Gangsterland

by Tod Goldberg

  “I didn’t hear from anybody,” Jeff said.

  “That’s the problem with this business,” Dennis said. “Everyone’s too damn proud.” He patted Jeff on the shoulder.

  Dennis Tryon got back into his Cutlass. He pulled back up the street, made a U-turn, and came to a stop across from where Jeff and Matthew were still standing. He rolled down his window, motioned Jeff over.

  “Yeah?” Jeff said.

  “Listen,” Dennis said. “Don’t get yourself killed. No one would come to your funeral for fear of being recognized.” He extended his hand out the window, but Jeff didn’t take it right away. “Shake my hand,” Dennis said.

  “I don’t know if I should,” Jeff said.

  “Thing is, Jeff, it’s probably no worse than what you expect.”

  “That’s the problem I’m having,” Jeff said. “You didn’t need to give me this stuff. I already knew something was crooked.”

  “Well,” Dennis said, “be that as it may. I see some stuff here that makes me sick. But I’ve got five more years until I can take early retirement. When that day comes, there’s gonna be no second thoughts, that much I can assure you.”

  “So maybe you should hold on to this,” Jeff said, “in case you need to blackmail someone.”

  “I won’t lie. I thought about that,” he said. “I reckon that makes me no better than the animals I’ve been tending.” Dennis took a balled Kleenex from his pocket and blew his nose. “Whatever you do with that,” Dennis pointed at the envelope, “just know that maybe five years ago that boy would have been a chew toy in this place.”

  “All I’m going to do is read it,” Jeff said.

  “Well, good, then,” Dennis said. “You think you’ll get back into the bureau?”

  “No,” Jeff said. “Not now, anyway. So don’t worry, I’m not here to cause any problems for you.”

  “I know you’re not,” Dennis said. “I didn’t say anything to your office, you should know.”

  “It doesn’t matter, really,” Jeff said. He paused and thought about the steps that had brought him to this moment, the litany of mistakes that he accumulated trying to be the good guy. “Just tell me I’m not going to find out Ronnie Cupertine is an honorary guard or something.”

  Dennis laughed in a way Jeff didn’t find in the least bit authentic. “Well,” Dennis said, “next time you come through, call first. We’ll have lunch.”

  “I’m not ever going to come back this way,” Jeff said.

  Dennis rolled his window back up, gave Jeff a two-fingered salute, and was gone.

  It was amazing to Jeff how much paperwork accumulated during a cover-up. He and Matthew were parked across the street from the Four Treys Tavern in Roscoe Village, waiting to meet up with Fat Monte. They’d made him hours earlier, walking out of his apartment, which was only a few blocks down Damen, and decided to follow. When he ducked into the Four Treys, likely to watch the Packers and 49ers play in the Wild Card game, they decided to let him percolate a bit before they made their move. Besides, they had plenty of reading to do.

  “No wonder Stateville is always ankle-deep in problems,” Matthew said. “They’re meticulous in their record keeping of negligence.”

  What Dennis gave them wasn’t exactly the Pentagon Papers. In fact, to the layman, most of what he gave them would appear meaningless and mundane. Neto Espinoza was sent directly to Stateville on a parole violation and pending his trial on drug-trafficking charges—he was arrested near the Canadian border with over fifty pounds of heroin hidden under the bed lining of his truck—and was looking at serious time, particularly with the gang enhancement charges saddled on top of everything else.

  Normally a person like Neto, with gang affiliations and Family ties, too, would find himself segregated from the general prison population while he awaited his hearing, since the danger level was high. Both the Family and the 2-6 would want to make sure he wasn’t going to snitch, and there was a good chance they’d want retribution for losing so much product, since fifty pounds of heroin was worth a cool million dollars, maybe even more during the colder winter months when distribution slowed down.

  On the other end of the spectrum, the state would want to keep Neto segregated for the very hope that he would snitch, a kid like him easy bait for a decent interrogator. That’s how Jeff had found the CI Sal Cupertine killed, after all. And he was sure that if given the chance, he could have turned Neto Espinoza, too, if only he’d been aware of his existence.

  All of which made the fact that he was put into the general population exceptionally suspicious. His first cellmate was a career bank robber named Kyle Behen who was also awaiting trial, but he was moved out last April in favor of Thomas “Lemonhead” Nicolino, a career Family member (and, notably, a part of Fat Monte’s crew) whom Bruno himself had dimed out a few years before. Five days later, Neto was dead. Ten days, he’d already been cremated.

