House of the Rising Sun (39 page)

“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 marble 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.”

“What happened next?”

“Nothing. We never talked about it again. Just pretended it never happened.”

“So why are you talking about it now?”

Ray signaled for another drink. “Why are you asking me that? You're the one who set this thing up.”

“What do you mean?”

“That's why you told me about Jimmy's deal with the feds. You wanted me to get even. You wanted me to do your dirty work for you.”

After Ray's drink came, Landry said, “You'll have to testify.”

Ray thought about the garbage bag full of money across the street in his hotel room. Somewhere around $250,000. “After what he did, I don't care.”

“Are you talking about what he did to the girl or to you?”

“Take your pick,” Ray said. “As long as the D.A. is paying for the ticket, I'll fly back and testify.”

“You're leaving?”

Ray nodded and took a sip of his drink.

“Where?”

“I don't know yet. When you need to reach me, you can contact my parole officer. He'll know where I am.”

“What are you going to do?”

Ray shrugged.

The next morning, Ray was up early. He stuffed himself at the all-you-can-eat breakfast bar in the hotel restaurant. After that he went back to his room and called Jenny. Still no answer.

He decided to take a walk.

It was ten blocks to Jenny's apartment. He tried to come up with something to say to her. Some kind of apology. It didn't matter. Her car wasn't there.

He remembered what she had said about wanting to go back to California. He leaned on the buzzer outside the main door to the building for a good thirty seconds. A third-floor window jerked open and a young guy with long hair stuck his head out. “Knock that shit off!”

Ray didn't recognize him. He bit back his first response, waved up at the guy, and said, “Sorry.” Then he walked away.

Back in his room at the Doubletree, the red message light on the telephone was blinking. He had not told anyone where he was staying. He picked up the phone. On the hotel's voice mail system was a recorded message telling him to call the front desk for an urgent message. With a growing sense of dread, he dialed the front desk. The girl who answered wanted to know if he would be staying another night.

Ray told her he would be staying at least one more night. He was enjoying spending someone else's money. Since he was using cash, he had to pay up front. He pulled the garbage bag out from the closet, grabbed two hundred bucks, then wandered toward the lobby. On the way out of his room he double-checked
that the do-not-disturb sign was still in place. He didn't want housekeeping throwing his garbage bag out with the trash.

After paying for another night, Ray went back to his room and spent the next two hours staring at a movie on pay-perview. When it was over, he realized he didn't even know what it had been about. Instead of watching it, he had spent the last two hours trying to decide what he was going to do for the rest of his life. He had not made any decisions.

That was too much thinking, so he pulled the money out and counted it—$247,374, not counting the small stuff in his pocket. He went to the gift shop and talked the clerk out of three shopping bags, the stiff, square kind with the twine handles. He put $100,000 each into two bags, and the rest in the third bag.

At 4:00
PM
, he called Jenny again, and still got no answer. A gnawing feeling in the bottom of his stomach told him she was gone for good.

Ray loaded the three shopping bags into the trunk of his Mustang. Then he drove past Jenny's apartment. Her car still wasn't there. This time he didn't stop. At a store on Esplanade Avenue, he stopped and used a pay phone to call the House.

Someone whose voice he didn't recognize answered. No, the voice told him, Jenny Porter wasn't at work. As soon as he hung up, Ray hated himself for making that call. She had said she was through at the House. When Jenny said something, she meant it. There was something to be learned from that.

Ray took the expressway toward Metairie. At the hotel where they had stayed, he circled the parking lot looking for her Firebird. It wasn't there. He wandered into the lobby. At the front desk he asked the clerk if Jenny Porter had checked out. The clerk, a young Pakistani man, eyed him for several seconds, then said, “Are you Mr. Shane?”

Ray nodded.

“Mr. Ray Shane?” the clerk asked in his lilting accent.

Ray fought the urge to reach over the counter and choke the shit out of him. Instead, he said, “Yes, sir. My name is Ray Shane.”

The clerk reached under the desk and then handed Ray an envelope with the hotel's logo and return address in the upper left corner.
Ray Shane
was written in pen across the front. Jenny's handwriting. So she had at least left him a Dear John letter.

