Gangsterland

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

The cab dropped Rabbi David Cohen back at Temple Beth Israel a few minutes after nine thirty, just in time for David to see Rabbi Kales step out of the administrative offices to light a cigarette. In the months that David had worked with Rabbi Kales, he’d never seen him smoke, never even smelled smoke on him. It was, in David’s opinion, somehow undignified for his position, never mind that David himself liked a cigar periodically.

“I’ve been calling you all night,” Rabbi Kales said when David walked up. He looked panicked. “Where have you been?”

“I left my phone in my car,” David said.

“Where have you been?” Rabbi Kales repeated.

“You don’t want to know,” David said. “Let’s just leave it at that.”

“I thought the worst.”

“The worst about what?”

Rabbi Kales waved him off. “He’s in jail,” Rabbi Kales said. “Benjamin.”

“Jail? What the fuck are you talking about?”

“The FBI raided the Wild Horse this evening,” he said.

Fucking feds. If it was Super Bowl Sunday or Christmas or Thanksgiving, you could expect a knock on the door. “What did they get him on?” David asked.

“Conspiracy,” Rabbi Kales said.

Shit. That was a federal charge. When the feds wanted to have the freedom to poke around until they found something worthwhile, they always went the conspiracy route, since they could convict a boss for what his soldiers did, or what his soldiers covered up, or even what his soldiers were thinking about doing.

David tried to collect his thoughts. If it was the conspiracy he and Rabbi Kales and Bennie were involved in with the funeral home and the bodies, Rabbi Kales would already be in cuffs, too. If it had anything to do with David whatsoever, there’d be feds and marshals and cops and reporters lining the street like the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. And if it was just some local shit — the building commission or something equally mundane — David was sure Bennie had enough people in his pocket to take care of that, at least forewarn him about a raid on Super Bowl Sunday. Bennie didn’t talk much about the political side of his life, but it was in the papers every day which “reputed mob figures” or “jiggle-joint owners” (or whatever euphemism the Review-Journal came up with that particular day) were donating to which races for mayor, city council, judge, sheriff. . hell, even the dogcatcher was getting checks from guys with vowels at the end of their last names.

All of which made Bennie no different than Ronnie Cupertine when it all came down, both of them selling rides of one kind or another and peddling influence so long as no one got hurt.

And there it was.

“The tourist,” David said.

“You’re really blaming a paralyzed man for this?”

“I’m not blaming him,” David said. “I’m blaming the situation.” One of those bouncers rolled, said something to someone; had to be. The FBI doesn’t get out of bed on Super Bowl Sunday unless they think they’ve got something for the newspapers. That’s how they work. In Chicago, everyone involved would already be in a body bag, that’s for sure: the bouncers, the victim, maybe the victim’s family, and then maybe they’d burn down the club, too, just to clean the slate entirely. . the realization of which made David actually catch his breath.

It wasn’t the first time he’d come to the conclusion that he should be dead for his role in the fuckup at the Parker House. But it was the first time he realized that he wasn’t dead for some specific reason. Cousin Ronnie got David’s ass smuggled out of Chicago and killed either Chema or Neal, or both, just to make it look good. . and then had Paul Bruno killed. . and then Fat Monte put a bullet in his wife’s head, and then another in his own, rather than deal with whatever Hopper had said to him. It had taken a while, but Ronnie wasn’t just cleaning the slate, he was pouring lye on it and burying it in Siberia.

David had told Bennie to give up the bouncers, which he had, got them good attorneys, everything, and yet, the Wild Horse still got raided. The bouncers didn’t know enough to give up anything other than what the feds already knew — that maybe Bennie Savone wasn’t exactly an angel — and David was certain Bennie told the boys he’d take care of them if they ended up doing time, provided they kept their mouths shut. And they were likely to do time for the crime they’d obviously committed, and deservedly so in David’s opinion, particularly with the beating caught on camera. So it had been about keeping them from getting a longer sentence, keeping them from being recognized as part of an organized crime conspiracy, which didn’t give the bouncers any good reason to start putting Bennie’s name on the street. Might as well come out of prison with some money in their pocket. David just didn’t see the feds getting enough from a commonplace beatdown — even if the guy ended up paralyzed — to actually move against Bennie Savone.

Which meant they got their information from somewhere else, from someone who knew enough about Bennie’s operations that they could ring up the feds and offer some kernel of information that would get the suits up and running.

“Where’s Rachel?” David asked.

“Home, with the girls,” he said. “Benjamin hasn’t been arraigned yet, so there’s not much that can be done until tomorrow when the bail is set.”

“If there’s a bail,” David said.

“He’s just a businessman,” Rabbi Kales said.

“Never been arrested?”

“Never,” Rabbi Kales said.

“Pays his taxes?”

“Yes, of course.”

“His business taxes, too?” David thought of all the bosses who’d gone down not for murder but for ducking the IRS. That was the one lesson Ronnie Cupertine had imparted to everyone in the Family: Pay your taxes. You like driving on nice streets? You like taking the L places? You like breathing fresh air? Pay your fucking taxes. You like staying out of prison? You don’t want a visit from the Rain Man? Pay your fucking taxes.

“How should I know?” Rabbi Kales said.

“Because you know everything else, seems like.”

Rabbi Kales tossed his cigarette onto the pavement and ground it out under his shoe, fished in his pocket, and came back out with a pack of Camels and a lighter and lit back up. “I haven’t smoked in fifteen years,” he said. “I don’t know why I ever stopped.”

“This will get resolved,” David said, though who the fuck knew. If they had Bennie on a conspiracy charge, that meant they probably convened a grand jury first, secured an indictment, maybe for conspiracy to obstruct justice or something similarly minor compared to everything else Bennie Savone had actually done during the course of his life. “Bennie’s got a good lawyer. The thing to concentrate on right now is Rachel.”

“She’s fine,” Rabbi Kales said. “You don’t need to worry about Rachel.”

“She didn’t sound fine when she was telling me she was planning on leaving her husband,” David said. “She didn’t sound fine when she told me you knew.”

“You don’t need to worry about Rachel,” Rabbi Kales said again.

“Maybe she should worry about me,” David said.

Rabbi Kales took a long drag off of his cigarette and then exhaled through his nose. He flicked the still-burning cigarette into the parking lot and for a few moments watched it burn. “Do you think you frighten me?” he said eventually.

