Gangsterland

CHAPTER EIGHT

That afternoon, after David helped the teenagers wrangle the last of the sugar-addled kids off the playground and break down the tents and deflate the dreidel, he walked across the street to the funeral home, where he found Bennie pacing out front.

“You have a good time today, Rabbi?” Bennie asked. He was still on the phone, so he covered the receiver with his hand.

“It was fine.”

“Looked like you were going to puke for a minute there.”

“I don’t like public speaking,” David said.

“You want me to get you some Valium? Maybe another steak?”

“I’ll make it work.”

Bennie put a hand up to indicate he was back on the phone. “Here’s the deal,” Bennie said, “you tell Danny to get out of town, I don’t care where he goes. Let this shit blow over, and then we’ll deal with it after the holidays. Last thing I want is to get subpoenaed on Christmas Eve, because that’s how they’d do it, right? Okay.” Bennie closed his phone and slipped it into his pocket, then gave a snort. “You know what’s unsatisfying? You can’t hang up on anyone anymore. You can’t slam the phone down. I just get to flip it closed. Used to be you could get some aggression out on a phone, not anymore. Now I just get to stand here and be pissed off.”

“You got a problem?”

Bennie eyed David curiously. “You want to know?”

“Doesn’t matter one way or another,” David said.

“So you’re my consigliere now?”

“That’s a bullshit word,” David said.

“Yeah,” Bennie said, “I always thought so, too. I blame Coppola for that stupidity.” He rubbed that spot on his neck absently. “I’d kill someone for a cigarette right now.”

“Easier just to have a cigarette and leave the killing to someone else.”

“Can’t,” Bennie said. He pointed to his scar. “See that? Thyroid cancer. Seven years clean of the bug. Not gonna start inhaling cancer just to feel better about myself. Nearly died from that shit. Probably will die from it at some point. Cancer’s the one thing more efficient than you ever were.” He rubbed the scar again. “Some shit went down last night at the club. Guy gets his hands all over one of the girls on the floor, so the bouncers tell him to knock it off or go to the VIP room. The guy tells one of our bouncers to go fuck himself, and so they dragged him out back and stomped the shit out of him.”

“That who I’m burying?” David asked.

“No,” Bennie said. “He’s over at Sunrise Hospital. Paralyzed from the neck down, apparently bit off his own tongue, lost an eye. They tossed him in a Dumpster when they were done with him, didn’t realize he still had some buddies inside.”

“That’s stupid,” David said.

“No, what’s stupid is that it’s all on camera,” Bennie said. “Pawn shop next door records everything. Only legit pawn shop in the fucking world and it’s next to my club.”

“The bouncers are your guys?”

“Yeah.”

“Were you there?”

“Yes and no,” Bennie said. “If my wife asks, yes. If someone else asks, no.”

“Were you doing something illegal?”

“No,” Bennie said. “This new dancer, Sierra, she wanted to suck my dick, I wasn’t gonna deny her.” He actually looked remorseful for a moment. “Rachel’s been sick for almost a year.”

“You trust this Sierra?”

“I don’t even know her real name,” Bennie said.

“You should give them up,” David said.

Bennie considered this. “Gang enhancement, they could get twenty on this,” he said.

“They get twenty, you might get life if they decide to really probe; which sounds better to you?” David said. “Unless they’re the type who’d flip, get them a decent lawyer, maybe he gets a plea and they get five years, out in three on good behavior.”

“These aren’t good-behavior guys,” Bennie said. David could see the wheels turning in Bennie’s head, however, the idea taking root. “That how you do it in Chicago?”

“We don’t get caught in Chicago.”

“I wouldn’t be so sure of that.” He checked his watch. “Jesus, I gotta get to the mall before sundown to pick up presents for the girls. This eight nights of presents thing is a real slog. I’ve been trying to convince Rachel we should just light the candles and sing the Neil Diamond songs for eight days and give out presents on Christmas. She’s not hearing it. We’ve got a tree. That’s her one concession. When I was a kid, my dad used to climb up on the roof on Christmas Eve and would leave a bunch of reindeer prints in the snow, throw some glitter down the chimney.” He paused, lost in the memory. “What about you?”

“My dad was dead by the time I was ten,” David said. “I don’t really remember much before that.”

“How did he go?”

“Straight off the IBM Building.”

“The IBM Building? Like off the top?”

“It was still being built,” David said. “They tossed him out a window on the thirty-second floor.”

