Charlie Hustmyre - House of the Rising Sun

“You’re the detective,” Tony said. “What do you think?”

“If I was working it as a straight robbery case, I’d be looking real hard at Ray Shane.”

Tony nodded.

“Shane had means, motive, and opportunity,” the cop said. “He knows how to set something like this up. There’s a lot of money involved, and he’s the one who let them in the front door.”

Tony tried not to, but he couldn’t help grinning just a little. “That’s just what I was thinking.”

The address on the burglary report was for a small apartment complex off Franklin Avenue. Two months ago, someone had smashed out a window on Sylvester’s car and boosted his stereo. What was amazing to Shane was that Sylvester had filed a police report. The guy’s a career criminal-dope, robbery, assault-somebody grabs his radio, he calls the police like a regular citizen, like he had been violated.

The building was decent, not too much trash on the ground and only one junked car in the parking lot. A sign out front boasted that a resident manager was on the premises.

Sitting in his car, starring at the door to Sylvester’s apartment, Ray decided he didn’t have any more time to waste. Sylvester might not be home. It might be hours, maybe even days, before he came back. If he was home, he might not leave for hours or days. He might not even live there anymore. What Ray needed to do was get inside that apartment. Right now.

Too bad I don’t have a gun.

Sylvester’s apartment was on the ground floor. As Ray approached the door he felt his heart hammering against his ribs. Sweat dripped down his back. He really wished he had a gun.

He stood to the side of the door and knocked. No answer. He knocked again. First trying the old soft-knock trick, then gradually building to the standard police pounding. Still no answer. The next-door neighbor stuck her head out. She was about twenty-five, skinny, with shoulder-length brown hair. Ray pegged her as an ex-junkie, probably with a kid she was trying to take care of. “Who you looking for?” she said.

There was no sense lying to her. “I’m looking for Dylan.”

She shook her head. “He moved out.”

Another dead end. “You know where he went?”

The girl looked him up and down. “You a cop?”

“Just a friend.”

“You’ll have to ask the manager. He might have left a forwarding address or something.”

“Where’s the manager?”

“Apartment fourteen,” she said.

“How long ago did he move out?”

“Last month sometime. Right after all them cars got broke into.”

“Thanks,” Ray said. He headed toward apartment fourteen.

Ray told the manager Sylvester had rented a TV and was three months behind on the payments. “I’m supposed to get the TV back or get the money,” he said.

The fiftysomething manager sat at a round table in her kitchen with one elbow propped on the chipped Formica top, a cigarette burning between her fingers. She wore a threadbare pink housecoat. Between drags on her cigarette, she said, “He still owes me two months’ rent.”

“You got any idea where he went?”

She shook her head and pursed her lips for another drag. Then she stopped and snapped her fingers. “One time, right after all that trouble we had with them kids breaking into the cars, he told me he was going to move out to the East, to one of those complexes that has security.” She traced a circle on the table with one yellowed fingertip. “One with a security fence and a guard.

Never before had Ray realized how many apartment complexes there were in New Orleans East. He started his search just past the high-rise, the bridge that arches high over the Industrial Canal. He cruised up and down Morrison Avenue, then searched along the major cross streets, then finally rolled down the interstate service roads.

What he was looking for was Dylan Sylvester’s car, described in the burglary report as a blue Buick four-door, and registered to a woman named Belinda Sylvester, born twenty years before Dylan. Ray figured Belinda was Sylvester’s mother. No self-respecting crook ever put a car in his own name.

Cruising apartment parking lots, looking for the blue Buick, Ray had time to think about coincidences, about how he didn’t believe in them, and about the odds of all this happening by chance.

Salazaar and Sylvester knew each other. They had been arrested together and had once served time in the joint together. And Ray had arrested both of them. There was nothing really unusual in two butt-buddy scumbags like that getting together to pull off a job. That could be a coincidence.

But where Ray quit believing it was a coincidence was the point where Salazaar and Sylvester got together with two other mopes to rob the Rising Sun, the place where Ray-the cop who had arrested them both-just happened to work.

Then there was the incredible timing: the four masked gunmen showing up while Hector was taking a leak, and just when Ray was watching the door, the one time he had done that since he started working at the House. Ray was no math whiz, but he knew enough to know that the odds of all that happening by chance were very slim, like winning-the-Powerball slim.

Then there were the dead bodies. Michael Salazaar, aka Scooby, standing outside his apartment, gunned down in a drive-by shooting. Hector disappearing right after the robbery. Tony having to hunt for him, finding him hiding out in a shit motel. Hector still trying to run. Tony-moron that he was-shooting the only witness they had.

Ray realized someone had to be setting him up. But who? Just among those working inside the House, there were twenty or thirty possibilities, and those were just the people who didn’t like him. With three hundred grand involved, it could easily be someone Ray didn’t even know, someone just using him for convenience.

As Ray rolled through the streets of New Orleans East, an idea wormed its way into his brain that made the hair on the back of his neck stand up. What if the person who set up the robbery knew Ray was going to get the job of looking for the shooters? What if giving him the job was part of the plan, the part that made him look like he was covering up the fact that he was the inside man?

And who gave him the job? Who forced it on him? Who insisted that since he was an ex-cop he was the best man for it? Who had motive, means, and opportunity? Who was the most inside man of all?

Vinnie Messina.

Tony Zello kept looking at his watch as he paced up and down in front of Fausto’s Italian Restaurant on Dumaine Street. It was eight o’clock.

Never trust a cop, not even to be on time.

A few minutes later he saw Jimmy LaGrange two blocks away, strolling up the street, wearing an off-the-rack department store coat and tie. Tony waved for him to hurry up, but LaGrange just kept ambling along.

When the detective finally reached him, Tony tapped his Rolex. “You’re fucking late.”

“I got held up.”

“He doesn’t like to be kept waiting.” He grabbed LaGrange’s elbow and tried to steer him toward the front door.

LaGrange jerked his arm away. “I don’t like meeting gangsters in public. Why couldn’t we handle this over the phone?”

Tony softened his tone a little. He needed this to go smooth. “He wants to meet you in person.” Then he draped an arm over LaGrange’s shoulders. “Don’t worry so much. Everything’s gonna work out fine, you’ll see.”

As they stepped into the restaurant, LaGrange said, “Is this going to get me back on the payroll?”

Tony nodded, not saying what was really on his mind, thinking how it was always the same with cops. They only cared about one thing-money. No wonder they were called pigs. Respect, honor, and loyalty were concepts that meant nothing to them.