Gangsterland: A Novel

by Tod Goldberg

  “And who are you?” the rabbi said.

  “A private consultant for the FBI,” Jeff said. It was a mouthful. And not one that Jeff particularly cared for.

  “What does that mean?”

  “I’m working on a special project for them,” Jeff said.

  “They don’t have enough agents?”

  “Not for this, no,” Jeff said.

  “There seem to be quite a few agents in Las Vegas,” Rabbi Cohen said. He pointed at the newspaper, which was still open to the column about Bennie Savone. “If what Mr. Curran in the Review-Journal says is to be believed, at any rate.” Rabbi Cohen picked up the photos of Sal Cupertine then and carefully looked at each one. “He doesn’t look familiar, I’m afraid,” he said eventually.

  “He would have been here in April,” Jeff said. He flipped through his paperwork. “The twenty-second, to be exact.”

  “Doing what?” Rabbi Cohen said.

  “We’re not sure,” Jeff said. “But there’s some indication he might have been transported via the company who delivers meat to your cafeteria. Kochel Farms.”

  “And what did he do that he needed to escape inside of a meat truck?”

  “He murdered three federal agents and a confidential informant,” Jeff said.

  “Oh, I think I read about this,” Rabbi Cohen said. “In Detroit, wasn’t it?”

  “Chicago,” Jeff said.

  “I see,” Rabbi Cohen said. “And it’s your belief he is now standing in our cafeteria, waiting for you?”

  “No,” Jeff said. “It’s my belief he went from here to somewhere else, but I’d like to talk to your staff and see if they recognize him, remember any details about the day in question.”

  “This man,” the rabbi said. “Does he have a name?”

  “Sal Cupertine,” Jeff said.

  “Oh,” Rabbi Cohen said. “Now I understand.” He picked up the newspaper and spent a few moments looking at the article about Bennie Savone. “This is the only city in America where it’s illegal to be Italian, apparently. As you can imagine, Rabbi Kales is sickened about all of this. That’s the father of his grandchildren and the husband of his only child that this . . . this . . . golem . . . is libeling.”

  “If he’s innocent,” Jeff said, “he has nothing to worry about.”

  Rabbi Cohen opened a desk drawer and pulled out a pair of silver scissors and began to cut the story out of the newspaper. “Talmud says that there are those who gain eternity in a lifetime, others who gain it an hour,” he said, and he continued cutting up the story until it was little more than confetti, then he very carefully scooped the pieces up and dumped them in his trash can. “How long do you think an article in a newspaper lasts?”

  “Bennie Savone is not my business,” Jeff said.

  “And yet here you are,” Rabbi Cohen said.

  Rabbi Cohen tented his hands together at the fingertips but didn’t speak for a moment. Jeff couldn’t quite place the inflection in the rabbi’s voice, couldn’t tell if he was annoyed or intrigued or simply bored. He didn’t seem surprised by the appearance of someone working for the FBI, which most people are, and that seemed odd. The more he stared at the rabbi, the more Jeff also got the sense that maybe he’d been in some kind of accident, because the skin on his neck and along his hairline seemed slick. Not like he’d had a facelift, exactly, but like he’d had something reconstructed. Maybe he’d been attacked by a dog or something. That would account for the weird way his mouth wouldn’t quite wrap around a smile. And then there was the way his beard didn’t quite connect with his sideburns . . . must have been an accident, maybe a burn? It was impossible to tell what the skin around his mouth looked like under his thick beard.

  “You’re wondering about my face,” Rabbi Cohen said.

  “I’m sorry?” Jeff said, because he didn’t know what to say.

  “I see you looking at my face,” Rabbi Cohen said, “trying to figure what’s wrong with it. It’s all right. You’re not the first person. Turns out children frequently have the same question.”

  “I apologize,” Jeff said. “I just . . .”

  Rabbi Cohen waved him off. “No need,” he said. “You can’t be more candid than you are with your own face, now can you? Talmud tells us that we cannot expect the Torah to live in only the most beautiful people. Eventually even the best wine spoils in gold chalices.” He tried to smile again. “Well, in light of everything, Mr. Hopper, I’m afraid that I can’t let you search our grounds without a warrant. While I trust your intentions are pure, you’ll pardon me for not trusting the FBI right now.”

