Gangsterland

CHAPTER SIX

David had his own preferred method for handling the guns he used for killing, and it involved buying them himself and making sure they were used only once and then immediately melted.

Not sold.

Not thrown in a river or a lake or buried or hidden under the dog house.

Not even destroyed. Melted.

It was a time-consuming process. In Chicago, he rented out a spot in a converted warehouse on West Fulton, near the old Kinzie Industrial Corridor, that had been turned into an artists’ space complete with a metal lathe, foundry, press, and furnace. He’d go straight there after a job to dispose of all his evidence, even the clothes he was wearing. If there was reason to be concerned that evidence had somehow ended up in the stolen car he was driving, he’d disassemble and melt the car doors, or trunk linings, or, one time, the whole front console of a Gran Torino. You don’t spend fifteen years killing people without learning how not to get caught.

David killed young men, middle-aged men, even old men. His first sanctioned hit was that German fucker, Rolf Huber, who’d been running girls in the suburbs since the 1950s and, at eighty, after the Family decided to colonize Batavia, started to talk about writing his memoirs for the feds. That was a gimme. Got him as he was walking out of his bar, the Lamplighter, on Christmas Eve. One shot, side of the head.

Not how he’d do it now; the side of the head sometimes didn’t work, too many variables. But that was before he knew exactly what he was doing. He was only nineteen, and everything he knew about killing he’d picked up watching Cousin Ronnie. Ronnie was more of a bludgeoner, didn’t feel like he’d done a job until he was covered in someone else’s blood. No one knew shit about forensics and DNA back then.

Now, parked a few doors down from Ibiza Tan, the salon Slim Joe visited every other day in order to keep his nice orange hue, David couldn’t believe how lucky he’d been. Killing disposable people helped. No one was sad to see another gangster dead. Besides, in those days, all the Chicago cops were on the take, and the FBI’s attention was focused on New York, everyone working John Gotti.

Back before he was the Rain Man, back before he had any reputation to uphold, he was out hitting street dealers Ronnie said were skimming. Didn’t matter if the kid was seventeen. David would stalk the kid for a week, two weeks, however long it took to figure out how to take him out with no collateral damage, follow the kid on the train out to Aurora, watch him shoplift from Lord & Taylor in the Fox Valley Mall, the next day show up outside his high school, see if there was any recognition on the kid’s part, show up a few days later on his block, walk right by the kid, see if the kid started to mad-dog him, act tough, flash the gun in his waistband, whatever.

Nothing.

No one ever recognized him. His simple secret to killing was that he was always behind the guy about to die, days, weeks, sometimes months before it actually happened. It was the part of his legend he happily cultivated over the years. He was like an embolism: Just because you couldn’t see him didn’t he mean he wasn’t there, waiting.

The only thing that bothered him now was that he knew he’d been trained, that the dealers he killed probably had done nothing in the least to deserve their fate, that it was all Ronnie manipulating him into a perfect killing machine. Ronnie building a legend on the streets to control his bigger business, so that when he had to hit actual hard targets, it was just a job.

David checked his watch. He had a lot of shit on his agenda, and Slim Joe was taking forever. He’d spent the last several days trying to figure out how he’d kill Slim Joe. David didn’t want to do it in the house, not with his own genetic material all over the joint, and he certainly wasn’t going to kill Slim Joe and then clean up afterward. Not after the last job he’d done in Chicago, a few months before the Donnie Brasco fuckup.

That was Frank Picone, the Windsor Syndicate’s guy in Chicago. Ronnie told David at first that he wanted only intel on the guy, find out what the Mounties were doing in town, but not to kill him. It was no use killing a guy if it meant it would open up a job for some other, more capable asshole.

In Canada, the Windsor Syndicate was into the computer and mortgage shit Ronnie and the rest of the Family had no interest in. Ronnie didn’t seem to mind when he found out that they’d moved down into Detroit, and then Chicago, running cons at nursing homes, stealing the identities of the patients, taking their whole portfolios out from under them, selling stocks, moving the cash back into Canada. It was irrelevant and frankly too risky for Ronnie. “That’s civilian business,” he told David. “Civilians have relatives. Relatives call the cops.”

