Priscilla Zello snorted at the piece of ass reference.
Ray took a deep breath. “I had no choice.”
Carlos stared at him.
Ray moved back around the bed and picked up Tony’s bag. “I want you to look at this.”
“What is it?”
Priscilla Zello’s eyes narrowed. Ray thought he saw recognition in them. He tossed the bag onto the bed. It landed slightly on its side, across Carlos’s outstretched legs, the unzipped top angled toward Ray. Nodding at Priscilla, Ray said, “It belongs to her husband.”
“That’s a lie!” she said.
Carlos gave her a look that shut her up. He left the bag across his legs but otherwise didn’t touch it. From his angle he couldn’t see inside the bag. “What is it?”
Ray glanced back and forth between the two of them, both sitting with their backs against the headboard, both naked, neither making any effort to cover themselves. “Money,” he said to Carlos. “I didn’t count it, but I figure it’s somewhere around three hundred thousand.”
Carlos bent forward, grabbed one of the handles, and rolled the bag closer to him. He looked inside. Then he nodded, as if his practiced eye agreed with Ray’s guess about the amount. Then he looked at Priscilla.
She shook her head. “That’s not Tony’s bag.”
Ray said, “Look at the tag.”
Carlos turned the bag around so he could read the luggage tag tied to one of the D-rings. He looked at Priscilla again. “It’s got his name on it.”
Priscilla looked at Carlos, but jabbed a finger at Ray. “I can’t believe you’re listening to him.”
Carlos said, “He’s got the gun.” His voice was calm, like he didn’t have a care in the world.
She nodded toward the nightstand. “You’ve got a gun, too. Why don’t you use it?”
The Old Man glanced at Ray, giving him a can-you-believe-I’ve-got-to-put-up-with-her look. Ray shrugged, and for a second they were just two guys sharing a little joke. Then Carlos said, “Where’d you get it?”
“That’s not Tony’s bag,” Priscilla repeated. “I’ve never seen that—”
“I’m not going to tell you again.” Carlos raised a finger in front of her face. “Keep your mouth shut.” He nodded at Ray.
“I got it from Tony’s house,” Ray said. “My guess is, that’s the money from the robbery.”
“What were you doing in my house?” Priscilla demanded. Carlos didn’t say anything to her for disobeying his order to keep her mouth shut, didn’t say anything to Ray, just let the question hang.
Ray understood. It was a good question. From the corner of his eye, he saw a chair against the wall near the bathroom door, shaped aluminum tubing and cushions. He pulled it over and sat down. “I went in there to get a gun.” He turned the Smith over in his hand. “This gun.”
Since Priscilla got away with it the last time, she tried it again. “He’s lying. That’s not Tony’s gun.”
Old Man Messina ignored her.
Ray said, “I didn’t say it was his gun. I said it was his bag. He had the gun, and I needed to get it back.” Ray pointed to the bag in Carlos’s lap. “I found that in the bedroom closet.”
“You went in my closet!”
Ray used the .40 caliber like an extension of his finger, pointing it at Mr. Messina. “You’ve got people in the Eighth District. You’ve got the captain in your pocket. You’re putting his kids through school. You didn’t need me looking for those guys.”
“It was my brother’s idea.”
“I bet if you check, you’ll find out it was really Tony’s idea.”
“Why?”
“To frame me. The money was in his . . .” he jabbed the Smith at Priscilla, “In her closet.”
Priscilla turned to Carlos. “He admitted breaking into my house. He stole that bag and put the money in it to frame Tony.”
Looking at Carlos, Ray said, “The money was already in the bag.”
“Liar!” She pulled her legs under her and scampered toward him.
Ray pushed the muzzle of the gun toward her and she stopped. “You can’t have it both ways,” he said. “Either you’ve never seen that bag, or I stole it from you to frame your husband. One or the other.”
Carlos shoved her down in the middle of the bed. “Sit down.”
Priscilla covered herself with the comforter.
Messina looked down at the money again, then stared into Ray’s eyes. “You got some balls coming in here the way you did. And I don’t think it was just to tell me a bullshit story.” Carlos pointed to the bag. “Why didn’t you keep it?”
“It’s not mine.”
“You could have run. A lot of guys would have.”
“I thought about it,” Ray said. “But I don’t like running.”
The Old Man nodded.
“The doorman,” Ray said, “a kid named Hector, got caught up in it and Tony killed him. Two of the mopes on the crew, the one who shot your nephew and another guy named Sylvester, turns out I arrested both of them when I was a cop.”
“There were four of them.”
“I didn’t know the other two,” Ray said. “They were hired help.”
Priscilla started to get up. “I’m not listening to this bullshit anymore.”
Carlos held her down. He pointed to the French doors. “You move again, I’ll throw you through that glass door.” She sat back down, arms folded across her chest.
Carlos looked at Ray. “What about my brother?”
