a dozen others.”

Vinnie stared at him. “When you let things get personal, that’s when you lose control.”

Tony Z. waved a hand at him. “I just don’t like the guy.”

“I like him, and my brother likes him. He did five years for us.”

“It wasn’t five years,” Tony said, tired of hearing about how tough Ray Shane was supposed to be. Everything he had seen of Shane lately just convinced him even more of what a scared little prick he was.

“Close enough to five,” Vinnie said. “But the important thing, at least as far as my brother is concerned, is the guy didn’t rat.”

“He knows what we do to rats.”

Vinnie struggled to his feet. “Point I’m making, Carlos appreciates Shane’s loyalty. And so do I. Shane is an ex-cop. He’s perfect for this job.”

Tony watched Vinnie, wondering if the fat man was going to want his chair back. But Vinnie lurched to the nearest window. Gazing out at the filthy streets of the French Quarter, Vinnie said, “The one thing my brother admires most in people is loyalty.”

Tony swiveled the chair toward the window, looking at Vinnie’s back. “How does doing a few years in the joint make him so loyal? I say it shows how stupid he is for letting the FBI get him on tape.”

Without turning, Vinnie asked, “You know why Charlie Rabbit was here?”

“He said he was here to help, whatever that means.”

“More than that,” Vinnie said. “My brother values Charlie’s opinion over anyone else’s. If he doesn’t like what Charlie tells him about how we handle this situation… Well, a lot of people might end up paying for what happened last night.”

Tony leaned back in the big chair, getting comfortable. “I don’t trust Shane.”

Vinnie turned away from the window, fixing Tony with a stare. Surprisingly, the gaze of the man he considered little more than a fool suddenly made Tony uncomfortable. Vinnie’s eyes had something burning in them that Tony had never before seen in the blubbery fool’s expression. Menace. “Carlos is watching us, so you make sure Shane does what I want him to do.”

Ray stepped out of the Hog’s Breath Saloon and into a torrential downpour. As he ran across the street to the Rising Sun, he held a newspaper he had swiped from the bar over his head as a shield. At the House, he stood under the awning waiting for the rain to let up so he could make a dash for his car, which sat two blocks away on Decatur Street.

But after ten minutes of smoking and waiting, the rain was still coming down in a windswept torrent, so Ray tossed his cigarette into the street, raised the sopping wet newspaper over his head again, and ran. When he reached the parking lot, he was sure he was dying. His lungs burned, and the stitch in his side felt like a knife wound. A small booth stood at the entrance to the parking lot, set between two lift gates, one for entry and one for exit.

Ray ducked into the booth and squeezed the attendant against the wall. “Sorry, Shorty,” Ray panted. “I just got to catch my breath.”

Shorty was an old black man, no more than five foot two, bald and pudgy. He had been the parking lot attendant for as long as Ray could remember.