“I think I probably should.”

“Your son’s name is William,” Rabbi Kales said. “He is in preschool at Mt. Carmel Academy, though your wife is having a hard time paying his tuition. Your wife, Jennifer, recently took a loan out on your home, even though it was paid off, in full, a few months after your death. Unfortunately, your wife is having a difficult time finding a job, since the name Cupertine doesn’t exactly make her easy to hire, since people either think she is related to your cousin, who I understand is a reputed mob figure, or was the wife of Sal Cupertine, who killed several federal agents. That must be a difficult weight to carry simply by virtue of who she fell in love with as a teenager, wouldn’t you say?”

“Shut the fuck up.”

“Your father,” Rabbi Kales said, “was thrown off the IBM Building. Do you know the circumstances that required he be thrown from the building? Because I would be happy to tell you, Rabbi Cohen.”

“I told you to shut the fuck up.”

“I heard you,” Rabbi Kales said. “We’ve all got secrets, Rabbi Cohen. Just know that I’m aware of all of yours.”

“You think it’s that easy? That you can just say shit like that to me and suddenly your daughter is off the hook? If she ratted out Bennie, she’s just a couple moves away from figuring out that her father is piece of shit, too.”

“She is already aware of that.”

“I don’t think she’s aware of the fact that you’re burying murder victims in the cemetery she thinks she’s inheriting,” David said. “Or that everything here is a fucking grift.”

“How is it you think she ended up marrying Bennie Savone, David? You think the daughter of a rabbi is going to just marry Bennie Savone? Do you really think everything you see here is by happy accident? That Benjamin lucked into this arrangement?”

David figured that Bennie had something on Rabbi Kales, figured that there was some weight that Rabbi Kales bore for the opportunity to have his own temple. Rabbi Kales had told him that day after their meeting at the Bagel Café that he’d made mistakes with his life. That Bennie had given him a tremendous opportunity. David had just assumed that Bennie had something on Rabbi Kales, when, maybe, it was the other way around. Bennie clearly adored his wife and kids. Or adored them as much as Bennie Savone was able to adore anything.

So that was the pact. Rabbi Kales knew that Bennie loved his daughter, held that over his head, and made a deal. Bennie got to marry the woman he loved; Rabbi Kales got his own temple, his own people. He couldn’t have imagined what Bennie would do next. Who could? And it was why Rabbi Kales wouldn’t just let Rachel divorce Bennie, wouldn’t let her just walk away, even when he knew it was the best thing she could ever do with her life. And why he wouldn’t just call the cops and tell them he was getting shaken down by the mob. In return, Bennie couldn’t do anything at the temple without going through Rabbi Kales, which is why it became important for there to be someone like David at all.

A mob boss who had to answer to a rabbi.

What an elegant fucking con, David thought, both sides ripping the other off.

In the short run, David answered to Bennie. Bennie hadn’t said anything definitive about taking Rabbi Kales out, but David wasn’t stupid. He knew it was coming, some day, and probably someday soon. And the thing of it was, Rabbi Kales wasn’t stupid, either.

“It doesn’t matter to me,” David said. “All that matters to me is what Bennie tells me to do.”

“That’s not true,” Rabbi Kales said.

“If it was Rachel who went to the feds on this,” David said, perfectly calmly, “I’ll kill both of you. Because what matters to me is one day getting the fuck out of this place and back to my family. And I can only do that with your cooperation, Rabbi Kales. And I count Rachel’s cooperation as your cooperation.”

Rabbi Kales smiled at David then. “Bennie was right about you,” he said.

“Yeah, in what way?”

“He said you had a singular focus.”

“I pay attention,” David said. Except once. And that’s what had brought him here, on this night, in front of this man, this man who was probably fairly decent, a man who spent 90 percent of his time in service to something larger than himself. The other 10 percent was given over to the management of a criminal enterprise, the benefit of which gave every member of his temple hope that their own lives weren’t meaningless. Rabbi Kales had essentially sold his daughter to Bennie Savone so that he could build an empire for the Jews in Summerlin.

What was the cosmic algebra on that? If you did a little bad for a greater good and the only people who got hurt were people who decided to get involved with a bunch of gangsters, wasn’t that a net positive? Because, surely, Rachel Kales, at twenty-two, had fallen in love with the wrong person. A choice was made. And then her father had bartered with a criminal for what he wanted out of the deal, and, in the long run, the members of Temple Beth Israel were content.

The way David saw it, the only person with a viable complaint at this point was David himself, now that he understood all the people he was doing business with were shysters, which, he realized, was like a boxer complaining about how often he got hit. Except it hadn’t been David’s choice to be in the ring with Bennie Savone and Rabbi Kales. He thought for a long time that it had been his choice to be Sal Cupertine, a man who killed people for a living, but really that was a choice Ronnie made for him. This was a different sort of madness he was involved in now.

Jennifer had chosen to be the kind of woman who married a hit man, the kind of woman who has a child with a hit man, the kind of woman who, one day, knew that she’d be alone because she’d married a hit man. Those were the choices they’d made together, if not explicitly, at least tacitly. So Rabbi Kales could threaten him all he wanted. It didn’t matter. David was who he was, and his wife knew. His father’s death, that was something he’d figure out on his own, because he doubted Rabbi Kales knew all the reasons. . but when it came right down to it, the reason was simple enough: Someone in the Family wanted him dead.

And that person was probably Ronnie Cupertine.

It was a truth David had tried to keep from confronting directly for a long time, but in the last few weeks it had come easier and easier for him to accept. Ronnie had also most likely wanted him dead, too, and then had to find a work-around when he got the jump on the FBI motherfuckers. There was no way Ronnie thought he’d get out of that meeting alive once he realized who the players were, four against one, impossible odds even for Sal Cupertine.

Ronnie never played to lose anything, so he was probably sitting in his house waiting for a phone call that said Sal was dead, only to get a call from Sal himself. No wonder he sounded so surprised. Ronnie wasn’t used to failure and had to find a work-around that wouldn’t end with Sal killing everyone in Chicago.

But the rub on that deal was that Sal Cupertine was alive, well, and prospering. It was the prospering that was beginning to bother David. That he’d been set up to succeed. It just didn’t make sense. It wasn’t how Ronnie did business.

