Gangster Nation

by Tod Goldberg

  “That’s what you do?” David asked. Not that he actually kept kosher, but he’d grown accustomed to doing so in public.

  “No,” Rabbi Kales told him. “I simply enjoy the meal. It’s Chinatown.”

  Except it wasn’t. Chinatown in Las Vegas was only a master-planned shopping plaza on a seedy stretch of Spring Mountain where the furniture stores, self-storage facilities, and sex shops gave way to a giant faux–Tang dynasty arch and a dozen restaurants and shops, all vaguely themed to express some part of the Orient. A mile away, it was back to the same graveyard of big-box stores, Krispy Kreme drive-thrus, and Manic Al’s pit stops as the rest of the valley.

  So David tried to avoid Chinatown, even though it was one of the few places in town he felt relatively safe from cameras, the whole block owned by a development company out of Hong Kong and policed largely by private security, none of whom gave a shit about anything short of a murder. Asian gangs had claimed the block, ironic since none of them lived in the area, the neighborhood around Spring Mountain and Decatur mostly working class and white, so the gangsters had to commute to work. Not like these guys were Triads. The papers talked about United Bamboo being in town now, a Thai gang up from LA. Then there was talk of Vietnamese gangs, and Filipino gangs, all of them supposedly running their operations out of Chinatown, though by the looks of the guys hanging out this afternoon, it was mostly teenagers in lowered Honda Civics. They might as well claim Café Espresso Roma or the Boulevard Mall or the old schoolhouse downtown, because, as David saw from inside the tea shop next to the Ranch 99 grocery store, the only game working in Chinatown was overcharging tourists for Boba, which was fucking Japanese.

  Five and a half bucks for Hokkaido Milk Tea seemed outrageous, but David paid it to the seventy-something Asian woman behind the counter, and then sat down and waited for Gray Beard and Marvin. David always arrived first, even though Gray Beard had picked the meeting place. That was the key to not having someone walk up behind you and put one in your ear, not that he expected Gray Beard to be the one to get the drop on him. Gray Beard was in his sixties, David guessed, had been a doctor at some point, but he’d been doing favors for Bennie Savone for a good long time. David had inherited him after his first series of dental surgeries required some extra care. In the interim, he’d found that he and his partner Marvin, who was maybe half his age, weren’t averse to doing some favors for money and materials. They’d cleaned up a murder scene for David, dropped Jeff Hopper’s head in Chicago, and left money for Jennifer. David didn’t want to overuse their services, but these were special times. So David contacted him a few days after getting back from Carson City, made sure Gray Beard was still game, even after the world started to collapse from the middle out. Asked him to get rid of Roger’s RV, had him run another errand, too.

  After about five minutes, a blue-and-white Zenith Medical Equipment and Supply truck pulled into the lot. Gray Beard and Marvin stepped out, both dressed in crisp white uniforms. They came into the tea shop, Gray Bead nodded at David, both of them ordered from the old woman behind the counter and then pulled two chairs over to David’s table.

  “New truck?” David asked.

  “Needed something bigger,” Gray Beard said. “Been a real busy time for our business.” He reached into his pocket, came out with an envelope, slid it across the table. “That’s what’s left from the sale of the RV. Needed to have a professional work on the cargo hold. Smell wouldn’t come out. Plus Marvin’s expenses in Chicago.”

  David flipped the envelope open. There was about two grand inside. He pushed it back across the table. “Keep it,” David said.

  “You sure?” Gray Beard asked.

  “Holiday bonus,” David said. It was two weeks before Thanksgiving, but already Las Vegas looked like a winter wonderland, even the tea joint covered in pictures of Santa and his reindeer, Johnny Mathis coming out of a tinny speaker on the counter, going on about who had a date for New Year’s Eve.