But when Picone started freelancing, flipped his cash into oxycodone, began dealing on AOL message boards, created a network of faceless buyers that handled their business with dead drops like they were the CIA, flooded the streets with an opiate cheaper and easier to handle than heroin? That was some shit Ronnie would not abide. The opiate business in Chicago belonged to the Family. And this asshole had just walked right around the Family, and in the process had taken intimidation and fear completely out of the game. That was a hanging offense.

Not that David cared about any of that. The only thing that concerned him was that Picone was indiscriminate, that he was able to get the thread of his actions by following him for under a week, was able to break into his house twice without incident, even sat behind Picone and his wife at a Chili’s on a Tuesday night, the two of them talking about their business like they were discussing an episode of Law & Order.

Picone and his wife rented a redbrick house all the way out in Evanston. It was the kind of neighborhood where everyone drove an Audi or BMW, and the only American car on the block belonged to the nanny, so David had to keep stealing nicer rides than he preferred, just so he wouldn’t be made. Picone spent his days either sitting around the house in his underwear, working on a laptop, or making drops at the Field Museum, or the sprawling Hilton on Michigan Avenue, Gene’s & Jude’s in River Grove, Buckingham Fountain, out in front of Wrigley Field, wherever there were a lot of people. His big spy move was to have his buyer tape an envelope stuffed with cash on the underside of a bus stop bench. If everything was in order, Picone would leave a duffel bag of pills in a bush or garbage can. If the envelope wasn’t there, or the money was short, he’d just keep moving, no deal, no problem, no one sticking guns in anyone’s face, and he could go see a dinosaur or get a red hot and be on his way. He didn’t even carry a gun.

Still, David couldn’t very well shoot Picone in front of Wrigley Field. He also couldn’t walk into Picone’s house and put one in his head while he slept — he could, it just wasn’t prudent. A murdered Canadian citizen in a solid upper-middle-class suburb was the kind of thing that ended up on the news. That wasn’t going to work. Plus, he wasn’t real keen on killing Picone’s wife.

He needed a work-around. So, he did the only thing that seemed sensible. He called the cops.

On Saturdays, Picone did a big drop on Navy Pier, usually in front of the Children’s Museum. He’d park blocks away and drag a suitcase behind him, pretend to take photos, talk on his cell phone, look frustrated, sometimes stop and ask directions. It was a whole bit. If he hadn’t been so predictable, it would have been a decent cover. When David picked him from the crowd, he was walking along the promenade wearing a Hawaiian shirt, jeans, big sunglasses, a baseball cap. The only thing that stood out were the two Latin Kings with the neck tattoos waiting over by the bike racks. Seemed Frank Picone had at least one other tail.

A few yards behind Picone, an old man pushed himself along in a walker.

Perfect.

David called 911. “There’s a guy in a walker out front of the Children’s Museum flashing his dick at the kids,” he said, then he hung up, ditched the phone in a planter, and stepped behind Picone, kept pace with him for a few minutes, until the Navy Pier security and cops started to stream out of every corner. Picone tensed up, and David put a hand on his back, pulled him close.

“You’ve been made,” David whispered. “Walk back to your car.” Picone nodded once, kept moving toward the museum for a few more seconds — there was a science fair going on, kids and parents and cotton candy and clowns and a bunch of rent-a-cops simultaneously putting walkie-talkies to their ears — then turned heel, David now a step back.

“Who the fuck are you?” Picone asked, trying to sound hard, not that it was working. They’d made it to Gateway Park, Picone still dragging his suitcase full of oxy.

“Ronnie Cupertine would like to have a conversation,” David said.

“I don’t know anyone named Ronnie Cupertine,” Picone said.

“He’s interested in doing business with you,” David said.

“I’m not a decision maker.”

“You are now,” David said.

Picone brightened, hazarded a glance toward David. “He thinks so?”

“Yeah,” David said, “you’re the guy he’s looking for.”

When they got to Picone’s car — a black 5 Series BMW with tinted windows and Ontario plates — David directed him to drive to his warehouse. He’d never actually killed anyone in his warehouse space — he killed a local gangster, he just shot them in the street; if he was doing some contract shit, it was easier to just make it look like a robbery gone wrong and do it at a victim’s house or job, preferably the job, since no one brought their kids or pets to work — but this called for special circumstances. When they walked inside, before Picone could say a word about the foundry or the metal press, David put one in the back of his head.

