Charlie Hustmyre - House of the Rising Sun

Ray had been in Vinnie’s penthouse before and rushed straight into the bedroom. In the light that spilled from the open bathroom door, Ray saw Vinnie sitting up in bed, eyes wide, wearing a just-woken-up-in-the-middle-of-the-night look on his face. The spot next to him was empty.

Ray held both hands out and open, imploring Vinnie to stay put. He left the Smith amp; Wesson tucked against his back. Last time he had pulled it out things hadn’t gone so well. “Where’s your wife?”

Vinnie glanced at the spot beside him. “Playing bridge,” he said, not fully awake enough yet to demand what Ray was doing breaking into his house in the middle of the night.

“I’m just here to talk, Vinnie. All I’m asking for is two minutes.”

Vinnie tensed and shot a glance at the nightstand beside him. There was a telephone on top. Below that a single drawer. Ray didn’t think it was the telephone Vinnie was thinking about grabbing.

“Vinnie, I have a gun, so if you’re thinking about reaching into that drawer for a piece, don’t. You’re not going to make it.” Ray waved his open hands back and forth. “I just want to talk.”

Vinnie was old, fat, and slow. He looked toward the nightstand one more time, then sighed. He slouched against the headboard and looked up at Ray. “So talk.”

Ray backed up and dropped into a chair that sat next to the wall, just inside the bedroom door. From Vinnie’s point of view, having a man towering over you while you sat in your bed wearing a pair of silk pajamas had to be intimidating. Ray didn’t want to intimidate him. He really did just want to talk. He wanted to find out the truth.

“I didn’t kill your son,” Ray said.

Vinnie didn’t respond, just stared across the room at Ray with a pair of sad eyes.

Ray went on. “But I’ve got to ask you something.”

“What?”

“Why was there so much money in the counting room that night?”

“I gave you a job when you got out. I paid you good money. I even trusted you.”

“Vinnie, I didn’t do it. If I did, I wouldn’t be here right now. I’d have taken the money and disappeared.”

Vinnie folded his hands across his paunch. “Tony warned me about-”

“Fuck Tony! He’s the reason I’m in this mess.”

“What do you mean?”

“Why was there so much money in the counting room?”

Ray watched Vinnie’s eyes. They moved up and to Vinnie’s left, the analytical side of the brain, searching for a memory; not toward the right side, the creative side, the side where lies came from. It was something Ray had learned in interview and interrogation class.

Vinnie said, “This year Halloween fell on a Friday. We figured we would get real busy. We were right.”

“Whose idea was that?”

Again, Vinnie’s eyes cut up to his left as he pulled down a memory. “Tony said we needed extra cash.”

Bingo.

“Tony’s the one who set this up. He’s the one who got your boy killed.”

“Bullshit,” Vinnie barked. His eyes cut to the nightstand drawer.

“Think about it, Vinnie. Who was it who was really doing the pushing to have me work this thing?” Ray was guessing, but he could tell by the way Vinnie’s face changed that he was guessing right. “When we thought Hector might know something, Tony shot him. When I started tracking down the four gunmen, they all turned up dead before I could get to them.” Except for Dylan Sylvester. He wasn’t dead before I got to him, but that’s another story. “What you said was right, you gave me a job and you pay me well. I got no complaints, and I got no reason to violate your trust.”

Vinnie stared straight ahead. His face soft. He was thinking about it. “The money is reason enough,” he mumbled, but it sounded more like a reflex. “Everybody needs money.”

Ray thought about something Tony had said, Vinnie couldn’t afford to buy a grilled cheese sandwich. Telling him about Vinnie’s financial problems. “Tony set it up so it looked like I did it, and then he led me around by the nose until he had me thinking it was you.”

“Me!”

“He told me Pete’s school was tapping you out. That and your wife’s shopping. You were basically broke.”

“Tony’s been telling me it was you who set it up and got my son killed.”

“He told me it was your decision to have so much money that night.”

“That’s bullshit.”

“And whose idea was it to skip a couple of pickups?” “Tony said picking up bags of cash with so many people in the club was too tempting, like asking for trouble. So we cut back some that night.”

“Which left a lot more in the counting room.”

Vinnie nodded.

Ray said, “He was planning to put it off on both of us.”

“Why would he do that?”

Ray wondered if Vinnie could really be so stupid that he didn’t see the ambitious fuck he had working for him. “He wants to run the House. At least that’s what he wants right now, no telling what he’s going to want later.”

“Tony is family.” Vinnie voiced the words, but the conviction in them was absent.

Ray glanced at the empty spot in the bed beside Vinnie.

“You said your wife was playing bridge?”

Vinnie nodded. “Twice a week.”

“That’s a lot of bridge.”

“What do you mean?” Vinnie’s voice was low and defensive.

Ray glanced at the telephone on the nightstand and thought about the carnage at the Old Man’s cabin. Any minute that phone could ring. He didn’t want to be here when Vinnie got the word his brother was dead. “I have to go, Vinnie.”

“Where the fuck you going?”

Ray was sure Vinnie was telling the truth. Tony had duped Vinnie just like he had duped Ray.

Now Ray had to get out of here. If he could lie low until the news broke about Carlos and Priscilla, and once the cops started hunting Tony down for murder, Ray could resurface. He could hand Tony’s bag full of money to Vinnie and say he found it at Dylan Sylvester’s apartment. Vinnie wasn’t going to look too closely at the logic of Tony leaving the money with a tweaked-out stickup man, not when Vinnie had all the money back in his hands, not when he was the last man standing and the new boss of New Orleans.

But first Ray had to get out of here and disappear, just for a few hours, until the storm out on Lake Catherine blew over. “I think I can get the money back,” Ray said.

Vinnie’s eyes narrowed with suspicion. “How?”

Ray looked at his watch. It was almost twelve thirty. “Give me until noon.”

“Why?”

“Just trust me.”

Vinnie glanced at the nightstand, but Ray couldn’t tell if he was looking at the phone or thinking about going for the gun in the drawer.

“Vinnie?”

Vinnie looked up. “You sure about this, Ray?”

“You’ll hear from me by noon. I give you my word.”

Vinnie shook his head. “I’m talking about Tony.”

Ray nodded. “I’m sure.”

“I treated him like my fucking blood, like my own… better than I did my own son.”

Behind Ray, Tony Zello said, “I have to admit I underestimated you, Shane.”

Ray spun around. Tony stepped into the bedroom, his five-shot. 38 aimed at Ray’s face. He pressed the muzzle against Ray’s forehead and patted him down. He pulled the Smith amp; Wesson. 40 from behind Ray’s back.

“Tony, what the fuck is going on here?” Vinnie said.

Tony hefted the big Smith amp; Wesson in his left hand. “What’s that term the government uses, regime change? ” Casually, Tony extended the stainless-steel automatic and shot Vinnie in the face. Blood and brains splattered the far wall.

“Carlos is going to be devastated when he finds out you murdered his brother,” Tony said, screwing the muzzle of his. 38 tighter against Ray’s forehead. “But then again they weren’t all that close anyway. And he’ll be glad to hear that I got here just a few seconds later and put a bullet in your head.”