“Chicago does its business, I’ll say that,” Bennie said. A minivan pulled down the street, and Bennie waved at the driver, motioned for him to pull over, which he did, directly in front of the funeral home. The doors slid open, and six old men stepped slowly out onto the sidewalk. Two of them had walkers, the rest of them should have; David thought that if they were under eighty years old, he’d eat his shoe. Bennie shook each man’s hand warmly, others he also hugged, one he actually kissed on the cheek. A bunch of old thugs, David realized, their gangster suits and tommy guns traded in for Sansabelt pants and oxygen tanks.

Bennie handed the driver a roll of bills. “Give them a hundred each,” he told him. “Walk them over, then go pick up some pasta over at the Venetian and bring it back in, say, ninety minutes. Keep whatever’s left.”

“What was that?” David asked when the driver walked away after the meandering men.

“Those are your mourners,” Bennie said. “Bring them in from Sun City.”

“You’re not worried about that?”

“You know what it would take to get a warrant for a wire on a funeral home? A cemetery? Much less a temple? Besides, I have no business interest in this place. I’m just a concerned member of the temple, happy to lend my checkbook to worthy causes.”

The front door of the funeral home opened, and a Mexican guy in a dark gray suit stepped out. David had seen him on a few occasions in the last couple weeks, usually walking back and forth to the temple with paperwork for the business office. Whenever they made eye contact, the Mexican would drop his eyes, like he was afraid he’d catch on fire just from looking at him. “Mr. Savone,” he said, “everything’s ready if Rabbi Cohen would like to begin.” He handed Bennie two manila folders.

“Thanks, Ruben,” Bennie said. “Give us five minutes.”

“Of course,” he said, and he disappeared back inside.

“That’s Ruben,” Bennie said. “You haven’t met?”

“No,” David said.

“Good,” Bennie said. “He was my first project. Plucked him out of the pound and sent him out to Arizona to get a degree in mortuary science. He’s been here for five years.”

“What does he know?” David asked.

“Just enough,” Bennie said. “He’s solid. He does his job, gives everybody that comes through the respect and dignity they deserve, unless otherwise directed.”

“What’s his take?”

“Salary and benefits,” Bennie said. “And as far as he knows, you are what you are, and Rabbi Kales is what he is, so don’t start thinking about how he’s just another person you’ll eventually have to kill.”

It didn’t matter to David what Ruben was paid. He just wanted to know how Bennie was keeping him quiet and what David would need to do if he wanted to keep him quiet, too, if this shit with the body tissue came to fruition. Though, the more he thought about it, the more it seemed prudent to clue Bennie in, give him a cut of the action versus being forced to cut him in at some later date.

Bennie gave David the folders. “This is who you’re burying today,” he said.

David opened the first folder and read for a moment. It said that the person was named Lionel Berkowitz, that he was sixty and that the family requested a private service and simple headstone noting his life and death. A simple recitation of the Kaddish and a few remarks would be sufficient. A full sermon was typed out for him to recite, the Hebrew prayers rendered phonetically, just in case. “Why even bother with this?” David asked.

“That’s what the family wanted,” Bennie said. “We do what the families tell us.”

It was a curious thing to say, more mysterious than Bennie was prone to be, so David opened the second file and saw that it was for a woman named Rhoda Kochman, age seventy-three, born Rhoda Heaton in Saint Louis to Lonnie and Edith Heaton, preceded in death by her beloved husband Raymond Kochman, a founding member of Temple Beth Israel, survived by. .

“What is this?” David said.

“Your four o’clock,” Bennie said.

“Someone hit a seventy-three-year-old lady?”

“I don’t know how she died,” Bennie said. “Rachel probably does. They were on a bunch of planning committees for the book drive. Lady was at my house more than I was.”

It dawned on David then that he wouldn’t just be presiding over the funerals of the war dead, that he might not know one body to the next who was a natural death versus a murder. Probably better all the way around, David realized, and certainly a smart decision by Bennie. But it got him wondering about something. “Rabbi Gottlieb,” David said, “he do both?”

“A few times. But it wouldn’t be prudent to speak poorly of the dead,” Bennie said. “Rabbi Kales wouldn’t approve.” Bennie checked his watch again. “I need to get moving, and you need to get to throwing dirt.”

“If someone comes from Chicago,” David said, “I want to see them first.”

“Closed casket,” Bennie said. “No can do.”

“I wasn’t asking permission,” David said.

Bennie stared at David without speaking for ten, fifteen, thirty seconds. “Fine,” he said, eventually. He paused again. Another fifteen unblinking seconds. “But that means you see every body that comes through. You prepared to do that?”

“Nothing I haven’t seen before.”

“You see a dead kid before? You ever see that? Like a toddler? A newborn? You ever see a stillborn?”

“Know that the reward unto the righteous is not of this world,” David said.