Then he got to work.

He called Air Canada using Picone’s cell phone and, using Picone’s Visa, booked Picone a ticket to Windsor, one-way, leaving that night out of Midway. He called Kirkpatrick’s Florist in Evanston, ordered two dozen red roses, and had them sent to Picone’s wife, along with a note that said he’d been called out of town. His wife was smart. She’d know that if he hadn’t called and just sent flowers, maybe he had a job to do and wouldn’t ask questions. Two dozen roses would make anyone happy for a few days. Maybe a week. Eventually she’d get antsy, but then she’d see the Visa bill, and that would keep her another week. Still, she wasn’t going to file a missing person’s report. Gone meant gone in this business. She’d know that. Besides, the guy’s name probably wasn’t even really Frank Picone.

Ronnie didn’t want any evidence of the guy’s existence, which meant no body, so David first cut him up, then used the metal press, then used the furnace, then used the foundry, but it was a terrible mess. The metal press had been an inspired idea, but it took him hours to clean, so long that he had to drive Picone’s car to a long-term parking lot, leave it, catch a bus, and come back to scrub even more. He was the fucking Rain Man. He didn’t do floors. It ended up taking him three full days with industrial cleaners, some selective melting, and then a meticulous black light check to even feel confident about it.

He didn’t have a secret place like that in Las Vegas, wasn’t even sure how to go about looking for one. There was nothing old in this town. Once something wasn’t useful anymore, they’d just implode it and start again, or do it like Fremont Street and throw a million lights on it and call it an “Experience” and give everyone a souvenir football filled with beer. Besides, he was a respected member of the community now, or would be beginning on Monday; he even had a set of keys to the temple, and that meant he needed to conduct himself a bit differently. He couldn’t exactly rent a murder shop.

That meant trusting Bennie.

Slim Joe finally walked out of Ibiza Tan five minutes later — he’d gone in for a full thirty-minute bake — his cell phone already up on his ear, like the idiot didn’t have enough radiation coursing through his veins. It was only ten in the morning, and David couldn’t imagine anyone Slim Joe knew was actually awake yet. No one would miss Slim Joe for at least another ten, fifteen hours, and even then, no one who might miss him would be in the business of contacting the police. His own mother had just seen him, so even she wouldn’t notice his absence for a few days. And maybe by then she’d be dead, too, though David was hoping to avoid that.

David watched Slim Joe get into his car — a black Mustang with a rear spoiler you could land a plane on — and tried to figure out how Bennie came to associate himself with such an obvious liability, cousin or not, particularly since the first thing Joe did when he got in his car was roll down the windows and begin bumping rap music. That he was still pretending to talk on his cell phone at the same time filled David with such an uncommon disdain that he nearly shot him right then.

Instead, he got out of the piece of shit Buick Bennie had secured for him, double-checked to make sure there weren’t any cops lingering around — not that David believed the Summerhill Plaza was a hotbed of criminal activity, though there was a Gold’s Gym in the corner of the center that was filled with guys who must have thought they looked pretty tough hanging out in front of the elliptical machines — and headed over to the Mustang and got in. Slim Joe recoiled immediately and practically jumped out the window. David thought he even heard Joe scream a little, but he couldn’t be sure with the bass creating sonic booms every other second. David tried to turn the volume down, but Slim Joe’s stereo had more lights and buttons on it than a fucking spaceship, so David just reached over and yanked the keys from the Mustang’s ignition.

“That’s better,” David said.

“Fucking Christ,” Slim Joe said. “You scared the shit out of me, dog.”

“What’s that smell?” David said.

“What?”

“There’s a smell in here,” David said. “Like fruit mixed with grass and piss.”

“That’s my bronzer,” Slim Joe said.

“What’s that?”

“Makes my tan stick,” he said. “Dog, you scared the shit out of me. I could’ve put a cap in you.”

