Gangsterland

CHAPTER NINE

Special Agent Jeff Hopper was always surprised by how pleasant prisons looked from the outside. The state penitentiary in Walla Walla, for instance, had a beautifully manicured front lawn, perfectly squared shrubbery, lines of evergreens, a sturdy redbrick facade. If you cut and pasted it into another part of the city, you might have mistaken it for one of the buildings at Whitman College.

Stateville was the same way. Just thirty-five miles west of Chicago down Interstate 55, it was situated in the middle of verdant fields and farmlands, two miles from the new Prairie Bluff Golf Course. To get into the prison, you had to drive a quarter mile along a tree-lined road with a median of green grass and circular planting beds that, in the spring, were filled with roses, though which today, the first Sunday of 1999, were covered with a thick blanket of snow and ice, the result of a brutal, two-day storm that dumped nineteen inches of snow on the city and plunged temperatures to an arctic negative thirteen. From the outside, the administration building, a four-story made of red and yellow brick, looked like an old Chicago hotel, the kind of place with a bottom-floor restaurant that served only steaks bloody-rare. In fact, if you could ignore the thirty-foot-tall cement walls and sniper towers, Stateville Correctional Center looked downright inviting.

Richard Speck and John Wayne Gacy probably wouldn’t concur, Jeff thought, but then they got to see the place from the outside only once. Same as Neto Espinoza.

“Do you ever wonder how people end up doing the things that put them in there? The process by which they decide to become that kind of person?” Matthew asked as they walked out of the administration building, back into the biting cold of the winter day, and down the long gravel road toward the parking lot. Matthew didn’t say much the entire time they were inside, waiting for the official paperwork on Neto Espinoza’s final days at the prison, and, before that, most of the ride out from Chicago.

Jeff had learned what Matthew’s demeanor meant over the course of the last several weeks. Sometimes, he was silent because he wanted to listen carefully to what was being said around him — like when they’d been with Paul Bruno — so that he could figure out how to play a particular situation. Sometimes, he was silent out of simple necessity: He didn’t know enough about being an agent to argue Jeff’s thoughts on an issue, though that didn’t mean acquiescence. No, it actually meant he’d attack the topic an hour or a day or a week later, after he’d formed a determined opinion. It was one of Matthew’s most admirable qualities, Jeff thought, and one not all that common in field agents.

Other times he kept his mouth shut so he could contemplate an issue he found difficult to parse. Like when they found out that Neto Espinoza, Chema Espinoza’s brother, died of a heart attack while in custody at Stateville. That wouldn’t have been all that vexing if Neto hadn’t been twenty-six at the time of his death, or if he hadn’t been, according to his death certificate, otherwise physically fit. And then today, after the prison released Neto’s death-in-custody report to them and it showed exactly what Jeff thought it would show: nothing. Just a regular heart attack for a completely healthy young man.

“That’s the reason I became a cop,” Jeff said, “and an FBI agent.”

“Really? I thought you just wanted to catch bad guys.”

“That was part of it, sure,” Jeff said. “But after a while, you see enough stupidity, you have to begin to wonder about the root causes. You don’t have to be evil to make the wrong choice. Don’t need to be good to make the right choice. You could save a kid from choking to death at McDonald’s one day and that night, to celebrate, you go out and get sloshed at the bar and plow your car through a bunch of disabled orphans. Next thing you know, you’re the worst person on earth.”

“Maybe people are just fucked-up,” Matthew said.

It was hard to argue that point. It had taken Jeff and Matthew weeks to find out the exact disposition of Neto Espinoza for just that reason. Finding out he was dead was easy — it was public record, after all — but when Jeff and Matthew went to question Neto’s mother, she was unwilling to talk to either of them. It didn’t matter that one of her sons was dead and another was missing. Jeff didn’t bother to tell Mrs. Espinoza what he knew about Chema, figuring that information would only get her killed, too. Not that he imagined many people in the Family would come down to Twenty-Fourth and Karlov to handle their business, the idea of rolling into the heart of the Gangster 2–6 territory probably not all that enticing even if the Family did employ many in their ranks. The Gangster 2–6 needed the drugs the Family provided, but their allegiance was to each other, not a bunch of Italians, and certainly not a bunch of Italians who may have killed some of their boys.

None of that mattered to Mrs. Espinoza. That Jeff and Matthew were investigating at all was the problem: The entire Espinoza family was gang-affiliated — Neto and Chema’s father, an OG in the Gangster 2–6, was doing fifteen at Logan — so Mrs. Espinoza wasn’t going to say a thing to anybody.

They had to move through back channels, Jeff calling every contact he had in the prison system to try to get anything beyond confirmation that Neto was dead in hopes of gleaning information that might lead to the Family’s attempts to cover their tracks with Sal Cupertine. If Neto had been murdered, that would mean another link in the chain, another person who could provide information, another cracked window. Problem was, no one wanted to give him anything, not with all the heat that had come down on the Illinois prison system recently, the stories of graft and obstruction of justice so regular that they began to dwarf the crimes of the men and women who got sent away.

So Jeff did the one thing he didn’t want to do, which was contact Dennis Tryon’s office. Dennis was an old classmate from UIC who’d moved into prison management at Stateville just in time for a decade of corruption scandals to erupt around him. Stateville’s history of laxity — which included Richard Speck himself appearing on a videotape with mounds of cocaine and handfuls of money, talking about what a great time he was having in prison, before taking time out to give a blow job to another inmate — now made even the smallest corruption possible front-page news. So asking Dennis to give him anything on the side was strictly verboten.

Lying to him, however, wasn’t. At least in theory. So Jeff called his office the previous day and simply asked for whatever documents could be mustered for what he described as a “wide-ranging FBI investigation.” It was a common code for a federal fishing exhibition, a nice exchange of information that the bureau and the prison carried on fairly regularly. He didn’t bother to mention to the clerk that he was on paid administrative leave. Jeff hoped the form would reach Dennis’s desk and Dennis would just sign off on his old friend’s request. It’s how business was usually conducted between people who trusted each other.

Still, Jeff had spent enough time visiting Stateville in the past several years to know that any number of nefarious deeds were possible in that shit hole. They’d cleaned up some in the last few years, though not so much that a death connected to the Family, or the Gangster 2–6 for that matter, might occasionally go uninvestigated if the price was right. . which is what the absence of paperwork on Neto Espinoza confirmed. He was a disposable person in a family of criminals. The kind of person Dennis Tryon probably didn’t give one shit about.