That was a subject Ray would rather skirt around. He was sure about Tony, but much less sure about Vinnie. Now was no time for speculation, but he couldn’t avoid the Old Man’s penetrating stare, so he gave the most neutral—and truthful—answer he could. “I don’t know.” It was probably the wrong answer.
Carlos’s face tightened and his lips barely moved as he spoke. “What the fuck do you mean you don’t know?”
“What I’m sure of is that Tony set up the robbery with people he could tie into me. Then he insisted I go after them. All the while he’s planning on putting the whole thing off on me. But as to whether your brother was in on it, that I don’t know.”
Carlos Messina was silent for almost a minute. Ray started sweating. He could smell it on himself. It smelled like fear. His whole life hung in the balance, waiting on the decision of an old man, sitting naked on a bed, his big belly hanging over his crotch. Meanwhile, Priscilla stared daggers at Ray.
Carlos looked down at the money in the bag, then nodded. “I’m going to kill that son of a bitch myself.”
Ray didn’t know if he was talking about Tony or Vinnie. He never found out because Priscilla Zello sprang across the bed, right over Carlos’s lap. She stretched out her long body and grabbed the Beretta pistol off the nightstand.
“Crazy bitch,” Carlos yelled as he wrapped his thick arms around her chest, squishing her bare breasts, but not able to stop her.
Ray sprang out of the chair, knocking it over behind him. He stepped to his right, toward the back door—a moving target is harder to hit—as Priscilla one-handed the pistol across the front of her body and fired at him.
Ray saw the flash, a yellow spurt of flame bursting from the muzzle, but adrenaline had diminished his sound perception, so he heard only a dull pop. Priscilla lay on her right side, sprawled on top of Carlos, who still had both arms locked around her and was trying to toss her off the bed. The Old Man had probably thrown her aim off just enough to save Ray’s life. Only six feet away, he didn’t expect her to miss again. With the Smith & Wesson thrust out in front of him, Ray yelled, “Drop the gun!”
Priscilla arched her back like a wrestler, pushing Carlos into the headboard. He held on to her with one arm and reached his other hand out, trying to grab the Beretta, but she moved it away from him like they were playing a game of keep-away.
Ray sidestepped all the way to the door. He yelled again, “Drop the gun!”
Priscilla rammed an elbow into Carlos’s gut. He grunt
ed as his breath exploded through his lips. He dropped his hands. Priscilla rolled up onto her knees in front of Carlos, then leaned forward, bracing herself with one hand on the bed. She stretched the gun toward Ray.
Ray aimed the Smith .40 and squeezed twice on the trigger—BOOM! BOOM! As far as he could tell the first shot missed, and the second whizzed under her hanging breasts and hit her in the thigh.
The Beretta flashed as Priscilla fired again. Ray heard the bullet THUNK against the wall behind him. He started pulling the trigger again—BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! The first shot caught her in the neck and lifted her onto her knees. The second one hit her low in the stomach, just above her dark patch of pubic hair. The third one missed and dug out a chunk of drywall just above the headboard. Priscilla fell back on top of Carlos, her eyes rolling up as one hand fell over the edge of the bed. Ray heard the Beretta clunk to the floor.
Carlos moaned. His breath was a wet sucking sound. Ray stepped to the side of the bed, his gun down by his leg. The Old Man’s eyes darted from side to side and although his mouth moved, all that came out was a gurgle. Blood bubbled from a hole in his chest, just above his left nipple.
Priscilla lay on her back, on top of Carlos, her smooth white skin punched through with three jagged black holes. The blood from her neck partially covered her breasts like a red bib, but her heart had stopped and so had the bleeding.
Carlos reached a hand out to Ray. Instinctively, Ray took it. Then he heard a rattle deep inside the Old Man’s chest as he breathed his last breath. Ray sank to the floor. He knew one thing for sure. He was fucked, absolutely fucked. No way, absolutely no way, could he get out of this. When the Guidos found out he had killed—
A thought, like a single razor-thin sliver of light sliced through Ray’s brain. The thought was nothing but a single word—IF. If they found out he killed Carlos Messina.
He looked at the two bodies. Naked bodies, entwined together in bed. Lovers caught in the act. Lovers shot dead. A crime of passion, a crime of insane jealously, a crime committed by an enraged husband.
Ray picked up the Beretta. He de-cocked the hammer and jammed the pistol in his waistband. The chair went back against the wall; then he wiped off the aluminum tubing with his shirttail. He looked for his footprints in the blood but didn’t see any. Once he got away, he would throw away his shoes just to be safe.
He backed toward the door, carrying Tony’s bag and the Smith & Wesson, scanning the room for any identifiable sign that he had been there. At the door, he used his shirt again and wiped off both sides of the handle.
Standing in the open doorway, Ray pulled Tony’s lighter out of his pocket, the ugly “Z” lighter Priscilla Zello had given her husband.
She bitches about my smoking. Says it ruins all her clothes.
Tony’s wife didn’t smoke. So it stood to reason that if Tony’s lighter was at Carlos Messina’s camp, Tony must have brought it. If it was on the floor, Tony must have dropped it. When he caught his wife in bed with Carlos and killed them both.
