Gangsterland

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Christianity, unlike Judaism, Rabbi David Cohen learned, was about rejecting the idea of luck. It was a consequence-based process. If you led a pious life, good things would happen. If you led an evil life, bad things would surely follow. If you led a pious life and bad things still happened, then that was the hand of God, it was meant to be, and in the afterlife you would be rewarded with the gift of God’s eternal love. He created humans, gave them free will, only to demand fealty, or there would be hell to pay. Nothing was chance. All was either reward or punishment.

It wasn’t unlike being in the Mafia. Except at least with God, if you waited until the last minute and said that you were sorry, and you really did respect his authority, you could go on living your life in everlasting peace. David was not under the impression his cousin Ronnie, nor Bennie Savone, operated under those same rules. He was certain that the FBI wasn’t about to accept his apology for knocking off their agents, especially not this Jeff Hopper, a man he thought he’d killed.

And yet here they were, two men raised from the dead, walking through a cemetery, David pointing out where the aquatic center would be housed, the bluff they were constructing so that the performing arts center could be seen from the bottom of the street, all the better to attract natural light, you see, to catch the brilliant colors of the desert sunset, as it was in Israel. “For the Talmud tells us,” David told Agent Hopper now, “whoever did not see Jerusalem in its days of glory never saw a beautiful city in their life.”

“You’ll pardon me, Rabbi,” Agent Hopper said, “but it’s still Las Vegas.” David heard a hint of boredom in the agent’s voice, which was good. They’d spent the last thirty minutes walking the perimeter of the temple and its property, David narrating the entire time, filling Agent Hopper with the arcane and the minute, explaining every plan Temple Beth Israel had for the future. The agent had stayed largely quiet, apart from every now and then muttering some empty platitude.

As they walked, David let the agent stay at least a half step in front of him, let Agent Hopper feel like he was guiding the tour, when in fact David was pushing him the entire time. They were inching toward the far end of the cemetery, blocks from the street and the bustle of people, where later that afternoon David was scheduled to bury a man named Alan Rosen who’d been brought up from Palm Springs that morning, but who David guessed was an Indian. The grave was already dug, a mound of dirt covered by a green tarp in the distance, the simple green shovel they used in burial ceremony placed at the ready for the mourners who preferred not to use their hands. All that was missing was the body.

“Where there is the temple, there is Israel,” David said.

“I’m sure that’s true,” Agent Hopper said. “But don’t you have a difficult time believing in the sanctity of your faith in a town like this?”

“Chicago is any better?” David asked.

Agent Hopper chuckled once. “Tell me something, did you always believe?”

“Does anyone have absolute faith?” David said.

“My family was not particularly religious,” Agent Hopper said. “Personally, I never bought into any of it.”

“So you think the world is just wicked?”

“That’s what the evidence suggests,” Agent Hopper said. He stopped walking then and turned around, a field of the dead before him. “Did any of these people die with any faith left? Any pride?”

“And you have yours?” David said, doing something Rabbi Kales had taught him, to answer questions with questions, as the Jews have always done.

“I don’t know,” Agent Hopper said, “but I’m still alive.”

“Mazel tov,” David said. He reached into his pocket and felt the butterfly knife there. It hadn’t been luck that made him carry the knife every day, nor faith; it was fear. God told Abraham that Israel had no mazel, and so the Jews created their own. A single mitzvah, done without question, done without the need for recognition, was the door to finding mazel. Luck didn’t happen because of mazel, luck was the embodiment of it: Everyone was able to transcend the merits of their life and, for at least a moment, find prosperity and unfathomable happiness. A wedding, a baby, a new job? Mazel tov. Jews had forgotten what the term really meant. It was only the moment that was blessed. You still had a chance to fuck up what came next.

And wasn’t that what David’s life had been? He’d found true love, had a baby, been given a new job. And then, mazel tov, the FBI showed up. It was someone else’s good luck. David would have to make his own.