Jeff took out his cell phone and tried calling Paul Bruno. He’d spoken to him twice after their visit, once to tell him that Neto was indeed dead, and once to ask him if he had any contacts at the slaughterhouses still, see if anyone might give him any information on anything that seemed shady in the last several months. And then. . nothing. It was general policy not to leave messages on a CI’s voicemail, so at first Jeff just called and hung up, then eventually left a message anyway.

“Shit,” Jeff said, and he closed his phone.

“Nothing?” Matthew said.

“Says his voicemail is full,” Jeff said.

They walked a few more yards in silence, the crunch of ice beneath their boots the only soundtrack to what both were coming to realize.

“Tonight,” Jeff said, “we’re going to have a conversation with Fat Monte. You ready for that?”

“I was ready a month ago,” Matthew said.

A horn honked, and Jeff turned to see a black Dept. of Corrections Cutlass, the official car of any decent prison, coming up behind them. Jeff and Matthew stepped off the road to let the car pass, but instead it pulled to a stop, and Dennis Tryon stepped out.

Dennis was a few years older than Jeff and had worked in criminal justice since he was eighteen. Jeff remembered that. It was one of those things Dennis used to say when they were in school, the ultimate trump card, that he’d been working with bad guys since he was a teenager. Now, though, he had the paunch of a man in his sixties and the sagging neck to match, even though he wasn’t yet fifty. He wore navy-blue wool pants and a blue-and-white striped shirt that bulged out over his belt, a red tie, a blue sport coat. Jeff liked Dennis a decade ago, though he wasn’t sure he still did.

“Shouldn’t you be behind a desk somewhere?” Jeff said.

“You didn’t come by the office to say hello,” Dennis said.

Jeff wagged the envelope containing Neto Espinoza’s report in front of Dennis’s face. “I got what I came for.”

“Did you know you’re on paid administrative leave?” Dennis said.

“I was aware of that, yes,” Jeff said.

“You failed to mention that when you asked for Neto Espinoza’s death records.”

“I didn’t think it was important,” Jeff said.

“Of course not,” Dennis said. A shiver went through him and he pulled his sport coat closed. He couldn’t button it over his gut, so he just held the two sides together. “Christ, it’s cold as hell out here. I hear Chicago is socked in. That right?”

“There something you want to talk about, Dennis?” Jeff asked.

“I called your office,” Dennis said, “and they said you are on an extended vacation. Stateville isn’t the kind of place most people visit while on vacation. Even fewer people do independent investigations into the natural death of drug mules.” He paused and looked at Matthew, who was watching the whole interaction with something close to amusement. “And you,” Dennis said to Matthew, “who are you, exactly?”

“Just a friend,” Matthew said.

“I’m sure,” Dennis said. Another black Cutlass pulled down the road, and Dennis straightened up, tried to look dignified. The Cutlass slowed as it went by, so Dennis gave it a wave, as if to let the driver know Jeff and Matthew weren’t escapees. “Jeff always was great about making friends,” Dennis said, once the car passed. “You keep in touch with anyone else from school?”

Jeff didn’t keep in touch with many people. That he kept in touch with Dennis Tryon had mostly to do with their infrequent meetings at the prison, though Jeff had no delusions that Dennis was simply one of the good guys or one of the bad guys. You work in prison management, those roles are generally pretty fungible, which made everything about Dennis questionable. He’d helped Jeff on a few occasions, Jeff had helped him on a few occasions, and even those interactions were strictly business, albeit salted with periodic attempts at familiarity, Dennis always going on about his wife, Lisa, who worked at the zoo in Chicago, and his son Devin, who had some developmental problem, or showing Jeff photos from his hunting trip; Jeff promising that the next time he came out, they’d get a beer in Crest Hill afterward, really catch up, that sort of thing.

Not exactly a friendship. More like two people with a tacit understanding that they should treat each other better than common strangers. The debt you pay for shared experiences, Jeff thought.

“No,” Jeff said. “I don’t want to ruin the possibility of chance reunions.”

Dennis laughed. “See?” he said to Matthew. “Jeff has friends everywhere.” He walked back to the Cutlass and popped open the trunk, then came back holding a bulging manila envelope sealed with packing tape. “You left this,” Dennis said, and he handed the envelope to Jeff.

“If whatever is in this envelope is bad enough that we gotta go through all of this,” Jeff said, “then I’m not sure I want you to give it to me.”

Dennis said, “I read about that Family business in the paper, figured that was your people. I probably should have called you, but I thought you probably didn’t need to hear from anyone else.”

“I didn’t hear from anybody,” Jeff said.

“That’s the problem with this business,” Dennis said. “Everyone’s too damn proud.” He patted Jeff on the shoulder.

Dennis Tryon got back into his Cutlass. He pulled back up the street, made a U-turn, and came to a stop across from where Jeff and Matthew were still standing. He rolled down his window, motioned Jeff over.

“Yeah?” Jeff said.

“Listen,” Dennis said. “Don’t get yourself killed. No one would come to your funeral for fear of being recognized.” He extended his hand out the window, but Jeff didn’t take it right away. “Shake my hand,” Dennis said.

“I don’t know if I should,” Jeff said.

“Thing is, Jeff, it’s probably no worse than what you expect.”

“That’s the problem I’m having,” Jeff said. “You didn’t need to give me this stuff. I already knew something was crooked.”

“Well,” Dennis said, “be that as it may. I see some stuff here that makes me sick. But I’ve got five more years until I can take early retirement. When that day comes, there’s gonna be no second thoughts, that much I can assure you.”

“So maybe you should hold on to this,” Jeff said, “in case you need to blackmail someone.”

“I won’t lie. I thought about that,” he said. “I reckon that makes me no better than the animals I’ve been tending.” Dennis took a balled Kleenex from his pocket and blew his nose. “Whatever you do with that,” Dennis pointed at the envelope, “just know that maybe five years ago that boy would have been a chew toy in this place.”

“All I’m going to do is read it,” Jeff said.

“Well, good, then,” Dennis said. “You think you’ll get back into the bureau?”

“No,” Jeff said. “Not now, anyway. So don’t worry, I’m not here to cause any problems for you.”

“I know you’re not,” Dennis said. “I didn’t say anything to your office, you should know.”

