House of the Rising Sun

by Chuck Hustmyre

  “Tony is acting weird and it makes me jumpy,” Ray said. “There’s bad blood between us, has been for a while, and I’m just worried he might try to settle our account before he leaves.”

  “I know all about the girlfriend and the bad blood, but what makes you think he’s trying to get out of town?”

  “He’s been acting real strange the last couple of hours.”

  “Strange how?”

  “Like he was nervous. Then I overheard him talking on the phone to somebody about an airline reservation.”

  “To where?”

  “I don’t know,” Ray said. “I didn’t hear that part.”

  “Why are you telling me this?”

  A stripper walked past Ray on her way to the can. She tried to whisper in his ear, but he covered the mouthpiece and waved her away.

  “Shane?” Landry said.

  Ray uncovered the phone. “Earlier today you gave me some information that cleared up something I’ve been wondering about for years. I’m just trying to return the favor.”

  “You’re trying to do me a favor?” Landry sounded skeptical.

  “Yeah, I guess.”

  “Do you always keep tabs on Tony?”

  “Only recently,” Ray said. “I don’t want him sneaking up on me.”

  “When’s he leaving?”

  “I don’t know. Must be soon, though. A little while ago I saw him come out of his office carrying a leather bag, like an airline carry-on. He headed outside, so I decided to take a stroll myself.”

  “You followed him?”

  “I wouldn’t call it that.”

  “Bullshit.”

  Ray didn’t say anything.

  “What did you see?” Landry said.

  “He put the bag in the trunk of his car, that big green Lincoln. Then he pulled a pistol out of his pants and tossed it in the trunk along with the bag, maybe inside the bag. I’m not sure.”

  “What kind of pistol?”

  “I was across the street,” Ray said. “All I know was that it was some kind of big automatic.”

  “How long ago was that?”

  “Hour, give or take. Why?”

  “Where are you?”

  “I left right after I saw him put that gun in his car,” Ray said. “I told you, he doesn’t like me. I see him acting weird and carrying a gun, it’s time for me to go home.”

  “You’re not at home,” Landry said. “I hear music. Where are you, at a bar?”

  “What’s going on, Carl?”

  Ray heard a scraping sound in his ear, then muffled voices in the background. Landry had put his hand over the mouthpiece and was talking to someone. After a few seconds Ray said, “Landry, you still there?”

  Landry’s hand came off the phone. “What did you say?”

  “I asked if there was something going on. Maybe something I need to know about for my own protection.”

  “Where exactly was Tony’s car?”

  “That parking lot on Decatur, two blocks from the House.”

  “Is it still there?”

  “Far as I know.”

  “How sure are you that it was a semiautomatic pistol you saw Tony put in the trunk of his car?”

  “Positive,” Ray said. “Why? What’s going on?”

  “Just police work,” Landry said. “Nothing that concerns you.” Then he hung up.

  Ray looked at the phone in his hand. “What an asshole,” he said. Then he smiled.

  Ten minutes after Landry hung up on Ray, a guy in a suit, who Ray recognized as an Eighth District detective, strolled past Shorty’s parking lot. He crossed the street and set up surveillance two doors down from the strip bar. Ray poked his head out the door and saw another detective standing by a lamppost a block and a half away.

  Just past 3:00 AM, an unmarked police car stopped at the curb in front of the parking lot. From his table inside the strip bar, Ray saw two detectives get out. The other two who had been on surveillance walked over to the car and all the cops stood around talking. None of them seemed to be in a hurry to do anything. They ignored Tony’s car.

  Fifteen minutes later another unmarked police car screeched to a stop beside the first. Carl Landry jumped out from behind the wheel and another detective climbed out of the passenger seat. They pulled Tony Zello out from the backseat. Ray noticed he wasn’t wearing handcuffs.

  Landry handed Tony a legal-size sheet of paper. Ray recognized it as a search warrant. One of the detectives grabbed a set of keys from inside the booth. Then they all walked toward the back of the lot. Tony managed to look cocky despite his beat-to-shit face. He limped along with the cops.

