American Criminal (35 page)

New Acquaintances

    Using an extreme effort of will, Ray stopped going to strip clubs with Tommy. He searched LA for the best dance clubs - social venues where he didn’t have to pay women exorbitant amounts of cash to “dance” with him. He tried to convince Tommy to go with him, but Tommy was used to easy prey and he didn’t want to put in any significant effort to meet a woman.

    Ray went to the LA dance club,
Vertigo
, alone. The place was noisy and crowded. The heavy bass music was ear shattering and the dancers were packed onto the floor like sardines. Ray sat at the bar, bought a beer, and looked around. Beautiful women were everywhere. But how should he approach them? At the strip club, the women came to him because they knew he had money to spend. What was the protocol here?

    Burnside felt he had aged in prison. He was twenty-seven when convicted and twenty-nine when he escaped. He was quickly approaching the dreaded thirty, so his social confidence was not the same as it was pre-incarceration.

    However, it didn’t take long for Burnside to realize that his muscular physique was attracting the attention of various twenty-something women in the club. He saw a gorgeous brunette, standing next to a railing circling the dance floor, raise her eyebrows at her blonde friend after checking him out.

    Fuck it. What do I have to lose?    

    Burnside took a swig of beer and got up from the barstool. He maneuvered his way through the crowd toward the women. The brunette who had raised her eyebrows was wearing a tight black dress that accentuated her curves and the blonde was wearing a black mini-skirt and white shirt that exposed her toned midriff. Burnside unconsciously flexed his chest, arm, and shoulder muscles as he approached. Ray smiled and looked from the brunette to the blonde and then back to the brunette. 

    “How’s it going?” Burnside asked.

    “Better now,” the brunette said, looking him up and down.

    “Wow, where do you work out?” the blonde asked as she touched his bicep muscle.

    “At my condo complex. They have some decent equipment there,” Ray replied, deciding that truthful responses would be best. Up to a point. “How about you girls? Where do you work out?”

    “I work out at the
Golds
on Venice Beach,” the brunette said, smiling seductively. Her glossy pink lips seemed to glow with vitality.

    “Oh sure, the one Schwarzenegger worked out at when he was starting out,” Ray said, remembering reading about the Venice Beach
Golds Gym
in a muscle magazine.
            

    “That’s right!” the brunette exclaimed. “The gover-nator used to work out there. Wow, you really know your stuff.” Her brown eyes scanned his body appraisingly. He was wearing black dress pants, black dress shoes, and a tight gray dress shirt he recently bought at Brooks Brothers.

    Without being too obvious, Burnside scanned the brunette’s body while taking a sip of beer. He made sure not to linger too long at the tan cleavage showing above the top of her tight black dress.

    “Do you want to dance?” the brunette asked.

    “I’m not a big dancer,” Ray said. “Why don’t we go over to the bar and I’ll buy you a drink?”

    “Okay,” she said, smiling.

    “My name is Diane. What’s yours?” the brunette asked.

    “Ray.”

    When the mob assigned Ray his new identity, they changed his last name, but not his first name. The mob boss told him that if they changed his first name, he might hesitate to respond whenever someone addressed him, which could compromise his position. His new legal name was Ray Campion.

    “I’ll leave you two alone,” the blonde said, picking up her drink from the railing, smiling at her friend, and walking briskly away.

    Ray led Diane over to the bar, but he discovered all the seats were taken. An idea flashed into his mind about what kind of action he would have taken to obtain a seat if he was still in prison. That wouldn’t work. He would have to improvise. He scanned the bar and found what he was looking for: two guys seated at the end - talking and nursing beers.

    Burnside turned to the brunette and grinned, “I know how to find us a seat.”

    The brunette’s brows furrowed as she followed him to the end of the bar. Ray approached the closest kid, a skinny, blond, twenty-something dressed in a bright green shirt and dark pants.

    “Excuse me, but would you mind giving up your seat for the lady here?” Burnside asked. “Her feet are sore from too much time on the dance floor.”

    The young blond kid’s eyes widened as he scanned Burnside’s heavily muscled form.

    “Sure, I guess, if it’s to help her out,” he said, hesitantly.

    “I’ll need you to give up your seat too,” Burnside said to the dark-haired kid seated next to the blond kid. The dark-haired kid glanced at Ray’s shoulders and arms, and then stood from the seat.

    “No problem.”

    The dark-haired kid grabbed his drink from the bar like an afterthought and led his wide-eyed blond friend away from the bar. Burnside gestured for the brunette to sit in the closest seat by the bar: the one formerly occupied by the blond kid.

    “I like your style,” Diane said, smiling and taking a seat.

    Ray bought Diane a drink. As she sipped it, he told her he owned a landscaping business and did jobs in Beverly Hills. She told him she was a manager at a local investment firm. This fact made him slightly nervous because it meant she was at least somewhat intelligent and might eventually see through his lies. Despite his apprehension, he turned on the charm and they ended up leaving the club together.

    They went back to her place - a beautiful, six-acre home in the Valley – and he had his first night of pure bliss since escaping prison. The next day was Saturday, so Ray and Diane spent the day alternating between using her Jacuzzi, pool, and going for long walks on her wooded estate. They had sandwiches for lunch at a table on the pool patio. Dinner was takeout from a nearby Chinese restaurant.

    That evening, they curled up on her comfortable leather couch to watch DVD movies. The situation was so perfect that Ray started to believe his own lies and began to imagine that he really was a landscaper enjoying a relaxing weekend with his new girlfriend. He didn’t want to ever leave her home, but a call from Tommy on his cell phone brought him back to reality.