Slim Joe was wearing his usual outfit — a wifebeater, Nike sweatpants, white Pumas, a watch the size of a hubcap. Not much room to keep a gun, not that there was any need to bring a gun with you to a tanning salon. Bullets and intense heat don’t usually have a good, safe relationship. Not even Slim Joe was that dumb. Maybe he kept a gun in the glove box.

“This bronzer, what does it run you?”

“I dunno, fifteen bucks. Whatever, man. No disrespect, but what the fuck are you doing here?”

No disrespect. Two words David had grown to hate. Someone said no disrespect, it immediately meant they were about to disrespect you. The Jews, they had it right: They basically told the Palestinians they could either have a piece of crap land or they could fuck off. Being polite got you exterminated. They killed first now.

“Maybe I’ve been thinking about getting a tan,” David said. “It’s the one thing I haven’t really addressed since I got into town. You think I need a tan?”

“Naw, dog, you look good.” Slim Joe gazed up into the rearview mirror and then turned around to look at the parking lot. “You drive here? I don’t see your ride.”

David could see that Slim Joe was agitated, which was good. He wanted him agitated. When you’re off-balance, you’re not as prone to seeing the obvious things. Better to keep someone engaged.

David put Joe’s keys back into the ignition but didn’t turn the car on. “We need to have a conversation. You willing to have a conversation with me?”

“You know I’m down for whatever.”

“Then let’s go for a ride,” David said.

“We can’t do this at the crib?”

“House is bugged,” David said. “What I want to talk about wouldn’t include Bennie. Just be something you and I get some skin on.”

“Oh, shit,” Slim Joe said, though it wasn’t clear to David if he was happy or frightened by this prospect. “How long?”

“How long have I been there?”

“Oh, shit,” Slim Joe said again. “All the rooms?”

“That’s my guess,” David said.

“You think Bennie listens to everything?”

“He’s your cousin,” David said. “I barely know the man.”

“Oh, shit,” Slim Joe repeated.

“You get it now?”

Slim Joe didn’t say another word. He pulled out of the shopping center, and David told him to head toward the temple. Slim Joe kept stealing glances at his cell phone while he drove.

David picked up the phone and examined it. As expected, Slim Joe hadn’t made or received a call since the previous night. David wasn’t sure when it became cool to appear to be talking to someone. He’d read something the night before that stuck with him: Reason is a small word, but a most perfect thing. Some old Greek Jew said it when he was talking about being grateful for the natural powers men possess — life, death, soul, imagination, all that. None of these Jews ever talked about trying to be cool, or trying to impress anyone. They never got down and demanded respect, or complained about being disrespected. It was always about being aware that your deeds were your legacy and how you were viewed wasn’t based on something as illusory as respect. Content was the thing.

It was a point that didn’t exactly sit well with David. Not that he didn’t believe it, only that he hoped it wasn’t true for everyone. Because if so, he was fucked.

As it related to someone like Slim Joe, however, it seemed apt: What the fuck was he grateful for, really? All he wanted was for people to stare at him, maybe fear him. Normally, David tried not to think about the people he was about to kill. Once they became people, you could sort of imagine them being someone’s husband, someone’s brother, someone’s son, and then you started to imagine them as babies, and his job became harder. Usually, David tried to depersonalize the experience as much as possible. The world was usually a better place for his work. Even when he did contract work, he tended to kill bad guys as much as possible, not just cheating spouses, though he’d done that on occasion, too, like when Jennifer was pregnant and they didn’t know how they’d afford all the prenatal care.

David opened up the Mustang’s glove box, and, sure enough, there was a TEC-9. Of all the guns to keep in your car, the TEC-9 was among the worst, since they tended to jam more often than shoot. TEC-9s looked cool, though, which David assumed was enough for Slim Joe to choose it over the arsenal of practical assault weapons inside the house. David pulled out the gun and put it on his lap, then tossed Slim Joe’s phone into the glove box and closed it.

“Why’d you do that?” Slim Joe finally asked.

“You expecting a call?”

“Nah, man, I’m just freaked out,” he said. “You just roll up on me in a parking lot and tell me to drive, man, I’m a little on edge about that shit, you feel me? Now you got my TEC on your lap.”

“I feel you,” David said, the words sounding absurd coming out of his mouth, and David made a note to himself never to put those three words together again.

