Ray's Hell: A Crime Action Thriller

by Matt Rass

  “I deal with a couple Silvers for all my dope. Punks with nice cars. They play at being big, but if it wasn’t for the coke they’re on, I’d say they’re about as soft as my dick. But Alex is different. “

  “You know him?”

  “No, but Sam would tell me about the shit they would do together, like just the two of them hangin’ out together like they was best friends, and that always made me suspicious. Like why would a rich, white lawyer for the city wanna hang out with a dude like Sam for? You know what I mean? The dude could have anything he wants, but he’s hangin’ out with a street nigga. What’s innit for him?”

  “You think he was playin’ him?”

  “Like a loser. And that pissed me off ’cos I thought Sam was smarter than that. But he was so proud of his friendship with Alex that after I questioned it the first time and he laid into me…” Tommy snapped his finger and waved it like a woman. “Man, I didn’t bring it up again. I would just shut up and let him go on with his stupid fairytale stories.”

  Ray took a sip of coffee as the door behind him was smashed open with a battering ram. He sprayed the mouthful across the table as a SWAT team rushed through the kitchen entrance. “Police. Police. Police,” one of them shouted.

  The puppy barked, the cats hissed, and Ray raised his hands above his head and looked over at Tommy.

  Tommy had backed up as far as the sink, bumped it, and as his coffee cup fell from his hand, a SWAT voice shouted, “Freeze.”

  Before the cup hit the floor, two shots fired directly behind Ray’s ear were in Tommy’s chest, one on top of the other, his .38 falling from his robe pocket.

  Shit, Ray thought, seeing the gun. There was no telling what would go down now. It had all happened so fast. A hand slammed Ray’s head onto the table, causing his badge to skitter under an empty cereal box, and a gun barrel was pressed so hard into his neck that it felt like a knife. His arms were twisted behind his back and the wrists were zip-tied tight. The rest of the SWAT team snaked through the house in formation, entering the bathroom and then the bedrooms shouting, “Clear, clear, clear.”

  Ray turned his head under the cop’s pressing hand and looked at Tommy folded over onto himself. His robe was open and his man tits sagged like deflated birthday balloons. A SWAT member lifted one of them with the toe of his boot, cracked a joke, and the other members surrounding the body laughed in unison. Tommy’s eyes were still wet and staring lifelessly back at Ray.

  The cop pressing down on Ray’s head asked him if he had any weapons on him. Ray grunted in response.

  “Are there any other firearms in the house?” the cop asked.

  Ray grunted again.

  “Where’s the dope?”

  “In my ass,” Ray said. “Why don’t you take a look.”

  “I’ll call the K-9 unit in for that.”

  Shit, Ray thought. Cop got him there.

  The rest of the SWAT members re-entered the kitchen and a familiar voice rang out, “My nigga.”

  The cop released Ray’s head and he looked up to see John Thomas.

  “The hell you doin’ here, Raymond?”

  “Sonuvabitch,” Ray said. “I hope you’re not following me, and I hope to hell you ain’t using me to clean up the congressman’s mess.”

  “Whoa, whoa, whoa. Take your foot off the gas man, there’s no conspiracy here. We’ve got top quality intel on this motherfucker. He’s been supplying the locals with fentanyl. Junkies are dyin’ left and right ’cos of this asshole. Not that I give a shit about a bunch of goddamn junkies, but you know, I got a job to do.” John spotted the .38 for the first time lying beside Tommy’s body. “This his?” he asked the cop standing behind Ray.

  “It fell out his pocket when he hit the floor,” Ray said.

  John looked at Ray but ignored what he said. “He point that thing at you?”

  The cop behind Ray shrugged his shoulders. “We bust in and I see him reaching for something…”

  “Yeah, right,” Ray said. “Y’all roll up here with SWAT to take him in?”

  “It’s how it’s done nowadays,” John said. “You either use it or lose it. Now you tell me what the hell you’re doing here?”

  “I had no idea who he was until I knocked on the door. I got his address from Mandy this morning. And all I got from him before y’all broke down the door was he and Sam were in juvie together back in the day.”

  “With the perverts and the kickbacks?”

  “The same.”

  “Well, the way it was laid out to us was your brother and this homo here have their fingerprints all over the city when it comes to this fentanyl shit.”