  “People been losing their minds lately.” Gray Beard lowered his voice. “Took a bullet out of a guy’s head the other night. He showed up at the office, looked like he had a racing stripe down the side of his face, said he’d changed his mind at the last minute, decided he wanted to live.” Gray Beard’s office was wherever he parked his own RV, but which was usually Lorenzi Park. “Bullet was lodged in the fleshy part between the skull and neck, behind the ear? Took me five hours, but we did it.” He and Marvin tapped their cups of tea. “You been busy?”

  “Yeah,” David said. Which was true. First couple days after the planes hit, the temple was empty, same with the school, but then everyone started to come out of their caves, wanted to be around people they recognized, wanted David to explain how to keep living in the face of such tragedy. And then the other side of the business became electric, too, just like he thought it would. Debts started to pile up, people started to pile up, too. The Triads dumped off another war casualty, a little older this time. Maybe twenty-five. No fucking fingers on either hand. Then they shipped out three white boys. Then an older black guy, in his fifties. A nice cash haul, but that was twenty dead men in a few months, and that wasn’t nothing, plus the white boys and the black guy weren’t war dead, they were just dead. No torture. Just a bullet in the eye. Might not be tomorrow or the next day, but eventually there would be a snitch who would offer up one of those bodies, which David added to his list of concerns. Then a tribal gang in Palm Springs made a deposit—forty-something Mexican, bullet between the eyes. Palm Springs was an area of recent growth. The weak-ass LA Mafia, half of whom had been busted in 1988, were finally getting out of prison and had begun to partner up on some casinos and bingo joints and nightclubs and drug routes for the tribes out that way, which meant they were tussling with Mexican Mafia types over territory and influence, which explained the body. An actual OG in the game, judging from the tattoos David saw—old prison ink, nothing flashy or intricate like Ruben had—which meant he must be of some importance, since gangsters didn’t tend to live that long.

  “It’s been a time, all right,” David said. He looked at Marvin. “What about my errand?” he asked.

  Gray Beard shifted in his seat. “You sure you want this now?”

  “Yeah.” The news was going to affect some decisions he had to make.

  Gray Beard said, “This isn’t a situation where the messenger needs to worry, I presume?”

  “No,” David said. He meant that. For now, anyway.

  “Tell him,” Gray Beard said to Marvin.

  “That address doesn’t exist anymore,” Marvin said.

  David sent Marvin to check on his house in Chicago. And the disposition of one Ronald J. Cupertine, a patient of Northwestern Hospital.

  “What does that mean?” David asked.

  “Burned down,” he said.

  “When?”

  “Neighbor kid said it was Halloween night,” Marvin said. “It had been empty for over a month. Firefighters just let it go, seems like. Kid said people who lived there were cooking meth so no one moved real quick to put the fire out. Firefighters just protected the other houses on the block.”

  “Meth,” David said. Jennifer never let any drugs in the house. She sure as fuck wasn’t cooking meth.

  “Hey,” Gray Beard said, “he’s just reporting.”

  “Anyone seen these tweaks since the fire?”

  “Kid didn’t say. I didn’t pump him, you know? I just acted like I was trying to drop off a piece of furniture. Rented a truck with a sofa in it and everything. Didn’t want someone to peg me for trying to abduct an eleven-year-old on Rollerblades.”

  It did make sense, David had to concede. The adults in the neighborhood surely knew who Sal Cupertine was, probably didn’t like the idea that the family of a murderer lived on the block. That the firemen didn’t bother to put the fire out wasn’t a surprise. First cop who showed up on the scene probably made the situation
clear. You didn’t save the Rain Man’s house. “Okay. What else?”

  “I went to that museum? They said the woman doesn’t work there anymore. Not since September.”

  Over two months now. Jennifer and William could be anywhere. He had to hope they were in custody. If she were hiding, David was confident she’d leave some kind of message for him, somewhere. Unless burning down the house was the message, which could be the case if it had burned down when she disappeared, not six weeks later. Federal custody was the best-case scenario, even though that meant she felt so threatened, she had to get off the streets. Which meant she knew it wasn’t the feds who were doing the threatening.

