Gangsterland: A Novel

by Tod Goldberg

  “I like to help people,” Gray Beard said, “but I got limits, you understand.”

  “Good,” David said again. “I like to help people, too.”

  David looked at his watch. It was almost nine. “I need you to get that body to the funeral home by one a.m. You got a problem with that?” David looked at Gray Beard’s partner, now that he’d figured out the power structure for this side of the job.

  “Naw,” Marvin said. “No hands. No feet. No head. No problem.” He reached into the cooler and pulled out another beer, twisted off the top, took a long sip, and leaned back in his chair.

  David started to walk away then, figuring the deal was sealed, but Gray Beard called after him. “You want me to take a look at your mouth?” he asked.

  “Why?” David said.

  “I ask because your bite is off,” he said. “I can see it from here. You having any jaw pain?”

  In fact, like he’d told Dr. Kirsch, he was. David just figured it was one of those things. You get your entire face rebuilt, you’ll have some lasting soreness. “Little bit,” David said.

  “Hold on,” Gray Beard said. He got up from his chair and went into the RV, leaving David outside with his partner. That’s how David thought of him, anyway. He didn’t see an extra bedroom in the RV, so maybe they were a couple. David couldn’t figure out a good reason for them to be hanging out with each other otherwise. Though when David had his wires snipped, Marvin did assist with the procedure, gave him water to swish with, stuffed some cotton against his gums when the bleeding got bad, that sort of thing. So maybe like Gray Beard was a defrocked doctor, Marvin was an ex-EMT.

  Gray Beard reappeared with a handful of papers. “These are some exercises you can do,” he said. “You probably have a case of TMJ.”

  “TMJ?”

  “Temporomandibular joint disorder,” Gray Beard said. When David didn’t respond, he added, “Your jaw is out of whack. Those exercises will help.”

  David examined the pages. The exercises seemed simple enough—put your tongue on the roof of your mouth while opening and closing your jaw—and David felt relief of a small, nagging problem was within reach. “Anything else?” David asked.

  “Try to avoid clenching your teeth during stress,” Gray Beard said. He sat back down next to Marvin and cracked open a beer for himself, swallowed most of it down in three gulps. “Maybe try to avoid stress, too.”

  “That’s what I’m doing today,” David said. “Taking care of some stress.”

  “No hands, no feet, no head, no stress,” Marvin said. He held his bottle up, and he and Gray Beard toasted.

  “One a.m.,” David said. “Don’t be late.”

  “I’m never late,” Grey Beard said. “If you’re not punctual in this business, someone can die, right?”

  As David walked back across the park, he considered the fact that he might have to eventually kill both Gray Beard and Marvin, though that point seemed a long time away, and something about them seemed more trustworthy than they probably were. Maybe it was just Gray Beard telling David he shouldn’t trust him. It was the kind of honesty David liked, because it admitted probable fallibility, though David was certain Gray Beard knew that fucking up was not really an option here, or ever, as it related to his work. If the next twenty-four hours turned out for the best, maybe David would see Gray Beard and Marvin only once or twice more; that would be okay, too.

  For everyone.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  The cab dropped Rabbi David Cohen back at Temple Beth Israel a few minutes after nine thirty, just in time for David to see Rabbi Kales step out of the administrative offices to light a cigarette. In the months that David had worked with Rabbi Kales, he’d never seen him smoke, never even smelled smoke on him. It was, in David’s opinion, somehow undignified for his position, never mind that David himself liked a cigar periodically.

  “I’ve been calling you all night,” Rabbi Kales said when David walked up. He looked panicked. “Where have you been?”

  “I left my phone in my car,” David said.

  “Where have you been?” Rabbi Kales repeated.

  “You don’t want to know,” David said. “Let’s just leave it at that.”

  “I thought the worst.”

  “The worst about what?”

  Rabbi Kales waved him off. “He’s in jail,” Rabbi Kales said. “Benjamin.”

  “Jail? What the fuck are you talking about?”

  “The FBI raided the Wild Horse this evening,” he said.