“Are you here to kill me?” Slim Joe said. Maybe he wasn’t so fucking stupid.

“Suppose I am,” David said. “There something you’d want to admit to, so maybe I don’t have to torture you first?”

“I’d want you to know,” Slim Joe said, “whatever beef I got with Bennie, that’s got nothing to do with you. That’s family shit, you feel me? Me and you, I feel like, you know, we bonded and shit while you were getting your face put back together.”

“Sure,” David said. He turned the TEC-9 over in his lap, inspected the clip. It had a full thirty-two rounds. That solved a problem. The gun was fairly light — two, maybe three pounds — which meant you really had to use some force if you wanted to beat someone with it, but it could be done. Metal versus flesh tended to have predictable results.

“So we’re straight, right?”

“Right,” David said.

“That’s a relief, dog,” he said.

“You tell anyone about me?”

Slim Joe swallowed. It looked like he was having some difficulty with general body functions, particularly now that David could see bulbs of sweat dotting his forehead. “Nah,” he said. “Bennie said keep your name out my mouth, so that’s what I’ve done.”

“So, your friends ask you where you’ve been living these last few months, what do you say?”

“Just that Bennie got me up in a big-ass crib for doing him a favor,” Slim Joe said.

“Rabbi Gottlieb?”

“Yeah,” he said, excited now, as if David wasn’t sitting there playing with his TEC-9. “You heard about that? Cuz Bennie said I couldn’t say shit about that.”

“It’s all right,” David said, the dumb motherfucker practically jumping out of his seat to tell the story. “How’d that go down?”

“Basically? I tied him up and forced about twenty shots of Jack down his throat, right? Make it look like he was drunk if they ever find his body, cuz Bennie, he was like, don’t beat him or nothing, but then the rabbi, he got mouthy on me so I ended up breaking some of his fingers and toes. I thought that shit was gonna come back on me, but then the boat motor pretty much ate him up, so it worked out fine.”

“Where was this?”

“The crib,” he said. “In the weight room. I put him right up against the mirror so he could see. I thought that was pretty hardcore, some Reservoir Dogs shit.” Slim Joe was giddy now.

David had always treated killing people as something you did with as little fanfare as possible. He’d done some torturing when he was younger, even broke the kneecap of a guy once. Frank Moti, an alderman in the First Ward, who Ronnie said had screwed him out of money on a zoning deal. You smack someone in the kneecap a few times with a ball-peen hammer, they throw up from the pain, there’s a mess everywhere, they can’t speak, they can’t walk, and then you try to send them to the bank to get your money and they crumble on the street, or someone sees them with their bones sticking out of their pants and they call the cops. Moti didn’t do that, instead he had a stroke right there in Ronnie’s basement, so Fat Monte ended up dumping him a block from a hospital. Guy ended up serving another dozen years at city hall with a limp and a frozen eye. Moti never said a word, and Ronnie still didn’t get his money. What was the use?

If the Family sent him out to kill someone, it was usually to make sure a secret remained a secret. Or maybe it was to keep some larger peace, or, and this wasn’t as frequent as it used to be, to exact revenge. That was street-gang shit, and it only led to bigger problems. That David himself was still alive, and not killed to keep a larger peace, in this case with the feds, weighed on him somewhat. He knew it meant either Chema or Fat Monte’s cousin Neal or, more likely, both, were dead because of it.

Though, it occurred to David that just having this conversation with Slim Joe was a kind of torture, prolonging the inevitable and all, but in this case David needed to know certain things.

“So you killed him in the house?”

“Naw, I just beat him there,” Slim Joe said. “Drowned him in Lake Mead and then dumped him, let the boat roll up on him.” David could hear the excitement in his voice, the memory of killing Rabbi Gottlieb firing him up. “So many bodies in there, it’s amazing anyone found him. That’s like our fucking cornfields, on the real.”

“Why’d they have you do him?”

“Bennie didn’t tell me that,” Slim Joe said.

“You didn’t beat it out of him?”

Slim Joe smiled. “I might have tried some words on him.”

“And what did he say?”

“He mostly just cried,” Slim Joe said. “Then he said he wouldn’t tell no one about Bennie. I guess he heard about some job Bennie was planning.”