“It doesn’t matter, really,” Jeff said. He paused and thought about the steps that had brought him to this moment, the litany of mistakes that he accumulated trying to be the good guy. “Just tell me I’m not going to find out Ronnie Cupertine is an honorary guard or something.”

Dennis laughed in a way Jeff didn’t find in the least bit authentic. “Well,” Dennis said, “next time you come through, call first. We’ll have lunch.”

“I’m not ever going to come back this way,” Jeff said.

Dennis rolled his window back up, gave Jeff a two-fingered salute, and was gone.

It was amazing to Jeff how much paperwork accumulated during a cover-up. He and Matthew were parked across the street from the Four Treys Tavern in Roscoe Village, waiting to meet up with Fat Monte. They’d made him hours earlier, walking out of his apartment, which was only a few blocks down Damen, and decided to follow. When he ducked into the Four Treys, likely to watch the Packers and 49ers play in the Wild Card game, they decided to let him percolate a bit before they made their move. Besides, they had plenty of reading to do.

“No wonder Stateville is always ankle-deep in problems,” Matthew said. “They’re meticulous in their record keeping of negligence.”

What Dennis gave them wasn’t exactly the Pentagon Papers. In fact, to the layman, most of what he gave them would appear meaningless and mundane. Neto Espinoza was sent directly to Stateville on a parole violation and pending his trial on drug-trafficking charges — he was arrested near the Canadian border with over fifty pounds of heroin hidden under the bed lining of his truck — and was looking at serious time, particularly with the gang enhancement charges saddled on top of everything else.

Normally a person like Neto, with gang affiliations and Family ties, too, would find himself segregated from the general prison population while he awaited his hearing, since the danger level was high. Both the Family and the 2–6 would want to make sure he wasn’t going to snitch, and there was a good chance they’d want retribution for losing so much product, since fifty pounds of heroin was worth a cool million dollars, maybe even more during the colder winter months when distribution slowed down.

On the other end of the spectrum, the state would want to keep Neto segregated for the very hope that he would snitch, a kid like him easy bait for a decent interrogator. That’s how Jeff had found the CI Sal Cupertine killed, after all. And he was sure that if given the chance, he could have turned Neto Espinoza, too, if only he’d been aware of his existence.

All of which made the fact that he was put into the general population exceptionally suspicious. His first cellmate was a career bank robber named Kyle Behen who was also awaiting trial, but he was moved out last April in favor of Thomas “Lemonhead” Nicolino, a career Family member (and, notably, a part of Fat Monte’s crew) whom Bruno himself had dimed out a few years before. Five days later, Neto was dead. Ten days, he’d already been cremated.

The autopsy report came back with huge sums of cocaine and heroin in Neto’s system, enough to cause a perfectly healthy person to die of a heart attack. Problem was, the report also indicated that Neto had injected the drugs.

Into his chest.

Approximately, the report said, thirty-seven times.

Matthew shook his head in disgust and handed the papers to Jeff. “It’s a joke. That’s what that is.”

The autopsy report showed that the “injections” managed to crack Neto’s sternum in five places, not exactly a common self-inflicted wound. Jeff flipped through the stack of papers to see when the autopsy report was filed: June 27, 1998. Nearly three months after Neto’s death and cremation. Just another drug-induced heart attack. No mention of any likely complicity via a third party.

And who was going to complain? Not Neto’s family. Not Neto’s public defender. Certainly not Neto’s coworkers in the Gangster 2–6 or the Family. The benefit of killing someone like Neto Espinoza in prison was that he existed beyond the law; the only people who cared about him were criminals. That was always the challenge when dealing with organized crime: You had to force those who suffered the most — the living — to turn their back on an entire way of life. Jeff thought he’d made some headway with Jennifer Cupertine, but the truth, he realized, was that Jennifer had already turned her back on the Family. That wasn’t the issue. The problem was that she hadn’t turned her back on her husband.

Neto Espinoza was murdered in prison for what he might do or say when he found out his brother, Chema, had been murdered. Simple as that. Jeff didn’t think of Lemonhead Nicolino as the killing type, but who knew anymore. The whole world was a Ponzi scheme.

Matthew cracked the knuckles on his right hand, then his left. Grabbed his chin and popped his neck and shoulders. He shook out his arms and legs, every joint along the way snapping audibly. Jeff watched him for a few seconds, imagined what it would be like to see that running at you on the lacrosse field, holding a stick. It wasn’t that he looked angry, it was that he looked ready to uncoil.

Matthew turned on the radio to check the score of the game. The 49ers were leading the Pack by three with a couple of minutes left. “What do you think?” Matthew said.

“He should be filled with joy right now,” Jeff said. He reached into the glove compartment and pulled out two guns, handed one to Matthew, and stuffed the other in his ankle holster. He didn’t think they’d need to shoot Fat Monte, but it never hurt to be prepared.

“Let me do this one,” Matthew said.

“Are you afraid I might lose it on him?”

“I know you liked Paul Bruno,” Matthew said.

“I still do,” Jeff said.

“Right,” Matthew said. “Let me hook him. If you feel like you need to get into the conversation, feel free, but let me hook him.”

The Four Treys was one of those neighborhood taverns that didn’t seem all that concerned about looking like anything more than a place to get drunk and watch sports. There was a long rectangular bar in the middle of the main room surrounded by brown vinyl high-backed bar stools, a few three-top rounds, and then a larger room with a pool table and space for someone to stand up with a guitar and butcher “American Pie” on Open-Mic Monday nights. Weekends, the place would fill up with twentysomethings who lived close enough to stumble home, softball teams, and the odd bachelor or bachelorette party. Jeff remembered coming here on a date once, even, after a Cubs game, Wrigleyville just a twenty-minute walk away.

It wasn’t the kind of place you expected to run into a Mafia enforcer like Fat Monte, but there he was, sitting by himself at a three-top, a pitcher of beer in front of him, staring at the football game on the big-screen TV, just like the fifty other people in the bar. There was just over two minutes left, and the Packers were driving.

“You mind if we take a seat?” Matthew said.

“Go ahead,” Fat Monte said, without even looking away from the TV. “Favre is going to win this ball game. Unbelievable.” They sat and watched, and sure enough, a few seconds later, Brett Favre threw a looping pass to Antonio Freeman in the end zone. “Cocksucker,” Fat Monte said. He slammed his hand on the table twice. He finally turned and looked at Jeff and Matthew. “Where was the defense?”

