Charlie Hustmyre: House of the Rising Sun

Both detectives stared at him.

Landry clicked the ballpoint pen and looked down at his pad like he was about to start taking notes. Like an afterthought he added, “Ray just got home.” Landry looked up at him. “You’re on parole, right?”

Ray nodded. One condition of his parole- supervised release the feds called it-was that he cooperate with the police should they question him. It would be just like Landry to report him to his P.O. for failing to cooperate.

Landry wrinkled his forehead like he was trying hard to remember something. “What’d you get, five years?”

Ray nodded, knowing the former PIB man was trying hard to make him look like an asshole, playing to his two-man audience of rookie detectives. Ray also knew there was nothing he could do about it. “I did fifty-one months.”

Landry whistled. “That’s what, about four and a half years?”

“Just about,” Ray said.

“I guess it was pretty rough in there, huh? A skinny white boy like you. Guess you ended up as someone’s bitch.”

Ray was tired of this bullshit. “It wasn’t too bad, Carl. I had your dad to keep me company.”

Landry’s jaw went slack, and his face burned bright red. He dropped his pen and pad and charged. Ray threw his hands up and bicycled backward. The last thing he wanted his P.O. to hear was that he got into a fight with a cop, but Landry got a hand around Ray’s throat. “Shut your filthy mouth, you piece of shit!” Landry shouted as he shoved Ray against the bar. Ray dropped his ice-filled towel and grabbed Landry’s wrist with both hands. As he tried to pry the detective’s fingers away from his throat, Landry hit him with an uppercut in the gut. Just as Ray doubled over, the two young detectives pulled Landry off him.

“It’s cool, I’m okay,” Carl Landry said, jerking his arms away from the two cops. Taking his time, he straightened out his suit and tie, then leaned over close to Ray and whispered in his ear, “You mention my father again, I’ll kill you.”

Ray put a hand on the bar to steady himself. Everyone in the room was staring at him, cops and customers. He took a couple of deep breaths and straightened up. He looked at Landry. “I’ll tell you one thing.”

“What’s that?” Landry asked, a challenge in his voice.

“Your dad sure does give good head.”

Landry rushed at him again, but this time the two young detectives caught him and held him back. One of the cops glanced over his shoulder at all the people in the room, then said to Landry, “Not here.”

Only after Landry stopped struggling did the detectives let him go. Still, he jabbed his finger at Ray. “We’ll finish this later.” Then he turned and walked away, the two junior cops trailing behind him.

By 5:30 AM the police were almost finished. They had handled the customers first, getting names, addresses, and brief statements. Then they had gone to each employee. A detective-not Landry, thank God-asked Ray to handwrite a statement and sign it. As Ray gave the signed statement back to him, the detective asked, “Could you identify any of them?”

“They had masks on,” Ray said.

“You notice anything else about them?”

“Like what?”

“Marks, scars, tattoos.”

Ray hesitated, thinking about the spiderweb tattoo.

“Anything,” the detective asked, “anything at all.”

“No,” Ray said. “Nothing.”

The detective shrugged and walked away.

Ray stood alone by the stairs, watching as two coroner’s assistants zipped Peter Messina’s body into a black plastic bag. Then they slung him onto a gurney and wheeled him toward the front door.

“Are you okay?”

Ray jumped. He turned and found Jenny Porter standing next to him. Surprised, he stared at her for a couple of seconds, wondering how she had gotten so close without him noticing, wishing he had seen her coming so he could have walked away. That’s how much he wanted to see Jenny Porter. Still, he had to admit she looked good in her cocktail waitress uniform. It was a black one-piece with a short skirt, a sleeveless top with a plunging neckline, and a pair of high spiked “fuck me” pumps. She didn’t wear stockings. She didn’t need to; her legs were tanned and smooth.

But seeing her made Ray feel like throwing up because he couldn’t look at her without thinking about her being shacked up with Tony Zello. As she reached a hand toward his swollen eye, Ray ducked.

“I heard you got hurt,” Jenny said.

“You talking about the guy in the mask pistol-whipping me, Tony slugging me in the eye, or Landry punching me in the stomach?”

She smiled. “I heard you had a rough night.”

“Good news travels fast.”

“I’m worried about you,” she said, the smile falling from her face.

“Don’t be,” he said. “You’re the last person in the world I want worrying about me.”

She looked hurt. “Why are you so hostile to me?”

“You know why.”

“What happened between you and Tony?”

“None of your business.”

“Ray,” she said, reaching to touch his arm.

He pulled away. “Your boyfriend is an asshole.” He said it loud.

Jenny glanced around, nervous. She kept her voice low. “Tony isn’t my boyfriend.”

“That’s not what I heard.” Keeping his voice loud.

“That’s over. It’s been over. I’ve told you that a dozen times.” Ray didn’t say anything.

“Tell me what happened, Ray. Maybe I can help you.”

“I told you what happened. Tony was being an asshole.” He said it loud again.

Jenny looked around again. “Keep your voice down.”

“You afraid I’m going to reveal some big secret about Tony? I got news for you…” Ray raised his hands and faced the cops and crime-scene geeks who were still working and the few customers who hadn’t been cut loose yet. He shouted, “Everybody already knows that Tony Zello is an asshole!”

Jenny turned away and looked down, embarrassed.

After a moment she looked back at Ray. “Why is he pissed off at you?”

“He thinks I should have done more, somehow kept the retarded kid from getting his face blown off.”

“Don’t say that.”

“Don’t say what?”

“Don’t call him… don’t call Pete that.”

“Retarded?”

She nodded.

“Why not?” he said. “That’s the medical term for it, isn’t it, retarded?”

“He was your friend. He looked up to you.”

Ray shrugged. Truth was, Pete had been his friend, his only friend at the House, but that wasn’t the point of this conversation. This was about getting back at Jenny any way he could. “You want me to call him something more respectful,” Ray asked, “like mentally handicapped or IQ challenged?”

She stared at him without speaking.

“I don’t think Pete cares,” Ray said. “He’s dead. Besides, it’s a fact, isn’t it? He was retarded. If you’ve got a hundred and fifty IQ, you’re a genius. If you’ve got a room-temperature IQ, you’re a retard.”

“You’re an even bigger asshole than Tony.”

“It’s touching that you stand up for your boyfriend like that. It really is.”

She stamped her foot and shouted, “He’s not my goddamn boyfriend!”

“You were fucking him the whole time I was in prison.”

She didn’t walk away, she didn’t even look pissed off, she just looked disappointed. “It wasn’t like that.”

Ray’s head throbbed. He probed his scalp with his fingertips, feeling the lump from the pistol. “I’m just going by what I heard.”

Jenny’s bottom lip quivered.

Ray was waiting on the tears, thinking if she started crying, he might feel better.

Then all of a sudden, Jenny didn’t look like she was going to cry. Instead, she looked defiant. “You don’t have any idea what you’re talking about. You never did. If I were you, I wouldn’t brag about that.”