Ray's Hell: A Crime Action Thriller

by Matt Rass

  Andre didn’t say anything.

  “That motherfucking junkie upstairs isn’t upstairs no more,” Tony continued. “No one knows where he is. So he either still has his phone, or your girl has it.”

  “I thought Mikey was watching the hotel?” Andre asked.

  “That doesn’t have nothing to do with nothing. And for your information, he says he saw the goddamn FBI staking out the hotel.”

  “Last night?”

  “Stop being a fucking parrot Andre, I swear to God! Yes, last night. Mikey says the FBI goes into the hotel and the cop from Detroit and your whore come down and get in his car and come to my fucking club and ask me stupid fucking questions about the motherfucker that you two was supposed to get rid of.”

  “Sam?”

  “Are you sure this motherfucker doesn’t have a wire on him?” Tony asked Mike.

  “No... I don’t think so.”

  “Yes, Sam, goddammit,” Tony said.

  “I swear I dunno what happened to them,” Andre said.

  “You had one fucking job to do Andre.”

  “Well, it was more than just one job…”

  Tony spoke in a slow, measured cadence: “That phone has very important audio onnit, and it is very important that we have it in our possession before our friend—who shall not be named—becomes any more nervous than he already is. Now, I cannot stress this enough, Andre; this particular man will not accept excuses for why we haven’t delivered it.” Tony waited for Andre to acknowledge the importance, and when he nodded, Tony continued: “So if your whore has it, I want it. If she doesn’t, then we’re all in deep shit, ya understand?”

  “I’m on it,” Andre said and headed to the side door, then looked back at the two Silvers before he exited. He stopped just on the other side of the door and held it open a crack so he could listen.

  “I think we made a big mistake with this fucking pimp,” Tony said.

  “What if he, like, sent the audio to someone else?” Mikey asked. “Like in an email, or something?”

  “The degenerate Junkie? He just wants money and he thinks we’re gonna give it to him. If he sent it to someone else then it’s not worth shit and neither is his life.”

  “And what if the feds have it?”

  “That’s what I’m worried about. If the whore didn’t grab it, then the feds prolly do, and our friend is gonna start covering his tracks.”

  “Killing people?”

  “He could even make us a target.”

  “No,” Mike said.

  “He ain’t an amateur like youze guys. I could tell you some stories.”

  “C’mon, Pop. I ain’t an amateur.”

  “The only reason our friend let you boys accompany him is ’cos I said youze wanted to stop being fucking amateurs, now look where we are; asses on the line.”

  “Maybe when we get the phone back, I take out the pimp?”

  “And everyone else that was there that night. Just to be safe.”

  Andre mouthed the words “What the fuck?” He didn’t have his gun, but he used his hand to pop-pop the two men on the other side of the door.

  “But first,” Tony continued, “we gotta find out why the fucking feds are here to begin with. That goddamn Junkie didn’t check outta here on his own.”

  “And what about that thing with Uncle Frank?”

  Tony shook his head. “Christ, we can’t worry about that now. Maybe there was a better way to go about it, I dunno. All’s I know is if we’re gonna have anything left over for ourselves, we gotta take him down. This Washington bullshit is gonna put us all in the poor house.”

  “It’s his own fault,” Mikey said. “You choose anything over family and you’re gonna end up all by yourself.”

  Tony drained the rest of his coffee. “I’m proud of you Mikey. No matter what happens, I’m proud of you.”

  “Thanks, Pops. I’ll talk to my guy at the PD and see what he knows about the feds.”

  “Good boy,” Tony said. “Good boy.”

  Andre pushed the Tavern door closed and goose-stepped wildly to his Monte Carlo, his ass unable to keep up with his ankles.

  Once safely inside he fumbled to light a fresh joint to calm his nerves. “Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit,” he said. He drew the flame of his lighter into the tip of the joint and filled his lungs with smoke. “Awww,” he exhaled. “That’s the shit.” Then he grabbed his 9mm from under his seat.