“Plenty of time on the clock,” Matthew said.

“49ers can’t beat the Packers. It’s just how it is,” Fat Monte said.

“Gotta admit,” Matthew said, “if Favre were on the Bears, you’d love him.”

“I don’t have to admit shit,” Fat Monte said, though not in a threatening way. Just a couple of guys talking football in a bar. “Favre couldn’t hold Jim McMahon’s dick.”

“Didn’t McMahon back up Favre a few years ago?” Matthew said.

“I dunno,” Fat Monte said. “Couple years, I didn’t follow football.”

Yeah, Jeff thought, must be hard to keep up with the movements of second-string quarterbacks while you’re in prison. The Packers kicked off, and Fat Monte turned his attention back to the game. The last time Jeff saw Fat Monte was in surveillance photos from late 1997, right before he got sent up for six months on a possession beef, Jeff trying in vain to stick the murder of James Diamond, a Cicero drug dealer who was shot to death outside his house, on him, lining up witness after witness. . only to have each and every one of them disappear or change their stories. Unlike Sal Cupertine, whom no one ever saw, Fat Monte was spotted everywhere back then. He was over six foot and, back in 1997, weighed at least three hundred pounds. That he drove a black Navigator on twenty-inch tires didn’t exactly make him inconspicuous.

Now, though, he was slimmer, more muscular, probably from hitting the weights and the steroids while in prison, probably still hitting the steroids, Jeff noticing that Fat Monte had pimples crawling up the back of his neck, odd for a guy in his late thirties unless he was juicing. Jeff also saw that Fat Monte had a wedding ring now, too, which explained why he was living in Roscoe Village. Even the mob gets gentrified eventually. In fact, that Fat Monte was sitting inside the Four Treys instead of one of the Family’s video poker bars in Bridgeport was probably all Jeff really needed to know to understand how the world was changing.

“Finally,” Fat Monte said. “You see that? Young’s been avoiding Rice all day. Jesus Christ.”

“You got any money riding on this?” Matthew asked.

“None of mine,” Fat Monte said. “Besides, no one here wants to bet with me.” Fat Monte laughed at his own joke, or what Jeff presumed Fat Monte considered a joke. Maybe he was laughing at his general state of affairs: sitting in a yuppie bar in Roscoe Village with absolutely no action on the biggest game of the year. There was a timeout in the game, under a minute left, and Fat Monte took the opportunity to stand up and stretch his legs.

“You look like you’ve lost some weight,” Matthew said.

“Yeah? You seen me before?” Fat Monte said, interested now, and not in a good way, Jeff saw.

“A few times,” Matthew said. “Though they say surveillance cameras add fifteen pounds. You, it looked more like fifty.”

Fat Monte looked over his shoulder and then around the room, probably for uniformed cops or at least a few guys wearing FBI windbreakers, Jeff watching him calculate what this all meant. . and probably calculating the odds of doing something stupid, like pulling out his own gun. Jeff was sure Fat Monte was packing, probably had a piece in his jacket, which was hung over the back of his chair, though not even someone like Fat Monte was dumb enough to try to shoot someone in the middle of a bar, particularly not someone who was probably law enforcement. And, on top of that, law enforcement that had the jump on him.

“Whatever this is,” Fat Monte said, “I’m gonna watch the end of this game first. You don’t like it, just go ahead and shoot me in the back of the head and get it over with.”

Matthew gave Jeff a shrug. What the hell. Jeff asked a waitress for a couple of glasses, refilled Fat Monte’s beer, poured one for Matthew, one for himself, and sat back to watch. Steve Young completed a pass to Terry Kirby for a couple of yards, then another to Garrison Hearst, the 49ers moving down the field, fourteen seconds left, the whole bar screaming and yelling at the TV right until a time-out was called and Jeff heard fifty people expel the same breath. Fat Monte saw the beer, took a sip.

“Answer me this,” Fat Monte said, “am I going to jail tonight? Because if so, I’m gonna get a shot. You guys want shots?”

“We’ll see how things go,” Matthew said.

“You federal?” Fat Monte asked. “Because I’d know you if you were local.”

“Yes,” Jeff said, figuring that was his spot to interject.

“Fed guys working a Sunday night,” he said. “I must be pretty special.” He took another sip of his beer and turned back to the TV. What did Jeff really know about Monte Moretti? He liked to hurt people. He wasn’t one of Ronnie Cupertine’s new-breed gangsters, guys who made money and didn’t do a lot of outside damage. No, he was the guy Ronnie turned to, still, to keep that cliché alive, the guy who broke arms and talked tough and did time. On the organizational chart, Fat Monte Moretti was listed as a capo, but in truth he was more like a high-ranking soldier, since he still liked to do his own grunt work, since he couldn’t keep himself out of jail for more than a year at a time. He had his own rackets, and then he did work directly for Ronnie, like this whole Sal Cupertine issue.

On the TV, Steve Young stumbled back from center, the clocked ticked from eight seconds, to seven, to six. . and then he threw a strike to Terrell Owens in the end zone. Fat Monte jumped up from his chair and shouted, “Fuck the Packers! Fuck the Packers!” and soon the rest of the bar joined in, until there was a chorus of drunk yuppies and one Family enforcer chanting together, which then turned into a series of high fives, hugs, and fist pumps. The Bears hadn’t even made the playoffs, but the Packers had lost, which was enough for the bartender to announce one-dollar shots for the next half hour. Fat Monte pulled out twenty bucks, handed it to a waitress, and told her to bring ten shots of whatever and keep the change, baby girl.

Fat Monte eventually took his seat, threw back the rest of his beer, and leaned back. “Now,” he said, “who the fuck are you guys?”

“We’re looking for Sal Cupertine,” Matthew said. “Have you seen him lately?”

“Last I heard,” Fat Monte said, “you guys found him toasted to a crisp in some landfill.”

“Nah,” Matthew said. “That was Chema Espinoza.” The waitress swooped by then and dropped off the ten shots. Fat Monte immediately downed one, paused, took down another, Jeff not saying a word, watching Matthew set his hook, going about it real smooth, letting Fat Monte make the next move. . though downing two shots of what smelled like Jägermeister probably qualified at least as a tell if not a move.

“Maybe I need to have my lawyer here,” Fat Monte said eventually.