    “Excuse me a moment,” Ray said, removing his arm from around Diane’s shoulder to grab his cell phone from his pocket.

    “Hello,” he said.

    “Ray, where the fuck are you? I dropped by your apartment, but you weren’t there,” Tommy said.

    “I’m spending some time with a lady friend at her home in the Valley.”

    “I need you to meet me at the house in the canyon. The boss has a big job for us to do tonight.”

    “Does it have to be tonight?”

    “Right now. I told you this would happen sometimes,” Tommy said, impatiently.

    “I know that, but the timing couldn’t be worse,” Ray said, frowning at Diane. Diane furrowed her brows and frowned back.

    “Sorry, bro, it can’t be helped. Get your ass to the house ASAP.”

    “All right, fine,” Ray said, hanging up. He turned to Diane. “Sorry, babe, I have a family emergency I have to deal with.”

    “On a Saturday night?”

    “Unfortunately, yes. My brother is in trouble.”

    “I didn’t even know you had a brother.”

    “Well I do and he’s a complete fuck-up. I have to bail him out of jail,” Ray said, thinking on the fly and coming up with this lie.

    “Bail him out of jail? What kind of family do you come from?” Diane asked, her frown deepening.

    “The rest of my family is normal – my brother is the black sheep,” Ray said, trying to repair the damage.

    “All right. Fine. Leave.” Diane said, folding her arms and moving away from Ray on the leather couch.

    Ray knew he had fucked up, but there was nothing he could do about it now. He had to go to work. If he didn’t, his life would be in jeopardy if he denied a request from his new benefactors. He stood up, apologized again, and walked to his gray Toyota parked in the driveway. Cursing under his breath, Ray put the car in reverse, glanced in the rearview mirror, hit the gas pedal, and peeled out of the driveway.    

Chapter 49

NYC

    Ray wasn’t shocked when Diane didn’t return his calls. She was a high-class woman and he understood why she would be apprehensive about dating a landscaper with criminal family issues.

    Tommy was right about the job being “high risk.” Some surviving Triads had relocated to a warehouse outside town and were conducting business again from that location. The LA mob couldn’t allow that to happen, so they organized a daring nighttime pre-emptive raid on the facility.

    It was bloody. Two guys on the mob team were killed. On the Triad side, it was a slaughter; over twenty enforcers were iced. As usual, Burnside made his services invaluable. A combination of sheer guts and precise marksmanship won him even more respect from the mob guys. Tommy bragged to everyone that he was the one who had “discovered” him.

    After completing the high-risk job that had cost him his ultra-hot girlfriend, things returned to relative normalcy for Ray. He continued to do jobs and returned to
Vertigo
several times in an attempt to repeat his previous success. It was a bit awkward because he saw Diane there, but Ray ignored her and flirted with women who were at least her physical, if not social, equal. Ray left the club with Monique; a quintessential hot LA blonde with fake breasts. He didn’t connect with her emotionally, like he had with Diane, but they had a good time together.

    Ray dated Monique for several months, but her air-headedness eventually annoyed him and he tried to find someone who could hold a conversation as well as providing physical passion. He didn’t have any luck meeting Ms. Right at the LA Club scene, but he did meet several who qualified as Ms. Right-now. Ray’s confidence had returned and he had no problem interacting with the fast-paced LA social scene. In fact, he wasn’t sure if he had as much confidence before he went to prison.

    The nightmares continued, but Ray dealt with them as best he could. He still got 4-6 hours of heavily interrupted sleep every night, but he supplemented it with occasional afternoon naps.

    After six months of convalescence, Joe returned to action. Joe, Tommy, and Ray became known as the “three stooges” because of their antics. They always succeeded at whatever job they were assigned, but they were known for doing jobs with a dash of comedic flair. One time, they did a three stooges routine as they roughed up a deadbeat gambler. They used some of the stooges’ techniques, but with more effect. Ray became bored with doing jobs, so he felt he needed to do something extra to spice things up. Joe and Tommy had nothing better to do, so they went along.

    After putting in a year for the LA mob, Ray went to the Boss, Michaelitsi, to request a transfer. His timing was perfect. The NYC mob was having problems with a recent law enforcement crackdown, so they had lost some of their best enforcers and hit men. Replacements were badly needed and Ray stepped in to fill the gap. Ray said a tearless goodbye to his fellow stooges and boarded a jet bound for his old stomping ground. A mob representative met him at the airport.

    “You Burnside?” a short, thin, balding guy - with a pointy face that reminded Ray of a weasel - asked him at the luggage pickup.

    “Yep,” Burnside said.

    “It’s not like I could fucking miss you,” the guy said, laughing and pointing at one of Ray’s bulging biceps. “You look like the gover-nator back when he was in shape.”

    Despite the cool weather in NYC, Ray was still dressed for LA. He wore khaki shorts and a dark blue polo shirt. His muscles bulged under the shirt as if they were trying to push through the fabric. Ray and his new escort waited for his suitcase to arrive and then left the airport terminal.

    Ray’s contact introduced himself as Jerry and escorted him to a waiting vehicle: a gray, old-model Cadillac. Ray shivered in the cool March air as he waited for Jerry to unlock the doors. Ray placed his suitcase in the back seat. He had packed $60,000 in fifties and hundreds that he accumulated during his year working for the mob in LA. That was all he packed. He figured he could buy anything else he needed.

    Jerry took the driver’s seat and Ray the passenger’s. Jerry turned the radio on low and Ray heard sassy jazz music emanate from the speakers.

    “So, where are we headed?” Ray asked.