  Fucking feds. If it was Super Bowl Sunday or Christmas or Thanksgiving, you could expect a knock on the door. “What did they get him on?” David asked.

  “Conspiracy,” Rabbi Kales said.

  Shit. That was a federal charge. When the feds wanted to have the freedom to poke around until they found something worthwhile, they always went the conspiracy route, since they could convict a boss for what his soldiers did, or what his soldiers covered up, or even what his soldiers were thinking about doing.

  David tried to collect his thoughts. If it was the conspiracy he and Rabbi Kales and Bennie were involved in with the funeral home and the bodies, Rabbi Kales would already be in cuffs, too. If it had anything to do with David whatsoever, there’d be feds and marshals and cops and reporters lining the street like the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. And if it was just some local shit—the building commission or something equally mundane—David was sure Bennie had enough people in his pocket to take care of that, at least forewarn him about a raid on Super Bowl Sunday. Bennie didn’t talk much about the political side of his life, but it was in the papers every day which “reputed mob figures” or “jiggle-joint owners” (or whatever euphemism the Review-Journal came up with that particular day) were donating to which races for mayor, city council, judge, sheriff . . . hell, even the dogcatcher was getting checks from guys with vowels at the end of their last names.

  All of which made Bennie no different than Ronnie Cupertine when it all came down, both of them selling rides of one kind or another and peddling influence so long as no one got hurt.

  And there it was.

  “The tourist,” David said.

  “You’re really blaming a paralyzed man for this?”

  “I’m not blaming him,” David said. “I’m blaming the situation.” One of those bouncers rolled, said something to someone; had to be. The FBI doesn’t get out of bed on Super Bowl Sunday unless they think they’ve got something for the newspapers. That’s how they work. In Chicago, everyone involved would already be in a body bag, that’s for sure: the bouncers, the victim, maybe the victim’s family, and then maybe they’d burn down the club, too, just to clean the slate entirely . . . the realization of which made David actually catch his breath.

  It wasn’t the first time he’d come to the conclusion that he should be dead for his role in the fuckup at the Parker House. But it was the first time he realized that he wasn’t dead for some specific reason. Cousin Ronnie got David’s ass smuggled out of Chicago and killed either Chema or Neal, or both, just to make it look good . . . and then had Paul Bruno killed . . . and then Fat Monte put a bullet in his wife’s head, and then another in his own, rather than deal with whatever Hopper had said to him. It had taken a while, but Ronnie wasn’t just cleaning the slate, he was pouring lye on it and burying it in Siberia.

  David had told Bennie to give up the bouncers, which he had, got them good attorneys, everything, and yet, the Wild Horse still got raided. The bouncers didn’t know enough to give up anything other than what the feds already knew—that maybe Bennie Savone wasn’t exactly an angel—and David was certain Bennie told the boys he’d take care of them if they ended up doing time, provided they kept their mouths shut. And they were likely to do time for the crime they’d obviously committed, and deservedly so in David’s opinion, particularly with the beating caught on camera. So it had been about keeping them from getting a longer sentence, keeping them from being recognized as part of an organized crime conspira
cy, which didn’t give the bouncers any good reason to start putting Bennie’s name on the street. Might as well come out of prison with some money in their pocket. David just didn’t see the feds getting enough from a commonplace beatdown—even if the guy ended up paralyzed—to actually move against Bennie Savone.

  Which meant they got their information from somewhere else, from someone who knew enough about Bennie’s operations that they could ring up the feds and offer some kernel of information that would get the suits up and running.

  “Where’s Rachel?” David asked.

  “Home, with the girls,” he said. “Benjamin hasn’t been arraigned yet, so there’s not much that can be done until tomorrow when the bail is set.”

  “If there’s a bail,” David said.

  “He’s just a businessman,” Rabbi Kales said.

  “Never been arrested?”

  “Never,” Rabbi Kales said.

