Charlie Hustmyre: House of the Rising Sun

Screams. Some of the customers jumped to their feet, some dove to the floor. Ray glanced up at the stage. One of the dancers was bent over, looking at blood pouring out of a hole in her thigh. Something heavy cracked against the top of Ray’s head, and he dropped to his knees. Dazed, but still looking at the stage, Ray saw the dancer with the hole in her leg collapse onto her ass. The other girl knelt beside her and cradled her head like a lover.

Sound was muffled, but Ray heard the skull yelling something. Then a foot in his back shoved Ray facedown onto the floor. He heard another blast as the guy with the sawed-off let go with his second shot. From the corner of his eye, Ray saw the twin barrels aimed at the ceiling. Glass from the colored track lights hit the floor. Then there was more screaming. At least the big gun was empty.

There was a dull pop just above Ray’s head. Heat seared the back of his neck as something smacked into the wooden floor next to his face. He could barely focus his eyes, but he was still able to see four pairs of feet rush past him on their way out the door.

Although he was glad they were finally gone, all Ray could really concentrate on was how badly he needed a cigarette. As he remembered the half-full pack of Lucky Strikes in his shirt pocket, he slid his hand along the floor trying to reach it, but he was just too tired. Something warm dripped into his left eye.

“Are you fucking kiddin’ me?” Tony Zello screamed, nose to nose with Ray, spit spraying across Ray’s face.

They stood in the storeroom behind the second-floor bar. Tony and his boy Rocco had dragged Ray up the stairs and shoved him into the storeroom as soon as the four armed robbers left. Tony wanted to find out firsthand what had happened. So far he had not liked what he had heard.

“Let me get this straight,” Tony said. “Four guys waltz in here with guns, rob us blind, kill Vincent’s son, and all you did was lay down like a bitch?” Looking disgusted, Tony turned away and pressed the heels of both hands into his eyes as if he were trying to keep them from popping out.

Then he spun back around and threw a punch. Ray tried to duck but he wasn’t quick enough. Tony’s fist caught him just above the left eye and bounced his head off the wall.

Tony stared at Ray and flexed his right hand. “Is that how you acted when you was in the joint? I bet you just bent over and took it up the ass, didn’t you?”

Ray looked back and forth between Tony and Rocco, biting back the rage that welled up inside him. He wasn’t going to provoke Tony, not here. Tony stood in front of him in his charcoal-gray, hand-stitched Italian silk suit, wearing it over a cream-colored shirt and burgundy tie, his feet encased in a soft pair of Bruno Magli loafers. The whole thing was worth an easy fifteen hundred bucks. Tony Zello, the man everybody called Tony Z. He was forty, just a couple years older than Ray, a real up-and-comer, the right-hand man to the guy who ran the House-Vinnie Messina.

Tony spit at Ray’s feet and turned away. Ray figured he was disappointed that Ray hadn’t tried to hit him back. Tony looked at Rocco. “You believe what a fucking pussy this guy is?”

Rocco just nodded. He was big and dumb and never said much. He had on a nice suit, too, but he couldn’t pull off the look the way Tony did. Rocco always looked like he had trouble stuffing himself into his clothes, like maybe they were a size too small. The two of them were always together, just in case Tony Z. needed someone’s leg broken or a skull cracked.

The storeroom door stood open and Ray could see a few employees milling around on the other side of the bar, peeking in and listening to what was going on. Tony liked to have an audience. Somebody called out. “Tony, the cops want you downstairs.”

Tony Z. nodded to Rocco. “Let’s go. This punk’s making me sick.”

Ray heard Tony tell everyone to go downstairs. After everybody left, Ray walked out of the storeroom. He found a towel behind the bar and wrapped some ice in it. His head had stopped bleeding, but he could feel his left eye starting to swell. The second-floor casino was deserted.

As soon as the gunmen had left and before anyone called the cops, Tony and Rocco had shown all the gamblers the back door and reminded them they were never here. Then they did the same thing on the third floor, except it had taken a little longer since a lot of the customers weren’t dressed. The girls had been told to stay in the rooms and keep quiet.

“Shane!” someone shouted from the stairwell. Ray walked over and looked down. Rocco stood halfway down the stairs, one hand on the rail, the other cupped next to his mouth.

“Yeah,” Ray said.

“They want to talk to you.”

“Who?”

Rocco took a couple of steps up. “The cops,” he whispered, but still loud enough for everyone to hear.

Ray followed the big moron downstairs. Cops were all over the first floor-uniformed officers, detectives, crime-scene techs, and a photographer. Near the front door, two coroner’s assistants leaned against a gurney. Their postures reminded Ray of a couple of vultures perched on a branch, waiting for the lions and hyenas to finish, waiting to pick up what was left of the body.

Since the first floor of the House was mostly legit, the customers had been told to stay. The police had shoved a bunch of chairs into a corner to form a makeshift waiting area and herded the customers into it. A couple of detectives were making the rounds and taking preliminary statements.

Standing on the bottom step of the stairs, Ray peered over the top of the bar. Pete’s body still lay on the floor where it had fallen. The only thing different was the ring of crime-scene tape the cops had strung around the bar, three-inch wide, plastic yellow tape with big black letters that read POLICE LINE – DO NOT CROSS repeated over and over again.

Ray was always surprised at the chalky white color of fresh corpses. They looked fake, like wax dummies. The blast had caught Pete in the face and bowled him over onto his back. His legs were folded under him at crazy angles. Painful, if Pete had been in any condition to feel pain.

The short range hadn’t given the shot much time to scatter. The stripper onstage must have caught the one buckshot pellet that missed Pete. Instead of being peppered with individual holes, Pete’s face looked like it had been scooped out with a hand shovel. There was nothing left of it but a bloody crater that started just below one eyebrow, cut across mid-nose, down under the other eye-which was still in its socket-then back under the mouth, and up between the cheekbone and the ear. Ray remembered reading somewhere that an adult’s body held roughly a gallon of blood. If that was true, then most of Pete’s blood was on the floor, well on its way to congealing.

A loud voice said, “If it isn’t Ray Shane.”

Ray recognized the voice. He turned his head and saw Detective Carl Landry standing ten feet away, wearing a cheap, rumpled suit. It had to be Landry who caught the case, the last cop on earth Ray wanted to see.

Ray nodded to the detective. “What’s PIB doing here?” He knew the Public Integrity Bureau-the department’s name for Internal Affairs-only investigated cops.

“I’m not with PIB anymore,” Landry said.

“What happened?” Ray asked. “You got tired of bum-rapping policemen and putting them in jail?”

Landry ignored the jab. “I’m in Eighth District Homicide now.”

Two more detectives walked over, young fresh-faced kids who looked to be straight out of a patrol car. Ray didn’t recognize either one. He pressed the bar-rag ice pack more firmly against his eye.