House of the Rising Sun (24 page)

“I got a good job.”

Mr. Zello's eyebrows shot up in an exaggerated look of surprise. “You do, huh?”

“I work for Mr. Nicky.”

Tony's father might have been a poor white-trash boozer, but he was an honest poor white-trash boozer. He knew Nick, knew Nick was connected, knew Nick ran numbers and shylocked on the side. Nick even ran a little protection racket on the
businesses along Saint Claude Avenue. “You're staying away from Nick, and you're staying in school,” his father said.

They were in the kitchen and his dad had already turned around to pour himself another drink when Tony said, “I'm not going back. Fuck those niggers, fuck that school, and fuck . . . you.”

The speed of the move caught Tony by surprise. His father spun around, highball glass in his right hand, and smashed it against the side of Tony's head. Sprawled on the kitchen floor, Tony pulled his hand away from his head and saw it was covered with blood. The next day he went to a doctor and had the three-inch slice above his left ear sewn up. That was twenty-five years ago, and he had not seen his father since.

Riding in his Lincoln, Joey driving, Tony was on the verge of seeing everything he had worked for disappear because of one man—Ray Shane. With no idea where Shane was, no leads on where to start looking, and time running out before Vinnie found out what had happened, Tony decided to make a career move. He was going to—

“Hey, Tony, you listening?”

“Huh?” Tony looked at Joey. Lost in his thoughts, he hadn't heard the big goon. “What did you say?”

“I said, where to?”

They were at the foot of Canal Street, at the river. “Head uptown on Tchoupitoulas.”

“Where we going?”

“I'll tell you when we get there.”

After Ray got out of the shower, Jenny handed him the clothes she had dug out of the bedroom closet. She sat on the end of the bed while he slipped on an old pair of khakis. After buttoning them, Ray ran his hand down inside the waistband, showing her a couple inches of extra room. “Prison food is pretty lousy.” After he pulled on a blue golf shirt, he said, “I can't believe you kept this stuff.”

For weeks after Ray was arrested, Jenny Porter cried herself to sleep every night, her face buried in one of his shirts. After a while the shirts stopped smelling like him, so she had washed them and hung them up in the closet, eventually forgetting about them. She supposed that somewhere in the back of her mind she had always hoped he would come back. However, that was something Ray didn't need to know. She gave him a smile. “Goodwill wouldn't take them.”

He pointed to the closet. “Any chance you got a pair of my old shoes in there?”

She shook her head. “I'll light a fire and we can dry your shoes in front of the fireplace.”

She was glad when they left the bedroom. Too many memories, both good and bad. In the den she crouched in front of the small fireplace and struck a long match. She turned the gas valve until she heard the hiss. Then she held the flame near the jets until the gas ignited. Ray padded over on bare feet and set his shoes and socks down in front of the brick hearth.

The clock on the mantle read 6:30.

Jenny said, “You hungry?”

“Starving.”

“Eggs all right?”

He nodded. “That'd be great.”

Just like that, she flashed back as a montage of images from a better time played in her mind.

Late afternoon, both of them about to leave for work, Ray with the Vice Squad, she as a bartender. She stood in the kitchen in bare feet, whipping up something for him to eat before he left. Kissing him on his way out the door, telling him to be careful
.

Jenny cracked four eggs for the both of them, then threw in an extra one, remembering how skinny Ray had gotten in prison, and scrambled them in a skillet. She toasted bread and poured orange juice. After they ate, Ray helped her pick up. That part was new. He used to stuff his food down and rush out, leaving everything on the table for her to clean up before she left for work.

By the time they finished cleaning up the kitchen, it was 7:00
AM
, and Jenny was dead tired.

As if he had read her mind, Ray stifled a yawn and said, “You mind if I crash on the sofa? I'm about to pass out.”

No, she didn't mind. She almost, almost but not quite, told him he could take half the bed. It was the same bed they used to sleep in together every night. Both of them needed sleep, what was the harm? She didn't tell him that, though, because he might say no. He might say no because she was a whore, or because he was afraid of catching something, or both. Jenny didn't think she could bear hearing him say no, so she didn't say anything.

Instead she pulled a spare pillow and blanket down from the shelf in the hall closet and tossed them to him. Ray leaned the pillow against the armrest and was unfolding the blanket when Jenny asked, “You ever think of where we'd be if we hadn't messed our lives up so bad?”

Ray didn't look at her. He kept his eyes on the blanket as he spread it out on the sofa.

Embarrassed by his silence, she forced out a laugh and said, “Probably doesn't matter. People like us always screw things up.”

He stood up and looked at her with a penetrating stare. She tried to meet it, but after a couple of seconds she had to look away. When he spoke, his voice was low, almost a whisper, “I think about it every day.”

Her belly tightened as a lump formed in her throat, forcing her to swallow a couple of times before she said, “Me, too.”

“What you said earlier, about how people can change, do you really believe that?”

Afraid her voice would crack, she just nodded.

“How?” he asked.

She stood across the sofa from him, looking straight in his eyes. “First, I think you've got to admit that whatever happened is
your
fault, and then you've got to make up your mind that you're going to change.” She saw him shaking his head, so before he had a chance to interrupt, she added, “Then you've just got to do it. You've got to change. Just quit doing the things you used to do.”

Ray's gaze faltered and he looked away. “I wish it was that easy.” He sat down on the end of the sofa, his back to her.

She walked around and sat down near him, not next to him, not crowding him, leaving a foot or so of cushion between them. “I didn't say it was easy.”

