pulled a thick towel down from a wide shelf. As she dried herself, she thought about Ray.
After their encounter this morning, she had seen him again, just past six o’clock, right after the cops finally cleared out. She had been up on the second floor, trying to get away from everyone downstairs, when she saw Ray slipping out the emergency exit. She had seen him leaving through that door before and knew he was going to climb the outside fire escape to the roof. This time she thought about going after him, about trying to talk to him again, but she didn’t. There was no use in it. Too much had passed between them to ever go back to the way it was.
A few minutes after Jenny spotted Ray climbing to the roof, on his way to do whatever the hell he did up there every morning, she saw Tony Zello practically skipping down the stairwell. She figured he was coming from Vinnie Messina’s apartment on the fourth floor. Judging by the big, shit-eating grin on Tony’s face, she also figured he had been successful in convincing his boss that the robbery wasn’t his fault.
Tony slowed when he saw Jenny leaning against the bar. He stepped out of the stairwell and strolled toward her. “Shane really fucked up this time.”
Jenny kept her back against the bar and tried hard to look unconcerned. “How’s that?”
“Are you kidding me?” Tony threw an elbow over the bar, dangerously close to Jenny’s shoulders. It bugged her, but she didn’t move. He did stuff like that all the time. Because they used to sleep together, he seemed to think she didn’t have a right to personal space anymore, that he could walk up and violate it anytime he wanted.
“We did that asshole a favor,” Tony said. “We gave him a job and put him in charge of security. Then he let four guys come in and knock us off.”
“Four guys with guns, Tony.”
“Twenty years we been in business here, and you know how many times we been robbed?”
She didn’t know but had a feeling she was going to find out. Tony held up his hand and made a circle with his fingers and thumb. “Zero. That’s how many.”
Jenny stood up straight as she felt her anger rising. “What was he supposed to do?”
“What we pay him for.” Tony stood up straight. “If he had any balls, he would’ve stopped those cocksuckers.”
“Stop them with what, a mean look?”
Tony turned toward her and shrugged. “When Old Man Carlos calls me, I’m gonna tell him straight out, Shane blew it.”
She knew Tony was talking shit, still trying to impress her with what a big man he was. “Why would Carlos call you?”
“Business. The Old Man calls me just about every day.”
She pointed to the stairs. “Weren’t you just up on the fourth floor making sure Vinnie didn’t think it was your fault?”
Tony’s eyes narrowed. “Nobody cares what Vinnie thinks. Carlos is the boss. Only reason he lets Vinnie run this place is because they’re brothers, and it keeps Vinnie from fucking up anything else.”
“Can I quote you on that?”
“He’s like the Queen of fucking England.”
“Are you calling Vinnie a queen?”
Tony snorted and shook his head. “What’s she really do? The Queen of England, I mean. She don’t do nothing. She’s a figurehead, just like Vinnie.” He tapped a finger against his chest. “I run the House.”
“That’s going to be a surprise to Vinnie. Finding out that you think he’s an English homosexual, and that he works for you.”
Tony jabbed his finger in her face. “You keep your mouth shut, or you’ll end up on the street, selling your pussy on Tulane Avenue like any other crack whore.” Then he reached down and scooped her crotch.
Jenny knocked his arm away. “Keep your hands off me.”
Tony stepped even closer. “That’s not what you used to tell me.” He dropped his voice into what she knew he thought of as a smooth, sexy baritone. “How about you go home and get cleaned up, and later on I could drop by.”
Jenny looked Tony straight in the eyes. “You want to screw somebody, why don’t you go home and screw your wife?” She turned away from him and walked toward the stairs.
Because Jenny had known Tony for years, she knew how his devious little mind worked. As a class-A brownnoser, he wasn’t going to let any of the shit from the robbery fall on him. He would suck up to Vinnie, then go behind Vinnie’s back to his brother Carlos and bad-mouth Vinnie, subtly but effectively. It was a dangerous game playing the two brothers against each other, but if anyone was weasel enough to pull it off, it was Tony Z.
As Jenny finished drying off, she wrapped the towel around her head and stepped to the vanity. The naked reflection staring back at her from the mirror above the sink made her want to cry. On the outside she looked basically the same as before Ray went to prison: five foot seven, with a slender waist and soft curves. She had the kind of body men wanted-and would pay well for-but she could see past the roundness of her hips and the swell of her breasts, she could see the hollowness inside, she could see the degradation she had wrought on her soul.
Jenny shook her towel-wrapped head, forcing the self-pitying thoughts from it, and turned her focus back toward Ray. Since replaying her conversation with Tony in her mind, she knew she should warn Ray that Tony was blaming him for the robbery. If Ray was going to defend himself, he needed to know what was going on. But would the stubborn Irish son of a bitch listen? And even if he did listen, and understood the danger, would he do anything about it? Since coming home from prison, Ray didn’t seem to care about anything anymore, especially himself.
Jenny unwound the towel from her head and dried her hair. When she finished, she tossed the towel onto the vanity and stepped into a pair of pink panties. Then she slipped on an extra-large man’s T-shirt. The gray shirt had a dark blue star-and-crescent, the symbol of the New Orleans Police Department, silk-screened onto the left breast.
In the bedroom, she sat on the bed and stared at the telephone on the nightstand. Only then did she realize she didn’t even know how to get in touch with Ray. Someone had told her he was living out by the marina, in one of those boathouse apartments, but she didn’t know his telephone number, or even if he had a telephone. It would be just like him not to have a phone. He wasn’t exactly a people person.
She called the House just for the hell of it and was surprised when someone answered. It was one of the bartenders, stuck there waiting for a delivery. After a few minutes he managed to find Ray’s cell number. She wrote it down on a notepad beside her telephone. She hung up and looked at her alarm clock. It was 8:15. Her eyes shifted from the clock to the notepad. Then to the cordless phone in her hand. Then back to the clock.
It was too early to call Ray. He was probably just getting to bed. She needed sleep, too. Noon, she decided. She would wake up and call him at noon. It wasn’t that urgent. Tony had probably been talking just to hear his own voice.
When Jenny woke up, the first thought she had was that last night had been a bad dream. Just another nightmare. Then she remembered. Everything had been real. Gunmen had taken down the Rising Sun. One of them had bashed Ray in the head and nearly put a bullet in his skull. Tony had knocked Ray around. Then a cop had knocked Ray around. And Tony was blaming everything on Ray.
Jenny sat up. She had to call him. The glowing green numbers on the clock showed 12:05 PM. She picked up the telephone, glanced at the scratchpad on the nightstand, then dialed Ray’s number.
The shrill ring of his cell phone jerked Ray out of a nightmare. He had been tied up, hanging from the ceiling in a meat locker, a couple of goons about to go to work on him with carving knives. He had no idea why it was happening or what he had done to piss them off. The goons wouldn’t say. They couldn’t say. Neither had a face, just blank skin pulled over bone.
For a few seconds after the first ring, Ray was caught in that gray area between sleep and wakefulness, but was still conscious enough to realize he was home in bed and not hanging from the ceiling of a meat locker. He was glad for that.
The cell phone shrieked again. Ray looked for it. He couldn’t find it. Then it screamed again. He spotted it on the overturned beer crate he used for a bedside table. He fumbled for it and knocked it on the floor just as it rang again.
Finally, he got the phone in his hand. For a moment he was disoriented, not sure how to answer it. He didn’t get many calls. The only reason he even had a phone was so he could order pizza.
The phone rang again.
Ray punched the green send button. He jammed the phone against his ear. “Yeah?”
