Gangster Nation

by Tod Goldberg

  The man chuckled. “He never did.”

  A golem. He was a golem.

  The nurse came over to David’s bedside. “Rabbi, your cousin is here to see you. Came all the way from Chicago.”

  An assassin. He was an assassin.

  David tried to get up, but that wasn’t happening. He was attached to so many IVs and catheters; he was essentially imprisoned by his own body.

  The man waited for the nurse to leave and then closed the door behind her. Came and stood at the foot of David’s bed. “Do you know me?” he asked.

  David shook his head.

  “You killed my partner,” he said. “Jeff Hopper.”

  Not an assassin. An FBI agent. Except he was dressed like he was coming from the gym. If he was here to arrest him, David would already be cuffed to the bed.

  “I’ve been looking for you for a long time,” he said. “I imagined when I found you, I’d kill you. But I guess someone beat me to it.” He came around to the side of the bed, examined the five different hanging bags that pumped meds into David. “I suppose I could OD you, but that seems like a pleasant way out. Not what the Rain Man deserves.” He sat down in the chair Dr. Melnikoff had vacated. “But I suppose what we deserve has very little to do with what we get. You and me, we have a lot to discuss.”

  The door to David’s room opened and Dr. Melnikoff stood there, looking panicked. “Who are you?”

  “I’m Rabbi Cohen’s cousin,” he said. “Matthew.”

  “This door is not to be closed.” He pointed at the whiteboard on the wall, where it said DOOR MUST REMAIN OPEN AT ALL TIMES/FALLING RISK. He came and picked up the chart again, flipped through it. “And I’m sorry, I don’t have you on the approved visitor list. I’m going to need you to contact Rachel Savone if you’d like to come back.”

  “I’ll do that,” Matthew said. “The nurse who let me in tonight? It’s not her fault. I was just so worried.” He put up a giant hand. “Flew in from Chicago as soon as I heard the news. Cousin Dave is so private,” he said, and there was that smile, that dimple. “I didn’t even know he was having surgery.”

  “You’ll need to get the proper pass,” the doctor said, but he didn’t sound concerned. “Well, as long as you’re here, you can be here for the big moment. Rabbi Cohen hasn’t seen his new face yet.”

  “His new face?”

  “Newish,” Dr. Melnikoff said. He disappeared into the bathroom, came out with a hand mirror, came to the opposite side of the bed from where Matthew now sat. “Rabbi, this may seem disorienting at first, but understand that you are still very swollen. In a week, you will look different still. But this will begin to give you a sense of where you are in the process.”

  He held the mirror a few inches from David’s face. At first, David thought he was hallucinating again, that he was lost in a memory. He blinked twice. Looked over at Matthew, the FBI agent, whose mouth had turned into a crooked smile. Looked over the top of the mirror, at the lights of Las Vegas, and beyond, east toward Chicago. Toward his past. Toward his wife and his son and the man he’d left behind in that meat truck three years ago.

  And then, finally, back to his reflection, at the face now returned to him.

  Sal Cupertine.

  Acknowledgments

  From the first line of this book to the very last, I have benefited from the persistence, kindness, cajoling, midnight texts, meals, tough love, downright threats, and utter devotion of my wonderful editor Dan Smetanka. We started talking about how this book might evolve from almost the moment we finished working on Gangsterland . . . and for the next three years Dan never stopped demanding that I take big risks. I am indebted to your hard work and sleepless nights on my behalf. I may have to plant a tree in Israel in your name if I ever put you through this gauntlet again. I am likewise indebted to my amazing, kind, and supportive agent Jennie Dunham, who has been by my side for nearly twenty years. A better consigliere does not exist and I am so happy to have grown up right beside you. And, as well, I have been so lucky to have the indefatigable Judi Farkas getting my work into the hands of people who make pictures move. I am so thankful for your guidance, your generosity, and your foresight. There’s at least one good person in Hollywood.

  Thank you to the whole team at Counterpoint: from publisher Andy Hunter; to associate publisher and publicity guru Megan Fishmann (who already helped make my dreams come true once, which is a pretty good record); to associate publisher and marketing goddess Jennifer Kovitz; to Wah-Ming Chang, who makes my words look better than they deserve to look; to everyone else between the two coasts who go to work each day in the service of literature. Special thanks to foreign rights agent Judy Klein, who is charged with selling me around the world and who, inexplicably, has been able to do just that. Thank you in all languages!