Bennie took a deep breath, then another. “You better go tell Ruben you want to see the bodies. Tell him you want to do some sort of religious shit to them. He won’t know any better.”

Bennie started to walk away, then turned around. He already had his phone out. “You really think I should give them up?”

“They know anything important?” David asked.

“They’re just muscle,” Bennie said.

“This guy they paralyzed, he a local?”

“A dentist from Omaha,” Bennie said. “In for some implant convention at the MGM. Wife, couple kids.”

“Give them up,” David said.

“My insurance is going to go through the roof. Would have been easier if they’d killed him.” Bennie looked out toward the Strip. You couldn’t see any of the casinos from this vantage point, couldn’t see anything other than houses and palm trees and blue sky. “You know what Bugsy Siegel said about this place? It turns women into men, and men into idiots. If he saw this place today? He’d think he walked into an insane asylum.”

“Maybe give that newspaper guy a call,” David said.

“Curran?”

“Beat him to the punch,” David said. “Give him a quote. Tell him you’re ashamed of what happened and that you’re going to see that this guy gets the best treatment available. All that.”

“And then, what? Go in and smother him?”

“Maybe do the right thing,” David said, “and pay his bills.”

Bennie pinched his mouth, contemplated for a few seconds. “Happy Hanukkah, Rabbi,” he said.

“You, too,” David said.

Dead bodies didn’t bother Rabbi David Cohen. He’d seen plenty of them over the years. That’s what David believed to be true, anyway, as he followed Ruben into the mortuary to look at the bodies of Lionel Berkowitz and Rhoda Kochman.

David and Ruben walked through the funeral home — the portion that actually looked like a home, in this case someone’s grandmother’s house, replete with couches covered in velvet, thick curtains, ornate coffee tables, pastoral art, and, inexplicably, plates of butter cookies everywhere, which is maybe why it was called Kales Mortuary & Home of Peace, since it was hard to imagine feeling anything but drowsy and restful in that joint. And then they were outside, back where David killed Slim Joe, the mortuary only a few feet away and closing fast.

“You ever see a dead body before?” Ruben asked.

“Yes, of course,” David said.

“Someone who’s been in an accident?”

“Yes.”

“Not like a drowning or an OD,” Ruben said. They were at the door now, which had a sign that said AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY, and Ruben was visibly nervous.

“I get it,” David said.

“Because, as you know, we don’t do much restorative work unless the family asks for it,” Ruben said, “and in this case, uh, Mr. Berkowitz’s family was very specific that he be left alone.”

“Ruben,” David said, “do you mind if I call you Ruben?”

“Of course not, Rabbi Cohen.”

“Ruben, do you know what happens to the Jews when the End of Days comes?”

“No disrespect,” Ruben said, and David had to stop himself from grabbing Ruben by the throat and choking him to death, “but I’m not really up on a lot of the more religious aspects of Judaism. I appreciate everything you do and Rabbi Kales, too, but I’m just not a believer in that way.”

“That’s fine,” David said. “What happens is that the dead are flushed with the Dew of Resurrection, and we return as our most vibrant selves, and then we roll through a series of underground tunnels to the Mount of Olives in Israel.”

David hoped Ruben wouldn’t question him on that, since it was one of the strangest things he’d learned in all the eschatology he’d read. “The point, Ruben, is that even the most horribly disfigured Jews will eventually be whole again,” David said. He paused for a moment, trying to think of something else he could add to convince Ruben that whatever he was about to see was not going to make him pass out. “It is one of the thirteen principles of our faith, Ruben, and when the time comes, it will make sense. That is what we believe.”

“Okay then,” he said. Ruben opened the door, and David followed him past a reception desk, where a young woman sat reading People magazine, and down a narrow hallway, which led to the morgue. Ruben stepped through a set of double safety doors, and the first thing David saw was the body of a naked man, belly up on the embalming table.

There was another young Mexican kid, this one in medical scrubs, cleaning the body. The room smelled like a mixture of disinfectant and body odor, though David didn’t know if that was coming from the dead guy or the one cleaning him, along with a pungent smell that reminded David of rotting lamb (and which, he realized, would forever preclude him from eating lamb). There was a refrigeration unit against one wall and then three other tables, which David was pleased to see were empty, and the room was lit with bright halogens that gave the space a white glow. He didn’t know the guy on the table; all he knew was that he didn’t have a funeral the next day, so it must have been one Rabbi Kales was doing, or someone working freelance was coming in.

“Miguel,” Ruben said to the kid working on the naked dead guy, “this is Rabbi Cohen. He’s taking over for Rabbi Gottlieb.”