  “Pays his taxes?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “His business taxes, too?” David thought of all the bosses who’d gone down not for murder but for ducking the IRS. That was the one lesson Ronnie Cupertine had imparted to everyone in the Family: Pay your taxes. You like driving on nice streets? You like taking the L places? You like breathing fresh air? Pay your fucking taxes. You like staying out of prison? You don’t want a visit from the Rain Man? Pay your fucking taxes.

  “How should I know?” Rabbi Kales said.

  “Because you know everything else, seems like.”

  Rabbi Kales tossed his cigarette onto the pavement and ground it out under his shoe, fished in his pocket, and came back out with a pack of Camels and a lighter and lit back up. “I haven’t smoked in fifteen years,” he said. “I don’t know why I ever stopped.”

  “This will get resolved,” David said, though who the fuck knew. If they had Bennie on a conspiracy charge, that meant they probably convened a grand jury first, secured an indictment, maybe for conspiracy to obstruct justice or something similarly minor compared to everything else Bennie Savone had actually done during the course of his life. “Bennie’s got a good lawyer. The thing to concentrate on right now is Rachel.”

  “She’s fine,” Rabbi Kales said. “You don’t need to worry about Rachel.”

  “She didn’t sound fine when she was telling me she was planning on leaving her husband,” David said. “She didn’t sound fine when she told me you knew.”

  “You don’t need to worry about Rachel,” Rabbi Kales said again.

  “Maybe she should worry about me,” David said.

  Rabbi Kales took a long drag off of his cigarette and then exhaled through his nose. He flicked the still-burning cigarette into the parking lot and for a few moments watched it burn. “Do you think you frighten me?” he said eventually.

  “I think I probably should.”

  “Your son’s name is William,” Rabbi Kales said. “He is in preschool at Mt. Carmel Academy, though your wife is having a hard time paying his tuition. Your wife, Jennifer, recently took a loan out on your home, even though it was paid off, in full, a few months after your death. Unfortunately, your wife is having a difficult time finding a job, since the name Cupertine doesn’t exactly make her easy to hire, since people either think she is related to your cousin, who I understand is a reputed mob figure, or was the wife of Sal Cupertine, who killed several federal agents. That must be a difficult weight to carry simply by virtue of who she fell in love with as a teenager, wouldn’t you say?”

  “Shut the fuck up.”

  “Your father,” Rabbi Kales said, “was thrown off the IBM Building. Do you know the circumstances that required he be thrown from the building? Because I would be happy to tell you, Rabbi Cohen.”

  “I told you to shut the fuck up.”

  “I heard you,” Rabbi Kales said. “We’ve all got secrets, Rabbi Cohen. Just know that I’m aware of all of yours.”

  “You think it’s that easy? That you can just say shit like that to me and suddenly your daughter is off the hook? If she ratted out Bennie, she’s just a couple moves away from figuring out that her father is piece of shit, too.”

  “She is already aware of that.”

  “I don’t think she’s aware of the fact that you’re burying murder victims in the cemetery she thinks she’s inheriting,” David said. “Or that everything here is a fucking grift.”

  “How is it you think she ended up marrying Bennie Savone, David? You think the daughter of a rabbi is going to just marry Bennie Savone? Do you really think everything you see here is by happy accident? That Benjamin lucked into this arrangement?”

  David figured that Bennie had something on Rabbi Kales, figured that there was some weight that Rabbi Kales bore for the opportunity to have his own temple. Rabbi Kales had told him that day after their meeting at the Bagel Café that he’d made mistakes with his life. That Bennie had given him a tremendous opportunity. David had just assumed that Bennie had something on Rabbi Kales, when, maybe, it was the other way around. Bennie clearly adored his wife and kids. Or adored them as much as Bennie Savone was able to adore anything.

  So that was the pact. Rabbi Kales knew that Bennie loved his daughter, held that over his head, and made a deal. Bennie got to marry the woman he loved; Rabbi Kales got his own temple, his own people. He couldn’t have imagined what Bennie would do next. Who could? And it was why Rabbi Kales wouldn’t just let Rachel divorce Bennie, wouldn’t let her just walk away, even when he knew it was the best thing she could ever do with her life. And why he wouldn’t just call the cops and tell them he was getting shaken down by the mob. In return, Bennie couldn’t do anything at the temple without going through Rabbi Kales, which is why it became important for there to be someone like David at all.