  Landry didn’t waste time. He started with the trunk. Even from across the street, Ray could see the detective’s face light up. He pulled the bag out of the trunk and opened it, the bag with a murder weapon and $50,000 cash inside it, the same bag that had Tony Zello’s name printed on the luggage tag.

  Tony started backing away and shaking his head. Two detectives shoved him against his own car and handcuffed him behind his back. He kept shaking his head, yelling something Ray couldn’t make out.

  Ray watched the cops photograph the car and the inside of the trunk. They put the Smith .40 caliber into a plastic evidence bag, preserving it for prints. They bagged the cash, too. Landry was never far from the money, Ray noticed. He must be worried that some of it might disappear.

  Ray waved to the bartender for another beer.

  Half an hour later, Ray walked to Jenny’s apartment. Her car wasn’t parked on the street. He rang the buzzer anyway.

  No answer.

  He stuck a cigarette between his lips and walked away. Reaching for his lighter, he remembered he didn’t have one. He had been using Tony Zello’s gold-plated “Z” lighter, which was now no doubt in police custody.

  Ray put the Lucky Strike back into the almost full pack and was just about to slip it into his pocket when he passed a trash can on the sidewalk. He stopped. A slogan painted on the side of the square trash can said DON’T TRASH NEW ORLEANS.

  Ray looked at the pack of cigarettes in his hand. He looked at the trash can. Then he reread the slogan. He had been smoking since high school. What had it done for him? Jenny had said something important. Something Ray was sure was true.

  People can change.

  Ray threw the pack of Lucky Strikes into the garbage.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  Ray woke up at two o’clock the next afternoon. He was at the Doubletree, a high-rise hotel off Canal Street, a block from the casino. It was a big step up from the dump on Chef Menteur Highway. Here they put a free newspaper in front of your room in the morning and mints on your pillow at night.

  The newspaper headline screamed:

  MOB BOSSES, BROTHERS, GUNNED DOWN!

  CARLOS AND VINCENT MESSINA KILLED.

  REPUTED MOB SOLDIER ARRESTED, CHARGED WITH MURDERS.

  Ray switched on the TV. CNN and Fox News were running with the story. Updates linked the murders of the Messina brothers to two more bodies discovered in the New Orleans suburb of Kenner, where another reputed Messina soldier had been found dead, along with his wife.

  Ray called Jenny a few times, but she didn’t answer.

  He called Carl Landry.

  “If you’re looking for a reward,” Landry said, “you’re not getting one.”

  “I need to talk to you.”

  “So talk.”

  “In person.”

  “I don’t have time.”

  Ray had expected that. “Landry, I just gave you the biggest arrest of your career. You’re on all the cable news channels doing the perp walk with Tony. You owe me a few minutes.”

  They met in the bar at the Sheraton, across the street from the Doubletree. Ray didn’t want Landry to know where he was staying. Ray had a Jameson on the rocks. Landry had a glass of water with a slice of lemon.

  “Does it bother you,” Ray said, “that Jimmy LaGrange is still a cop?”

  Landry took a sip of hi
s lemon water. When he put his glass down, he said, “Why, does it bother you?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Maybe it bothers me, too,” Landry said.

  “You said he had immunity.”

  Landry nodded.

  “What kind of immunity?” Ray asked.

  “Anything he admitted to got written up and everyone signed off on it. No one can touch him for anything on the list, and it’s a long list.”

  “That’s some deal.”

  “He went way back,” Landry said. “Even before he was in Vice. When the feds tell you that if you admit to it, you can’t ever be prosecuted for it, it’s in your best interest to dig deep.”

  Ray took a sip of whiskey. “How about murder, was that part of the deal?”

  Landry’s eyes widened. “No, that wasn’t covered.”

  “He strangled a girl in the Rose Motel.”

  For several seconds, Landry didn’t say anything. Just stared across the bar at the rows of liquor bottles. “That must have been his favorite hangout.”