“Maybe,” Matthew said, his voice low, not angry, not loud, just matter of fact, telling Fat Monte how it was going to be. “Maybe I just put the word out that Fat Monte Moretti now spends his Sunday nights in Roscoe Village taverns surrounded by a bunch of accountants and their tucked-in polo shirts. Maybe I drive down to Logan and tell Chema and Neto Espinoza’s father that Fat Monte Moretti and his wife live in an unsecured walk-up on Damen, and maybe one night you and the wife are sitting on the sofa eating popcorn and watching Friends, and maybe four or five 2–6 Gangsters roll up on your place, tie you up, and rape your wife in front of you, then maybe get a little cornhole practice on you, too, just to make sure they still remember how to survive in prison.”

Fat Monte took this all in without saying a word. He took another shot and then examined the empty glass, then pointed at Jeff. “I know you,” he said.

“Oh yeah?” Jeff said.

“Yeah, I couldn’t place you at first, but now I remember. You were the one who kept trying to pin that Diamond murder on me, right? Hopper? That you?”

Jeff tried his best not to seem surprised, tried to figure out how the hell Fat Monte knew he was the one moving the pieces around that investigation, then realized that it made sense. The Family kept records, too. Interesting. “That’s right,” Jeff said.

“Never did get that to stick, did you?” Fat Monte said.

“No, never did,” Jeff said. “Fortunately there’s no statute of limitations.”

“No witnesses plus no statute of limitations equals you walking around holding your dick,” Fat Monte said.

“Between us?” Jeff leaned across the table, so that he was only a few inches away from Fat Monte’s face, so close he could smell Fat Monte’s acrid breath, the creepy bastard actually breathing out of his mouth in these short, quick pulses. “I didn’t mind you killing a drug dealer. One less piece of paperwork I had to worry about. But what gets me, Monte, is why you’d kill Chema and Neto Espinoza. My guess is that Chema saw whatever went down with Sal.” He paused for just a second, tried to think of his next words carefully, see how Fat Monte reacted. “Probably saw the trade go down. Or he could have just been the driver, since I can’t imagine Sal Cupertine sitting by while your fat ass drove him around in the dark. Okay, fine. You can’t be leaving witnesses around. But Neto? He was already in prison and wasn’t going to be leaving any time soon, not with a million dollars of H on his ticket. That just seems. . sloppy. . to me. Because then I gotta walk that back, see who Neto is down with, see that he was on your crew, and that up in Stateville he somehow ends up rooming with Lemonhead Nicolino. You couldn’t have farmed the job out to the Aryans?”

Jeff sat back, took a sip of his beer, and let Fat Monte process the information.

“You don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about,” Fat Monte said.

“Thirty-seven times, Monte? You think I wouldn’t notice Neto was stabbed thirty-seven times in the chest?”

Fat Monte had another shot halfway to his mouth but thought better of it. He set the glass back down on the table. Jeff thought he saw a little shake in his hand. “Maybe you think I’m a little bitch like your friend Paul Bruno,” Fat Monte said. “See, I don’t scare. Prison doesn’t scare me, either, so why don’t you just go ahead and call your assault team down to secure the bar and take me in.”

Hearing Paul Bruno’s name immediately gave Jeff pause. That Fat Monte knew he was a snitch made Jeff reconsider a few things. It shouldn’t have been a surprise, not with Ronnie Cupertine’s connections. Maybe he had a guy in the bureau. Or maybe he just bugged all the cars he sold and serviced out of his shop. Most likely, though, he was keeping tabs on Paul Bruno. It’s what Jeff had predicted for Bruno’s fate, he just didn’t want to believe it could come to pass so quickly.

“You want to be on the hook for Paul’s murder, too?” Jeff asked, just to see how Monte reacted. “Because I’m happy to add that to your ticket.”

“You’d need to find a body first,” Monte said.

“Funny thing,” Jeff said, “I didn’t even know he was missing.”

Fat Monte started to say something, stopped, and then started to laugh. “Maybe he committed suicide,” he said. “You never know.”

“Pretty hard to hide your own body,” Jeff said.

“I got somewhere to be,” Fat Monte said. He took another shot, slammed the glass onto the table, and then started to stand up. Before Jeff could even make a move, Matthew reached out with his right hand and grabbed Fat Monte Moretti by the balls and yanked down. Fat Monte shrieked and fell to both knees and then onto his side. Matthew stood up as though to help him back up, but in the process managed to also kick Fat Monte in the face. Not too hard. Just hard enough to break his nose.

“Whoa,” Matthew said, as friendly as can be, “easy there.” He reached down and seized Fat Monte by the back of his neck and hefted him back up onto his stool. Fat Monte’s face was a bloody mess, his nose now pointing to the right, his eyes filled with tears. “Maybe you should go a little easy on those shots.” A waitress came rushing over with a rag filled with ice, which Fat Monte took without saying a word.

“Is he going to be all right?” she asked.

“He’ll be fine,” Matthew said.

“Do you want me to call an ambulance for you, Monte?” she asked. Monte. She knew his name; he was a regular at the Four Treys now, the kind of guy who the servers knew by name, the kind of guy who wasn’t likely to make a scene now because this was where he actually came to chill out, where he came to not be who he was during business hours. . whenever those happened to be for members of the Family.

“Yeah,” Fat Monte croaked out, “call 911.”

The waitress turned to Jeff. “Is he being serious?”

“I don’t think so,” Jeff said. “But then, you probably know him better than I do.”

“Are you being serious, Monte?” she asked. “Do you want me to call your wife?”

“No,” Fat Monte said.

“No you don’t want me to call your wife or no you’re not being serious?” the waitress asked.

“Both,” he said. “And bring me some Tylenol, doll, if you could.”

“You’re not gonna sue or anything, are you, Monte?” the waitress asked. Fat Monte shook his head, which looked like it hurt. “All right then,” she said, and she walked away.

“Nice girl,” Matthew said once she was gone. “You sure you don’t want her to call your wife, Monte? How about your mommy?”

“Fuck you,” Fat Monte said, though there wasn’t much behind it. It occurred to Jeff that this might be the first time in his adult life that Fat Monte had actually been on the other end of a beatdown, even if a single punch hadn’t been thrown. That was the thing about being trained how to fight versus just picking it up on the streets. You learned how to do the most amount of damage with the least amount of exertion. Matthew managed to emasculate Fat Monte in two distinct ways. “How the fuck am I supposed to explain to my wife how I ended up with a broken nose?”