  “I’m not an FBI agent,” Jeff said.

  “Then you’re just trespassing,” Rabbi Cohen said, “and I’m afraid I’ll have to ask you to leave.”

  “This is how you want to do it?” Jeff said. “You want twenty guys in here tomorrow? That’s what you want?”

  “If you’d like,” Rabbi Cohen said, “I’m happy to take you on a tour of our public facilities. Show you that all we’re hiding here is dirt and sand. And if tomorrow you come back with a warrant, Temple Beth Israel will be happy to let you do as much searching as you’d like.”

  Jeff knew one thing for certain: Poremba wasn’t going to be able to get a warrant to start searching a temple in twenty-four hours. He’d be lucky to ever get one. And Jeff wouldn’t be in on the search even if they did. Tomorrow, he and Matthew would do this on their terms.

  Jeff stood up. “Show the way, Rabbi.”

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Christianity, unlike Judaism, Rabbi David Cohen learned, was about rejecting the idea of luck. It was a consequence-based process. If you led a pious life, good things would happen. If you led an evil life, bad things would surely follow. If you led a pious life and bad things still happened, then that was the hand of God, it was meant to be, and in the afterlife you would be rewarded with the gift of God’s eternal love. He created humans, gave them free will, only to demand fealty, or there would be hell to pay. Nothing was chance. All was either reward or punishment.

  It wasn’t unlike being in the Mafia. Except at least with God, if you waited until the last minute and said that you were sorry, and you really did respect his authority, you could go on living your life in everlasting peace. David was not under the impression his cousin Ronnie, nor Bennie Savone, operated under those same rules. He was certain that the FBI wasn’t about to accept his apology for knocking off their agents, especially not this Jeff Hopper, a man he thought he’d killed.

  And yet here they were, two men raised from the dead, walking through a cemetery, David pointing out where the aquatic center would be housed, the bluff they were constructing so that the performing arts center could be seen from the bottom of the street, all the better to attract natural light, you see, to catch the brilliant colors of the desert sunset, as it was in Israel. “For the Talmud tells us,” David told Agent Hopper now, “whoever did not see Jerusalem in its days of glory never saw a beautiful city in their life.”

  “You’ll pardon me, Rabbi,” Agent Hopper said, “but it’s still Las Vegas.” David heard a hint of boredom in the agent’s voice, which was good. They’d spent the last thirty minutes walking the perimeter of the temple and its property, David narrating the entire time, filling Agent Hopper with the arcane and the minute, explaining every plan Temple Beth Israel had for the future. The agent had stayed largely quiet, apart from every now and then muttering some empty platitude.

  As they walked, David let the agent stay at least a half step in front of him, let Agent Hopper feel like he was guiding the tour, when in fact David was pushing him the entire time. They were inching toward the far end of the cemetery, blocks from the street and the bustle of people, where later that afternoon David was scheduled to bury a man named Alan Rosen who’d been brought up from Palm Springs that morning, but who David guessed was an Indian. The grave was already dug, a mound of dirt covered by a green tarp in the distance, the simple green shovel they used in burial ceremony plac
ed at the ready for the mourners who preferred not to use their hands. All that was missing was the body.

  “Where there is the temple, there is Israel,” David said.

  “I’m sure that’s true,” Agent Hopper said. “But don’t you have a difficult time believing in the sanctity of your faith in a town like this?”

  “Chicago is any better?” David asked.

  Agent Hopper chuckled once. “Tell me something, did you always believe?”

  “Does anyone have absolute faith?” David said.

  “My family was not particularly religious,” Agent Hopper said. “Personally, I never bought into any of it.”

  “So you think the world is just wicked?”

  “That’s what the evidence suggests,” Agent Hopper said. He stopped walking then and turned around, a field of the dead before him. “Did any of these people die with any faith left? Any pride?”

  “And you have yours?” David said, doing something Rabbi Kales had taught him, to answer questions with questions, as the Jews have always done.