  The autopsy report came back with huge sums of cocaine and heroin in Neto’s system, enough to cause a perfectly healthy person to die of a heart attack. Problem was, the report also indicated that Neto had injected the drugs.

  Into his chest.

  Approximately, the report said, thirty-seven times.

  Matthew shook his head in disgust and handed the papers to Jeff. “It’s a joke. That’s what that is.”

  The autopsy report showed that the “injections” managed to crack Neto’s sternum in five places, not exactly a common self-inflicted wound. Jeff flipped through the stack of papers to see when the autopsy report was filed: June 27, 1998. Nearly three months after Neto’s death and cremation. Just another drug-induced heart attack. No mention of any likely complicity via a third party.

  And who was going to complain? Not Neto’s family. Not Neto’s public defender. Certainly not Neto’s coworkers in the Gangster 2-6 or the Family. The benefit of killing someone like Neto Espinoza in prison was that he existed beyond the law; the only people who cared about him were criminals. That was always the challenge when dealing with organized crime: You had to force those who suffered the most—the living—to turn their back on an entire way of life. Jeff thought he’d made some headway with Jennifer Cupertine, but the truth, he realized, was that Jennifer had already turned her back on the Family. That wasn’t the issue. The problem was that she hadn’t turned her back on her husband.

  Neto Espinoza was murdered in prison for what he might do or say when he found out his brother, Chema, had been murdered. Simple as that. Jeff didn’t think of Lemonhead Nicolino as the killing type, but who knew anymore. The whole world was a Ponzi scheme.

  Matthew cracked the knuckles on his right hand, then his left. Grabbed his chin and popped his neck and shoulders. He shook out his arms and legs, every joint along the way snapping audibly. Jeff watched him for a few seconds, imagined what it would be like to see that running at you on the lacrosse field, holding a stick. It wasn’t that he looked angry, it was that he looked ready to uncoil.

  Matthew turned on the radio to check the score of the game. The 49ers were leading the Pack by three with a couple of minutes left. “What do you think?” Matthew said.

  “He should be filled with joy right now,” Jeff said. He reached into the glove compartment and pulled out two guns, handed one to Matthew, and stuffed the other in his ankle holster. He didn’t think they’d need to shoot Fat Monte, but it never hurt to be prepared.

  “Let me do this one,” Matthew said.

  “Are you afraid I might lose it on him?”

  “I know you liked Paul Bruno,” Matthew said.

  “I still do,” Jeff said.

  “Right,” Matthew said. “Let me hook him. If you feel like you need to get into the conversation, feel free, but let me hook him.”

  The Four Treys was one of those neighborhood taverns that didn’t seem all that concerned about looking like anything more than a place to get drunk and watch sports. There was a long rectangular bar in the middle of the main room surrounded by brown vinyl high-backe
d bar stools, a few three-top rounds, and then a larger room with a pool table and space for someone to stand up with a guitar and butcher “American Pie” on Open-Mic Monday nights. Weekends, the place would fill up with twentysomethings who lived close enough to stumble home, softball teams, and the odd bachelor or bachelorette party. Jeff remembered coming here on a date once, even, after a Cubs game, Wrigleyville just a twenty-minute walk away.

  It wasn’t the kind of place you expected to run into a Mafia enforcer like Fat Monte, but there he was, sitting by himself at a three-top, a pitcher of beer in front of him, staring at the football game on the big-screen TV, just like the fifty other people in the bar. There was just over two minutes left, and the Packers were driving.

  “You mind if we take a seat?” Matthew said.

  “Go ahead,” Fat Monte said, without even looking away from the TV. “Favre is going to win this ball game. Unbelievable.” They sat and watched, and sure enough, a few seconds later, Brett Favre threw a looping pass to Antonio Freeman in the end zone. “Cocksucker,” Fat Monte said. He slammed his hand on the table twice. He finally turned and looked at Jeff and Matthew. “Where was the defense?”

  “Plenty of time on the clock,” Matthew said.

  “49ers can’t beat the Packers. It’s just how it is,” Fat Monte said.

  “Gotta admit,” Matthew said, “if Favre were on the Bears, you’d love him.”