“Maybe you should ask yourself how you’ll explain it to Ronnie Cupertine,” Jeff said.

Fat Monte pulled the rag from his face, examined all the blood — as if he thought looking at it might somehow fix the situation — then pressed it back up against his nose. “What kind of feds are you?”

“Tell me about Sal Cupertine,” Matthew said, “or one day you’ll be walking down the street and I’ll be inside of a building with a sniper’s rifle, aimed right here.” Matthew reached over and touched a spot on Fat Monte’s back. “You feel that? That’s the part of your spine that controls your bladder, your bowels, all your sexual functions. That’s where the bullet is going to go. And you know what? It will be perfectly legal because you’re a known criminal with a gun and I’m an FBI agent. You’ll be shitting into a bag for the rest of your life, trying to make your limp dick work. Maybe I’ll just go ahead and do it when you walk out of this place tonight, because I’m sure you’ve got some heat on you and you’re surely on probation. Save us all some time.”

“I want my lawyer,” Fat Monte said.

Matthew actually started to laugh. Jeff thought Matthew was enjoying this a bit too much. Here was Fat Monte Moretti, one of the most feared gangsters in all of Chicago, a man probably responsible for a dozen or more murders, asking for his lawyer, undone by a broken nose and the realization that sometimes you really don’t have any rights.

“Let me put it to you this way,” Jeff said. “You’re free to go any time. But understand that as soon as you walk out the door, you’re a dead man. Either my partner here will shoot you, or it’s gonna be the Gangster 2–6, or it’s going to be someone in the Family, once we put out the word that you were seen at this nice bar consorting with the FBI. You could say we’re actually here to help you.”

“Help me?” Fat Monte said. “This asshole broke my fucking nose and now wants to hobble me.”

“I know you helped get rid of Sal Cupertine,” Jeff said. “I know you killed Chema. I know you had Neto killed. So that’s two bodies on your sheet, plus aiding a fugitive who murdered federal agents. And now I’m pretty sure you killed Paul Bruno, too, because you opened your stupid mouth. You want that weight? You willing to spend the next five hundred years in prison? Because that’s what you’re looking at, Monte. No more in and out in a year. No more Ronnie greasing things so you’re living like a kingpin somewhere. Because now you’re a liability to him. So I’m talking the rest of your life in a supermax, solitary confinement for twenty-three hours a day. That’s if you live through the week. All that, and your wife will have a bounty on her ass from the Gangster 2–6 for you killing two of their boys. You ready for that?”

“I talk to you,” Fat Monte said, “what can you do for my wife?”

Matthew shot Jeff a quick look. Fat Monte hadn’t just taken the hook, he’d swallowed it all the way down. Jeff wasn’t totally convinced this was the case, actually, though if there was something to be gleaned from all this, it was that Fat Monte understood what Jeff said was entirely true. Though, if Fat Monte actually went to his lawyer, well, there could be some problems. . namely that Matthew was impersonating an FBI agent. . though the odds were fairly good that Fat Monte Moretti would probably have some problems alleging that his civil rights had been violated, particularly since he was a known felon.

“We can get her protection right away,” Jeff said, which was a lie. But it was a lie he’d figure out how to make good on, if need be. He still had a few friends, somewhere.

“Like a house in Phoenix or some shit?” Fat Monte said. “Maybe a little place on an island? Get her some new tits, also? Maybe you put her up in business, like an ice cream shop or some little boutique place selling sweaters and scented candles?”

“This isn’t TV,” Jeff said.

“So don’t play me like I’m on TV,” Fat Monte hissed. He pulled the rag from his face and picked up a napkin from the table and dabbed at his nostrils to check for bleeding. It was down to just a few trickles, though once he saw himself in a mirror, he wasn’t going to be pleased. “Unless I see some marshals in this joint, you don’t even have the authority to make that kind of promise. You’re not the first feds to come knocking on my door with offers of immunity and shit.”

Jeff had long worked under the impression that Fat Monte wasn’t very bright. Of all the members of the Family he’d investigated, he was the one clear liability, the one part of upper management prone to common stupidity — over the years, in addition to his notable felonies, Fat Monte was pinched for drunk driving, got nicked for beating down a valet he accused of stealing three dollars in change from his car, even once tried to get on a commuter flight with a vial of cocaine in his pocket — never mind his propensity to kill other humans. Now, though, sitting here with him, Jeff was beginning to understand that Fat Monte wasn’t very bright, but he’d acquired some level of institutional intelligence.

“Okay, then,” Jeff said. He stood up and put his coat back on, Matthew followed suit, and then Jeff asked a passing waitress for a pen, scribbled his cell phone number on the back of a napkin, handed it to Fat Monte. “You call me, and I’ll get an ambulance for you.”

“That’s it? Your pit bull breaks my fucking nose, threatens me, and then you leave?”

“You don’t need to be Ronnie Cupertine’s bitch,” Matthew said. “You tell us where Sal Cupertine is, that’s all, and maybe we’ll forget about Chema and Neto.”

“They’re already forgotten,” Fat Monte said.

“Just like you’ll be when you’re not of any use anymore,” Jeff said. “I’m not asking you to tell me what crimes Sal Cupertine committed. I have that information. I’m just asking for a location. You point to a spot on a map, and your wife is safe for the rest of her life.”

“While I do. . what? Five hundred years? That what you said?”

“You chose this life, Monte,” Jeff said, his voice rising, and it was all he could do not to grab Fat Monte by his collar and shake him, but he managed to stay calm, managed to extend a single finger in Fat Monte’s direction instead of his gun. “Your wife didn’t. She could ask Jennifer Cupertine about that, see how life really works when your old man is left to sway in the wind by the Family. See how far the omertà goes when she can’t afford to flush the toilet.”

“Fuck you,” Fat Monte said again, and there still wasn’t much behind it.

“That’s what Ronnie Cupertine does,” Jeff said. “You don’t believe me, just you wait until he sees you with your twisted face and your story about how the feds roughed you up. He’s gonna have a lot of questions about why you’re not in jail, and next thing you know, we’ll be pulling your crispy body out of the landfill, too.”

Jeff started out the door, Matthew a few steps behind him, and it was only then that he realized how quiet the bar had become, primarily because he’d shouted at Fat Monte Moretti, killer of men and a regular at the Four Treys Tavern in bucolic Roscoe Village. Bad form, sure, but whatever.