  But if Ronnie was out of commission, who would give a shit if Jennifer were at home, doing her thing? No one in the Family would move on her. They’d known her since she was an infant. And if they had any loyalty to Sal, they sure as fuck wouldn’t touch his kid. What was the name of the guy Bennie had given him?

  Peaches.

  “Okay,” David said.

  He was thinking now. Trying to figure out what it meant to burn down his house if Jennifer and William were already gone.

  David loved that house. Bought it with his own money. Got a loan and everything. Well, Jennifer did. And it’s not like he thought he was ever going to live in that house again. But he imagined William would live in it until he went to college, because William was going to college. He’d made that decision months before William was born. He had dreams about that house, so precise that he could see every knot in the wood floor. Could imagine Jennifer and William in every room. All the boys knew how much Sal liked the place, would talk about how the Rain Man was cleaning his own rain gutters now, the height of fucking wit and irony, but when it was time for a BBQ or a kid’s birthday party and all they had were shitty walk ups with no yards? Or apartments on the fucking Loop? Who did their fucking wives and girlfriends call, asking for a favor?

  And now it was . . . gone? Like it never existed at all? Whoever burned his fucking house down? David wasn’t going to forgive that shit. He’d go old school. Like, Inquisition old school.

  And there it was.

  He’d have to go to Chicago for that job. Would have to go on the hunt. If he wanted to find Jennifer and William? Same deal. And if it turned out they were in custody, he’d have to find someone close to the feds, which would not be easy, in light of everything.

  Thing he didn’t get was that Ronnie knew where Sal was. If Ronnie wanted someone to kill him, all he had to do was find some dumb fuck willing to take the job. Maybe that wasn’t going to be someone in the Family—David felt good about that—but still, there’d be some guy trying to make his name. But they would have done it already. Soon as Sal cut Ronnie out of the Las Vegas con, he would have sent a team if he really wanted vengeance. But that wasn’t the game.

  Ronnie wanted money. Territory. Advantage. He wasn’t going to get that by killing Sal. He’d get that by killing Bennie, maybe. But that hadn’t happened either, because Ronnie knew that if Bennie Savone died, cops and feds would start looking at the temple and that would mean Sal’s ass and, by association, Ronnie’s. If whoever this Peaches motherfucker was wanted to have Sal killed, he could send a fucking pipe bomb via Fed Ex, or send three or four guys with automatic weapons. They could do that right now.

  Unless Ronnie wasn’t talking. Literally wasn’t talking.

  “Did you find out if Ronnie Cupertine was still in the hospital?” David asked. He didn’t mind saying his name out loud, didn’t think it was a curse like if he said Jennifer’s and William’s names, because Ronnie Cupertine was a public figure.

  “Yeah,” Marvin said. “That place was secure as hell, though, so I couldn’t see him. I called his room, said I was a cousin. Nurse said he was in no condition to speak. Said a good cousin would show up and sit for a bit and then hung up on me.”

  “This was at Northwestern?”

  “Yeah. Where you told me.”

  “You see any law enforcement on the floor?”

  “A few. Plainclothes types.” That could be cops, that could be feds.

  “Security?”

  “Private guys.”

  “They have guns?”

  “Not that I saw. Walkie-talkies and Maglites. Guys like that.”

  “Any guys like me?”

  “With the yarmulkes?”

  “No,” David said. “Guys like me, but don’t look like me.” When Marvin gave him a confused look, David said, “Someone who didn’t fit in.”

  Marvin thought for a moment. “I guess I saw one guy,” he said eventually, “sitting by the elevator with a magazine, but not really reading it, just kind of flipping through the pages.”

  “What was the magazine?”

  “Sunset or Redbook or some shit? Like what you find in a waiting room.”

  “What was he wearing?” David asked.