  “I don’t have to admit shit,” Fat Monte said, though not in a threatening way. Just a couple of guys talking football in a bar. “Favre couldn’t hold Jim McMahon’s dick.”

  “Didn’t McMahon back up Favre a few years ago?” Matthew said.

  “I dunno,” Fat Monte said. “Couple years, I didn’t follow football.”

  Yeah, Jeff thought, must be hard to keep up with the movements of second-string quarterbacks while you’re in prison. The Packers kicked off, and Fat Monte turned his attention back to the game. The last time Jeff saw Fat Monte was in surveillance photos from late 1997, right before he got sent up for six months on a possession beef, Jeff trying in vain to stick the murder of James Diamond, a Cicero drug dealer who was shot to death outside his house, on him, lining up witness after witness . . . only to have each and every one of them disappear or change their stories. Unlike Sal Cupertine, whom no one ever saw, Fat Monte was spotted everywhere back then. He was over six foot and, back in 1997, weighed at least three hundred pounds. That he drove a black Navigator on twenty-inch tires didn’t exactly make him inconspicuous.

  Now, though, he was slimmer, more muscular, probably from hitting the weights and the steroids while in prison, probably still hitting the steroids, Jeff noticing that Fat Monte had pimples crawling up the back of his neck, odd for a guy in his late thirties unless he was juicing. Jeff also saw that Fat Monte had a wedding ring now, too, which explained why he was living in Roscoe Village. Even the mob gets gentrified eventually. In fact, that Fat Monte was sitting inside the Four Treys instead of one of the Family’s video poker bars in Bridgeport was probably all Jeff really needed to know to understand how the world was changing.

  “Finally,” Fat Monte said. “You see that? Young’s been avoiding Rice all day. Jesus Christ.”

  “You got any money riding on this?” Matthew asked.

  “None of mine,” Fat Monte said. “Besides, no one here wants to bet with me.” Fat Monte laughed at his own joke, or what Jeff presumed Fat Monte considered a joke. Maybe he was laughing at his general state of affairs: sitting in a yuppie bar in Roscoe Village with absolutely no action on the biggest game of the year. There was a timeout in the game, under a minute left, and Fat Monte took the opportunity to stand up and stretch his legs.

  “You look like you’ve lost some weight,” Matthew said.

  “Yeah? You seen me before?” Fat Monte said, interested now, and not in a good way, Jeff saw.

  “A few times,” Matthew said. “Though they say surveillance cameras add fifteen pounds. You, it looked more like fifty.”

  Fat Monte looked over his shoulder and then around the room, probably for uniformed cops or at least a few guys wearing FBI windbreakers, Jeff watching him calculate what this all meant . . . and probably calculating the odds of doing something stupid, like pulling out his own gun. Jeff was sure Fat Monte was packing, probably had a piece in his jacket, which was hung over the back of his chair, though not even someone like Fat Monte was dumb enough to try to shoot someone in the middle of a bar, particularly not someone who was probably law enforcement. And, on top of that, law enforcement that had the jump on him.

  “Whatever this is,” Fat Monte said, “I’m gonna watch the end of this game first. You don’t like it, just go ahead and shoot me in the back of the head and get it over with.”

  Matthew gave Jeff a shrug. What the hell. Jeff asked a waitress for a couple of glasses, refilled Fat Monte’s beer, poured one for Matthew, one for himself, and sat back to watch. Steve Young completed a pass to Terry Kirby for a couple of yards, then another to Garrison Hearst, the 49ers moving down the field, fourteen seconds left, the whole bar screaming and yelling at the TV right until a time-out was called and Jeff heard fifty people expel the same breath. Fat Monte saw the beer, took a sip.

  “Answer me this,” Fat Monte said, “am I going to jail tonight? Because if so, I’m gonna get a shot. You guys want shots?”

  “We’ll see how things go,” Matthew said.

  “You federal?” Fat Monte asked. “Because I’d know you if you were local.”

  “Yes,” Jeff said, figuring that was his spot to interject.

  “Fed guys working a Sunday night,” he said. “I must be pretty special.” He took another sip of his beer and turned back to the TV. What did Jeff really know about Monte Moretti? He liked to hurt people. He wasn’t one of Ronnie Cupertine’s new-breed gangsters, guys who made money and didn’t do a lot of outside damage. No, he was the guy Ronnie turned to, still, to keep that cliché alive, the guy who broke arms and talked tough and did time. On the organizational chart, Fat Monte Moretti was listed as a capo, but in truth he was more like a high-ranking soldier, since he still liked to do his own grunt work, since he couldn’t keep himself out of jail for more than a year at a time. He had his own rackets, and then he did work directly for Ronnie, like this whole Sal Cupertine issue.