Even though they’d been gone less than thirty minutes, the inside of Jeff’s Explorer was already freezing once they made it back, the steam rising from both men fogging the windows. Jeff took his gun from his ankle holster and put it back in the glove box. Matthew didn’t seem to notice. Jeff checked his reflection in the rearview mirror, wiped a speck of dried blood from his forehead.

“I could do it, you know,” Matthew said. “Put one right in his back.”

“I know,” Jeff said.

“I want to do it now. What’s stopping us from doing it right now?” Matthew said.

“Put your gun away,” Jeff said.

“We should take it to the next level,” Matthew said. He took his gun out, examined it for a moment. “I want to hurt him.” He looked at his hands, wiped them on his pants. “I’ve got his blood all over me.”

“You violated his civil rights,” Jeff said. “If you were still working for the FBI, I’d have to fire you.”

“I want to hurt him,” Matthew said again, like maybe he was trying to make sense of his own revelation. He dumped the gun in the glove box.

“I know,” Jeff said. He pulled off Damen, turned right on Roscoe, then came back down Wolcott and onto Henderson, headed back toward the bar.

“What are we doing?” Matthew said.

“I want to see what he does,” Jeff said. “If he walks home, back to the wife, we got him. If he sits in there and calls a couple of his boys, starts plotting how he’s going to kill us, we’ll need to make different arrangements.”

“He doesn’t even know my name,” Matthew said.

“He could get it,” Jeff said. “He knew who I was.”

“Do I need to worry about my sister?”

“We’ll know soon enough.” Jeff parked half a block away from the bar, in front of a blue walk-up that had both Cubs and Sox banners flying out front. Jeff took out his cell and tried Paul Bruno’s phone again. Voicemail still full. Shit.

“Anything?” Matthew said.

“No,” Jeff said. Matthew nodded, kept staring out the window, waiting for Fat Monte, or a bunch of guys in sweat suits, to appear. “If he’s dead,” Jeff said, “that’s on me.”

“It’s on him,” Matthew said. “What did you say to Fat Monte? That he chose this life? Same thing for your friend.”

“Maybe so,” Jeff said, though he didn’t want to believe that.

Jeff dialed 411 and got the number for Paul Bruno’s mother. Mrs. Bruno picked up on the third ring.

“Ma’am,” Jeff said, “my name is Jeff Hopper. I’m friends with your son. I was wondering if you’d heard from him recently.”

“Are you friends from the neighborhood?” she asked.

“No,” Jeff said.

“You one of his boyfriends, then?”

“No,” Jeff said. He tried to figure out a polite way of telling the truth and then just decided he’d tell the truth as it was. “I knew him from his work with the FBI.”

“Oh,” she said. “You were his handler, is that right?”

“That’s right,” Jeff said.

“Oh,” she said again. Jeff heard her sigh, and he wondered how much she actually knew about her son. “I haven’t heard from him in weeks. He normally called every other day or so. More often since his father passed. It’s been almost a month. Do you think he’s all right?”

“No,” Jeff said. “Ma’am, if I were you, I would file a missing person’s report. Get an investigation going.”

“Oh, I see,” she said. “Maybe I can ask you a question?”

“Sure,” Jeff said.

“Do you think I’m stupid?”

“Ma’am?”

“I just want to know if you think I’m stupid,” she said. Her voice sounded choked, and Jeff realized she was crying.

“Of course not,” Jeff said.

“Then please don’t call here again,” she said, and she hung up.

Jeff set his phone down. It was 1999, a whole new century was about to start, and people were still too scared to do the right thing. Chicago was still the kind of place where people feared the authorities and respected the crime bosses, even after all this time. “Paul Bruno is dead,” he said quietly.

Matthew nodded. “What do you want to do about it?”

“This whole thing,” Jeff said. “It’s stupid. Right? Isn’t that what you tried to convince me of? Back at the White Palace? That this was a fool’s journey?”

“I’m here, aren’t I?”

“Where else do you have to go?”

“You know who killed him,” Matthew said. “You just sat there and had drinks with him. I’ve got his blood all over my pants.”

“That’s what gets me,” Jeff said. “What makes Sal Cupertine any different? Why bother looking for him if it all just perpetuates? Could be any of these assholes who work for the Family.”

“The FBI any better right now? They let Sal Cupertine walk,” Matthew said. “You said it yourself. They’ll wait until it’s convenient to start looking for him. And you know what? They won’t find him. And the czars at Stateville? Doesn’t someone have to do the right thing? I mean, isn’t that what this is about, Jeff? Doing the right thing?”

“I don’t know anymore,” Jeff said.

“You better figure that out,” Matthew said, “because I’m riding with you now, and I can’t just throw my life away. I need to find this guy if I want to have a career, or else I’m going to be the most qualified security guard at Citibank.”

Ten minutes later, as Jeff and Matthew sat in the front seat of Jeff’s idling Explorer, a single woman crossed the street in front of them and entered the Four Treys. She came back out less than a minute later, hand in hand with Fat Monte Moretti.

Jeff was woken up at four o’clock in the morning by the sound of his cell phone ringing. He picked it up and looked at the number on the caller ID, but he didn’t recognize it. He hoped it was Paul Bruno, calling from Canada or something, but was fairly certain that wasn’t going to be the case.

“Hopper,” he said.

“Why do you law enforcement people always answer the phone like that?” Fat Monte said. “Anyone ever teach you to say hello?”

“It’s FBI policy,” Jeff said. “Always smart to identify yourself, takes the mystery out of things.”

“Yeah, I bet,” Fat Monte said.

“Something I can help you with, Monte?” Jeff asked. “Or are you just making sure I gave you a working number.”

“You know,” Fat Monte said, “your people aren’t that sharp. There was another body in that dump.”

“Oh yeah?” Jeff said.

“A white guy,” Monte said. “About the same height and weight as Sal. But you find the faggot Mexican and make him. That’s why you’re never going to win, you get that?”

“What’s to win, Monte?” Jeff said.

“Tonight,” Fat Monte said, “why didn’t you just take me in? Why bust me up and let me go home? That’s not how you guys normally do business.”