Agent Hopper walked over to the hole that had been dug into the ground for the Rosen funeral and looked down.

“Is it really six feet?” Agent Hopper asked.

“Jewish custom requires ten handbreadths,” David said. He stepped beside the agent and examined the grave. “It seems deep enough, doesn’t it?”

“Off the record, Rabbi,” Agent Hopper said, “you ever seen anything funny here?”

“How would I know?” David said.

“You seem like a man who pays attention.”

“This person you’re looking for,” David said, “is he a monster?”

“He’s just a man,” Agent Hopper said. “Nothing special about him.”

“Then he shouldn’t be very hard to find,” David said. He’d spent all this time observing Agent Hopper. He wasn’t wearing Kevlar and didn’t have a gun on his belt or slung over his shoulder. Just a notepad, a file filled with pictures, and a hunch. This was the man who’d made Fat Monte kill himself? If he knew anything, he would have come with an assault team. If he knew anything, he’d still be an FBI agent, not a consultant. If he knew anything, he’d start running.

“You happen to remember where you were last April 22?” Agent Hopper asked.

David shook his head. “Do you know where you were?”

“Yeah,” Agent Hopper said. “A funeral for one of my friends.”

“Talmud tells us we have two faces,” David said, “one that lives in sorrow, one that lives in joy.”

“Didn’t Bruce Springsteen say that?” Agent Hopper said.

Shit. “Did he?” David gripped the knife in his pocket.

“Yeah,” Agent Hopper said quietly. He took a step away from the grave, a curious look on his face.

David was no more than a foot away from Hopper, but he’d need to lunge for him at this point. David needed to be closer.

“You know, you haven’t answered a single question I’ve asked.”

“I hope you find your man,” David said. He extended his hand, but Agent Hopper took another step, this one to the side, near the mound of dirt and the shovel.

“You didn’t tell me what happened to your face.”

“All is vanity,” David said. He tried to smile, but his mouth wouldn’t follow directions.

“Then I’d think you’d want a better plastic surgeon.”

The Talmud said that if someone comes to kill you, you should wake up early and kill him first. David doubted Jeff Hopper knew that edict in the religious sense, but he surely knew it as an FBI agent, or else he wouldn’t have made such a sudden move for the spade.

As soon as he did, David was on him.

He plunged his knife into Hopper’s back once, twice, three times, the blade snapping off in Hopper’s rib cage as David tried to pull it out so he could cut the agent’s throat. They both fell to the ground, deep in the dirt.

David stood up then and rolled Jeff over onto his back, his eyes wide open, his mouth opening and closing like a fish. David had seen this before. He wouldn’t need to use the shovel. At least not to kill the man.

“I found you,” Jeff Hopper said, his voice barely a whisper.

“You shouldn’t have come here,” David said.

“I would have let you live,” Jeff said.

Jeff Hopper tried to take a breath, and then another, but they wouldn’t come; his body tensed and he tried to raise his head, tried to fight what was coming, and then he relaxed, his eyes fluttering. “I found Sal Cupertine,” he said.

“You did,” Sal Cupertine said, and then he leaned over and squeezed Jeff Hopper’s carotid off so that he’d pass out before he drowned on his own blood.

A mitzvah.

Sal Cupertine parked Jeff Hopper’s rented Pontiac across the street from Wingfield Park in Reno and then walked a few blocks down Second Street, looking for a place to make a phone call. It was midnight, and though he’d spent the last seven hours on the road from Las Vegas, Sal didn’t feel tired. In fact, for the first time in a good nine months, Sal Cupertine felt positively alive.

Though it was a Thursday night, and not much more than thirty degrees outside, there were people streaming in and out of the hotels, casinos, and restaurants along Sal’s path. There was also music — country, rock, rap — that bleated out of each passing car, each open door into each casino, each set of headphones of the people who brushed too close to Sal. But that was fine. How long had it been since he’d let anyone actually near him? Actually touch him? Plenty of people at Temple Beth Israel hugged him or kissed him on the cheek or felt the need to have some kind of human contact with him after receiving his counsel, but it was never Sal’s choice, never something he actually courted.