Ray mumbled his thanks. He trudged across the lobby and sat down on a sofa. The envelope was sealed and didn't appear to have been tampered with. He used his Swiss Army knife to slit open the flap. Inside was a single sheet of hotel stationery. On it, written in Jenny's hand, it said,
Call me
, and gave a downtown phone number.

In the back of the lobby, next to the restrooms, was a pay phone. Ray got change for a dollar from the Pakistani desk clerk and dialed the number.

A hotel receptionist greeted him. He asked for Jenny Porter. His call was put through and Jenny answered on the first ring. Her voice was cautious. “Hello.”

Relief flooded through him. “I got your note.”

She was at a hotel a block from the Doubletree. She had read in the paper and heard on the news about all that had happened. She didn't feel safe at the hotel in Metairie, or at her apartment. She had left the note just in case he decided to look for her.

Ray went to her hotel. Two steps into the room they were in each other's arms. They trailed clothes from the door to the bed. The fear, the anger, the longing—all of the emotions Ray had been feeling came out in a gush that left them sprawled on the bed, panting and exhausted.

“Whew!” Jenny said. “What the hell got into you?”

Ray had to catch his breath before he could speak. “I don't
know. I feel better than I have in a long time.” He looked over at her. “Why?”

“No reason.” She smiled at him, just a hint of wickedness in it. “You think you can do that again?”

He grinned and rolled toward her.

“You think it's safe?” Jenny asked.

“Carlos and Vinnie are dead and Tony is in jail,” Ray said. “You and I are nothing to them. They're not going to look for us.” He wasn't really sure about that, there was always Rocco. Tony's butt-boy wasn't going to forget Ray so soon, but there was no sense worrying about that.

The sun was coming up and they were still in Jenny's room. They had barely slept. During the night he had told her everything that had happened. If they were truly going to start over, he had to be honest with her, but there was one issue he had skated around. He didn't say how much money he had slipped into Tony's car. Nor had he mentioned that he still had close to $250,000 packed in shopping bags in the trunk of his Mustang.

Still, something in the back of his mind nagged at him about that money. Having it didn't feel right. He couldn't remember ever having had a feeling like it before. How could you not feel right about a quarter of a million dollars?

Sometime during the night, Jenny had nodded off for a few minutes, and Ray had propped himself up on one elbow and just looked at her. She lay on her back, covers pulled down to her waist, breasts exposed. Ray was happy, happier than he could ever remember being.

When the sun came up, he asked her if she felt like taking a trip.

“Where?” she asked.

“I know you like California, but how do you feel about Florida?”

She told him Florida sounded great.

That afternoon they piled into his Mustang and drove to her apartment. She only took ten minutes to get what she needed. While she was upstairs, Ray sat in the car. She came back lugging a soft-sided suitcase and a cosmetic bag. Ray helped her stuff them into the backseat. He didn't want to open the trunk.

“What about my car?” she asked.

“Leave it.”

“Let's sell it. It's paid for, and we might need the money.”

The girl was practical.

They went back to her hotel. She got her old Firebird and followed Ray to a used-car lot on Canal Street just past Claiborne. They sold her car for cash.

Ray took five minutes at his apartment. He threw his shaving kit and some clothes into a zippered duffel bag. Then he stuffed the bag into the backseat on top of Jenny's suitcase. He still didn't want to open the trunk.

From his apartment, he took Robert E. Lee Boulevard to Canal Boulevard, then drove river-bound past the cemeteries to where it turned into Canal Street. Jenny said, “I thought we were going to Florida.”

“I have to make one more stop.”

“Where?” she asked.

“A friend of yours.”

A few minutes later, Ray turned off Canal onto Rampart Street. He pulled to the curb in front of the Catholic Children's Home.

“What are you doing, Ray?”

“Remember that nun we saw, the one with those kids?”

Jenny nodded, her expression suspicious. “Sister Claire?”

“This is the school she runs, right?”

“Yeah.”

Ray reached into the glove compartment and punched the trunk-release button. “Come on.”

She followed him to the back of the car. He pulled the two heaviest shopping bags out. “I've got something for her.”