  “I don’t know,” Agent Hopper said, “but I’m still alive.”

  “Mazel tov,” David said. He reached into his pocket and felt the butterfly knife there. It hadn’t been luck that made him carry the knife every day, nor faith; it was fear. God told Abraham that Israel had no mazel, and so the Jews created their own. A single mitzvah, done without question, done without the need for recognition, was the door to finding mazel. Luck didn’t happen because of mazel, luck was the embodiment of it: Everyone was able to transcend the merits of their life and, for at least a moment, find prosperity and unfathomable happiness. A wedding, a baby, a new job? Mazel tov. Jews had forgotten what the term really meant. It was only the moment that was blessed. You still had a chance to fuck up what came next.

  And wasn’t that what David’s life had been? He’d found true love, had a baby, been given a new job. And then, mazel tov, the FBI showed up. It was someone else’s good luck. David would have to make his own.

  Agent Hopper walked over to the hole that had been dug into the ground for the Rosen funeral and looked down.

  “Is it really six feet?” Agent Hopper asked.

  “Jewish custom requires ten handbreadths,” David said. He stepped beside the agent and examined the grave. “It seems deep enough, doesn’t it?”

  “Off the record, Rabbi,” Agent Hopper said, “you ever seen anything funny here?”

  “How would I know?” David said.

  “You seem like a man who pays attention.”

  “This person you’re looking for,” David said, “is he a monster?”

  “He’s just a man,” Agent Hopper said. “Nothing special about him.”

  “Then he shouldn’t be very hard to find,” David said. He’d spent all this time observing Agent Hopper. He wasn’t wearing Kevlar and didn’t have a gun on his belt or slung over his shoulder. Just a notepad, a file filled with pictures, and a hunch. This was the man who’d made Fat Monte kill himself? If he knew anything, he would have come with an assault team. If he knew anything, he’d still be an FBI agent, not a consultant. If he knew anything, he’d start running.

  “You happen to remember where you were last April 22?” Agent Hopper asked.

  David shook his head. “Do you know where you were?”

  “Yeah,” Agent Hopper said. “A funeral for one of my friends.”

  “Talmud tells us we have two faces,” David said, “one that lives in sorrow, one that lives in joy.”

  “Didn’t Bruce Springsteen say that?” Agent Hopper said.

  Shit. “Did he?” David gripped the knife in his pocket.

  “Yeah,” Agent Hopper said quietly. He took a step away from the grave, a curious look on his face.

  David was no more than a foot away from Hopper, but he’d need to lunge for him at this point. David needed to be closer.

  “You know, you haven’t answered a single question I’ve asked.”

  “I hope you find your man,” David said. He extended his hand, but Agent Hopper took another step, this one to the side, near the mound of dirt and the shovel.

  “You didn’t tell me what happened to your face.”

  “All is vanity,” David said. He tried to smile, but his mouth wouldn’t follow directions.

  “Then I’d think you’d want a better plastic surgeon.”

  The Talmud said that if someone comes to kill you, you should wake up early and kill him first. David doubted Jeff Hopper knew that edict in the religious sense, but he surely knew it as an FBI agent, or else he wouldn’t have made such a sudden move for the spade.

  As soon as he did, David was on him.

  He plunged his knife into Hopper’s back once, twice, three times, the blade snapping off in Hopper’s rib cage as David tried to pull it out so he could cut the agent’s throat. They both fell to the ground, deep in the dirt.

  David stood up then and rolled Jeff over onto his back, his eyes wide open, his mouth opening and closing like a fish. David had seen this before. He wouldn’t need to use the shovel. At least not to kill the man.

  “I found you,” Jeff Hopper said, his voice barely a whisper.

  “You shouldn’t have come here,” David said.

  “I would have let you live,” Jeff said.

  Jeff Hopper tried to take a breath, and then another, but they wouldn’t come; his body tensed and he tried to raise his head, tried to fight what was coming, and then he relaxed, his eyes fluttering. “I found Sal Cupertine,” he said.