Rabbi Kales’s cell phone rang, and the old man — because that what he was, David saw, an old man standing outside a place of worship chain-smoking filterless Camels — took it from his pocket and examined the screen. “It’s Benjamin’s lawyer,” Rabbi Kales said.

“Give it to me,” David said.

“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Rabbi Kales said.

“I wasn’t asking,” David said.

“When you’re at Temple Beth Israel,” Rabbi Kales said, “you work for me, Rabbi Cohen.” He answered the phone and turned his back to David. Rabbi Kales still had a full head of silver hair that he kept cut short in the back, so you could see three or four inches of neck between his hair and his collar. David could shoot Rabbi Kales in that spot, and he’d be dead before he hit the ground, his hair still perfectly coiffed while he waited for the Moshiach to come stomping back to collect all the Jews and bring them to the Mount of Olives.

With five pounds of pressure exerted on the trigger of his gun, David could end Rabbi Kales right here. That was it. Five pounds of pressure. Less pressure than it would take to slap the man. David could feel his gun pressing against the small of his back, beneath his now ever-present suit jacket. He could draw his gun in a second, second and a half if he really needed to take some time with it. At point-blank range, the bullet would take just a fraction of a second to pierce that spot between Rabbi Kales’s head and neck. And for what? The hubris of wanting to give his community a place to gather and of not realizing the consequences of his actions?

Yom Kippur wasn’t for another eight months, yet David couldn’t help but think of what he’d learned about the Day of Atonement, about how almost a hundred years earlier, Rabbi Hertz had written that sin was not an evil power whose chains one must drag behind oneself for the rest of one’s life. We can always shake off its yoke, Rabbi Hertz said, and we never need to assume the yoke in the first place.

The Talmud taught that Jews live in deeds, not years, and in that way, David understood the paradox of all the things he’d learned during these months of rabbinical study: You could never quite unfuck yourself, when it got right down to it, but that didn’t mean you couldn’t be a better person after making a bad choice.

Rabbi Kales turned back around then, the phone pressed to his ear as he listened intently to whatever was being said to him, so David very calmly took out his gun and placed it directly against the rabbi’s forehead. “We all have a boss,” David said.

David thought he saw the wrinkle of a smile begin to play at the edges of Rabbi Kales’s mouth, though he couldn’t really be sure. What he didn’t see was fear. And that, above all else, made David’s assumptions about the power structure between Bennie and Rabbi Kales crystallize. He wasn’t scared because he knew it wasn’t his time to die yet. If Rabbi Kales was found with a bullet in his head on the same day Bennie Savone was arrested, everyone would go down.

“You’re in luck,” Rabbi Kales said. “Benjamin’s lawyer would like to speak with you.” He handed the phone to David and then fished out another cigarette and lit up.

David stuffed his gun back into his waistband, cleared his throat, collected himself for a moment, tried to decide which voice he wanted to use, and then said, “With whom am I speaking?”

“Who the fuck is this?” Bennie’s lawyer said.

“This is Rabbi David Cohen,” David said.

There was a pause on the other end for a moment, and David thought he could hear Bennie’s lawyer thinking. “Okay,” he said. Another long pause. “Okay.”

“I am Mr. Savone’s rabbi,” David said.

Another long pause. “This is Vincent Zangari, Mr. Savone’s attorney. I wasn’t expecting you to sound like you sound.”

“How do I sound?”

“Calm,” Vincent said.

“Yes, well, I am very concerned about Mr. Savone,” David said.

“He said you might be.” Vincent chuckled then, or let out what amounted to a chuckle. There was something strangled about what the man found amusing. David wondered just how much he knew. Maybe everything. David had never met Vincent Zangari, but he knew all about him from the news and the papers and the commercials he had on television. That was one of the weird things about Las Vegas: You’d be watching the news, and they’d be reporting on some guy cannibalizing his wife and kids, and they’d cut to the scene in front of the courthouse, and there was someone like Vincent Zangari, ten-thousand-dollar suit on, telling everyone how misunderstood his client was, how it was a simple accident involving cooked humans. They’d cut to a commercial, and there was that same lawyer, wearing the same suit, striding the neon streets of Las Vegas, letting you know that if you got “jammed up,” he was the guy to get you unjammed.

Zangari’s commercials had slightly higher production values and always featured him getting in and out of a Bentley. There was one specific commercial that seemed to run on a loop during the eleven o’clock news broadcasts: Zangari’s Bentley pulls up to a crime scene, and the lawyer steps out of the backseat, cell phone to his ear, and approaches a line of cops standing in front of a band of yellow crime scene tape. As soon as they see Zangari, the cops lift up the tape and let him stride into the crime scene, like he’s chief of police. He turns to the camera, the phone still at his ear, and says, “Keep your mouth closed. You have rights.” That’s it. Keep your mouth closed. You have rights. Simple but effective, David guessed, since Zangari seemed to be the go-to guy these days for the crime family types now that Oscar Goodman was running for mayor. The benefit of Las Vegas being an open city, David imagined, was that there was always plenty of work for guys like Zangari.

“How long do you expect him to remain in jail?” David asked.

“Depends,” Vincent said. “They might not give him a bond hearing for another seventy-two hours, then they’ll arraign him after that. If there’s a bond, we’ll get him out right away. That’s no problem. But with a federal case, they might claim he’s a flight risk and hold him without bond, or postpone his arraignment for thirty days. Maybe even sixty, if they end up tacking on some RICO. I’ve seen worse. Could be ninety.”

“But what do you think?”

Another long pause. “I think Mr. Savone has a good reputation locally,” he said. “He has many, many friends in all parts of local government. I think that will help him, but it won’t save him from the feds doing their best to elongate the process. At this point, I don’t even know what he’s allegedly conspired to have done. On the outside, I would guess the feds will try to get at least thirty days on him and that they won’t give him bond, based almost entirely on his last name. I’ll need to make a fuss. Even still, thirty to sixty, then probably they spend the next year watching him. This isn’t going to be a cakewalk. We get him out, first things first, and then see what the government has. They probably have dick, if I know these guys.”

“Yes, well,” David said, “Mr. Savone should know that he has the support of Temple Beth Israel.”

“He knows that,” Vincent said. “That’s why I wanted to speak with you. Mr. Savone wanted to convey how important it was for you to make sure his wife and children were well taken care of while he’s away.”

“Of course,” David said.