  “You sure about your information?”

  “Listen Ray, I’m telling you this ’cos we have a history together but you’ve been back for like, what—a day? I can’t have you gettin’ in the way of me doing my job.”

  “Like find out what happened to my baby brother?”

  “This is the last time I give you advice as a friend: go back to Detroit and wait ’till you hear from him or Mandy that he’s okay. But if you think this lying piece of shit right here gave you better answers than I just did, then you’re in for a very short and miserable time in this town, Price.” John nodded at the cop standing behind Ray to let him up.

  Ray pushed his chair back and stood. “If I find out any of this fentanyl shit being used against Sam ain’t true, I swear I’m gonna burn this motherfucker down.”

  “Is that how you wanna tell it, Ray? You wanna stop talking and walk outta here, or do you want us to bring you in and embarrass your Chief some more? ’Cos we know what you got waiting for you back home.”

  “This is my home,” Ray said.

  John laughed. “No it’s not. Those days are long over, my friend, and you got till tonight to say your good-byes. If you’re still here tomorrow, I’m gonna personally give the order to arrest you. You dig?”

  “Not anymore.”

  Ray scooped up his badge from under the cereal box. The puppy skidded back into the kitchen, his claws slipping on the linoleum. “Come here little guy,” John said scooping him up before he could get to Tommy’s body and the growing pool of blood beneath him.

  “Give me my dog,” Ray said.

  John thought about it for a second before handing the dog over to Ray. “Cute little guy. What’s its name?”

  “He’s the dog with no name,” Ray said and walked out.

  Ray rounded the side of the house with the puppy tucked under his armpit like a football.

  The sheriff’s department had already established a perimeter around the front of Tommy’s house and a gaggle of senior citizens huddled and craned their wrinkled necks hoping to be the first to call out a development. Ray spotted the little white girl standing beside who must’ve been her daddy. He was an angry-looking dude tatted up like a biker.

  When he got to the car, Ray wasn’t terribly surprised that DC was gone. Maybe the SWAT team had spooked her… But when he opened the glove box to return his badge, he saw DC’s rabbit foot lying on the floorboard. There was no way she would leave that behind. He stepped back out of the car and pressed the horn three times.

  The little girl and her daddy turned to look at him. The girl tugged on her daddy’s hand. “That’s him,” she said and her father gulped.

  Ray waved them over and met them halfway.

  “See, Daddy,” the little girl said, standing with her arms crossed. “I told you it’s him.”

  “You see the woman who was in this car?” Ray asked them.

  The dude looked relieved to be talking about anything other than his daughter’s complaint. “Was a black dude,” the man started, but then he started over. “I mean, a guy came up in this tricked-out Monte Carlo and he dragged her ass out in the street, man. I thought, you know, it was a domestic situation, so I didn’t like jump in and do anything…”

  “When was that?”

  “Not more than like a minute ago.”

  “Which way did he go?
”

  “Straight ahead, man.”

  “Thanks,” Ray said before jogging back to his car. He could hear the little girl complaining behind him—“But, Daddy…”—before she was shushed quiet.

  Ray turned the key, dropped the shifter into gear, and pulled away from the curb as if it was on fire.

  The GMC SUV lurched forward and an old woman screamed as it smacked the walker out of her hands and she fell forward, smearing her face down Dwight’s window.

  “Oh shit,” he said. “Stop, stop!” He opened his door and hopped out and over the prone woman as the two in the back of the GMC told the driver to keep driving. The GMC narrowly avoided the little girl and her dad as it sped down the street after the Caddy.

  CAR CHASE

  The Caddy ripped hard around a corner, hot on the Monte Carlo’s ass, and Tommy’s puppy yelped and slid across the Caddy’s passenger seat.

  DC turned to look through the rear window at Ray. His hands gripping the steering wheel and his face twisted in anger. Both cars cut through the slow traffic like sharks through a school of fish. No one was safe on—or off—the road. Mothers pulled their children away from the edge of the curb, while old men shrunk into their centers then raised their canes up in protest as the cars zoomed past followed by the clumsy driving of the GMC SUV. Andre brought the Monte Carlo into oncoming traffic and Ray dodged a stopped car and careened onto the sidewalk and fishtailed through the intersection, the GMC coming within a hare’s breath from T-boning the Caddy.