  Ray nodded. “I pulled him out of there a few times.”

  “When did it happen?”

  “Two years before I got arrested.”

  Landry sipped his water. “How do you know about it?”

  “Jimmy told me.”

  “That was seven years ago. Without a body you don’t have a case.”

  “I know where she is.”

  “What?”

  “Saint Louis Number Three.”

  The detective frowned. “You think a judge is going to let us exhume her on your word?”

  “She’s never been buried. At least not officially.”

  “I’m listening.”

  “She’s in the Underwood family tomb, but she’s not an Underwood.”

  “I think you better explain that.”

  Ray slid more whiskey down his throat. “She’s right behind the Third District station.”

  “I know where Saint Louis Number Three is,” Landry said, his impatience showing.

  “No, I mean the tomb. The Underwoods are right behind the station, just across the fence from the back parking lot.”

  “LaGrange told you right where he hid the body.”

  Ray drained the rest of his drink in one gulp. To make this work, Ray had to be willing to go all the way. “No,” he said. “I helped him put her there.”

  The detective pushed his glass away and sat up straight. “Then I’m going to have to advise you of your rights.”

  Ray leaned close to Landry, his voice sharp. “Who do you want, Carl? An ex-cop and ex-con because I didn’t report it, or do you want an active-duty cop who strangled a teenage girl?”

  Carl Landry shook his head. “Accessory after the fact is a felony that could violate your parole.”

  Straight-arrow, by-the-book motherfucker. “Without me, you got nothing.”

  “I can dig her up,” Landry said. “LaGrange will crack in ten minutes. He’ll probably put the whole thing on you. He’s done it before.”

  “The deal Jimmy made with the feds sticks in your craw, doesn’t it? You had to watch your father go to prison while a piece of shit like Jimmy LaGrange went free and got to stay on the job.”

  Landry’s face turned red. He grabbed the front of Ray’s shirt and pulled the two of them together. With their faces only inches apart, he said, “My father is none of your fucking business.” Spittle flew from the detective’s lips and struck Ray in the face. “You’re a fucking scumbag, and I’m not working any deals with you.”

  So Landry wasn’t always in control. He had a dark side after all. Ray pushed the detective’s hands away. “After he killed her, he called me in a panic and I helped him get rid of the girl’s body.”

  “So you’re admitting to being an accessory.”

  Ray nodded. “But accessory after the fact carries a seven-year statute of limitations.”

  Landry’s face hardened. His lips pressed together so tightly his mouth looked like a red line.

  “You just can’t help it, can you?” Ray asked.

  “Help what?”

  “You’re so fucking straight you’d break if you tried to turn a corner.”

  “The law is not a suggestion, Shane. You don’t get to bend it to suit your needs.”

  “Bullshit,” Ray said. “Police work is a dirty business. Sometimes you have to look the other way.”

  “I don’t work like that.”

  “What do you call the deal you made with LaGrange? If that’s not looking the other way, I don’t know what is.”

  “That wasn’t my decision.”

  “But you went along with it, didn’t you?”

  Landry turned away.

  Ray stared at him for several seconds. “It’s been eating you up, hasn’t it? Five years, tearing your guts out. Thinking about your dad—”

  “My father deserved to go to prison.”

  “And so does Jimmy LaGrange.”

  Carl Landry waved for the bartender. He ordered two drinks, a Jameson for Ray and a vodka and tonic for himself. After the drinks came, he looked at Shane. “Tell me about the girl.”

  “Aren’t you going to read me my rights first?”

  “Fuck you.”

  Ray kicked back a slug of whiskey. “I don’t know what happened before I got there. He called me about midnight, out of his fucking mind, said he had to have my help. When I got there, the girl was dead. Jimmy said it was an accident.”

  “An accident?”

  Ray shrugged. “Jimmy was into weird stuff.”

  “What kind of weird stuff?”

  “Eroto-asphyxiation, bondage, S and M.”

  “Who was she?”