“He’d like you to keep a close eye on Rachel, specifically,” Vincent said. “She might feel like Las Vegas is not a safe place for her and therefore might be considering leaving. You should make her feel safe.”

“Of course,” David said.

“That’s good,” Vincent said, “because Bennie was concerned that Rachel might be thinking of leaving town, but he knew you wouldn’t let that happen if she knew you were there to watch her. Keep her safe.”

“No,” David said, thinking: Fucking Bennie. He knew everything. Probably had his own fucking house bugged. “I wouldn’t let that happen.”

“Because Mr. Savone wanted it made clear that if he knew your wife was planning a surprise trip, well, he’d let you know well in advance, just out of common courtesy. In case you wanted to buy them travel insurance or something. You understand?”

“I understand.”

“He also wanted you to know, specifically, the faith he has in your work and that you shouldn’t be concerned about his devotion to the temple and to your work. And that you should absolutely stay in Las Vegas.”

“I wasn’t planning on going anywhere,” David said.

“It’s not always something people plan on,” Vincent said. “Sometimes, you just decide, what the hell, maybe I’ll take a vacation. That wouldn’t be the right course of action during this trying time.”

This trying time. For fuck’s sake. “Bennie doesn’t need to worry about that,” David said quietly.

“That’s good,” Vincent said. “He would also like you to keep a close eye on business affairs of the temple, for which he’s made such sizable investments. He trusts your judgment on the projects while he’s indisposed. Things Rabbi Kales probably isn’t quite as sharp on. You are in charge. Is that clear?”

“You covered all of this ground tonight?” David said.

Vincent Zangari chuckled again. It sounded like someone swallowing chicken bones. “Let’s just say we’ve had some discussions on the topic recently. Always good to have a contingency plan.”

“You mean other than ‘Keep your mouth closed’ and ‘You have rights’?”

“That’s the best contingency plan of all,” Vincent said. “One last thing. Mr. Savone did relay to me this evening how important it was for you to plan on an efficient way to clean the house. Not tonight, or even tomorrow, but shortly. Do you understand?”

“I understand,” David said.

“Very well,” Vincent said. “I’ll be in touch with news as it comes. And Rabbi? Answer your phone, okay? I don’t like having to call all over town looking for you. Seriously. You’re lucky to be alive right now.”

David found Rabbi Kales sitting behind his desk reading the Torah. Rabbi Kales’s office was twice the size of David’s and had a sitting area with two sofas facing each other, a low coffee table between them set with an ornate porcelain tea service, though David had never seen anyone drinking tea in the rabbi’s office, not even the rabbi. David sat down on one of the sofas and picked up the samovar. “Where did you get this?” David asked.

“It belonged to my parents,” Rabbi Kales said. “And before that, it belonged to their parents, in Russia.”

“Where in Russia?”

“Ukraine, to be exact,” Rabbi Kales said. “But I wasn’t sure you’d know the difference.”

“I know the difference,” David said, wondering if Rabbi Kales remembered telling him about his family once before, when they first met. Maybe Rachel was right. Maybe he was shedding some space. “When was this?”

“They came here in 1909,” Rabbi Kales said, though David remembered him saying it was 1919. Maybe it didn’t matter.

“And they brought this all the way over from the Ukraine?”

“Yes,” Rabbi Kales said.

“And you never drink out of it?”

“It’s very fragile.”

“How fragile could it be if it’s lasted all this time?” David asked. He picked up one of the teacups. It was decorated with a pastoral scene — a green field filled with blooming flowers, and in the distance, the blue of the sea — and was rimmed in what felt like actual gold. “You should use it. Your grandparents didn’t bring it all the way over from the Ukraine just to be a decoration.”

“One day, it will be Rachel’s, and she can do with it as she chooses,” Rabbi Kales said.

David set the cup down. “So that’s how it works? It’s an inheritance?”

“No,” Rabbi Kales said. “I received it when I got married, as did my parents. It did not seem right to pass it on to Rachel when she married.”

“Because of Bennie not being Jewish?”

“My wife didn’t approve, no.”

“You never talk about your wife,” David said.

“You never talk about your wife,” Rabbi Kales said.

Fair enough, David thought. “Listen,” David said, “there’s going to be a transition here.”

“I’m aware of that,” Rabbi Kales said.

“Whatever you and Bennie have, that’s between you two. I’ve got a job to do.”

“As you indicated earlier,” Rabbi Kales said. He rubbed at his eyes and then walked over to the sofas and sat down across from David. “How long do you expect it will take?”

“It’s already happened,” David said.

“No,” Rabbi Kales said, “I mean how long until you’re expected to kill me?”

“I guess that will be up to you,” David said.

“You think that?”

“I don’t see you running to the cops. I trust you will help me keep Rachel’s mouth shut,” David said, though he wasn’t convinced she hadn’t already run her mouth. “I don’t have any orders right now.”

“But you are aware that the orders are coming.”

“Rabbi Kales,” David said, “they are always coming.”

“How would you do it?”

“Painlessly,” David said.

“I believe you,” Rabbi Kales said. He shook out another cigarette and lit up right there in his office.

“Might be the best thing would be to get cancer,” David said. But then he had an idea, something that was already right in front of him. “Alzheimer’s wouldn’t hurt, either.”

Rabbi Kales cocked his head. “Pardon me?”

“Maybe not Alzheimer’s, exactly,” David said. “Maybe just dementia. You got any history of that in your family?”

“They used to just call it being senile. My father was senile. His mother was senile, I remember that, her babbling in Russian about going back home to where she felt comfortable.” Rabbi Kales sighed. “Half of the people in the parking lot at Smith’s, at any given time, are probably senile. It’s very sad.”

“It doesn’t have to be,” David said. “Could be that you just wake up one morning and you’re a little confused. Not sure where you are, go outside with two different shoes on, whatever. Think of it as an early retirement.”

Rabbi Kales stared at David for a long time without speaking. “How much time will that buy me?” he said finally.

“Could be forever. If Bennie doesn’t think you’re a liability, there’s no need to get rid of you.”

“Is that what he thinks? That I’m a liability?”

“You know too much,” David said flatly. “That’s how it works. One day, he’ll decide I know too much, and someone will come for me, too.”

“You’re too valuable,” Rabbi Kales said.