“Pleased,” Miguel said, and he gave David a shy smile. He was just another person doing a dirty job, David thought, which made David examine Ruben more closely. He was wearing a conservative suit, but it was cut precisely, and he had a thick gold watch on his wrist, an absurd topaz pinkie ring, perfectly shined black shoes on his feet. In fact, the more David examined the suit, the more familiar it looked, since he had a matching one in his own closet. Salary, benefits, and probably whatever they could pinch off the dead or get on the cheap from Bennie’s contacts, David thought.

David followed Ruben through another set of double doors and into a well-lit waiting room that housed two coffins — both simple pine boxes — on wheeled platforms, two chairs, and another velvet sofa. A door led out of the room and onto the service road that wound through the cemetery. David saw through the one window in the room that there was already a hearse parked outside, the driver standing next to it, sipping coffee from a Styrofoam cup.

“From now on,” Ruben said, and David realized he didn’t know if Ruben had been talking the entire time, he’d been so focused on keeping everything as normal and blasé as possible, “maybe it would be easier if you just came down in the morning before a service, so that we don’t need to reopen the coffins, since I know that’s against Jewish law.”

“Yes,” David said. He didn’t know if that was strictly true, though he figured if Ruben knew that fact, it probably had some truth in it.

Ruben went around and unlatched the top of both coffins, but didn’t open them. “Should I step out?” he asked. Polite guy. Probably was a real comfort to the actual grieving families. His manner even made David feel at ease.

“Yes,” David said, “because of the Jewish law.”

“I’ll be outside,” he said. “Just let me know when you’re ready, and then we can take Mr. Berkowitz down to his resting place.”

“Which one is Mr. Berkowitz?”

“The one on the right,” Ruben said.

“Great, thank you,” David said, then he thought maybe he was being too informal, so he added, “And bless you for the work you do.”

David waited until Ruben was engaged in conversation outside with the hearse driver before he opened the coffin completely. He noticed a few things almost immediately. The first was that he wasn’t quite sure what he was looking at. Obviously, there was a body in the coffin, a head, a neck, a chest, he could make those out. . but the head was missing its ears. And it wasn’t like they’d been severed in some kind of accident. David could see the jagged cuts that were made around the ears, even with all the dried blood that was gathered there. Though, that wasn’t what killed him. Getting his eyelids slit off hadn’t killed him either, nor had the cigarette burns on his face. All were survivable wounds.

David didn’t know anyone who could survive without a throat, however, and they’d done a good job with that, cutting Paul Bruno’s neck in a full circle, likely using piano wire from the front, the way Fat Monte always liked to take out snitches, so they could see it happening.

Bruno the Butcher. Poor bastard. He’d been snitching for years, but no one really gave a shit, since he only dimed out the people the Family wanted him to dime out, the loose threads, the idiots who were working on the fringes, guys like Lemonhead, who’d tried to blackmail a straight-edge city councilman over some prostitution shit. Ronnie was always smart about letting people like Paul Bruno do the dirty laundry for them.

What the fuck was going on in Chicago? He’d known Paul Bruno his entire life, could remember playing jacks with him out front of the butcher shop while his dad and Paul’s dad talked shop inside. Paul’s dad gave them turkeys every Thanksgiving, free of charge, after David’s mom disavowed the Family and money got scarce; Paul’s mom always brought over soups and casseroles and magazines and books. Jennifer’s family was tight with them, too; the Frangellos and the Brunos bowled and played bridge together, just like regular people.

Paul so confused growing up; David remembered that, too. Tried to be a tough guy. David remembered Jennifer telling him how she’d always known he was gay, from back when they were kids.

And now here he was. Not just done ugly. Done ugly and personally — the cigarette burns, the eyelids. And that Paul was here, not just thrown into a ditch somewhere, told David that whatever information Paul had given out was not the negligible shit of the past, because the Family would make an example out of him if that was the case, leave him somewhere as a message to other snitches. This was private and personal, and that gave David pause.

David closed the coffin and wheeled it back into the morgue. “Miguel,” he said, “you need to clean this body.”

“The man?”

“Yes, the man,” David said.

“I’m sorry, Rabbi, but Ruben said that the family requested he not be touched, which I understood to mean that he wasn’t to be cleaned.”

“And I’m telling you to clean him.”

“I’m sorry, Rabbi,” Miguel said, “but I’m not sure I understand.”

“I don’t care what you understand,” David said.

Miguel started to say something, stopped himself for a moment, then said, “I’ll do it right away, Rabbi.”

“And I want you to fix all these wounds,” David said. “You understand that?”

“Yes, Rabbi, that’s no problem.”

David went back into the waiting room, grabbed a chair, and slid it into the morgue, where he watched Miguel wash down Paul Bruno’s whole body, from the top of his head to the bottom of his feet.