  “A runaway. A junkie. A whore. But she was only about fifteen.”

  “You said he strangled her.”

  “The only marks on her, other than the tracks on her arms, were bruises and some scratches around her neck. Jimmy was nuts, screaming about prison, threatening to kill himself. He grabbed his gun off the dresser and put it in his mouth. I had to take it away from him.”

  Ray took another sip of whiskey. Thinking how different things might have been if he’d never gone to the Rose Motel that night. Thinking about the cleaning lady finding LaGrange with his brains blown out, next to a dead hooker. “I shouldn’t have stopped him.”

  “What happened next?”

  “He wanted to put her in my car. I told him there was no fucking way a dead prostitute was going in my car.”

  “So what did you do?”

  “We put her in his trunk.”

  “Why the cemetery?”

  “Who’s going to look for a body in a graveyard?”

  Landry nodded. “Whose idea was that?”

  “Jimmy’s.”

  “The cemeteries are locked after five.”

  “That’s why we went to the Third District station. LaGrange backed his car up to the fence, and we borrowed some tools from the desk sergeant.”

  “Who was the sergeant?”

  Ray shook his head. “He didn’t know anything about it. LaGrange told him we were pulling a surveillance and we had to get through a fence. He just lent us some tools.”

  Landry gestured for him to go on.

  “Jimmy cut a hole in the fence. He crawled through and pulled the girl’s body in behind him. I followed him.” Ray lifted his glass and downed the rest of his drink, feeling the amber liquid burn the back of his throat. “He found a tomb in the cheap seats, right behind the station.”

  “Cheap seats?”

  “There’s a double row of small family tombs just across the fence.”

  Carl Landry had been eyeing his vodka and tonic while Ray talked. Finally he took his first sip. Ray thought it was probably the first on-duty drink he’d taken in his life.

  Ray said, “Jimmy picked a tomb that looked full.”

  “How could he tell?”

  “It was a small one, no more than six or seven feet tall and about four and half feet wide. The marb
le stone on front had about eight names on it already. Seemed like a good bet they weren’t going to be able to fit any more in there.” He paused for a few seconds, thinking about that night seven years ago.

  “The heat cremates them after a year or so,” Landry said. “There’s really no limit to how many you can put in there.”

  “We didn’t know that,” Ray said. The image clear in his mind of him and Jimmy LaGrange carrying the naked body of the dead girl. When they set her down in the grass beside the tomb, Ray had thrown up. “I remember the family’s name, Underwood, engraved in block letters across the face of the tomb.”

  “How did you get the body inside?”

  “With a screwdriver.”

  “How?”

  “Two long screws are all that hold the marble stone—headpiece, tombstone, whatever you call it—in place. All you need to get into one of those things is a screwdriver, and we had the sergeant’s toolbox.”

  “So you unscrewed the cover?”

  That was the second time Landry had said you. Ray nodded. “But I let Jimmy handle the rest.”

  “All right. What did he do?”

  “It was pitch dark in that tomb. Jimmy asked me to help him carry her inside. I told him there was no way I was going in that thing. It was his mess. He could finish cleaning it up.”

  “So you stayed outside while he went in?”

  “Jimmy grabbed under her arms and was backing in, but he missed one of the steps and ended up falling backward into the tomb. She fell on top of him. Scared the shit out of him and he started screaming. I had to kick him to get him to shut up.”

  “Where were you when you kicked him? Were you inside the tomb?”

  Ray shook his head. “His legs were hanging out, so were the girl’s. I kicked the bottom of his foot just to get him to stop screaming.”

  “Where exactly did he put her?”

  “I don’t know. I told you it was dark in there. I’ve never been in one of those things, and I don’t have any idea what they look like on the inside.” Ray wished he had another drink. “The inside of that tomb was the blackest thing I’ve ever seen. When Jimmy went in there, it was like the dark just swallowed him up. He was sweating like a pig when he came out, but I didn’t know if it was from exertion or from fear. I was sweating, too, but I knew mine was from fear.”