David was both confused and surprised. Confused that they’d even attempt to run the body business under the nose of a real rabbi since it seemed far too risky a proposition, and surprised it had taken so long for Bennie to act on what would be a readily apparent situation. If Bennie had something on Rabbi Gottlieb, like he did on Rabbi Kales, it was more likely that Rabbi Gottlieb would have run to the police, so David assumed that whatever Rabbi Gottlieb learned was not because Bennie or Rabbi Kales tried to get him into the business. The poor fucker probably found out about it by being a good and diligent human being. The wrong kind of guy to kill, in David’s opinion.

“Personally?” Slim Joe said. “I think it had more to do with him touching the kids. That’s what I heard.”

“He was molesting the kids?”

“Allegedly,” Slim Joe said. “Bennie told me he had to go.”

David doubted that. If it had been true, Bennie would have done the ugly himself. One of his kids was in that school, after all. Sounded more like a way to get Slim Joe interested in doing the job. A little motivation beyond the chance to just kill someone. He remembered needing that starting out. “That your first job?” David asked.

“Yeah,” Slim Joe said. “It was fucked-up at first, but now I feel like I got a taste for it. Hoping you’ll show me some moves down the line. Heard you were the fucking Grim Reaper in Chicago.”

“Where’d you hear that?”

“You know,” Slim Joe said, “I got the Internet.”

“So you know my name?”

Slim Joe licked his lips, reached over and flipped on the AC, even though it was only about fifty degrees outside, and then didn’t say anything. His silence was answer enough.

“You tell anyone else my name?”

“Nah. I keep the omertà like it’s my job, homie.”

Clearly, David thought. “You didn’t mention me to your mother?”

“Naw,” he said. “I mean, I told her I met someone who was down with our idea, like, who had some real faith on it, because she knows Bennie thinks it’s bullshit, but she’s been knowing him for all her life and knows he’s all about big-dollar gigs, not this small-business shit.”

“So,” David said, “at no point did you say my name to your mother.”

“That’s what I said.” Slim Joe was getting angry now, which meant he was probably lying. He’d have to tell Bennie that. “On her grave, I swear it.”

“You don’t swear on someone’s grave before they’re dead,” David said. “That’s like asking for them to be killed.”

“Really?” Slim Joe seemed baffled by this.

“That’s what the Torah says,” David said, not that he thought that was true, but sometimes, like right before you’re about to kill someone, it’s just easier to lie.

Ten minutes later, they were pulling down Hillpointe, the temple coming up on the right, the cemetery and funeral home on the left, signs everywhere for the schools, Stars of David poking out around every corner. It was Sunday, so there was no construction going on, but there were a few cars parked in the temple’s lot. Across the street, however, the cemetery was empty, and though there were lights on at the funeral home, there weren’t any cars in the front lot, which was good. This was going to work out fine. David instructed Slim Joe to pull through the service entrance to the funeral home and then back behind the main building, where there was an alley between the home and the actual morgue where the bodies were unloaded. The entire lot was surrounded by a seven-foot brick fence and then rows of full-grown weeping willows, which must have cost a fortune to have planted, though David again had to admire Bennie’s forethought. It looked pretty, sure. More importantly, between the brick wall and the trees, all views were completely obstructed. Sound was duly muted, too.

“Park here,” David said, “and keep it running.” Slim Joe did as he was told, because that’s what he’d been trained to do, though David could see he found this whole proposition dubious.

“So, what’s this job?” Slim Joe said. “We gonna rob some graves?”

“You don’t know about this place?” David asked.

Slim Joe looked around. “Well yeah,” he said. “Isn’t this Bennie’s big deal?”

“Is it?”

“Yeah, I mean,” he said, “it’s why I had to off the rabbi and it’s why you’re here, right? Run this game? You thinking we cut out Bennie and go it together? Bonnie and Clyde style?”

“No disrespect?” David said, and Slim Joe just stared at him, not getting it. Whatever. David had learned enough. Slim Joe knew too much and probably told at least his mother about David, maybe even his real name. He reached over and turned on the stereo until the car filled with the sound of nothing but bass. There were some lyrics in there somewhere, David was sure, but he couldn’t make them out over the dusty-sounding boom-de-boom-de-boom-boom of the bass and the boo-ya of the shotgun fire the song employed as, David assumed, menacing authenticity. Like anyone still used shotguns.