  On the TV, Steve Young stumbled back from center, the clocked ticked from eight seconds, to seven, to six . . . and then he threw a strike to Terrell Owens in the end zone. Fat Monte jumped up from his chair and shouted, “Fuck the Packers! Fuck the Packers!” and soon the rest of the bar joined in, until there was a chorus of drunk yuppies and one Family enforcer chanting together, which then turned into a series of high fives, hugs, and fist pumps. The Bears hadn’t even made the playoffs, but the Packers had lost, which was enough for the bartender to announce one-dollar shots for the next half hour. Fat Monte pulled out twenty bucks, handed it to a waitress, and told her to bring ten shots of whatever and keep the change, baby girl.

  Fat Monte eventually took his seat, threw back the rest of his beer, and leaned back. “Now,” he said, “who the fuck are you guys?”

  “We’re looking for Sal Cupertine,” Matthew said. “Have you seen him lately?”

  “Last I heard,” Fat Monte said, “you guys found him toasted to a crisp in some landfill.”

  “Nah,” Matthew said. “That was Chema Espinoza.” The waitress swooped by then and dropped off the ten shots. Fat Monte immediately downed one, paused, took down another, Jeff not saying a word, watching Matthew set his hook, going about it real smooth, letting Fat Monte make the next move . . . though downing two shots of what smelled like Jägermeister probably qualified at least as a tell if not a move.

  “Maybe I need to have my lawyer here,” Fat Monte said eventually.

  “Maybe,” Matthew said, his voice low, not angry, not loud, just matter of fact, telling Fat Monte how it was going to be. “Maybe I just put the word out that Fat Monte Moretti now spends his Sunday nights
in Roscoe Village taverns surrounded by a bunch of accountants and their tucked-in polo shirts. Maybe I drive down to Logan and tell Chema and Neto Espinoza’s father that Fat Monte Moretti and his wife live in an unsecured walk-up on Damen, and maybe one night you and the wife are sitting on the sofa eating popcorn and watching Friends, and maybe four or five 2-6 Gangsters roll up on your place, tie you up, and rape your wife in front of you, then maybe get a little cornhole practice on you, too, just to make sure they still remember how to survive in prison.”

  Fat Monte took this all in without saying a word. He took another shot and then examined the empty glass, then pointed at Jeff. “I know you,” he said.

  “Oh yeah?” Jeff said.

  “Yeah, I couldn’t place you at first, but now I remember. You were the one who kept trying to pin that Diamond murder on me, right? Hopper? That you?”

  Jeff tried his best not to seem surprised, tried to figure out how the hell Fat Monte knew he was the one moving the pieces around that investigation, then realized that it made sense. The Family kept records, too. Interesting. “That’s right,” Jeff said.

  “Never did get that to stick, did you?” Fat Monte said.

  “No, never did,” Jeff said. “Fortunately there’s no statute of limitations.”

  “No witnesses plus no statute of limitations equals you walking around holding your dick,” Fat Monte said.

  “Between us?” Jeff leaned across the table, so that he was only a few inches away from Fat Monte’s face, so close he could smell Fat Monte’s acrid breath, the creepy bastard actually breathing out of his mouth in these short, quick pulses. “I didn’t mind you killing a drug dealer. One less piece of paperwork I had to worry about. But what gets me, Monte, is why you’d kill Chema and Neto Espinoza. My guess is that Chema saw whatever went down with Sal.” He paused for just a second, tried to think of his next words carefully, see how Fat Monte reacted. “Probably saw the trade go down. Or he could have just been the driver, since I can’t imagine Sal Cupertine sitting by while your fat ass drove him around in the dark. Okay, fine. You can’t be leaving witnesses around. But Neto? He was already in prison and wasn’t going to be leaving any time soon, not with a million dollars of H on his ticket. That just seems . . . sloppy . . . to me. Because then I gotta walk that back, see who Neto is down with, see that he was on your crew, and that up in Stateville he somehow ends up rooming with Lemonhead Nicolino. You couldn’t have farmed the job out to the Aryans?”