  TOMMY’S HOUSE

  Ray cruised past the address the cabbie had given him and parked on the far side of the street. He watched the house in his side mirror. It was a washed-out pink, single-story corner house with dirty, white shutters and yellowed lace curtains in the window. The empty lot on the side of the house was occupied by a teal Pontiac Sunbird up on blocks; the ugly stepsister to the hugely popular Firebird.

  “You sure this is the address?” DC asked.

  “Looks like someone still lives with his grandmother,” Ray said. “Can you hand me my badge outta the glove box, please?”

  DC opened the glove compartment and passed him his badge. “Why don’t you carry a gun?”

  “Long story,” he said.

  “You shoulda kept Andre’s gun.”

  “And what happens if I get caught with it? Maybe it’s connected to some crime I don’t wanna be a part of.”

  “Yeah, I don’t think it’s even his, anyway.”

  “You okay to keep sittin’ in the car?” Ray asked.

  “Sure, I’m used to being on my feet all day anyway.”

  “Your back, more like it,” Ray winked.

  “Real comedian. Don’t quit your day job.”

  “I don’t have a day job,” he said and stepped out the Caddy and walked coolly across the street. No neighbors, no kids, no dogs. It was eerily quiet for a Saturday afternoon. White people, he thought; they’re either hungover and still in bed, or stuck watching TV.

  Mike Silver’s GMC SUV crept around the corner and parked four cars back from the Caddy, but he wasn’t in it, Dwight and three other big dudes in tracksuits were.

  “He ain’t in his car,” the driver said.

  “I can see that,” Dwight said. “You draggin’ ass when you’re ’spose to be following him, now we don’t know which house he went into.”

  “It’s not my fault Mikey put us in the biggest fuckin’ thing on the road. You tell me to hang back, I gotta hang back. So don’t call me the fuckin’ idiot.”

  “I wanna call you a fuckin’ idiot, I’m gonna call you a fuckin’ idiot.”

  The two big hulks in the back agreed with the driver. “You gonna tail someone, you don’t do it in a Yukon,” one of them said.

  “Whaddya want?” Dwight asked. “We roll up in a Nissan?”

  “Who the fuck are you anyway?” the driver said. “We don’t need no fucking doorman here.”

  “You think I give a shit about what you need or don’t need?” Dwight said. “Mikey asked me to ride with you, so I’m here.”

  “Psssh…. Asked you. Like you’re doing him a favor. You’re his bitch and everyone knows it, Dwight.”

  The two in the back started laughing. Dwight looked as if he was trying his hardest to keep his cool and not to turn into the black Hulk and tear these fools apart.

  In the backyard of the house, Ray stood on an upturned garbage can to see through the kitchen window. Dishes were piled up in the sink and trash from days of takeout was strewn all over the counter. A couple of natty cats prowled around the food containers. It was either a trap house or a junkie pad. Or the home of a hoarder.

  A kid’s voice startled Ray. “Hey, mister.”

  He turned to see a little white girl about ten years old behind him.

  “Are you looking for Tommy?” she asked.

  Ray stepped off the garbage can. “Yeah. Is that who lives here?”

  “Why are you looking for him?”

  “I want to ask him about his car out there.”

  The kid turned and squinted at the Sunbird on
blocks. “It’s okay if you want to buy drugs from him. Everyone does.”

  “You should run along home now, little girl.”

  “I could text him, if you want.” She produced an iPhone and Ray snatched it from her. “Hey!”

  “You go home now, and stay the hell away from here or I’m gonna slap the white off your ass, ya hear?”

  He handed the phone back to her and she slowly inched away, her worn kicks sinking into the wet mud.

  “I’m gonna tell my daddy about you,” she shrieked over her shoulder as she bolted.

  Ray cringed, hoping the girl hadn’t just given him away. He went to the back door and peered into the house through the mesh window screen. Just inside the door, a methy-looking white girl with an open housecoat revealing flapjack like titties was bending over to fill a cat’s bowl. Ray stepped back as the woman straightened and peered back at him. “The fuck?”

  Ray stood back as the woman fumbled while trying to open the door too fast, stubbing her toe against the metal frame. “Jesus!”