  A mob boss who had to answer to a rabbi.

  What an elegant fucking con, David thought, both sides ripping the other off.

  In the short run, David answered to Bennie. Bennie hadn’t said anything definitive about taking Rabbi Kales out, but David wasn’t stupid. He knew it was coming, some day, and probably someday soon. And the thing of it was, Rabbi Kales wasn’t stupid, either.

  “It doesn’t matter to me,” David said. “All that matters to me is what Bennie tells me to do.”

  “That’s not true,” Rabbi Kales said.

  “If it was Rachel who went to the feds on this,” David said, perfectly calmly, “I’ll kill both of you. Because what matters to me is one day getting the fuck out of this place and back to my family. And I can only do that with your cooperation, Rabbi Kales. And I count Rachel’s cooperation as your cooperation.”

  Rabbi Kales smiled at David then. “Bennie was right about you,” he said.

  “Yeah, in what way?”

  “He said you had a singular focus.”

  “I pay attention,” David said. Except once. And that’s what had brought him here, on this night, in front of this man, this man who was probably fairly decent, a man who spent 90 percent of his time in service to something larger than himself. The other 10 percent was given over to the management of a criminal enterprise, the benefit of which gave every member of his temple hope that their own lives weren’t meaningless. Rabbi Kales had essentially sold his daughter to Bennie Savone so that he could build an empire for the Jews in Summerlin.

  What was the cosmic algebra on that? If you did a little bad for a greater good and the only people who got hurt were people who decided to get involved with a bunch of gangsters, wasn’t that a net positive? Because, surely, Rachel Kales, at twenty-two, had fallen in love with the wrong person. A choice was made. And then her father had bartered with a criminal for what he wanted out of the deal, and, in the long run, the members of Temple Beth Israel were content.

  The way David saw it, the only person with a viable complaint at this point was David himself, now that he understood all the people he was doing business with were shysters, which, he realized, was like a boxer complaining about how often he got hit. Except it hadn’t been Da
vid’s choice to be in the ring with Bennie Savone and Rabbi Kales. He thought for a long time that it had been his choice to be Sal Cupertine, a man who killed people for a living, but really that was a choice Ronnie made for him. This was a different sort of madness he was involved in now.

  Jennifer had chosen to be the kind of woman who married a hit man, the kind of woman who has a child with a hit man, the kind of woman who, one day, knew that she’d be alone because she’d married a hit man. Those were the choices they’d made together, if not explicitly, at least tacitly. So Rabbi Kales could threaten him all he wanted. It didn’t matter. David was who he was, and his wife knew. His father’s death, that was something he’d figure out on his own, because he doubted Rabbi Kales knew all the reasons . . . but when it came right down to it, the reason was simple enough: Someone in the Family wanted him dead.

  And that person was probably Ronnie Cupertine.

  It was a truth David had tried to keep from confronting directly for a long time, but in the last few weeks it had come easier and easier for him to accept. Ronnie had also most likely wanted him dead, too, and then had to find a work-around when he got the jump on the FBI motherfuckers. There was no way Ronnie thought he’d get out of that meeting alive once he realized who the players were, four against one, impossible odds even for Sal Cupertine.

  Ronnie never played to lose anything, so he was probably sitting in his house waiting for a phone call that said Sal was dead, only to get a call from Sal himself. No wonder he sounded so surprised. Ronnie wasn’t used to failure and had to find a work-around that wouldn’t end with Sal killing everyone in Chicago.

  But the rub on that deal was that Sal Cupertine was alive, well, and prospering. It was the prospering that was beginning to bother David. That he’d been set up to succeed. It just didn’t make sense. It wasn’t how Ronnie did business.

  Rabbi Kales’s cell phone rang, and the old man—because that what he was, David saw, an old man standing outside a place of worship chain-smoking filterless Camels—took it from his pocket and examined the screen. “It’s Benjamin’s lawyer,” Rabbi Kales said.