  “That’s what made him stand out, actually. Everyone on that floor? Man, they were done up nice. Suits and expensive shoes—those new Jordans? This guy had on a blue sweat suit and had a tattoo of a face on his neck. No one else had any visible tattoos. So. There was that.”

  That didn’t make sense. Even the Gangster 2-6 guys Ronnie employed, like that poor fucker Chema, he made them dress well.

  So if Ronnie wasn’t talking, if this Peaches was in charge now because of that, maybe the problem now was that this Peaches didn’t know where Sal Cupertine was or when he might show up.

  If Sal Cupertine got arrested, this whole enterprise would come down.

  If Sal Cupertine showed up looking for vengeance, same problem.

  And if Sal Cupertine was simply out there, unaccounted for, who knew when he might want to come back and get a piece of the action. Because if Ronnie Cupertine died, the Family belonged to Sal. That was the line of succession.

  Then something clicked into place, an idea, the machinery of this whole thing starting to grind into position. Ronnie has a stroke. Someone named Peaches takes over, might be partnering with some non-Family types. Jennie and William disappear. Someone burns down Sal’s house. Ronnie’s still in the hospital, but he’s got cops, gangsters, and private security watching him, which means he can’t defend himself, everyone thinks someone’s gonna show up. Good guys think that. Bad guys think that.

  Yeah.

  There it was.

  Peaches wanted him to show up. Couldn’t very well run your own crime empire with a rogue actor floating out in the ether. If Jennifer and William went to ground, maybe Sal Cupertine would poke his head back up, just in time for a sword to lop it off.

  He had to give these fuckers credit. It was a more elegant con than he’d thought them capable of, which was yet another reason why David was sure it wasn’t Ronnie’s doing. He’d been snitching on himself for years, David knew that, but he wasn’t about to bring Sal back to town and be faced with a history of murder that no amount of confidential information could erase.

  David had to think now. Figure out his next move. “Anything else?”

  “Your face is falling apart,” Gray Beard said, “if you don’t mind me saying.”

  “That hasn’t escaped me,” David said. “I’m getting it fixed next month.”

  “By who?”

  “Dr. Melnikoff.”

  Gray Beard whistled. “I didn’t know he was still with us.”

  “Yeah,” David said. “I don’t foresee that changing.”

  “Well, good. He has small hands. You want a doctor with small hands.” Gray Beard leaned forward, showed David his hands. It looked like he could palm a basketball. “You need something after the surgery, you know where to find me.” He tapped Marvin on the leg and they both got up to leave, but David followed them out to the truck.

  “Something wrong?” Gray Beard asked.

  “No,” David said. “I just want to take a look insi
de.”

  Marvin gave Gray Beard a look, but the older man just shrugged, so Marvin unlocked the back, pulled up the door. David put his head in, looked around. It was empty. It’s always wise to make sure. He also had one other question for Marvin. “Did you happen to see a tire swing?”

  “Where?”

  “Front of the house, near the end of the driveway,” David said. “Big blue ash tree.” It was one of the first things David had done after they bought the house. Jennifer would swing on it while David mowed the lawn. No. Not David. Sal. While Sal mowed the lawn. Then eventually William tried it a few times, but he wasn’t big enough yet and Jennifer was scared he’d fall.

  “There was no front,” Marvin said. “That shit was all gone. Flat. Could see straight through to the neighbor’s house. It was the ghost of a house.”

  Gray Beard let Marvin get back into the truck before he said, “He’s too honest. Hope it’s not a fatal flaw.”

  “It’s not.”

  “I did want to ask about Mr. Savone,” Gray Beard said, “but didn’t know if that was a subject you were comfortable discussing.”

  “It’s not,” David said. “But I can tell you he’s getting off house arrest in January.”

  “Then maybe I’ll be leaving town in January,” he said. “In case there comes some advanced scrutiny on his movements.”

  “There will be,” David said. “It would be real wise for you to not say his name out loud when that time comes.” A thought came to him. “Could be I need you for something else before then, though. Before Hanukkah.”