Ray smeared his palms over the metal surface of the lighter. Lab techs had to find smudges on things, otherwise those things looked planted. He tossed the lighter onto the floor, then closed the door behind him.
Ray tossed the Beretta in the swamp. Driving back toward the city, he stopped at the first gas station he came to on Highway 90. The station was closed. People out here went home early. The pay phone was attached to the corner of the building, over by the restrooms. He used his shirttail to hold the handset.
Ray told the 911 operator that he was a neighbor, out walking his dog when he heard shots coming from the Messina camp. No, he didn’t want to give his name. That’s why he was using a pay phone. Didn’t she know who Carlos Messina was? He didn’t want to get involved. He was just reporting what he had heard in case someone needed help.
Was anyone hurt? the operator asked.
He didn’t know for sure, Ray said, but he heard gunshots and didn’t that usually mean someone was hurt? Before he hung up, Ray told the operator one more thing: just after the shots, he had seen a man pulling away in a green car. He wasn’t sure what kind, but it was big, one of those luxury cars, maybe a Cadillac or Lincoln.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Ray pulled his Mustang into a parking garage next door to Harrah’s Casino. The six-story garage was well lit and had twenty-four-hour traffic and security. He opened the trunk and tossed in Tony Zello’s leather carryall.
Glancing around the garage, Ray spotted an old couple just stepping into the elevator. He slipped Dylan Sylvester’s Smith & Wesson .40 caliber down the back of his pants and covered it with his shirt.
Ray took the elevator down, walked across Canal Street, and eased into the French Quarter.
After more than a decade of interviewing suspects and witnesses, at least half of them lying to him, Ray had faith in his ability to judge if someone was telling the truth, but it had to be face-to-face. Ninety percent of communication is nonverbal. Facial expressions, body posture, hand gestures, eye movements—those are the things that give away the liar, and none of that comes through during a telephone conversation.
Interviewing someone over the telephone was like phone sex. She might sound like a twenty-two-year-old, 120-pound, blonde-haired, blue-eyed goddess, but odds were she was a fifty-year-old, 300-pound hag, with thinning hair and bad breath.
He had to talk to Vinnie face-to-face.
Ray wasn’t sure where Tony was, but he had to assume he was probably at the House. From a doorway alcove across the street and half a block away, Ray spent twenty minutes watching the front door of the House, making sure Tony wasn’t dicking around outside, greeting customers, acting like a big shot. The key to Ray’s plan was to get in and out without running into Tony.
Getting in turned out to be easier than Ray thought. He just strolled in. The new doorman, a guy Ray had never seen before but who definitely looked Italian, even opened the door for him.
Inside, the first floor was packed. On the stage, a couple of the girls were doing their oiled-up, titty-rubbing routine. No one even looked at Ray as he drifted past the bar, past the empty stool where he used to sit, and climbed the stairs. The pistol wedged into the back of his pants felt heavy.
Same thing on the second floor. From the stairwell, Ray saw the players jammed around the tables, throwing down money and chips.
On the third floor, he caught the eye of one of the girls draped across a chaise. The refurbished and resized rooms where the girls got down to work were spaced along a central hallway, but the area near the stairs was set up as a lounge. If a guy couldn’t find a girl in the strip club or casino, all he had to do was go up to the third floor and he could find one waiting for him on a love seat or reclining on a sofa. Vinnie liked to keep two or three girls there all the time.
When the girl on the chaise looked at him, Ray didn’t know what else to do, so he pressed a finger to his lips, pleading for silence. She shrugged and rolled her head back against the cushion.
On the fourth floor, Ray crept down the hall to the sitting area outside Vinnie’s apartment. A leather couch and two wingback chairs were arranged around a coffee table. Ray checked his watch. Five minutes past midnight. Vinnie wasn’t much of a night owl, so the odds were good that he was tucked in for the night, with or without the missus, depending on whether it was bridge night.
The door to Vinnie’s suite was solid, made of dark wood, and heavy, the kind normally found on the exterior of a house. An old-fashioned brass knocker was centered just below the peephole. Ray glanced around the sitting area, hoping for some inspiration, some idea how to get the door open. Knocking was out of the question. Even if Vinnie didn’t know about his brother yet, as soon as he saw Ray standing outside his door, he would at least call Tony, or, at the very least, if Tony was out, summon a couple of muscle heads up to put the grab on Ray until he could find Tony.
No inspiration came. Ray thought about the lock-picking kit he used to carry around in
his briefcase. He had carried it for years, maybe used it twice. Now that he really needed it, he couldn’t remember what he had done with it. When you get arrested, denied bond, then later sent to prison, your possessions seem to have a way of disappearing.
He raised his foot and kicked. The door flew open. Whoever had remodeled the place had hung the heavy door on the hotel’s original door frame. The cheap wooden jamb splintered as the lock’s strike plate tore through it.
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 & 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.
House of the Rising Sun Page 25