“For now,” David said. “But this whole place is changing. Whole world is changing. Not a lot of room for gangsters anymore. Everything that used to be illegal is legal now.” David hadn’t minded being a hit man — it was a legit job in the field, as it were — but the idea that now he was, for all intents, also an undertaker was showing him just how little a skill set like his was really going to be needed in the future. You didn’t need a gun to rob someone anymore, you just needed a spreadsheet.

“How old are you, David?”

“Thirty-five,” David said. Shit. No, that wasn’t true. He was thirty-six now. He’d had a birthday in September. How had he forgotten to celebrate his own birthday? And now he was halfway to thirty-seven. Damn. Time fucked with you in Las Vegas.

“You talk like you’re my age.”

“I’ve seen some shit,” David said.

Rabbi Kales stubbed out his cigarette on the underside of the coffee table and then picked up one of the teacups. This one was covered in vines that spun out from the handle, where a fine drawing of a tree sprouted. “This one was always my favorite,” he said. “My nana used to let me hold it for one minute at a time, but only if I was sitting and only on carpet.” Rabbi Kales chuckled lightly. “She’s been dead for sixty years, and I still think about her. Isn’t that odd?”

“Not so much,” David said.

“But you see, she wasn’t given a choice about when she was to die, so every day could have been her last.”

“That’s true for everyone,” David said.

“That is not true,” Rabbi Kales said. “I can’t tell you how many of my relatives died in the camps, David. Do you think they had any choice?”

“They could have fought back,” David said. “Maybe they did. You don’t know.”

“They killed the entire village my family came from in Ukraine. Not a Jew left standing. Unless they had tanks and planes, no amount of fighting would have saved them from that.”

“All respect,” David said, and he actually meant it, “this is a choice you made to enter into this life, with Bennie, with me, with all of this shit. And now I’m giving you a choice of how to leave it. You can either wait for me to show up one day with a gun, or you can fade away and buy some time.”

“That’s not a choice. It’s an ultimatum. Act like I’ve lost my mind, or you’ll kill me?”

“Call it what you want, Rabbi Kales,” David said. David knew that Bennie wouldn’t have anyone else take out Rabbi Kales, so if it came down to it, he’d see about implying to the rabbi that a nice cocktail and a handful of Percocet might be a good way to leave the world. “I’m offering you a lifeboat.”

“You’re taking everything from me,” Rabbi Kales said.

“I’m giving you a chance,” David said. “It’s more than I need to give you.”

Rabbi Kales considered this. “When would this madness have to begin?”

“Depends on how long Bennie is locked up,” David said. “A stressful time like this, a psychotic break wouldn’t seem that unusual. So let’s say a week from today, you maybe tell Rachel that you’ve been feeling disoriented.”

“She’ll take me to see a doctor,” he said.

“Great,” David said. “Even better.”

“Won’t the doctor know that I’m lying?”

“Rabbi,” David said, “how old are you?”

“Seventy-two,” Rabbi Kales said. And then he nodded, getting it. “And that’s it? Am I still allowed to come here?”

“Of course,” David said, though he suspected Bennie would feel differently.

“Anything else?”

“One thing,” David said. “Before you start losing your mind, you need to update your will. The funeral home needs to be left to the temple.”

“That was to be left to Rachel,” Rabbi Kales said.

“Yeah,” David said, “that won’t work. I’m sure Mr. Zangari can recommend an estate lawyer to you.”

“You’re taking everything away from me,” Rabbi Kales said again.

It was true, David realized. In one day — in one hour — he’d stripped Rabbi Kales clean. It wasn’t his proudest moment, but the end result was that he’d let him live. That was worth something, wasn’t it?

“You’ve had a good life, Rabbi. Why not relax? Spend time with your granddaughters. Play golf.” David understood it was hard to do those things while simultaneously drooling on yourself and pretending to be lost, but it could be a slow descent, he supposed. Rabbi Kales was seventy-two. Rachel had said he was slipping, but David hadn’t believed it, chocking it up more to the secrets Rabbi Kales had to keep than some actual cognitive deficiency. Now, thinking about the last nine months, it seemed more than plausible, even though the rabbi still looked fit and able. “This thing,” David said, “could be a mitzvah.”

“Sal Cupertine,” Rabbi Kales said, “what did he believe in?”

“Family,” David said. “Duty, I guess. Retribution.”

“Nothing else?”

“Everybody dies,” David said. “That was sort of my motto.”

“What about Rabbi David Cohen?”

“He believes in the articles of our faith, Rabbi.”

Rabbi Kales smiled at David and then got up, walked over to his desk, emptied a small file box of its contents, and then came back and filled the box with the tea set, save for one cup and saucer — the one with tree branches — which he handed to David. “Does your wife drink tea?” Rabbi Kales asked.

“Sometimes,” David said. “If she can’t sleep.”

“When you see her next, give her that cup and saucer as my regards,” Rabbi Kales said. “That will be the mitzvah.”

Just before midnight, David walked across the street to the funeral home to call Jerry Ford. In the time they’d been in business, they’d fostered a positive working relationship with no real sense, at least on David’s part, that Ford considered him anything more than a rabbi. David tried to keep the flow of work to Ford’s firm within reason in case anyone bothered to look into the business of either side of the transaction. All the paperwork was legit — or at least looked legit when it involved the bodies Bennie took in — and everyone seemed happy. David wasn’t exactly sure when it occurred to him that it was no happy accident that Jerry had appeared on the scene with this wonderful offer to help the Jewish faith by moving corpse tissue, though the afternoon he saw Jerry and Bennie chatting amiably out in front of the temple confirmed what he probably should have always known: that Bennie was involved from the get-go. It was simply another layer of secrecy: If David didn’t know that Bennie had the initial idea, it was one less potential witness for the prosecution.

The endeavor needed a rabbi. . and that was never going to be Rabbi Kales, nor the late Rabbi Gottlieb. And who knew what Bennie had on Jerry Ford. Probably nothing, once he thought about it. Guys like Jerry, they wanted to work with the mob. Made them feel like they were doing something out of a movie. It wasn’t like that in Chicago too much because the stakes were too high. People in Chicago were much more open about killing you. Here it just helped get you into nice strip clubs, maybe a little extra grind for your twenty bucks.

Thus, David was under the impression that Jerry Ford might be willing to do him and the temple a little favor. So David sat down in the funeral director’s office and called Jerry Ford’s cell phone.