  “You did,” Sal Cupertine said, and then he leaned over and squeezed Jeff Hopper’s carotid off so that he’d pass out before he drowned on his own blood.

  A mitzvah.

  Sal Cupertine parked Jeff Hopper’s rented Pontiac across the street from Wingfield Park in Reno and then walked a few blocks down Second Street, looking for a place to make a phone call. It was midnight, and though he’d spent the last seven hours on the road from Las Vegas, Sal didn’t feel tired. In fact, for the first time in a good nine months, Sal Cupertine felt positively alive.

  Though it was a Thursday night, and not much more than thirty degrees outside, there were people streaming in and out of the hotels, casinos, and restaurants along Sal’s path. There was also music—country, rock, rap—that bleated out of each passing car, each open door into each casino, each set of headphones of the people who brushed too close to Sal. But that was fine. How long had it been since he’d let anyone actually near him? Actually touch him? Plenty of people at Temple Beth Israel hugged him or kissed him on the cheek or felt the need to have some kind of human contact with him after receiving his counsel, but it was never Sal’s choice, never something he actually courted.

  Though, in that way, he supposed, it was a choice. He wanted to save physical interactions for the two people whose touch he actually missed. But today, his first day back among the living—and his last day for a good long time, too, he recognized—Sal went ahead and let people bump into him, let people look him in the eye, even let people smile at him.

  Not that many did any of those things. He was still Sal Cupertine, after all. Still the Rain Man. Still the last person you ever wanted to show up behind you, anywhere, at any time. These days, though, when Sal Cupertine was going to kill a guy, it really didn’t matter which way the guy was facing.

  Sal had spent much of his time driving between Las Vegas and Reno trying to find an upside to all this, other than the fact that he probably wouldn’t have to kill another person for a while. And that was good, since killing Jeff Hopper hadn’t given Sal any gratification, had in fact upset him a great deal, at least for a time, since he realized just how far down the road he’d been sold. That he’d once again done what someone else should have done.

  And now, thanks to a small alteration in the deal he’d made earlier with Gray Beard, Jeff Hopper—or at least a portion of him—was on his way back to Chicago. Seemed only fair since Chicago had sent Paul Bruno to Las Vegas, and after going through
the paperwork Sal found in Jeff’s car, Sal thought there was perhaps a tad bit of poetic justice in that.

  It had been a long day, and Sal needed a drink, maybe a big piece of fish, since he couldn’t quite handle the idea of cutting into some bloody piece of meat for the second time that day. Sal didn’t know if the casinos in Reno had the same facial-recognition software as the ones in Las Vegas, but he wasn’t taking any chances, so he ducked into a bar called the Brass Nickel. It was in between a pawn shop and a Vietnamese restaurant called Pho Saigon that Sal recognized from Hopper’s list of Kochel Farms clients. It was the kind of place that had grainy pictures of their dishes taped up to the window, so Sal spent a moment looking at something called bo luc lac—which didn’t look like much more than some meat, onions, lettuce, and white rice—and thanking God he hadn’t ended up on that plate.

  There were a dozen or so people inside the Brass Nickel. Sal went up to the bar, ordered a Johnnie Walker Black on the rocks, got five dollars in quarters, and headed over to check out the pay phone. It was between the men’s room—distinguished by the painting of a cowboy with his gun drawn that covered the door—and the ladies room—woman with her dress pulled up, revealing sexy garters, of course—in a back hallway that smelled of Lysol and beer piss. Not the kind of place people tended to spend much time waiting around.

  Perfect.

  Sal punched in the numbers, deposited a buck seventy-five for five minutes, and listened to the space between his past and present close around the sound of a phone ringing.

  Ronnie Cupertine answered his cell phone on the third ring by saying, “Who the fuck is this?”

  “It’s your dead cousin,” Sal said.

  There was a pause on the line, and Sal could hear SportsCenter on in the background—someone on the Lakers was “cooler than the other side of the pillow”—and the sound of water running. Ronnie was probably in his favorite spot: watching TV from the shitter in his basement.

  “Good that you called,” Ronnie said. “Save me the trouble.”

  “I figured,” Sal said.

  “You somewhere safe?”