  Ray took out his badge and held it up as the door flew open and he stared down the wrong end of a snubnosed .38 Smith & Wesson. The woman wasn’t a woman after all—not even a trans-whatever—it was man.

  “I’m Sam’s brother,” Ray said. “Are you Tommy? Mandy gave me your address.”

  “Yeah, I’m Tommy,” he said, lowering the gun and putting it in the pocket of his housecoat. He was naked under it except for Homer Simpson boxer shorts.

  Ray looked at the breasts again. Curious. They looked like soft yellow mangoes. The man must’ve lost a couple of hundred pounds of weight to be left with these two stupid trophies.

  “I know who you are,” Tommy said. “C’mon in.”

  The house smelled like shit, sex, and cocks. In that order. Ray had smelled the same scent when busting illegal gay clubs in Detroit. It had been the middle of a heatwave and the responding officers had expected to find horses in the back, the smell of shit was so strong.

  The rush of ammonia from the overflowing cat litter was almost a breath of fresh air. The cats mewed blissfully at his feet, unaware of the squalor they were living in. A grey pitbull puppy skidded around the corner, his voice croaking out his throat. He put on the brakes, but slid into Ray’s feet. Ray scooped him up in one hand and cradled him like a football.

  “Take a seat,” Tommy said, pointing to the kitchen table littered with junk food containers.

  Ray chinned toward the front of the house. “You mind I check out the window, see if my girl is still in the car?”

  “You can invite her in if you like,” Tommy said, turning to open a cupboard door and reach for tins of cat food.

  “Nah, I won’t take too much of your time.”

  Ray stepped over the cats, raising the puppy into the air, and walked through the kitchen and down the corridor to the living room, ostensibly looking for the front window, but checking the home for any other occupants. The place was a shrine dedicated equally to images of Dolly Parton and Elvis Presley. Posters and framed pictures occupied each wallpapered surface. A five-foot cardboard cutout of the King stood in front of a bookcase filled with Encyclopedia Britannica, Hardy Boys books, and family pictures. A baby Tommy was pictured in his grandmother’s arms; a chubby, adolescent Tommy, then fat teenager Tommy. All pictured beside his grandmother, and as he grew fatter in each photo she seemed to wilt beside him with age and burden, until finally, she was pictured in a hospital bed with a slimmer Tommy sitting beside her. Friends till the end, Ray thought.

  The bathroom door to Ray’s left was slightly ajar and he pushed it open as far as it would go with the toe of his boot. The grimy green shower curtain was pulled all the way back and he could see there wasn’t anybody in there. Across the hall he could see into the two bedrooms. One was obviously the grandmother’s, the bed made up with a flowery bedspread and frilly pillows, the other cluttered with clothes atop a sunken, naked mattress.

  “You want coffee?” Tommy asked.

  “Sure,” Ray said. “I’m only going on a cup and a half today.”

  He continued through to the carpeted living room with faux wood panelling running halfway up the wall and looked out the front window at DC standing outside the Caddy smoking a cigarette.

  “You sure you don’t want to invite your friend inside,” Tommy called out.

  “Nah,” Ray said, “she’s cool.”

  He set the puppy down and returned to the kitchen and watched as Tommy spooned coffee grounds into the coffee maker’s basket lined with Subway sandwich napkins.

  “Tell me what you know about Sam being missing,” Ray said, taking a seat at the table.

  “What’s there to tell? He ripped-off someone’s money. Oh no wait, wasn’t he kidnapped? Or did he take off outta town? What do you take in your coffee?”

  “Black. And I get it. You heard all the rumors. But which one do you believe?”

  “You don’t remember me, do you?” Tommy asked.

  “Should I?”

  “Guess not. I used to be close to three hundred pounds back then, now I’m half that.” Tommy pulled a baggie of meth out of the pocket that didn’t contain the .38, and ate it. “Crystal is the best weight loss drug there is. Gastric bypass, too. Anyway, I was with Sam when he went away to detention back in the day.”