  No book gets written without the tremendous support of some great people. These are mine: my brother, Lee Goldberg, and my sisters Karen Dinino and Linda Woods; partner-in-crime Brad Meltzer; Club 3012 and all of my great friends in the Low Residency MFA in Creative Writing & Writing for the Performing Arts at the University of California, Riverside, without whom I would be lost, and who make having a day job one of the great honors of my life; Agam Patel, who has my back, my front, and both of my sides, daily; Gina Frangello, who was always willing to give me mundane information about Chicago at a moment’s notice; Rabbi Malcolm Cohen, Stefanie Helms, and all of Temple Sinai of Las Vegas, I thank you for having a really, really good sense of humor; Vitaly Sigal provided excellent legal advice without a hint of suspicion; Jim Kochel, as per usual, provided me insight on certain, shall we day, shady aspects of the casino industry; Julia Pistell and Rider Strong, my Literary Disco cohosts, are my regular and beloved checks and balances, and I so appreciate you giving me time to finish this book when I needed it most; Mechtild Dunofsky keeps my mind in working order—for that, I and everyone I encounter are grateful. Attending the Writers’ Police Academy, run by Detective Lee Lofland, was an indispensable experience, and I would like to thank, in particular: Officer Matt Ninham, who taught me about the operations of Native American gangs, patiently answered all of my increasingly obsessive questions, and who, in the process, changed the course of this novel. I took great liberties with the information Officer Ninham gave me concerning the gangs, so any and all factual errors are mine alone, I assure you. Former Special Agent Randy Clifton taught me just how dead I would be in every single situation I’d ever imagined, so that was nice, and Officer Ian Nishimoto taught me how to shoot handguns and AR-15s (you don’t want me coming up behind you . . . or, well, coming up wide and to the left of you), and both men taught me a great deal about how and when people with guns end up shooting each other. I am deeply appreciative of all the law enforcement officers and instructors of the Writers’ Police Academy for their practical help and assistance.

  As one may suspect, I am not a rabbi. My characters’ interpretations of Judaism are not to be taken as the official word of the faith and, as ever, my characters’ understanding and application of Talmudic law isn’t always what it appears to be. Nor should the views of Judaism in this book be construed to be my beliefs . . . all of which is a long way of saying: This is a work of fiction. However, I did find several books especially helpful in the writing of this story—in addition to the Bible, the Torah, and the Talmud, all of which are quoted or paraphrased throughout—and which illuminated many of the thoughts and actions of the characters, as well as the wisdom they espouse: Modernity and the Holocaust by Zygmunt Bauman (Cornell University Press, 2001); The Holocaust in History by Michael R. Marrus (Brandeis, 1987); A Book of Jewish Thoughts, selected and arranged by Rabbi Joseph Herman Hertz (Bloch Publishing, 1926); Holy Mountain: Two Paths to One God by Rabbi Raphael H. Levine (Binfords & Mort, 1953); Policing Las Vegas: A History of Law Enforcement in Southern Nevada by Dennis N. Griffin (Huntington Press, 2005).

  Finally, my wife Wendy, the great l
ove of my life. She lives for days, weeks, months, and years on end with a rabbi, a hitman, and her husband, all of them moping around the house at once, and loves us all, unconditionally. Your people are my people.

  About the Author

  tod goldberg is the author of more than a dozen books, including Gangsterland, a finalist for the Hammett Prize; The House of Secrets, which he coauthored with Brad Meltzer; and the crime-tinged novels Living Dead Girl, a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and Fake Liar Cheat, plus five novels in the popular Burn Notice series. He is also the author of the story collection Simplify, a 2006 finalist for the SCIBA Award for Fiction and winner of the Other Voices Short Story Collection Prize, and Other Resort Cities. His essays, journalism, and criticism have appeared in many publications, including the Los Angeles Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Review of Books, Las Vegas Weekly, and Best American Essays, and have won five Nevada Press Association Awards. He lives in Indio, California, where he directs the Low Residency MFA in Creative Writing & Writing for the Performing Arts at the University of California, Riverside.

  Author photograph by Linda Woods