He picked up on the first ring. “How you doing, Ruben?” he said.

“This isn’t Ruben,” David said. “It’s Rabbi Cohen.”

“Oh, sorry, Rabbi,” he said. “Ruben calls me so often in the middle of the night, my wife is beginning to think something is up.”

“Yes, well,” David said.

“Not that my wife has reason to worry otherwise, you understand,” he said. In the background, David could hear music and people talking. It was midnight on Super Bowl Sunday, and it didn’t seem like Jerry was keeping vigil at one of the local hospitals.

“Listen,” David said, “a man has taken his life and has asked that his body be buried in a traditional Jewish ceremony, with conditions, however, and so I’m hoping you might be of some help.”

“How’d he go?”

“He shot himself in the head, I’m afraid,” David said.

“Okay, I’m listening,” Jerry said. If Jerry was completely above board, he would have already hung up, but David could hear the man making calculations in his head. Internal organs were big business. . and not a business he was normally privy to. . and a bullet to the head wasn’t the sort of thing that spoiled a kidney.

“He’d like only his hands, feet, and head to be buried and for the rest of his body to be disposed of,” David said.

“Strange,” Jerry said.

“Yes, well, he was not right in his mind,” David said. “And while I’d like to respect his wishes, I’d hate for what was an otherwise healthy young man to not pay forward the gift of life, particularly if someone could use a kidney or a liver or heart.”

“Of course,” Jerry said. David could hear that Jerry had stepped outside now, the music gone, replaced by the sound of traffic. He was probably on the Strip or, worse, at one of the local casinos playing cheap poker with guys in satin jackets.

“Unfortunately Ruben is gone for the evening, and thus you’d need to handle the harvesting on your own. I trust you would dispose of the internal organs in an appropriate fashion.”

Jerry paused for a moment and then said, “Yeah, I can take care of all of that. No problem. No problem in the least. I’ve got a guy who can do that.”

“Because I know you can’t handle the organs yourself,” David said.

“Right,” he said. “The extremities, you got that part handled? Avoiding the long bones, that would be best. I’m talking femur, tibia, humerus. Keeping those intact would be, uh, helpful, in terms of paying it forward.”

“Yes,” David said. “One of our technicians has taken care of that. But he isn’t certified for the other work. So if you think you can handle this, I’d be happy for the help. Though I think it might be wise for you take caution here. You’d hate to lose your license.”

“I’ll take supreme caution, Rabbi. Absolutely.”

“Good.” David paused for a moment and thought about everything that had transpired that day and over the last few weeks, tried to figure out just how to say next what he wanted to say, and then decided being simple and direct was probably the route to go. “I’m not sure if you heard, but Mr. Savone was arrested today.”

“Yeah, yeah, tough stuff there,” Jerry said. “Saw him getting perp-walked on the news tonight. Terrible.”

“Yes, horrible. Horrible indeed. We’re hoping to help get him bonded out, of course, so it would be helpful if you could bring cash with you tonight instead of waiting sixty days.”

“Cash? How much are we talking about?”

“Whatever you think is the correct amount.”

“And this is for Bennie?”

“In light of everything,” David said. It was one of those terms he’d heard Rabbi Kales use periodically that seemed to comfort everyone while saying absolutely nothing.

“Right, okay,” Jerry said. “For the temple.”

“Yes, for the temple.”

“No problem, Rabbi,” Jerry said. “I’ll cash a check at the Bellagio, and we’ll be good to go. Everything will be above board. What time should I be there?”

“Ninety minutes,” David said. That would be enough time to get Gray Beard and Marvin back out the door, get the body refrigerated, and make sure there were no bumps in the road. Like another actual body being delivered for non-nefarious purposes. “I’ll have all the paperwork waiting for you, too. Please don’t be late.”

David hung up and leaned back in the chair. Ruben’s office was small and tidy — a desk, a computer, a phone, a Rolodex, a file cabinet, a framed copy of his funeral director’s license, another of his diploma from a mortuary school in Arizona — and smelled like lemon Pledge. There were photos on the desk of a little boy dressed in a Little League uniform, another of Ruben with a woman, presumably his wife, and the same child wearing Hawaiian shirts, the blue waves of the Pacific Ocean crashing behind them, a sunset of orange and pink hovering above the horizon.

What did he know about this asshole? Nothing, really. He worked with him on a daily basis and didn’t even know his last name. He looked at Ruben’s diploma. Ruben Topaz. He sounded like a fucking magician.

In the photo, Ruben’s wife wore a diamond ring that could be seen from Russian satellites (which went well with the diamond-crusted watch Ruben had on in the photo, which must have been his vacation watch, as opposed to the nice gold number he wore to the office each day), a diamond pendant necklace, a diamond tennis bracelet, and diamond studs in her ears. . all of which helped David understand why Ruben was the only other person on the planet Bennie trusted, even a little bit.

Mostly, the photo just made David feel. . sad. Yes, that’s what he was feeling. Sadness. He felt bad for calling Ruben an asshole in his head, that was one thing, but there were other more specific things pinging around in there tonight, too. He’d been gone now almost a year. . and did Jennifer even have photos of him? He wasn’t real big on his image being snapped, for obvious reasons, but now it seemed like a terrible thing. And then: Could he even remember Jennifer’s voice? Would he even recognize William? Would either of them recognize him?

It was 2:15 a.m. in Chicago. Jennifer would be asleep on her right side, the blankets pulled up to her neck, her sketchbook on the nightstand, the remote control on top of it. William would be asleep on his stomach, his bed filled with army men and Star Wars action figures. Or maybe he’d be into something new. Almost a year.

David picked up the phone.

Fuck it to death.

He punched in the first nine digits of his phone number. All that was left was the number 5. That was it. Just the number 5, and he could hear Jennifer’s voice, tell her he was alive, tell her that he was coming back, eventually, and that she needed to wait for him. Tell her that he was going to take her and William away from Chicago, that they’d go to Hawaii or Barbados or, hell, Green Bay if that’s where she wanted to go. Tell her that he was out of the game just as soon as he finished cleaning out the closet. .

“Oh, excuse me, Rabbi Cohen, I didn’t know you were here.”

David whipped around in his seat, the phone clattering from his hand, and found Miguel, the tech who’d worked on Paul Bruno, standing in the doorway dressed in a suit, holding one of the saws they used to cut open the bodies.