  With one hand on the wheel and the other reaching out to retrieve the puppy bouncing as if he was being tossed around in a clothes dryer, Ray straightened the Caddy and resumed the chase.

  As the trio of wild vehicles passed, pedestrians looked back up the road, sure the sheriff’s vehicles would be right behind, but none appeared.

  Andre fumbled with his phone, trying to keep his one good eye on the road while opening up his contact list.

  “Fuck,” he cried. “Call Tony.”

  “Dialing Tony,” his phone answered.

  When Tony answered, Andre told him about the car chase.

  Tony spoke over Andre’s speakerphone. “Why the hell is the cop after you?”

  “I got the ho back,” Andre said.

  “Fuck you, you motherfucker!” DC screamed as she pounded on Andre’s arm.

  “Does she have the Junkie’s cell phone?” Tony asked.

  “No, I searched her and the cop’s car. It don’t got it. Now this pig is your problem, man. Get him offa me.”

  “And how am I s’pose to do that? I got a family barbecue goin’ on here,” Tony said.

  “I don’t give a shit. Just help me.”

  “You remember the big white house on the cul-de-sac?”

  “Sack of what?”

  “Big white mansion on a dead end street?”

  “Yeah,” Andre said.

  “Bring him here.”

  Andre twisted the wheel and lost the phone under his feet. He punched the gas and could barely hear Tony’s muffled voice over the roar of the engine.

  “What?” Andre yelled, his voice straining into a hoarse cry. “I can’t hear you. I dropped my motherfuckin’ phone.” He looked at DC, but he couldn’t trust her to help him with the phone. “Bitch, you gonna pay for this.”

  Ray’s Caddy nosed up to the rear bumper of the Monte Carlo. The cars bucked for position before Ray relented and Andre cut through a packed parking lot at the last second. Ray stayed on the perimeter of the lot, the GMC still far enough behind, and watched as the Monte Carlo squeezed around a motorhome and went between two strip malls.

  “I got you,” Andre said. And to DC he said: “Your boyfriend is fucked now. I’m gonna bring him ’round the white people way.”

  The Caddy tore around the corner and stayed tight on the Monte Carlo’s ass as both vehicles weaved through the hill climb and growing forest, to a roundabout, and into a cul-de-sac of multimillion-dollar homes.

  Andre was coming in hot. He pressed the brake to stop, but the Monte Carlo kept its speed. The iPhone had slid under the brake pedal, keeping it from fully depressing. “Fuck, shit!”

  The Monte Carlo hopped the curb and jumped into the lawn and did a dead stop into a giant tree in front of the mansion. The front end of the car was crushed like a beer can.

  DC’s passenger side window was smashed into a spider web pattern and she was passed out.

  Castle-like doors up and down the cul-de-sac opened and older white women and immigrant nannies holding caucasian infants emerged and held their collective breaths at the sight of the vehicular carnage.

  Ray stepped out of his Caddy, and running to Andre’s side of the car, he noticed the former sheriff’s Lincoln Town Car parked in the mansion’s driveway. Ray reached in through the busted-up Monte Carlo’s driver’s side window and gripped the back of Andre’s head and smashed the pimp’s face into the steering wheel until his neck went slack.

  The GMC squealed to a stop beside Ray and a rush of five or six men came out from the side of the congressman’s mansion. Ray recognized a couple of the dudebros from the dealership followed by Mikey and his dad, Tony.

  Tony pointed at Ray and directed the young thugs to, “Get that sonuvabitch.”

  Ray saw DC slumped in her seat and ran to her side of the Monte Carlo as the three muscle heads from the GMC and the dudebros from the mansion cautiously approached. “She’s pregnant,” Ray said. “Lemme get her out.”

  Tony motioned for the three from the GMC to intercept Ray before he could get to her, “Don’t let him touch her,” he said. And then he turned to the women gathered at the top of the mansion’s stairs, and said, “Go inside.”

  “Stop right there,” Ray said, holding up a finger to the GMC Crew. But he couldn’t come up with a good enough excuse for them to stop. “Whatever,” he said. “Let’s do this.”

  That’s when they rushed him. Ray shuffled back and stepped on the blade of a kid’s discarded hockey stick. He kicked it up to his hand and wielded it like a bo staff.