“New policy went into effect,” Jeff said, “right after one of your guys killed three feds.” He sat up in bed and turned on a light, looked around for his minirecorder, since it wasn’t every day that a member of the Family called in the middle of the night with, it sounded like, a few things to get off his chest. Jeff was pretty sure he’d left the recorder outside in his car, and he wasn’t about to go running outside in his underwear when it was zero degrees outside. He fumbled through his nightstand and came up with a pencil but no paper. He’d write on the wall if he had to. “You want to talk to me about that day, Monte? That why you’re calling?”

“You gotta make me a promise,” Fat Monte said. “I tell you some shit, you go back out to the dump, and you get that fucking body. Because I can’t have that on me.”

Jeff tried to remember if there’d been any chatter about any guys from Fat Monte’s crew missing around the time of Sal’s disappearance, but part of his brain was still in REM. And anyway, Chema Espinoza wasn’t listed in any of the files. The FBI didn’t care much about the guppies, not when there were whales like Fat Monte swimming around.

“It’s been months, Monte,” Jeff said. “Whoever you threw in there has probably been picked clean by the rats.”

“Don’t fucking say that,” Fat Monte said. “Jesus Christ, don’t say that shit. Get some of those cadaver dogs and get out there tomorrow, right? Tomorrow. Promise me you’ll get those cadaver dogs out to the dump, or this phone call is over.”

“Okay,” Jeff said. He was startled by the desperation in Fat Monte’s voice. There was something happening here, and it wasn’t good. “Okay. I’ll get them. I’ll get dogs and radar and everything, okay? Whatever you need, we’ll get it. We’ll go out together if you want.”

“Nah, nah, fuck that,” Fat Monte said. He was silent for a moment, and Jeff heard what he thought was the clink of ice in a glass. “One other thing. You keep my wife’s name out of this. She’s got family and cousins, and they don’t need to know what kind of life she was living, okay?”

“There’s no reason to bring her into anything,” Jeff said. That Monte said “was living” immediately bothered him. And he didn’t say “keep my wife out of this,” he said “keep my wife’s name” out of it. “Where are you right now, Monte? Why don’t I meet you, and we can talk.”

“Like I need another beatdown? My balls finally stopped hurting.”

“It won’t be like that,” Jeff said. “We’ll sit down, have a cup of coffee, you can tell me whatever is on your mind.”

Fat Monte laughed at that. “Look,” he said. “I’m going to tell you two things, and that’s all I got with this. You walked into my life today and ruined it, you get that? Ruined it. Nowhere I can go now, you get that?”

“I get that,” Jeff said. “But I’m giving you a chance that Neto and Chema didn’t get.” He paused. “Or my guys that Sal murdered. I’m giving you a chance to get out of this with your life.”

“You don’t really believe that, do you?” he said. “Because maybe that’s the line you gave Bruno when you flipped him and now he’s dead. You know Ronnie don’t forget, right?”

“So then what is this?” Jeff said.

“Making my own bed,” Monte said. He cleared his throat, and Jeff heard the clinking of ice again. “First thing, you get that body from the dump, you call my mother. You got her phone number?”

“Yes,” Jeff said. He had phone numbers for every extended member of the Family, and the FBI had bugs on most of them, too.

“You call her, tell her you got my cousin Neal. She’s gonna lose it. Don’t play with her, don’t dig on her, no pressure, okay? She’s not in the game, never has been, she just tried her best, you know? That kid was practically a retard, not a evil bone in his body, just real sweet, wanted to start a puppy farm, always had gerbils and hamsters and shit, used to wash them. . Ronnie always had this idea that he was the perfect guy to have along for things because, well, fuck, what did he know? Right?”

Jeff had only passing knowledge of Neal Moretti: He was inconsequential to even the smallest investigations Jeff had been party to, his most notable trait being his last name and that he was frequently used as a driver.

And now he was rotting in the landfill.

Fat Monte rambled on about his cousin, his words running into each other, and Jeff realized this wasn’t just a confession of some kind, it was maybe a coda, too, that Fat Monte was winding down toward something dreadful, trying to get his mind right. This was not good.

“Okay, okay,” Jeff said. “I’ll call your mother. We’ll find Neal. We’ll do whatever we need to do to get that to happen right away.”

“He was like my brother,” Fat Monte said finally. “I’ve done plenty of bad things, you know that, right? You know that?”

“I know that.”

“But I was never like Sal. I tried to be this cold-blooded motherfucker, and maybe most of the time I was, that steroid shit, that made it worse for a while, but I tried to get off that when I met my girl, and all of a sudden, all this shit, it starts visiting on me, like flashbacks. So I get back on it, get that rush, you know, invincible. Most of the time, I can put it in the back somewhere, but Neal, Neal, he was like my brother, right? And I had to do him. There’s no returning from that, that’s what I keep thinking about, thinking about how my wife, Hannah is her name, you knew about her, right? What if she found out about that? She’d never be able to see me like she saw me before, and that, that, that, that wouldn’t be something I could deal with.”

“It’s going to be okay,” Jeff said. He was throwing on his pants, had already slipped into a sweatshirt while Monte was going on, was looking for his shoes, trying to figure out how he’d call 911 while he was on the phone, trying to figure out how he’d explain to the cops — shit, to the FBI — how it was that he was on the phone with Fat Monte Moretti and the tenor of their conversation. He’d need to figure that out. But at that moment, his biggest concern was getting to wherever Monte was, since he was becoming increasingly aware of how much Fat Monte was talking about his wife as if she didn’t exist anymore.

“Yeah, yeah,” Fat Monte said.

“Why don’t you tell me where you are,” Jeff said. He found his car keys and was walking out into the frigid darkness. “Why don’t you tell me where we can meet and talk, Monte. Just man-to-man. No bullshit.”

“Kochel Farms,” Fat Monte said.

“You need to tell me where that is,” Jeff said.

“I ain’t there, but you’ll find it,” Fat Monte said.

“Okay,” Jeff said. “Let’s just do one thing at a time. I’m getting into my car right now. Why don’t you let me buy you some steak and eggs over at the White Palace. You know where that is?”

“It’s too late,” Fat Monte said.

“No, no, it’s not, Monte,” Jeff said. “We can figure out a good solution here. Get you out of town, into a program, you and Hannah into a house with a lawn and a garage. Send you out to California, whatever you want. Okay? We can do that. I have that authority.”

“Just get him out of that dump,” Fat Monte said, and then the next thing Jeff heard was the distinctive blast of a.357, followed by the unmistakable sound of a body hitting the floor.