  “I’m sorry about that. They treated you kids bad back then.”

  “You don’t know the half of it. But whatever, right?”

  Sam—and Tommy—had been one of hundreds of juveniles that were part of a kickback scheme involving for profit detentions centers and local judges giving out harsh sentences for low-level crime and misdemeanors. The kids went away and the judges and detention center bosses got paid. All taxpayer funded.

  “I’m told Sam was pimpin’ out girls at the club,” Ray said.

  “Believe me, it’s not what you think. He was setting up girls who wanted to make money. That’s all. It’s not as if he was really pimping them out. Sam likes to ride that line between good and bad, you know what I’m sayin’? Rich white people coming to him, looking for drugs and sex, he would set ’em up with people who liked being paid to do drugs and have sex. He never took the girls or boys’ money.”

  “So, where’d things go wrong at the club?” Ray asked.

  “Sam told me everything was cool until they started asking him to find younger and younger girls, like teenagers. Then they wanted young boys…”

  “And he wasn’t down with that?”

  “The way we were abused in detention? No. Effing. Way.”

  “What else happened there? At the center.”

  “That’s just it, right? Gives the name ‘center’ a whole new context. We were the center of every perverted sonuvabitch in that damn place. They even had outside ‘visitors’ coming in to abuse us. Do you think any of them were accused of pimping? Nope. Nevermind charged with it. And when they finally let us out they tried blackmailing us with pictures they took of us on the inside. They wanted to keep abusing us. I swear to god I wish I could kill every single last one of them.”

  “You think these could’ve been the same people Sam was organizing the parties for?”

  “I doubt he would want anything to do with them, actually.”

  “What if he was settin’ them up for blackmail? You think that’d be somethin’ Sam would come up with?”

  “Like, take pictures of them having sex? I dunno. And not tell me? I doubt it. Not after all we went through together and everything.”

  “I was given his address and when I went to visit, the pad had what looked like hidden cameras behind the walls. Recording sex, most likely.”

  Tommy shook his head. “He lived here after he left Mandy’s trailer, and would crash out on my couch most weekends… But I guess I can’t say for sure. A lot of what Sam did was secretive.”

  “He kept to himself as a kid,” Ray said.

  “When we were at the center, he told me about you bringing him to his friend’s house. W
hen he was caught with the video game…”

  “I’ve regretted that day my whole life,” Ray said.

  “Why? Sam said that was the first time he truly felt as if he had a big brother. You kept his secret.”

  “It’s ’cos I kept his secret that he went back to that pervert’s place. I shoulda beat the shit outta that dirty, old bastard.”

  “You poor man,” Tommy said, delivering Ray’s coffee and putting a hand on his shoulder. “You’ve been carrying this guilt around all this time? You would’ve had to kill that man to keep Sam and those other boys from going back there.”

  “How’s that?”

  “Where else were they going to go?”

  “I dunno,” Ray said.

  “It was kids like me and Sam that these people prey upon; poor, awkward, ugly. We didn’t play sports, or hang out with our Dads. Most of us don’t even have fathers. So believe me, if it wasn’t that pervert, it was the one next door.”

  “Well, I wanna right that wrong and find out why he disappeared.”

  “You heard he was carrying seventy-five large on him when he disappeared, right?”

  Ray nodded.

  “It’s not true,” Tommy said.

  “How do you know?” Ray asked.

  “’Cos that was the day my grandma was buried and Sam was with me the whole day. And believe me, he wasn’t carrying more than twenty dollars on him. The only reason he left was to meet Dominique at the bar so he could get me some sleeping pills. I’d been awake for seventy-two hours by then.”

  “I talked to Dominique. She thinks Sam took off with the money.”

  Tommy laughed. “And go where? Sam was neither a thief or a—what—globetrotter. Farthest he’s ever been outta town is when we were in juvie.”

  “So what do you think happened to him?”

  “I think he was set-up so someone would think he stole the money. And who better to blame than a nigga, right? No offense.”

  “And who’s the someone else?”

  “Alex Silver.”

  “Why him?”