“What the fuck are you doing here?” David said before he could catch himself.

“It’s my night,” Miguel said, but the look on his face said something entirely different. That didn’t explain the fucking giant saw.

“Your night?” David was still rattled, things weren’t computing right, and there was about to be a fucking headless, footless, handless torso delivered to the funeral home in an RV. Not exactly standard practice. When the bodies came in from the other families, it was always Ruben who checked them in. He’d let Miguel or the other techs work on them, but shipping and handling was his area of expertise.

“Super Bowl Sunday,” Miguel said, “can be a busy night. People lose a lot of money.” David just stared at Miguel, trying to figure out what the fuck he was saying. “You know, people have heart attacks, or they jump off something. It’s an emotional night. So we always have someone on that night, in case of emergencies.”

“What are you doing with that saw?”

Miguel looked down at his hands and seemed surprised to find he was still holding the saw. “I thought someone had broken in,” Miguel said.

“And you were going to cut them in two?”

“I guess I didn’t know what I was going to do,” Miguel said. He gave David a sheepish grin.

David smiled back. Just two guys in a mortuary, one with a saw, the other with a gun stuffed in his waistband.

“How long have you been here?”

“Bus dropped me off around ten,” Miguel said. “I might have fallen asleep in the back, so I didn’t hear you come in.”

“No, I mean, how long have you worked here?” Though, actually, he meant both things.

“Oh, three years in June.”

“You like your job?”

“It’s cool,” Miguel said with a shrug. “I like the responsibility.”

“Did you hear my phone conversation?”

Miguel looked confused. “I’m sorry?”

“I was on the phone,” David said. “Did you hear me talking?”

“I heard voices,” Miguel said carefully. “That’s what woke me up.”

David examined Miguel closely. His suit was olive green and cheap — probably bought from one of those places in the Meadows Mall called Suitz or Stylez or Fashionz. His watch had a leather band. No rings on his hands. His shoes were brown and didn’t really match his suit, and he wasn’t wearing a belt. In his whole life, he’d probably never made over fifteen bucks an hour. What did this Miguel know about him? Probably nothing. What did Miguel know about Bennie Savone? Probably an awful lot.

There was a single bead of sweat on Miguel’s upper lip.

David could see Miguel’s pulse beating in his neck.

He kept swallowing.

“So, yes or no,” David said, testing Miguel, because he knew the answer just from looking at him.

“I guess,” he said. “Yes. I guess.”

“You have a wife?”

“No,” Miguel said.

“Kids? You got some shorties running around? Is that what you call them now? Shorties?”

Miguel shook his head. “No, that means girlfriends. Actually, it means both things. Depends how you say it. Like the context of the word.”

“You got either one of those?”

“No, not right now.”

“So, no wife. No kids. No girlfriend. What the fuck do you have, Miguel?”

“Rabbi?”

“What the fuck do you have?”

“I’m afraid I don’t understand what you’re asking,” Miguel said.

“It’s a simple question, Miguel: What the fuck do you have?”

David knew that what was throwing Miguel off was that one word—fuck—that he’d dropped early into their conversation and now felt married to using a few more times, just because it felt good saying the word out loud after having it run through his mind pretty much constantly, in different derivations, for the last nine months.

“I guess nothing big,” Miguel said.

“Nothing worth losing your life over then, right?”

Miguel swallowed hard. “No, nothing worth dying over.”

“Then if you think this place is ever getting robbed,” David said, “run out the back door. Because nothing is worth dying over. . particularly not something you might have thought you heard.”

“Yes, Rabbi,” Miguel said. He now had a good seven beads of sweat on his upper lip, and David was somewhat concerned that if his pulse didn’t slow down a tick, Miguel would stroke out.

“Go home,” David said.

“I’m on until six.”

“Put that saw down, and go home,” David said, and this time Miguel didn’t bother to disagree. He set the saw down on the desk, nodded once at David, and then left.

David picked up the phone, which had begun to bleat from the incomplete call, and examined it for a moment. He’d been so close. One number away. But nothing here was worth dying over. That much was absolutely true.

At 12:57, Gray Beard and Marvin pulled up to the receiving bay of the funeral home in a white cargo van that said lincoln medical supply & uniform on both sides. At first David thought he’d failed to account for something important, but then he saw Marvin behind the wheel and realized that Gray Beard wasn’t shitting him: They did everything professional.

The van backed up to the building, and Marvin came around to the rear of the vehicle. He held a clipboard and wore a crisp white uniform with the Lincoln Medical logo on the back of his shirt. He even had a name tag, except it said Alex.

“We have a delivery,” Marvin said.

“Okay,” David said.

Marvin opened up the van’s rear double doors and pulled down a short metal ramp. He then climbed into the cargo hold and pushed down a large cart topped with freshly laundered towels. “Everything you ordered should be in the cart,” Marvin said.

He peeled back several layers of towels to reveal that the cart was filled with ice and, in two body bags, what was left of Dr. Kirsch. David had thought getting shipped across the country in a freezing cold meat truck was a bad lot, but he supposed there was, in fact, worse ways to get from point A to point B.

“If you just want to sign off here,” Marvin handed David the official-looking clipboard, “we’ll be on our way.”

According to the paperwork, they’d been making deliveries all over town for the last few hours, including a stop at the Marshall Brothers mortuary a few miles away, where the goyim seemed to gather for the afterlife, and which made David ponder just what the future might hold in terms of revenue streams if he had to stay in Las Vegas for the long term. David signed his initials where indicated, figuring that if they were going to go this far with putting on a show, he’d keep it up, too. He gave the clipboard back to Marvin, who silently nodded his ascent and headed back to the front of the van.

David walked around to the passenger side, and Gray Beard rolled down his window. He was also wearing a Lincoln Medical uniform. “Everything okay?” Gray Beard said.

“Looks like it,” David said.

“You left a real mess there,” Grey Beard said. “But we managed pretty well. Took care of some hair we found, some fibers, that sort of thing. No charge.” Gray Beard smiled. “On account of you maybe giving me an early retirement.”

“Be discreet,” David said.

“Always am,” Gray Beard said.

“You got a ballpark figure for me?”

“Why don’t we go a flat twenty thousand now, more later once I’m able to move some machinery and that Jaguar. Don’t know who might want an X-ray machine and bunch of surgical equipment, but I’m gonna find out.”