Though, in that way, he supposed, it was a choice. He wanted to save physical interactions for the two people whose touch he actually missed. But today, his first day back among the living — and his last day for a good long time, too, he recognized — Sal went ahead and let people bump into him, let people look him in the eye, even let people smile at him.

Not that many did any of those things. He was still Sal Cupertine, after all. Still the Rain Man. Still the last person you ever wanted to show up behind you, anywhere, at any time. These days, though, when Sal Cupertine was going to kill a guy, it really didn’t matter which way the guy was facing.

Sal had spent much of his time driving between Las Vegas and Reno trying to find an upside to all this, other than the fact that he probably wouldn’t have to kill another person for a while. And that was good, since killing Jeff Hopper hadn’t given Sal any gratification, had in fact upset him a great deal, at least for a time, since he realized just how far down the road he’d been sold. That he’d once again done what someone else should have done.

And now, thanks to a small alteration in the deal he’d made earlier with Gray Beard, Jeff Hopper — or at least a portion of him — was on his way back to Chicago. Seemed only fair since Chicago had sent Paul Bruno to Las Vegas, and after going through the paperwork Sal found in Jeff’s car, Sal thought there was perhaps a tad bit of poetic justice in that.

It had been a long day, and Sal needed a drink, maybe a big piece of fish, since he couldn’t quite handle the idea of cutting into some bloody piece of meat for the second time that day. Sal didn’t know if the casinos in Reno had the same facial-recognition software as the ones in Las Vegas, but he wasn’t taking any chances, so he ducked into a bar called the Brass Nickel. It was in between a pawn shop and a Vietnamese restaurant called Pho Saigon that Sal recognized from Hopper’s list of Kochel Farms clients. It was the kind of place that had grainy pictures of their dishes taped up to the window, so Sal spent a moment looking at something called bo luc lac—which didn’t look like much more than some meat, onions, lettuce, and white rice — and thanking God he hadn’t ended up on that plate.

There were a dozen or so people inside the Brass Nickel. Sal went up to the bar, ordered a Johnnie Walker Black on the rocks, got five dollars in quarters, and headed over to check out the pay phone. It was between the men’s room — distinguished by the painting of a cowboy with his gun drawn that covered the door — and the ladies room — woman with her dress pulled up, revealing sexy garters, of course — in a back hallway that smelled of Lysol and beer piss. Not the kind of place people tended to spend much time waiting around.

Perfect.

Sal punched in the numbers, deposited a buck seventy-five for five minutes, and listened to the space between his past and present close around the sound of a phone ringing.

Ronnie Cupertine answered his cell phone on the third ring by saying, “Who the fuck is this?”

“It’s your dead cousin,” Sal said.

There was a pause on the line, and Sal could hear SportsCenter on in the background — someone on the Lakers was “cooler than the other side of the pillow”—and the sound of water running. Ronnie was probably in his favorite spot: watching TV from the shitter in his basement.

“Good that you called,” Ronnie said. “Save me the trouble.”

“I figured,” Sal said.

“You somewhere safe?”

“Safe enough,” Sal said.

“You in Chicago?”

“You’d know if I was in Chicago,” Sal said.

Ronnie laughed. “I suppose I would.”

“You fucked up,” Sal said.

“You think so?” Ronnie said, and then Sal heard a toilet flush.

“I had to clean up your mess, again,” Sal said.

“I knew you would,” Ronnie said. “It’s what you’ve always been best at. It’s why you’ve always been so valuable to me. To everyone.”

“I don’t work for you anymore,” Sal said. “Let’s make that clear. I work for Bennie Savone.”

“See, I heard someone dimed him out to the feds,” Ronnie said. “Seems like that strip club of his is doing some very shady things. Real shame.”

“He’ll be out in thirty days,” Sal said, though he didn’t believe that. “Maybe less.”

“Could be someone dimes him out again,” Ronnie said. “Could be every few months, the feds learn something else about your boss. Could be they eventually start looking into that Jew business, too, because I know I’ve been looking at my business model, and while cars and drugs are lucrative, they’re nothing compared to God and death. Now that’s a long-range business. Could be you need some protection out there now that fed charges are sitting on your boss. Could be I make sure the fed’s phone doesn’t ring for a while.”

“Snitching on yourself,” Sal said. “Where’d you learn that?”

“You don’t stay in this business for as long as I have without learning a few tricks,” Ronnie said. “Sometimes, it’s just easier to have the feds take care of my problems. Could be you’ve learned that yourself these last couple days.”

“Could be,” Sal said, “you get into your car one morning and I’m in the backseat.”

“And then what? I’m dead. So what? I’m dead. Your best-case scenario still involves the gas chamber, if you’re lucky. We might as well enjoy our time together, you and me.”

“How much?” Sal said.

“Your boss, he’s got quite the scam out there,” he said. “Do you know what he charges just to bury a body? I can get some Mexican to dig a hole for a whole lot less.”

“How much?” Sal said again.

“I can’t tell you how much until I get a look at your books,” Ronnie said, “and I’m not planning on making a trip to Las Vegas anytime soon. Probably wouldn’t look good, you know? So why don’t we just agree that I’m in on this now. Full partner. You’re my guy in Las Vegas.”

There it was. He’d known it already, of course, but he wanted to hear it, wanted Ronnie to admit it.

“I’m not your guy,” Sal said. “I’m your cousin. We’re family.”

“Of course we are,” Ronnie said.

“Just like you and my father, right?” Sal said.

“That what this is? You want to talk about your daddy? Fine. But I charge a copay for that.” Ronnie laughed. “Isn’t this what you always wanted, Sal? You’re the big man now.”

“No,” Sal said, “I’m a dead man. But you know something? I’m not gonna be dead for long. And when the FBI realizes that, and they will, Ronnie, and soon, you’re gonna wish you were, too. As long as they know I’m alive, you belong to me. Because you know what, Ronnie? I know where all the bodies are. Every single one of them. And they all belong to you.”

Sal hung up before Ronnie could respond, took a few sips of his Johnnie Walker, and made his second and final call of the evening, this time to the Chicago Tribune. He’d need to make it quick, since he still needed to get a cab to the airport, boost a car from the long-term parking lot, and then drive back to Las Vegas in time for his 2 p.m. meeting with Barbara Altman, Camille Lawerence, and Phyllis Gabler to talk about the teen fashion show they wanted to do at the temple come spring. Maybe, in a month or two, he’d see about getting an assistant rabbi, someone he could train, since the temple really needed two rabbis if they wanted to get business done. There was the book fair coming up, the opening of the new school, the never-ending brisses, weddings, funerals, bar mitzvahs. . and then there was the business Sal knew Rabbi Cohen would need to make sure didn’t lag while Bennie was away. . and maybe he’d need to get creative with that, too, maybe periodically make some business locally. . could be the other six temples in town could face some tragedies in the coming year. Who could say when Temple Beth Zion might have an electrical fire? Or when one of the conservative shuls might lose a rabbi to some kind of blood poisoning? And who was to say that the cemetery needed to remain Jewish only? Yes, those were all possibilities to consider, and like that, as the phone began to ring, Sal Cupertine could see miles and miles of empty desert turning into roads paved toward his wife, Jennifer, and his son, William. Ronnie would remain a problem, so he’d need to keep Jennifer and William safe, somehow, but that was the next step. For now, he just had to set the ball rolling.

“Tribune City Desk, this is Tom.”

“Tom,” Sal said, “my name is Jeff Hopper, and I have some information concerning the murders that took place last year at the Parker House that I need to discuss with someone.”