Slim Joe opened his mouth to say something, and David shoved the TEC-9 in, felt Slim Joe’s front teeth crack and give way, and squeezed the trigger once, putting a bullet right through Slim Joe’s medulla oblongata, David’s preferred sweet spot, and into the headrest. The human skull was the best silencer in the world, and the nice, new ergonomic safety design of modern headrests provided plenty of sound cushion, too. The rap music, however, really did the trick.

He set the gun back on his lap, took out a small packet of wet-naps from his pocket, and carefully wiped the gun down and then put it in Slim Joe’s hand, made sure his prints were all over it, and then dropped it on the floor. He then took a few moments to wipe down all the surfaces he’d touched, pulled out Slim Joe’s phone and wiped that down, too. It was more than he needed to do, more careful than he needed to be by a mile, since no one would ever find Slim Joe’s body or this car, but still: You were either a professional or you weren’t. No need to be sloppy just because you feel like you’re in control.

David checked himself in the rearview mirror, made sure there wasn’t any spatter on him — last thing he wanted was to be walking around with bits of Slim Joe stuck to his face — then killed the Mustang’s ignition, took one last look around the car to make sure he hadn’t left anything important sitting about, and then stepped out into the late morning.

It was brisk outside with a nice breeze, not like the gales that came off the lake back home, and Rabbi David Cohen caught the whiff of cooking meat coming from somewhere in the neighborhood. It was about ten thirty, pretty early for someone to be having a barbecue, though not outside the realm of possibility in a twenty-four-hour town like Las Vegas. Steak and eggs, that’s probably what it was. Yeah, that would work, the idea of red meat finally starting to sound palatable. Hit the whole plate with a little Tabasco, maybe get some breakfast potatoes, maybe a nice cigar, call it brunch.

David walked across the street to the temple, where his Range Rover was parked, let himself in the back door with his keys, avoided the actual synagogue, where he heard some laughing and talking, like maybe there were a couple of people having a normal conversation, unaware that there was a dead gangster about one hundred yards away, and then entered his office. It was still dusty and dark with all the books stacked up on the shelves and the floor, plus all of Rabbi Gottlieb’s non-personal effects — stacks of probably unread issues of The New Yorker, articles clipped out of the Review-Journal, a corkboard filled with coupons for free car washes. He’d clean the place himself, let a little light in, see what he could get rid of. This was his place of business now, so he didn’t want to get too cozy, because cozy was soon lazy, and he wasn’t ever going to be that.

He fished a scrap of paper from his pocket, then dialed out on the office phone.

“You done?” Bennie asked. Not even a hello.

“Yeah,” David said. “He’s back behind the mortuary, just like you said.”

“Anyone see you there?”

“Only Slim Joe,” David said.

“Okay,” Bennie said.

“Listen,” David said. “His mother, she probably knows my name.”

There was silence for a moment, followed by a long sigh. “Shit,” Bennie said. “He could’ve been running the Wild Horse in a couple years, you know? Dumb fuck.” He paused for what seemed like a long time. “Well, she would have begun to wonder why he wasn’t calling anyway. All right. I’ll send someone out to Palm Springs in the morning, get it taken care of. You good? You need anything?”

“Steak and eggs,” David said.

“What’s that?”

“I want some steak and eggs,” David said. He thought for a moment, then added, “and buttermilk pancakes.”

“Go get yourself some steak and eggs and buttermilk pancakes then,” Bennie said.

“You want your new rabbi out eating a nonkosher meal?”

“Jesus,” Bennie said. “You think you’re on a cruise ship? Anything else?”

“Couple cigars,” David said. “And some breakfast potatoes, with the skin on. Maybe some of that blueberry shit. Compote.”

“Jesus,” Bennie said. “You should’ve told me this before you did your job, I would have had Joe get this shit together.” David heard Bennie cover the phone and then shout for his wife, Rachel. David couldn’t make out what Bennie said after that, but when he came back on the line, he said, “How you want your steak, Rabbi?”