“That works,” David said, making calculations in his mind. Twenty thousand dollars was the kind of money that could make a difference for a little while. Maybe another eight or ten from Jerry Ford, that would make an even bigger difference. Fifty thousand, now that would be the kind of money that a person and a child could maybe live a year on, particularly if they didn’t have a lot of other bills. “But if you can get me fifty in the next day or two, we’ll call it square for the whole job.”

“Give me until Wednesday,” Gray Beard said. “Tuesday night if you’re in a rush.”

“I trust you,” David said.

“After what I’ve seen,” Grey Beard said, “I’m glad that’s true.”

Thirty minutes later, right on time, Jerry Ford showed up in the refrigerated LifeCore truck.

David already had Dr. Kirsch’s head and extremities set for burial tomorrow, and the rest of Dr. Kirsch was on a gurney and ready to go, so when he saw Jerry pull up, he met him outside with the body.

“Just you tonight, Rabbi?” Jerry said.

“It’s Super Bowl Sunday,” David said.

“Better than Christmas,” Jerry said. He unzipped the body bag and examined Dr. Kirsch. “He’s been kept cool?”

“Yes,” David said.

“The whole time?”

“As soon as his body was discovered, yes,” David said.

“The major organs, those are probably shot, but we’ll see,” Jerry said. He pinched the skin on Dr. Kirsch’s bicep. “Everything else looks good.” He zipped the bag back up and then loaded Dr. Kirsch into the back of his truck and closed the doors back up.

David handed Jerry a thick manila envelope filled with all the needed paperwork for the transfer of one Gabe Krantz to the good people at LifeCore, which Jerry didn’t even give a cursory glance to. He just reached into his pocket, took out a banded, half-inch stack of hundreds, and handed them to David.

“Everything look in order?” Jerry asked.

David flipped through the cash, just to be sure it wasn’t filled with singles, and suddenly it was like the old days, back when he did collections, back when this all seemed pretty glamorous, back when he thought his cousin Ronnie was the coolest man alive, back when he and Fat Monte were friends, hanging out, going on double dates. Back when none of this seemed even remotely plausible. Way back when.

“Yes,” David said.

“L’chaim,” Jerry said, and then he got back in his truck and was gone. It occurred to David then that there was a pretty good chance Jerry Ford wasn’t really a Jew. Not that it mattered.

Rabbi David Cohen locked up the funeral home and mortuary and then, for a long time, he stood in front of the entrance to the cemetery and stared up at the sky. Most of the time, it was impossible to see any stars, the light pollution from the Strip giving everything a strange green glow at night. In Summerlin, though, there were still ordinances about that sort of thing, and this close to the Red Rocks, if you faced away from the Strip, you could actually imagine you were somewhere else.

It wouldn’t always be this way, David knew. The newspaper had stories every other day about new casino developments getting approved on this end of town, along with huge shopping centers, to satisfy the needs of the one hundred thousand people who were supposed to eventually inhabit Summerlin.

It wasn’t a bad place to live. In the last nine months, David had grown warm to the convenience of the villages of Summerlin. He had his coffee place. He had a pizza joint he liked — a Detroit pizza, of all things — called Northside Nathan’s. He’d come to depend on the Bagel Café for decent corned beef and a pretty fair bagel. He even had a few places he liked to knock around in: a pub called the Outside Inn that had cheap whiskey and salty prime rib and no Jews (owing primarily to their hunting motif, David thought); a shopping center called Best in the West a few streets down, off of Rainbow, that had an ice cream shop where some angry kid mixed flavors on a slab of marble. He’d go into that store sometimes and imagine what flavors Jennifer and William would choose.

The idea that she was struggling to pay the bills made David sick. He wasn’t sure if Rabbi Kales had said that to make him feel that way. Once David got the money from Gray Beard, he’d get her some cash, and she’d be okay for a bit. A little breathing room was all she’d need while he figured out the plan.

And maybe the plan was changing. Maybe it wasn’t about getting back to Chicago anymore. Maybe it was about getting Jennifer and William to Las Vegas, where he could protect them. Get William into the Tikvah Preschool here. Keep him in all the way through high school. Get him into a good college. Maybe he’d become a doctor or a lawyer, or just the kind of guy people weren’t afraid to strike up a conversation with at a bar. What must that be like?

What would Jennifer make of this new life? It dawned on David then that in just nine months he’d been able to set up an entirely new life, here in the desert, and while it wasn’t perfect, it was a life and it had room for his wife and kid, for sure. And for the first time in his life, he was on top. Bennie was in jail, at least for a while. And then, who knew? Maybe he’d end up doing a year or two or ten, or just six months. Whatever. He wasn’t physically present, which meant that the only person who knew the truth about David was Rabbi Kales, and he was soon to be out of the picture, too. The day-to-day operations of two legit businesses — the temple and the funeral home and attached cemetery — would be under his control.

There would be so much money: all the donations, and the tuition, and the general operating budget of the temple, and then the money moved through the funeral home. The real business alone was lucrative. The murder business was a windfall, and they hadn’t even gone outside the Italian families. If they started talking to the Chinese or the Russians or even the Mexicans and blacks. . well, there were a lot of potential markets that weren’t being tapped, mostly because Bennie didn’t like dealing with anyone outside the traditional families. He just wasn’t thinking forward. The Bloods and Crips were killing each other at a pretty remarkable clip just a few miles away.

In Chicago, the Family farmed out a lot of their drug trade to the Mexican gang — the Gangster 2–6—and that had worked out well enough, so at least there was a working template. . though it wouldn’t exactly be easy to explain the sudden influx of dead Jews who were also Chinese or Mexican or black, David supposed. So that could wait.

Maybe what he’d do, David thought, was just kill Bennie Savone and keep it all for himself and. .

He’d been set up to succeed. And tonight, after nine months, he had done just that. Wasn’t that all he ever wanted?

“No,” he said aloud.

And there it was.

There was only one person alive who could predict how Sal Cupertine might react to this new life, one person who might benefit from knowing that Sal Cupertine wasn’t just efficient, wasn’t just ruthless, but was also adaptable, who could be taught to have a new life.

Only one person who might, after all this, figure out how to profit from sending Sal Cupertine to Las Vegas to become Rabbi David Cohen.

Only one person who knew where he was.

Cousin Ronnie.

It all made so much sense now.