Gangster Nation

by Tod Goldberg

  “Who’s that?”

  Miguel pulled down his mask. “A referral from Congregation Beth El,” Miguel said. One of Rabbi Goldstein’s, which meant he’d be doing the service. “Car accident.”

  “When’s the funeral?”

  “Tomorrow,” he said. “I know no one’s going to see it, but, I feel like, it’s not a wrong thing to put a person right, yes, Rabbi?” Normally, Jewish funerals, you went in the ground as you were. No embalming, no restoration, since they were all closed casket. They embalmed only the goyim, they usually restored only the goyim, too. Because when the Moshiach came, it didn’t matter if you were whole or dust, you would be restored then.

  “Yeah,” David said. “That’s fine, Miguel.”

  Ruben dug into his pocket, came out with a twenty, set it on the counter. “Miguel, why don’t you run to Starbucks, get us a couple lattes.”

  “Okay,” Miguel said. He stripped off his gloves, dumped his bloodstained apron in the clothes bin, washed up. Miguel had worked in the funeral home for five years now, on all kinds of bodies. He used to take the bus to work, but now he drove an Acura with a stereo system that you could hear bumping from five blocks away.

  “How much does he know?” David asked when Miguel left.

  “He don’t ask questions,” Ruben said. “But he’s not stupid.”

  David looked at the two bags, tried to stay calm.

  If it was Jennifer and William, David would be on the table next to them.

  He unzipped the adult and was hit with a wave of stench. The rotten and pungent smell of decomposition, but also sickeningly sweet, like old meat and cut, damp grass. David snatched the yarmulke off his head, pressed it to his nose and mouth, stifled a gag. He’d been around a lot of dead bodies, but not a lot of bodies that had been dug up, put in a bag, and shipped cross country.

  It was a woman. Naked. Face side down, long blond hair matted with dirt and blood and the exit wound of a gun blast.

  “This is not some shit I’m part of,” Ruben said behind David, but David didn’t respond. He reached down and pulled the hair from the woman’s face, revealed her profile. What was left of her profile. Looked like she’d been shot four, maybe five times. Up close. A Glock, most likely. One bullet would have done the job. You only shot someone that many times for the effect. For this side of the equation. Scare the people who find the body. David pushed away the dirt and debris. Stared into what was left of her right eye. Wiped her face off with his yarmulke.

  “Get out,” David said to Ruben.

  “What?”

  “Get the fuck out!” David said.

  Ruben took an instinctual step back, didn’t say anything, then went down the hallway toward the waiting room, where they left the coffins to be taken to the cemetery.

  David unzipped the other bag, let the stench wash over him. Steeled himself. Looked down. There were limbs strewn about, all caked in dirt, falling apart, skin torn away revealing the bright white of bones where they’d been cut from the body. Tried to figure out what the fuck he was seeing. Counted. Three legs. A trunk. Two arms. A head.

  A boy’s head.

  One shot, between the eyes. A burn mark. Fucker put the Glock right on him. No exit wound. Bullet was probably still in there.

  A boy whose birth he was present for, right there in Northwestern Hospital.

  But it wasn’t Jennifer and William.

  It was Ronnie’s wife, Sharon Cupertine, and one of their four children, their son, James.

  Sal had known Sharon her entire life. Grew up two blocks from her. She was Ronnie’s second wife; her father was Eddie Castigliano, who they used to call Toto, because he had a little fucking dog. She was the sweetest goddamned person Sal ever knew, other than Jennifer. Raised her four kids to be polite. Before Sal and Jennifer had William, they used to babysit all those kids. James was the second-youngest. He was born with a cleft palate and had fifteen surgeries before he was four years old. A little slow, if Sal was being honest, and that was probably good. