Gangsterland

CHAPTER FIVE

Paid administrative leave. Special Agent Jeff Hopper thought about those three words as he walked across the parking lot outside of the Chicago field office. Taken separate from each other, they didn’t mean much. Put them together, at least in FBI parlance, and they meant that you’d flamed out in spectacular fashion, not worthy of actual firing, as the FBI didn’t like to fire full agents unless they did something that might get them arrested. It was easier to put them on paid administrative leave and reassign them into oblivion — the Anchorage, Alaska, field office, or, worse, San Juan, Puerto Rico — after two or three years’ worth of investigation into their actions (or, occasionally, inactions). The idea was that the time on paid administrative leave and the weight of the investigation would cause the agent to quit and find other work. The FBI even offered kind letters of recommendation when agents on paid administrative leave were interviewing for private sector jobs. Hopper knew this all too well: As senior special agent, he’d once been the guy writing the letters.

He wasn’t surprised by the timing — the day after Thanksgiving — since that’s when he liked to discipline agents, too. Do it before Thanksgiving, you’re asking for the agent to do something crazy. Do it too close to Christmas, same deal. But the day after Thanksgiving is a dead period, everyone so stuffed with cholesterol and saturated fat and tryptophan that it’s impossible to get too worked up about anything. What surprised Special Agent Jeff Hopper — now on paid administrative leave — was how quickly the FBI had acted. It usually took a good three or four weeks for agents to go over wiretaps on low-impact surveillance subjects, like Jennifer Cupertine, though Jeff realized now that they had probably hot-buttoned any mention of Sal Cupertine.

Jeff thought Senior Special Agent Biglione, a man he’d known for the better part of five years, a man he’d gone fishing with the previous winter, a man who once confided in Jeff that what he really wanted to do with his life was become a pastry chef, took far too much joy playing the tape of Hopper telling Jennifer Cupertine that her husband was alive. “Is that your voice?” Biglione asked him when the tape concluded.

“You know it is,” Jeff said.

“This is unacceptable behavior,” Biglione said. “You’re aware of that, I would imagine?”

“Just give me the form,” Jeff said.

It took less than fifteen minutes, including the time it took the woman from Human Resources to give her speech about how he’d retain his full benefits but that he’d need to surrender his gun, his company laptop, his company cell phone, and his keys.

Jeff got into his Ford Explorer and tried to stifle a laugh. He was certain that someone, somewhere, was watching him (particularly since the parking lot was circled with cameras), and it just wouldn’t look right for him to be caught on film giggling after being put on paid administrative leave. All things being equal, this was the best possible turn of events for Jeff — he’d spent most of Thanksgiving copying the rest of the relevant materials from the files — and he could now look for Sal Cupertine without the burden of being an FBI agent. He’d find Sal Cupertine — and then what?

He didn’t even want revenge. He had no intention of killing Cupertine if he found him, though he had the sense that Cupertine wasn’t the kind of guy who would throw up his hands and say, “You got me!” if and when the time came. He simply wanted justice and to clear his name, not that he thought he could clear his name with the FBI — that ship had sailed, hit an iceberg, and sunk to the bottom of the ocean — but with Cupertine himself. The idea that Cupertine thought Jeff was a fool, was so stupid as to leave his own name on the bill, and that he surely thought he’d killed Jeff — either by shooting him in the face or choking the life out of him, face-to-face, Cupertine’s own saliva on the man’s forehead — enraged Jeff, kept him awake for three months, and wasn’t letting him rest even now.

Not that the FBI gave a shit. They had their body. They had their continuing investigation into the Family. No one other than Jeff was losing sleep.

Jeff pulled out onto Roosevelt and glanced over to the berm where he used to spend his lunches. There was so much to do, so many things to get started on, but the first thing was that he needed to get home and sweep out all the bugs. Probably sweep the car, too. Might as well yank the phone from the wall and do everything on the cell. . though, he’d need to get one of those, too. He had a gun, that wasn’t a problem. He had some money saved up, about twenty grand.

It wasn’t until Jeff Hopper turned down Morgan Street and saw the university dusted in the first significant snow of the season, saw the few students who were walking into the library on a holiday weekend, that he realized Matthew Drew had probably been fired.

Matthew Drew lived on the seventh floor of an apartment building in the Medical District, just a few miles from the FBI offices and down the street from the university, but it took Jeff an hour to figure that out. The FBI was good about hiding the addresses of their agents, so Jeff had to go about things the old-fashioned way: He had to try to remember the name of Matthew’s wife. He thought it was. . Sarah? Gina? Something like that. He spent thirty minutes outside on a campus pay phone, freezing his ass off, calling 411 and asking for different women’s names with the last name Drew. He’d then ask for the addresses, hoping to find one that was within a few miles of the offices, since he recalled that Matthew was able to get back and forth to the office within thirty minutes. He had two good leads — Trina Drew, that sounded right, and Nancy Drew, which couldn’t be possible, but the operator said someone with that name did in fact live in greater Chicago, and as an FBI agent he almost had to check that one out — before he decided to ask for information on Nina Drew and came up with an address just blocks away. That had to be it, he decided, and sure enough when he got to the apartment building and scrolled through the names on the security keypad he found it to be the home of both Matthew and Nina Drew.

He tapped in 713 and waited beside the intercom. There was a camera pointed directly at the door, which probably meant all the tenants had closed-circuit access. It was amazing to Jeff that things that were spy technology ten or fifteen years earlier were now regular amenities at middle-class apartment complexes. It also meant Matthew could decide whether or not he wanted to answer the door.

“Yes?” It was a young woman’s voice on the intercom. Nina, presumably.

“Yes, uh,” Jeff said, “this is Special Agent Hopper. I’m here to see, um, Agent Drew?”

“You should have been here yesterday then,” she said. That answered that. “Come on up,” she said, and then front door buzzed open.

Jeff spent the elevator ride trying to think of what he’d say to Matthew’s wife, and yet, when he knocked on their door and a young woman opened it, he found he had absolutely nothing to say. Part of this was because he still hadn’t settled on the exact words of his apology, and part of this owed to the fact that the young woman who opened the door looked very young. Eighteen, no older. Even though it was freezing outside, she had on only a white V-neck T-shirt and pink shorts, no socks or shoes. “Are you Nina?” Jeff said.

“Yeah,” she said, “come on in. Matt is in the shower.”

Jeff stepped into the apartment and looked around. There was a leather sofa pushed against one wall, a coffee table in front of it stacked with textbooks—Introduction to Western Civilizations, The Norton Anthology of Contemporary Fiction, a thesaurus — and two dirty plates. On the other side of the room was a papasan chair covered in magazines, a treadmill with dry cleaning, still in the bag, hanging from the hand bars, and a muted television, which sat on the floor. There was a VCR perched precariously atop the television and a Nintendo system on the floor beside it, along with a stack of games. On the TV was an old Harrison Ford movie, though Jeff couldn’t tell which one. He was either chasing someone or being chased, but with the sound off, it was impossible to tell.

There was a small galley kitchen and then two bedrooms separated by what Jeff presumed was the bathroom. He could hear a shower coming from the general vicinity. There was no evidence of any children.

“So,” Jeff said, “you’re Matthew’s. . wife?”

“Yuck, no,” Nina said. She plopped herself down on the leather sofa and picked up the Western Civilizations book. “I’m his sister.”

“Right,” Jeff said. “Where do you go to school?”

“UIC,” she said. “I just started, and it’s kicking my ass.”

“It gets easier,” Jeff said.

“You went there?”

“Graduate school,” Jeff said.

“Yeah, it’s totally different undergrad,” she said. “Everyone says the first two years are cake, that it’s just basic retard stuff — history, math, comp — and that when you get into your major, that’s when people jump out of buildings from the pressure and all that. So. Yeah. Not looking forward to that if I’m already underwater.”

A small bookshelf by the sofa was filled with books on criminology, forensic investigation, and counterinsurgency methods, and it also held framed photos of Matthew and Nina with their parents from a cruise, everyone posed in front of the ship’s bow. There were also photos of both kids playing lacrosse.

“So, you guys share this place?”

“Yeah, it’s cheaper that way,” she said. “Or, I guess it was. I don’t know what we’re going to do now. I don’t think Matt has anything saved up. His loans are insane.”

Shit.

“Yeah, well, I’ve got some news for Matthew that will help alleviate that,” Jeff said, not even knowing what the hell he meant as he said the words.

“Cool,” Nina said. She got up off the couch then, like she’d forgotten something, and headed into the tiny kitchen. “I’m being totally rude. Do you want some turkey or string bean casserole or something? Our mother sent us this huge care package, and we’ve been gorging on it since last night. We’ve got, like, three different pies, too.”

Before Jeff could answer — he would have liked some string bean casserole — Matthew came out of the bathroom wearing a pair of sweatpants and no shirt, a damp towel in his right hand. No wedding ring on his left.

“What are you doing here?” he asked. He didn’t seem all that surprised, just mildly annoyed.

“I wanted to talk to you,” Jeff said.

“I got fired, did you know that?”

“I had some idea, yeah,” Jeff said.

“You knew ahead of time?”

“No,” Jeff said, “they put me on leave today, so I figured that you got the axe. It’s how I would have done it.” Matthew rubbed at his head with the towel and let out a grunt of exasperation. “Look, I want to apologize. I dragged you into something stupid.”

“You know they didn’t even give me a severance?” Matthew said. “Two weeks short. Can you believe that? Apparently the twenty weeks I spent at Quantico didn’t count.”

“I know,” Jeff said. He’d fired plenty of people like Matthew during his time in the FBI, their positions were at will during their probationary period, and though he always felt bad about it in the abstract, his feeling was that the best severance for these people was that they could put FBI on their resume and land a nice corporate security job. “Look, I have a proposition for you. Something temporary so at least you can pay your bills.” He pointed to the ceiling and then to his ear, let him know people were probably listening, though he doubted the bureau bothered to bug Matthew’s place, since he wasn’t even really an agent yet. Still, it gave the proceedings a bit more weight. “Let me buy you a cup of coffee somewhere we can talk about it.”

Nina came out then holding two plates full of food and handed one of them to Jeff. “Hey,” she said to her brother, and then she went and sat back down on the sofa. “He thought I was your wife.”

Matthew didn’t say anything for a moment, so Jeff took his plate and sat down beside Nina on the sofa and got to work on some casserole. “Give me a couple minutes to get dressed,” Matthew said.

“Take your time,” Jeff said. He was suddenly starving.

The White Palace Grill was one of those places Jeff used to go to all the time when he didn’t have any money. They’d let you sit in a booth all night long for the price of a cup of coffee, particularly if you came in with textbooks, and they’d keep refilling your mug without ever getting snooty about it. It was up on Canal Street, so it had a crowd that was equally mixed with college students, hookers, cops, and the occasional wiseguy.

It had been almost a decade since Jeff had stopped inside, and yet, as he sat across the booth from Matthew, he recognized everyone in the joint. The waitress with the tattoos on her neck; the two detectives sitting by the door, a mountain of paperwork spread between them; the hipsters wearing their sunglasses inside; the young woman in horn-rim glasses sitting at the counter next to another young woman, also in horn-rim glasses, though it didn’t look like they were there together. And then the solitary old folks eating chicken salad and drinking tea. He wondered if they recognized him, too, curious about where he’d been all these years.

The waitress with the tattoos on her neck came by and dropped off their food and drinks — Matthew had ordered a strawberry shake and french fries, figuring, he said, that he didn’t need to worry too much about staying in shape now, which sounded like fairly wise, if shortsighted, counsel, so Jeff ordered chili-cheese fries and a chocolate malt.

Jeff had spent the better part of the previous twenty minutes explaining to Matthew his plan. . a plan he’d developed mostly on the fly, as he spoke, but the nut was simple: He was going to find Sal Cupertine. Wherever he was, he was going to track him down. And if Matthew wanted in, he was willing to pay him for his services.

“So, you’re gonna pick up my whole salary?” Matthew asked after the waitress left.

“No,” Jeff said. He wasn’t sure how much GS-10s made these days, but whatever it was, Jeff couldn’t afford it.

“So, I’m hourly?”

“I haven’t really worked it all out yet,” Jeff said. “But don’t you worry, if your wife and kid need a place to stay, I’ve got a guest room at my place.”

“That’s funny,” Matthew said.

“Not as funny as you telling me you had a wife and kid,” Jeff said.

“I never told you that,” he said. “I told Jennifer Cupertine. You just assumed I was telling the truth.”

“The ring was pretty convincing.”

Matthew leaned forward. “All my life, I worked toward getting a job at the FBI. When I got there, I didn’t want a bunch of guys like you calling me kid-this and kid-that, asking me if I was too pussy to go out drinking with them after work. So I bought myself a simple gold band, and all of a sudden, I’m a guy with a bit more going on than just the job. And you know something? Maybe it worked too well, since now I’m sitting here with you and you’re not trying to provide me with teachable moments.”

“I said I was sorry,” Jeff said.

“No you didn’t,” Matthew said. “You said, ‘I want to apologize.’ That’s not actually saying you’re sorry. Let’s just agree that you went out there and did exactly what you wanted to do with Mrs. Cupertine and didn’t take into consideration that maybe I’d lose my fucking job because I was I dumb enough to go with you.”

“Fine,” Jeff said. “We’re in agreement.”

“Great,” Matthew said, and then he sat back in the booth and spread his arms across the top of the banquette and seemed to notice the restaurant for the first time. “How did you find this place?”

“I used to come here,” Jeff said.

“A mile from my apartment and I’ve never even noticed it,” he said.

“Hiding in plain sight,” Jeff said.

“That a metaphor?”

“Unintentional,” Jeff said, “but probably true.” Jeff had spent the last several days going over everything he could find on Sal Cupertine, all the transcripts, all the witness information, even put a feeler out to an old Family CI named Paul Bruno, who was now living in Milwaukee and selling real estate but who’d grown up with the Family and who probably still had a couple skeletons, actual skeletons, in his closet. He was going to drive out to see him on Saturday, see what he could glean about Cupertine’s habits, see if Bruno had heard any gossip. What Jeff had already gleaned on his own, however, and what he told Matthew, was that he couldn’t imagine Cupertine being holed up in some safe house somewhere, at least not forever. If the Family felt it was important enough to keep him alive, then there had to be a tangible purpose for his continued existence. If Sal Cupertine was alive, and Jeff was sure he was, he was working.

And it wasn’t just because that made the most organizational sense. The FBI profile developed on Sal Cupertine was extensive: He was a professional, a workaholic even, who had a sociopathic view of violence, but only as it related to his business, which suggested he wasn’t a true sociopath, though his freelance work suggested his morality had a price. The death of his father, who was murdered in a coup within the Family, and which Sal Cupertine supposedly witnessed, likely had a disassociating effect on him from a young age. . but, really, who knew? He might have just liked killing people, though Jeff didn’t believe that was true. It was his job, and almost everyone hates their job.

Thing was, no one had ever even been able to question Sal Cupertine. He’d never been arrested. The only time he’d ever left prints at one of his killings was at the Parker House. Everything the FBI had used to develop Cupertine’s profile was based on supposition and secondary evidence, which was usually enough to catch a serial killer, since serial killers were often insane, which made it easier to catch them since their insanity usually fell along predictable medical lines. A sane person was much more difficult to figure out.

“You don’t actually think he’s in Chicago, do you?” Matthew asked after Jeff shared his thoughts.

“No,” Jeff said. “I doubt he’s even in Illinois.”

“Canada?”

“Maybe,” Jeff said, “but I can’t see Sal Cupertine fitting in with the syndicate in Windsor. They’re all white-collar fraud these days. Tech stuff. Mortgages. Not a lot of violence, just a lot of money. They don’t have a good reason to harbor an international fugitive. It would bring too much heat on them. Even if he went to Toronto or BC, it’s a different kind of Mafia. For one thing, they speak Italian.”

“Cupertine doesn’t?”

“No,” Jeff said. “And I don’t see him picking up French, either.”

“But he’s smart, right? Isn’t that what the files said?”

“Yes,” Jeff said. “Or at least he has a good memory. They called him Rain Man.”

“Nice to know even the Mafia goes to the movies,” Matthew said. “So maybe he just moves to Canada and lives a nice humble life.”

“He doesn’t have any skills,” Jeff said. That was the problem with all the mob guys Jeff had ever managed to get into witness protection. They never knew how to do anything but rip people off. He heard Sammy the Bull was already back into the game in Arizona. Just asking to get killed.

“Mrs. Cupertine, she was believable to me,” Matthew said. “Perhaps that makes me naïve. But I feel if Sal Cupertine is within a couple hundred miles of her, there’s no way he’s not already back in town.” He pulled the straw out of his milk shake and gulped down half of the glass and then wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. He is a kid, Jeff thought, there wasn’t any way of disputing that. That wasn’t a bad thing; perhaps he could look at things with a fresh perspective. “What about Vegas?”

“Too hard to keep him hidden,” Jeff said. “There’s a mob gossip columnist in town. He covers the comings and goings of the families like they’re members of a boy band.”

“Don’t you think Ronnie Cupertine knows where he is?” Matthew said.

“I’m going to guess he’d say he’s in the landfill, right where we found him.”

“That’s bullshit,” Matthew said. “Why doesn’t someone grab him, put him in a dark room, and spray him with a fire hose until he gives up the information?”

“Because we’re not the CIA,” Jeff said. “Or the KGB.”

“I bought my car from him,” Matthew said.

“You and half of Chicago,” Jeff said. “That’s part of the problem.” Ronnie Cupertine wasn’t just connected in the mob sense, he was part of the very fabric of Chicago — benefit lunches with the mayor, golf with Gold Coast politicos on both sides of the aisle, luxury suite to see the Bulls, black-tie events at the Field Museum, the entire city driving his chop shop cars. Word was he had a deal with an Albanian syndicate in Canada for the high-end rides, but there was never anything solid on that.

That Sal Cupertine was still alive was all thanks to Ronnie Cupertine; Jeff was sure of that. A savvy businessman, he’d figure out a way to get the most out of his cousin Sal. Jeff really wanted to sit across from Ronnie Cupertine and have a conversation, but that wasn’t going to happen. At least not yet. Ronnie Cupertine was the kind of guy who knew his rights, the kind of guy who kept lawyers on his speed dial, the kind of guy who wasn’t going to get suckered into admitting the sky was blue.

“I’m going to need at least two thousand dollars a month,” Matthew said then, “plus expenses.”

“What expenses?”

“How should I know?” Matthew said. “I’ve never been a private detective before. Between that and unemployment, I’ll be fine for a few months. Keep my sister off the streets.”

“I don’t think it will take a few months,” Jeff said. “I feel like we’ll be able to track him down before Christmas.”

“What gives you this confidence?” Matthew asked.

Jeff had no idea why he thought this. With no leads — the FBI having announced he was dead didn’t exactly cause the tip lines to light up — and not even a solid clue as to where Sal Cupertine might be, Jeff would be starting from below ground. But Matthew was right: Someone knew where Sal Cupertine was, and if one person knew, two people knew. And if two people knew, there was a pretty good chance four people knew. A criminal organization requires a hierarchy — there was no way Ronnie Cupertine was going to have blood on his hands, literally or figuratively — and that meant there were probably several moving parts between Sal Cupertine killing four men at the Parker House and the charred body found in the dump.

Jeff thought about his savings — the twenty grand he’d stashed away. If he caught Sal Cupertine, Jeff Hopper could write his own ticket, even if that meant he just went back to eastern Washington and sat around in his underwear all day.

“Look,” Jeff said, “give me three months, that’s all I’m asking. If after three months we aren’t any closer, you go your way, I’ll go mine, and I’ll pay you another two months’ salary as severance.”

Matthew picked up a french fry and blew the salt off of it before putting it in his mouth. “What if we catch him?”

“Same deal,” Jeff said.

“So you’re going to give me ten thousand dollars whether or not we catch Sal Cupertine?”

“I need your help,” Jeff said. There was no way he could take this on by himself. And in a more tangible sense, he needed Matthew physically — if it came down to a fight, Jeff Hopper felt like he could do what needed to be done, could still handle himself with a gun, but there was no denying that having someone qualified for assault team duty as his backup wasn’t a bad thing.

Matthew ate another fry and finished off his shake. “This is insane,” he said.

Jeff agreed.

“We do this, we get him,” Matthew said, “do you think I have any chance of getting picked back up?”

“No,” Jeff said. “Not by the bureau. Maybe NSA will like the self-determination angle, but who knows. I’ve got some contacts in private security, guys doing paramilitary and intelligence jobs on contract, things like that. That’s where the real money is.”

“It wasn’t about the money for me,” Matthew said.

“I wanted to be a superhero, too,” Jeff said, “and here we are.”

Matthew shook his head. Jeff couldn’t tell if it was in disgust or resignation or just simple frustration. Maybe it was something else all together. Either way, he followed it up with a brusque laugh and said, “What time do we leave for Milwaukee?”

The first time Jeff Hopper met Paul Bruno was in late 1995. Bruno had just been released from county — in fine Chicago form, he’d done two months after getting picked up for assault after trying to collect on a gambling debt, and then pled down to a minor racketeering charge, a term that didn’t even exist until 1927, when the Employers’ Association of Greater Chicago coined it in response to the constant shakedowns from organized crime figures in the Teamsters — and came sniffing around the bureau for opportunities to snitch once he realized a jail cell was not a place he ever wanted to visit again.

He wasn’t a made guy in the classic sense — as in, he’d never been made part of the Family — but he had a foot in their business interests in that he was good with numbers. He helped run a couple of books by setting spreads and the like, and since he worked with his father, Dennis, at the family butcher business — Bruno’s Fine Meats — he knew his way around dead bodies.

Paul Bruno had two problems, however: The first was that he was a closeted homosexual, which wasn’t exactly a great secret to have while trying to be a tough guy. Not that he wasn’t tough, but it opened him to blackmail by other syndicates or anyone else who might want to hurt him or his business interests, which was primarily with the Family. Paul was smart enough to realize this himself, which is why he kept himself outside the lines as much as possible. Sure, he’d aid and abet, provide a few key services, even; he just wouldn’t saddle up all the way. That made him even more valuable, since he’d been able to befriend guys up and down the chain of command. It helped that he’d grown up with them.

The second problem was far less pronounced, or at least was until Bruno landed in a jail cell: He had claustrophobia, which led to anxiety, which led to panic attacks, which led to crying, which led, every time, to vomiting. Jeff knew of Bruno’s first problem long before Bruno landed in county and revealed his second issue, though that revelation was the impetus for putting a CI into the cell with him for the last few weeks of his sentence to put some ideas into his head.

For the next year, in exchange for getting his record expunged and for financial help with tuition toward his real estate license, Paul Bruno provided information to the FBI, though because his operational knowledge was slight — he’d helped teach some Family members the art of cutting up bodies and knew the Family had cut up some bodies but didn’t know who those bodies actually were — what he knew about the books was practically common knowledge, so that was largely worthless. So Jeff tended to use Bruno for insight on the men themselves, find out their peccadilloes, their habits, interesting things about who they were outside the crimes they’d perpetrated. Bruno became a good CI because he was so secretive and low-key in his normal life that becoming a snitch was easy work for him.

Now, as Jeff and Matthew pulled up to a new model home tract located just outside of Milwaukee in the lake country town of Oconomowoc, it was impossible not to notice how things had changed. First, there was the series of billboards featuring Bruno and his “gold pro team” of real estate agents that lined Silver Lake, the long street that wound through Oconomowoc toward a subdivision called Pleasant Farms Lakes, that pronounced Bruno the “king of lake country home deals!” Then there was the yellow Hummer Jeff saw in front of a half-built two-story house at the entrance of the tract. It had a picture of Bruno and his “Gold Pro Team” emblazoned over the whole driver’s side of the vehicle.

“I thought you said he was a quiet guy,” Matthew said.

“He was,” Jeff said. When they spoke on the phone, Bruno suggested they meet at the development since it was a good place to do business — good guys wouldn’t bug a house that’s being built, and bad guys wouldn’t be smart enough to do it in the first place — which made Jeff think Bruno was still doing a bit of crooked work on the side. Which was fine. As long as he wasn’t piling up bodies, Jeff didn’t really care anymore about a little white-collar stupidity — in the larger scheme of things, everyone was at some point getting robbed.

Jeff parked down the street at the sales office — which was actually the garage of the Saddle Rock model home, a modification that would be changed once the development was built out — and waited outside, near a blue minivan and a ten-foot-wide map of the proposed community. Pleasant Farms Lakes boasted that space had been carved out for over two hundred homes; a multihole putting green; a dog park; a day care center; three man-made lakes, each one stocked with different kinds of fish; and, the map noted, “several lots scaled for Devotional Worship development.”

“Nice place,” Matthew said.

“It has the same basic layout of a federal prison,” Jeff said. “Minus the dog park.”

“I could see myself living in a place like this one day,” Matthew said. “Once I’d lost all hope.” He pointed three fingers at the map. “I’m trying to figure out the wisdom behind man-made lakes in lake country.”

“Easier to dump pesticides into a lake you own,” Jeff said.

Bruno’s yellow Hummer came down the street then and stopped a few feet from Jeff. The doors opened, and a family of four came tumbling out, followed by Bruno himself. The family looked happy, or at least normal: The father was maybe thirty-five, dressed head to toe in L.L.Bean, while the mother looked like she’d robbed J.Crew, as did their two small children, both girls. Bruno, however, looked completely different from how Jeff remembered him. He was the kind of guy who had a sweat suit for every occasion, but now he was in tan chinos, a black cashmere sweater over a white collared shirt. He had a Movado on his wrist, leather band, black face, classy. He’d grown a beard recently — or at least since the photos that appeared everywhere had been taken — and had a suntan, which meant he was spending his free time in a tanning bed, since it was already in the low forties and thirties in town and the skies had been gray for a good two months.

The father thanked Bruno for showing them around, and then the entire family systematically climbed into the blue minivan and drove off. Bruno waved at them as they meandered down the road, his face all smiles, his eyes wide and bright and filled with the kind of bottomless optimism all real estate agents seem to have when they stare at you from the calendars left on your doorstep. Jeff couldn’t help but wonder about the intersection in Bruno’s mind between cutting up bodies for the mob and showing nuclear American families real estate they probably couldn’t afford.

When the van finally turned the corner, Jeff got his answer.

“Fucking maggots,” Bruno said. He pulled his cashmere sweater off, balled it up, and tossed it into the Hummer, then walked inside the sales office and came back out with a bottle of Windex and some paper towels. He opened the back passenger door and started scrubbing at the seats. Jeff walked over and peered in. Brown leather, built-in TV monitors. State of the art. Matthew stayed a few feet back, probably trying to figure out what the hell was going on.

“Fucking kids spilled a full Coke on my backseat,” Bruno said, not that Jeff had asked. “Splashed it up on the back of my fucking sweater, too. Two-hundred-dollar sweater and now it’s sticky as shit. They don’t make sippy cups anymore? You gotta give your kids a full can of soda?” He stopped his rant for a moment, appeared to notice Jeff and Matthew for the first time, and said, “I thought you were coming alone.”

“Good to see you, too, Bruno,” Jeff said.

He regarded Jeff with a look of exasperation, like they’d been together on some kind of horrific experience, then he just got back to scrubbing. “Two hours I spend with that family. And what do they tell me? They’re just looking. You know, look on your own time.”

“This is Matthew,” Jeff said. “He’s working with me.”

“And one more thing,” Bruno said, “if you got a problem with two-story houses, then move to the Saharan desert and get a tent, okay? What is wrong with people these days? A two-story house is America. It’s the dream. Am I right?”

“I live in an apartment,” Jeff said.

“You don’t count. You work for the government.” Bruno finally paused and gave Matthew the once-over. “What about you, Encyclopedia Brown? You want a two-story house? Basement, wet room, big yard. You want that, right?”

“I’d just be happy not to have any more student loans,” Matthew said.

“When I was a kid, you know what I wanted?” Bruno said.

“To be an adult?” Jeff said.

“That’s right, that’s right,” Bruno said. “I just wanted to be bigger. You know? These kids, they kept telling their parents what they needed in a house, like they were gonna bust their asses on the mortgage. The gumption. That’s what gets to me.”

“This doesn’t sound like the sort of talk that made you the King of Lake Country Home Deals,” Jeff said. “Hardly what one would expect from a person who has his own Gold Pro Team.”

“You wanna know the truth?” Bruno said.

“I don’t know,” Jeff said. “Do I?”

This got Paul Bruno to laugh. “There is no Gold Pro Team. I’m it. These other people? I just found them in some clip art book. They don’t exist.”

“I believe they call that a racket,” Jeff said.

“Just false advertising,” Bruno said. “Anyway, I’ve sold more houses in this shit hole than anyone. This is my baby out here. You know more people move to Wisconsin than any other state in America?”

“That can’t be true,” Jeff said.

“It isn’t,” Bruno said. “So I always say it like that. Make it a question. People, they’ll hear what they want to hear, right?” He looked at his watch. “I got another client in an hour. Come on, get in the Hummer. I’ll drive you down to this development I’m buying into. We can talk in the car.”

Jeff slid in the front seat, left the sticky backseat for Matthew, who didn’t seem to mind. Bruno got behind the wheel and fired up the engine. It sounded like a bomb going off. Jeff couldn’t figure out one good reason for anyone to own a Hummer unless they had designs on attacking Baghdad. He knew several agents who drove them, but they were always ex-military types who wanted you to know just how comfortable they’d been riding in armored vehicles, so much so that they bought them to drive around the South Loop, too.

Bruno drove them through Pleasant Farms Lakes, pointed out where all the amenities were going to be, all of which were just mounds of dirt, and then pulled out of the development and headed down a road that had only recently been paved. Up ahead was a gate and a sign that proclaimed the development, called Legacy at the Lake Country, was Oconomowoc’s first “over 55 luxury retirement destination.” Jeff saw only dirt and gravel behind the gate. Bruno hit a button on a remote control, and the gate opened, and the Hummer pulled through and then came to a stop a hundred yards in, near a construction trailer. In the distance Jeff could make out two land graders moving back and forth near a low outcropping of tamarack and shagbark.

“This place,” Bruno said, “is my secret nest egg.”

“How secret is it if you’re showing it to us?” Jeff said.

Bruno considered this. “You got the can, right? For the Cupertine shit?”

“Paid leave,” Jeff said.

“Same shit. What about you, Encyclopedia Brown?”

“Fired,” Matthew said. “Just for knowing Agent Hopper.”

“So neither of you is officially FBI right now, right?”

“Correct,” Jeff said, though officially he was.

Bruno turned in his seat to face Jeff and Matthew. “So I tell you the plan, you tell me what kind of legal trouble I’m looking at, okay?”

“Fine,” Jeff said. He’d had conversations with Bruno like this before. He always had a scheme of some kind.

“So the builders? They’re friends of mine, plus, you know, I’ve got cash in the deal. Whatever. It’s a good deal, right? So they’re gonna put in these windows and sliders with locks. Everyone afraid of the world, they all want locks. Every single house is going to be Fort Knox, because these old motherfuckers will be moving in here with all their worldly goods, waiting for the Rapture and all that. Thing is, I’m going to have a master set of duplicates to every house. I fall on hard times, need a quick score to get me out of the city, on a boat to Hawaii, or I just want some extra cash to buy my groceries, whatever, I got my own mall right here. All I can steal. What do you think of that?”

“That’s a sound plan,” Jeff said. “I’d say ten years, maybe fifteen. Could probably plead down and get five.”

“Nah,” Matthew said. “I bet he’d only get two years. Non-violent crime? They’d process him out in a year.”

“Maybe so,” Jeff said. “Maybe plea insanity, Bruno, hope the people you’re ripping off get Alzheimer’s before they need to testify.”

“These old motherfuckers,” Bruno said, “they won’t know if a ring or two is missing. It’s not like I’m going to be housing the whole joint. Just diamonds, Baccarat crystal, easy stuff to move. Just little things, here and there. Maybe a car if I need one. Free and clear, I think.”

“It would be hard to get caught,” Matthew said. “Having a key makes it easier to be discreet. Having a car key makes it even easier in the event you decide to move into full GTA mode.”

“That’s what I’m saying,” Bruno said. “See, Agent Hopper, Encyclopedia Brown here knows a good score.”

“Of course,” Matthew said, “you might break into the wrong house and there’s some old man who did a couple tours in Korea waiting for you with a shotgun. Or maybe someone’s grandson with a nine and good aim. Things could take a turn.”

“Risk of doing business,” Bruno said. “What do you think, Agent Hopper? My feeling, if it works, I do this all over the country.”

“I wouldn’t bank on it,” Jeff said, though of all Bruno’s scams, it did have the highest degree of possible success, “but if you feel like in the future you’re going to need extra money, who am I to tell you who not to rob? But why not just make it simple and have the builders put in a false wall for you, something on the side of the house, near the garage, something you can just pop in and out and have it open into the back of a closet or something.”

Bruno pondered this. “Tongue and groove it, essentially?”

“Sure,” Jeff said.

“Maybe make sure there’s a shrub in front of it, make sure it’s a guest room closet or some shit, right?”

“Right,” Jeff said. He’d spent his entire life trying to stay one step ahead of crooks, and this had been the one idea he’d really appreciated stumbling on. A small arms dealer operating out of Rochester had a similar setup in his home as an escape route.

“That’s a pretty good idea,” Bruno said. “Why the fuck did you tell me that?”

“I need you alive,” Jeff said. “This seems like a better way to keep you above ground.”

“The FBI really dump your ass?”

“Really,” Jeff said.

“Just for Cupertine killing your boys?”

“No,” Jeff said. “I might have harassed Cupertine’s wife, telling her I thought her husband was still alive and it was being covered up by the FBI.”

Bruno snickered. “How’s Jennifer doing?”

“Tough,” Jeff said.

“Nice girl, that one,” Bruno said. “Her dad and my dad used to bowl together.”

“Yeah?” Jeff said.

“Yeah, the Frangellos were good people. Jennifer, she fell for Sal hard. Her dad, you know, he hated that she was married to a gangster. He was no idiot. I mean, everyone knew that Sal Cupertine was a killer, right? But I guess he told old man Frangello that he’d never bring that shit home, that they’d live a normal life, and I guess maybe they did. They had that little house in Lincolnwood, right?”

“White picket fence and everything,” Jeff said.

Bruno laughed at something.

“What’s funny?” Matthew said.

“I was just thinking,” Bruno said, but then he paused for a second. “Did I know any of your boys who got killed?”

“Not as FBI agents,” Jeff said. “You ever do any business with a guy calling himself Gino Ruggio?”

“Furniture guy? Always with the nice leather shit?”

“Yes,” Jeff said. “He was one of ours.”

“Huh. Good guy.”

“Two kids,” Jeff said.

Bruno laughed again. “I’m not laughing at your friend getting it,” he said quickly. “I’m just thinking how here I am, ninety minutes away, showing real estate to people, living a pretty good life, right? And all that same shit is still going on. End of the day, I’m forty now, I just want a comfortable place to sit, maybe someone to sit and talk to, periodically go see a flick, whatever. All that shit they’re still doing in Chicago doesn’t make sense to me anymore.”

“Money,” Jeff said. “But not what Cupertine did.”

“Don’t kid yourself, it’s always about money,” Bruno said. “No call to kill a fed. But if you don’t think there was some kind of financial reason behind it, you deserve to be on leave, Agent.”

“Three people,” Matthew said. “Three people got killed.”

“I said I was sorry to hear that,” Bruno said, a little edge to his voice now.

“And a confidential informant,” Matthew said. “Bullet right between the eyes. Brain matter all over the Parker.” Matthew toying with Bruno now, reminding him that he knew what, exactly, Bruno was. Jeff respected that, even if it was a bit misguided.

Jeff watched Bruno, to see if what Matthew told him made him pause to rethink his current status in life. If the Family was now in the business of killing federal agents and snitches, well, Bruno could have a short life expectancy.

“Did you tell Encyclopedia Brown how you saved me from my life of crime?” Bruno asked Jeff.

“I gave him the basics,” Jeff said.

“He tell you I like men?” Bruno asked Matthew.

“He did,” Matthew said.

“How you feel about that?” Bruno was testing now. Each of them trying to find their margin, Jeff just happy to sit back and watch.

“I don’t care,” Matthew said.

“See,” Bruno said, “that’s how all the kids are now days.” He shook his head. “I bet if I were coming up now, my life would be easier. Probably be a capo by now.” He paused for a moment and looked back out the front window of the Hummer. “You hear my dad died?” he asked Jeff.

“No,” Jeff said.

“Yeah, he got Lou Gehrig’s. All his life, you know, he was about being as precise as he could be cutting up steaks and shit. One day, he comes to work, can’t cut straight. Hand’s all shaky. I hear this from my mother, because my dad wouldn’t have shit to do with me. Anyway, you know what that fucker did? He swallowed a bunch of my mother’s Valium, put a bag over his head, and, just like that, good night, world. You believe that?”

“That’s how I’d do it,” Matthew said.

“Really?” Bruno said.

“Absolutely,” Matthew said. “Less pain for everyone.”

Bruno sniffed once, rubbed his face, and then didn’t say anything for a few seconds. “Reason I tell you that, man, you just never know how people are going to go, right? Gotta always be getting right with the people you care about. Him dying, that had an effect on me. I’ve been thinking about that a lot since you called me, Agent Hopper, asking about Sal and about that body in the dump.”

Normally when Bruno came in to give information, it was quick. This long conversation had Jeff off-center. He’d never known Paul Bruno to be an overly emotional guy, at least not one prone to introspection. There was something more here.

“What do you know about Sal?” Jeff said.

“Good guy,” he said. “Smart as fuck.”

“If he’s so smart,” Matthew asked, “why did he kill those men?” Good, Jeff thought. Just like that.

“I’ve been trying to wrap my head around that,” Bruno said. “There had to be money involved, like I said, one way or the other. The Family don’t send out Sal Cupertine just to hang out, you know? I mean, you ever get his prints, anywhere?”

“Never,” Jeff said.

“I knew the guy his entire life,” Bruno said, “and from the time he started doing hits until today? I never once saw him in the daylight. I mean, the man was a shadow, but that was his shit, too, you know? He wasn’t dumb. Made him sound like the boogeyman.”

“He took out my guys in broad daylight,” Jeff said. “His DNA was everywhere.”

“Then there’s no way it was a hit,” Bruno said. “No way.”

“No,” Jeff said, and then he told Bruno about how Sal Cupertine had figured out he was dealing with agents, how he got Jeff’s name, how he’d gone back upstairs and killed the whole room.

“That’s why you’re here?” Bruno said. “You’re taking a personal affront to this?”

“I am,” Jeff said.

“Dumb,” Bruno said. “Sal Cupertine will kill you and not even miss a meal afterward. Personal vendettas are stupid, and this is coming from a person who has a lot of personal vendettas.”

“It’s about justice,” Jeff said.

“You keep telling yourself that,” Bruno said. “Anyway, my thinking? Sal must have snapped. Just exploded.”

“Do you recall him ever doing that before?” Matthew asked. It was a phrase hammered into young agents: If possible, find a pattern.

“When we were kids, yeah, sure,” Bruno said. “After his dad got thrown off that building, he had some anger problems. But last ten, fifteen years? Nothing. I mean, I never got why he went into the killing business, except that he was good at it. And Ronnie was his only family. Sal didn’t have shit. Murdered father, mother was a nut job. For a time, rumor was she was fucking the principal at Winston so Sal could get free lunches. I mean, crazy shit like that. That was his life. That’s what he dealt with before he fell in with Ronnie. So I don’t begrudge him a few problems, you know?”

“So why now?” Matthew asked. “He’s methodical. He’s smart. He’s got this nice family now. Living the perfect gangster life. Why just lose it?”

“There any drugs involved?”

“Heroin,” Jeff said. “The initial report was that he sampled a bit of everything.”

“He was a mean fucker on heroin,” Bruno said. “Once he had a kid, he stopped doing any kind of junk. But you know, if some good shit came through, he’d have a taste. Last guy you wanted paranoid at a party was Sal Cupertine.”

“Then you go home, get your family, and run away,” Matthew said. “You don’t murder four people.”

“Normal person, maybe,” Bruno said. “This isn’t a normal person. Killing is what he does, that’s his nature. You put him in a situation where he might kill someone, he’s gonna do that. So, probably realized he was caught. Realized everything he’d been doing for fifteen years was gonna get undone, and he did what he could to get out. Frankly, I’m surprised he didn’t kill everyone in the whole Family for putting him in that position.”

“He didn’t have the time,” Jeff said.

“Still,” Bruno said. “Ronnie Cupertine shows up somewhere missing his head, don’t act surprised. Only reason Ronnie would send Sal out in the day would be to get caught. Ronnie, he’s the one with problems. On TV playing a gangster. The perfect cover. A fucking embarrassment, you ask me. Sal was just doing what he was told and if he blew, it was because someone put him in a position where that was the only choice.”

That was the problem. Sal Cupertine was consistent. By acting inconsistent, by being reckless, he’d thrown everything off. Jeff couldn’t figure out what his next move might have been, couldn’t even figure out where he was. Once they got the records, the FBI had pinged his cell phone off towers close to Ronnie Cupertine’s and then, hours later, it looked like he was driving in circles around southern Illinois. And then. . nothing. He surely ditched his phone, but that there was no chatter at all about him, that the Family all spoke of him in the past tense, and that Jennifer Cupertine was alone and not exactly prospering made it all clear enough.

“What about the body in the dump?” Jeff asked.

“Not him,” Bruno said. “My opinion? That body was a kid called Chema, real name Jose Espinoza. Half Mexican on his dad’s side. Couldn’t have been more than twenty-two, twenty-three.”

Jeff hadn’t heard of any half-Mexican members of the Family, though he supposed it wasn’t beyond possible. The Gangster 2–6 street gang ran a lot of the cocaine and heroin in the city for the Family, so it reasoned that they might occasionally find an able body there. Still, that Bruno had a specific idea on who had been murdered and then dumped was curious. “How do you know him?” Jeff said.

“He used to come up to Milwaukee to hit the rainbow clubs,” Bruno said. “So I recognized him. His brother Neto used to courier H for the Family before he got sent up to Stateville. I’d check and see if he’s dead, too. My guess is he is. Family is good about that sort of thing. If Neto is dead, then for sure that’s Chema they dumped.”

Bruno fell silent for a moment, and Jeff realized he needed to ask a question he really didn’t want to ask, had to ask the question he was hoping Bruno would explain on his own. “So,” Jeff said, “you two were a couple?”

“Not in the traditional sense,” Bruno said. “You know, we had fun, but he was a dumb, confused kid. Had a girlfriend, was Catholic, also, which fucked him up. Plus, he thought he was going to rise up in the Family, even though he saw what happened to Neto.”

“You know who he was working for?” Jeff asked.

“He just got on Fat Monte’s crew,” Bruno said. “Day your boys got hit, he called me to say he couldn’t drive up to see me. He had an errand to do for Monte. I never heard from him again.”

“That doesn’t mean he’s the body,” Matthew said. “Maybe he just didn’t want to see you anymore. Maybe he decided to make it work with his girl. Could be a hundred different things.”

“Could be, could be,” Bruno said. “What’s it been now? Seven months? How many people stay on Fat Monte’s crew for seven months and don’t end up getting pinched for some stupid gangster shit?”

Bruno let his last statement hang there.

“If Neto is dead,” Jeff said, “then I’d advise you to get a new address. Maybe a new name. You still have chits in the bureau.”

“Fat Monte don’t scare me,” he said.

“You’re not a gangster, Paul,” Jeff said. He used his first name on purpose, to remind him that he was a guy named Paul, not Bruno the Butcher, the name people on the street knew him by. Maybe he’d been a tough guy at one point, but he wasn’t on the level of a Fat Monte. Not now, anyway. “You don’t need this shit.”

“I see that motherfucker,” Bruno said, “I’ll roll over his ass with my Hummer, drag him out here, and have my guys put him in the foundation of a nice three-bedroom. Give him a view of the pool and everything.” Paul Bruno turned away from Jeff and Matthew then and started shaking his head. “I told myself I wasn’t going to do this,” he said quietly, and then he abruptly jumped out of the Hummer.

“What was that?” Matthew said.

“I think he’s finally realizing his boyfriend is dead,” Jeff said.

Jeff Hopper recognized two essential truths, as well, as he watched Paul Bruno walking off into the distance, his hands clutching at his scalp, his gait slow and deliberate: The first was that there was only one way for Paul Bruno to die, and it wasn’t from breaking into some old lady’s house to steal her furs and diamonds. Eventually, just as he’d told Jeff all this information, someone, somewhere, would give information to Ronnie Cupertine about Paul Bruno’s activities in Milwaukee, how he had this nice new legit business going and didn’t Ronnie think Paul owed him something for all their years of friendship? And did you know he was a queer? And then one day, Paul Bruno would wake up and find Fat Monte, or someone a lot like him, holding a gun on him. Diming out Fat Monte wasn’t something he had to do. It was something he wanted to do.

The second truth was that Paul Bruno had been in love.

“Wait here,” Jeff said to Matthew, and then he got out of the Hummer, too. It was cold outside, and Jeff immediately wondered just where Bruno hoped to find the seniors who would want to move here to live out their golden years.

Bruno walked over to the construction trailer and sat down on the second of three stairs that led to the door. There were no lights on inside, so Jeff made his way over, too, and sat down beside him, and the two of them waited there for a few minutes without speaking, the only sound Bruno’s periodic sniffling and the chirping of birds.

“I’m sorry,” Bruno said eventually. “I think I’m going through menopause or some shit.”

“It’s all right,” Jeff said.

“He was just a dumb kid,” Bruno said. “We never even did it. He was working out his shit and trying to figure out where it all went, and that was cool. I mean, who was I to pressure anyone? But to be done ugly like that?”

“Look,” Jeff said, “I need your help on Cupertine. I find him, I can put a lid on this whole Family. Get all of them what they deserve.”

That got Bruno to laugh. “You even hear yourself? This shit will just keep going on. You might find Cupertine, but don’t think it’s gonna change shit. You think Eliot Ness thought he’d solved it all? Poor motherfucker didn’t even make sixty, you know that? Dead at fifty-four. True story. And he didn’t stop shit. You find Sal Cupertine, just be content with that.”

“You got any ideas?” Jeff said.

“Where was the last place you spotted him?”

“His cell phone had him in south Illinois, near the border to Missouri,” Jeff said. “Last solid hit was outside Divernon.”

“Nothing but farmland out there,” Bruno said. “Slaughterhouses, too. Could be we’re both wrong and you ate Sal Cupertine last time you had a Big Mac.”

That thought had occurred to Jeff, too, when he’d seen the map. “You think of any safe houses the Family has outside of Chicago? Any other families they’re close enough with to have them harbor Cupertine?”

“No one is gonna take that weight without a return,” Bruno said. “You wanna look for a syndicate that can use him for something, someone who’d buy him from Ronnie, not the other way around.”

It was an idea so simple, so reasonable, and so fundamentally in line with Ronnie Cupertine’s way of doing business — selling people the things he didn’t want to hold on to for more than a month at a time was the very basis of his used-car business; the reason the feds had so much trouble making any case against him on his cars was that they were out the door before they could even be tracked — that it made Jeff feel foolish. It was also something Jeff had never heard of — the trading of assets between crime families. “That happens?” Jeff asked.

“I worked for a lot of people,” Bruno said. “They all seemed to know how to find me. I assume they paid Ronnie for that information.”

What Jeff couldn’t understand was what another syndicate would want with Sal Cupertine. Yeah, he was an efficient killer, but there were plenty of efficient killers working in all the families. “Who middled for Ronnie?” Jeff asked.

“Might be a nice thing to ask Fat Monte the next time you see him,” Bruno said. His cell phone rang then. He pulled it from the clip on his belt and examined the number. “Oh, fuck me,” he said, and then he answered it after the second ring. “Paul Bruno,” he said, his voice an entirely different tenor. Mellifluous, even. “Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Yes, well, I’m happy to hear that. Yes, of course, it would be my pleasure. I do think a two-story is something to really consider. Those girls of yours will be making a racket in a few years, and you’ll want the refuge! Yes, yes, of course. Okay, we’ll do that then. And thank you for calling, Mr. Stubbs. Thank you again.” Paul Bruno clicked his phone off and slipped it back into his belt clip.

“They want to buy a house after all?” Jeff said.

“Looks like it,” Bruno said. He stood up then and stuffed his hands into his pockets. Jeff stood, too, and for a moment they both looked at the view. It was a bit desolate, though Jeff could see the potential. The air was crisp and clean. The trees tall and stately in the distance. A little imagination? A few man-made lakes? Maybe it would be paradise. Stranger things had sprung from the dirt.

“You get this place built,” Jeff said, “maybe in fifteen years I’ll come back and buy a condo.”

“I shouldn’t have said all that about Fat Monte,” Bruno said.

“No,” Jeff said, “you probably shouldn’t have.”

Bruno sniffled one last time. “Fuck it,” he said. “I trust you won’t mention my name to anyone?”

“Of course.”

Bruno pointed at the Hummer, where Matthew was still sitting. “What’s his skin in this?”

“I feel a debt to him,” Jeff said. “I cost him his job. He’s a good agent, or will be.”

“He doesn’t like me,” Bruno said.

“No,” Jeff said, “he doesn’t. Probably better for both of us, really.”

Bruno spit through his teeth then, a nasty habit of his Jeff had forgotten. “I never understood you, Agent Hopper,” he said after a while.