  The GMC Three took cracks from Ray’s hockey stick on their heads, necks, and knees. He spun around to face the dudebros from the party and the first of that group took the end of the stick in the groin, and the next took it in the gut, was raised in the air, and then dumped into one of the wounded GMC crew. That stopped the rest. The two bros from the dealership tongued the gaps in their teeth and resolved themselves to try again. Mike circled Ray on the far side of the Monte Carlo.

  Ray swung the hockey stick around his body and twirled it over his head. “Now I start breaking things,” he said.

  The GMC Three rushed him at once. He broke the wrist of the first, the nose of the next, and the cheekbone of the third—each break sounding like twigs being stepped on in the grass.

  Ray counted the dudebros out loud, “One, two, three, six… Who wants first?”

  The dudebros looked at each other and two nodded at one another before rushing him. Ray threw the hockey stick over their heads at the other four and entered his fighting stance. He blocked the first bro and delivered a knockout punch to the second. The rest of them were rushing him now, too. He dodged and weaved like a boxer and delivered kicks and blows like a ninja. The biggest of the dudebros squared up defensively. He looked like a trained boxer. Ray puffed himself up, holding his hands at his side, and let the big man hit him. He landed a right hook on Ray’s temple, but it bounced off. He tried a left cross that glanced off Ray’s chin, followed by a flurry of punches on Ray’s jaw, trying to register some effect. Anything. But nothing doing. Ray growled and took every shot as if thrown by a toddler, then let loose with his own flurry. The boxer almost went down with the first punch, but Ray kept him up with the second, followed up with an uppercut and then a right cross, sending him to the earth where Ray tamped him into the ground like a wood stake. Mike appeared behind Ray and slipped on the fully charged taser knuckles. Ray didn’t see it coming. Mike punched him at the base of the skull as he de
pressed the taser button, zapping him. Ray convulsed and hit the ground and Mike straddled him and hit him again, and again, and again.

  The dudebros and the GMC Three all limped over and began raining kicks on Ray; his ribs, his legs, and his face. One kick to the head opened up a big gash above his eye and another busted his nose.

  Andre extricated himself from his crumpled car and yelled out, “Get him to the street. I’m gonna curb the motherfucker.”

  The bros all looked at each other like, this is some crazy shit, then lifted Ray. He sagged like an old mattress in their arms as they dragged him across the grass. DC stumbled out of the Monte Carlo and ran in a dazed, zigzagging line, screaming, “Let him go, you motherfuckers. Let him go,” before collapsing face-first into the grass.

  “Enough!” a voice boomed over the chaos. Everyone looked up to see the congressman at the top of the stairs. “You’ve got the whole neighborhood witnessing this mess,” he said. “Bring them both in the house.”

  Puzzled, Tony turned to his brother. “In the house? Are you sure, Frank?”

  “Clean all these people up off the lawn, it’s like a drunk frat party out here. And whatever you idiots left on the barbecue is now burned to shit.”

  “Mikey,” Tony yelled, “Get your friends off the lawn and go check the food.” Tony bent down to help up DC, and the two of them followed the dudebros carrying Ray up the stairs and into the house.

  “Whaddaya gonna do with ’em?” Tony asked when he got to his brother.

  “Give her to me,” Frank said, then pointed at Andre. “And get rid of that idiot and those cars.”

  “Sure thing.” Tony then pounded down the steps and tried to grab Andre, but the little man dodged and avoided the older man’s grasp. Tony and two of the able-bodied dudebros chased the pimp almost the whole way out of the cul-de-sac before Tony had to stop to catch his breath. “You two go ahead and tune that nigger out,” he said.

  One of the dudebros, holding the kid’s hockey stick that Ray had used to knock a few of his buddies out, slapped it into his palm. “Hundred percent,” he said.

  Tony returned to Ray’s Caddy and opened the door. He yelped when he saw the puppy jump from the floorboards to the seat. “Damn, you scared me little guy,” he said. He picked up the puppy with one hand and searched the inside of the car, looking for the Junkie’s cell phone. Not finding it, he deposited the puppy back on the seat, shut the door, and looked up at the big, white mansion. “No more of this errand boy shit,” he said.