With his elbows resting on his knees, Ray leaned forward. “One night when I first got on the job, maybe two or three months out of the academy, me and my partner, my field training officer, got a call. Shots fired. It was a little neighborhood off North Galvez in the Third District. We roll up on the scene and I see this guy lying in the street, really half in the street and half on the grass. He's shot to shit, maybe six, seven holes
in his chest and one in his face. Blew the back of his head out.

“There's a lady standing ten feet away screaming and crying. Turns out the victim is her husband. Later we find out he was a shithead, owed somebody money over a dope deal, but at the time we didn't know that. She's pointing across the street screaming that the guy who shot her husband ran between two houses.

“My FTO, a big fat dude who had been on the job twenty years and couldn't run ten feet, he tells me to go after the guy while he calls it in and secures the crime scene. So off I go, flashlight in one hand, gun in the other. I'm creeping down this pitch-black alley, and I hear a big dog barking like crazy, hear his claws tearing at a chain-link fence.

“Next thing I know I hear a shot. I duck and aim my light and my gun toward the back of the alley. I see the guy trying to go over the fence into the backyard. There's a dog back there on the ground just on the other side of the fence. The guy has shot the dog and is trying to climb over the fence. I take a shot at him but my hand's shaking so bad I miss. Doesn't matter, though, the guy hears the shot, he throws down his gun, puts his hands up, and surrenders.

“I hear my partner screaming from the street, but he doesn't come down the alley because he's scared. I cuff the perp, pick up his gun, and walk back to the car.”

Ray was quiet for a few seconds, staring down at the floor. “I never felt so good in my life.”

She reached across the space between them and laid a hand on his leg, not a sexual gesture, just one of reassurance. “Why did you tell me that story, Ray?”

He took a deep breath. “Everything was simple then. I was the good guy. The man in that alley, he was the bad guy. A week later my FTO and I respond to a house burglary. The owner was out jogging and somebody broke in. Owner stays outside
while we go in to check the residence, make sure whoever did it is gone. Upstairs in the bedroom my partner finds the owner's wallet. It's obvious the burglar didn't get upstairs, nothing's moved around, no sign the place has been tossed. My partner slips the guy's wallet into his pocket. End of the shift he hands me sixty bucks, says it's my cut.”

“What did you do?”

He looked at her. “Put it in my pocket.”

A frown crossed her face. “You kept it?”

Ray shrugged. “He was my FTO. He wrote my evaluations. On my way home that night I felt bad about it. I was stopped at the light at Tulane and Jeff Davis and I see this bum sitting on the neutral ground. He had one of those signs, handwritten on cardboard with a piece of string looped around his neck. Sign said ‘help a Vietnam vet,' or ‘will work for food,' something like that. I rolled down my window, wadded up the money, and threw it at him.”

Jenny reached behind him and rubbed his back. “You serious about changing?”

“It's too late,” he said.

She asked him again, “Are you serious about changing?”

Silence. Then he nodded. “I want to.”

“Wanting to is not enough. You've got to do it.” But talk was cheap. She was stuck in the same trap as Ray. She wanted to change, wanted to change so badly it hurt, but she didn't have the strength. Until now. She had never verbalized it like she was doing right now. Hearing her own words as they bounced off Ray and came back. She could do it, and she could help him do it.

Ray snapped his fingers. “Just like that?”

Jenny pulled her hand away and shook her head, feeling a new strength. “What did I tell you that you had to do first?”

Ray didn't answer.

“You have to admit it's your fault.”

“What's my fault?”

“Everything.”

“Everything's
my
fault?” he said, sounding defensive.

She wasn't going to back down, wasn't going to let him off the hook. This was going to be painful, but necessary. “Being a crooked cop and a thief was your fault, Ray, no one else's.”

He started to stand, but she grabbed his arm and held him down. “Just like it's my fault I'm a whore.”

Ray turned to her. “At least you had a reason.”

Jenny shook her head. “My mom getting sick isn't a reason. I could have done something different, but I chose not to. I chose to become a whore and fuck for money.” She felt the tears spill over and run down her cheeks. “I let any man who can afford it stick his dick in me, stick it anywhere he wants.”

“Shut up.” Ray had his eyes closed like he was in pain.

She went on. “Don't sugarcoat it. You might be a crook and a thief, but at least you paid for what you did. Me, I'm still doing it, and I'm nothing but a—”

He spun toward her, grabbed her shoulders with both hands, and shook her. “Stop it!”

But she didn't stop. “What you did was your fault. Just like what I did was my fault. But neither one of us ever has to make the same mistake again.” She took a deep breath. “I'm finished at the House. I'll give up whatever I have to, this apartment, my car, everything, but I'm finished.”

He leaned over and hugged her. “Me, too.”

They were too early, so Tony told Joey to stop at Rickabono's Café on Panola Street. Tony took his time. He ate a big breakfast, two jumbo waffles, a glass of juice, and three cups of coffee. At first Joey tried to ask questions, but Tony told him to shut up and eat.

The muscle head wasn't happy about the menu—too much fat, too many carbohydrates, and not enough protein. Still, he managed to stuff down a pile of pancakes after drowning them in a pool of maple syrup deep enough to float a small boat in; then he stuffed down enough scrambled eggs to choke a horse.

After breakfast they headed downtown. Joey parked the car where Tony told him. The big man looked surprised as he looked at the building. “This is where the boss has his office?”

Tony nodded.

“You want me to come in with you?” Joey asked, sounding hopeful.

“Stay in the fucking car,” Tony said. “Don't go anywhere, don't talk to anybody.”

The muscle head nodded.

“Where's your cell phone?” Tony asked.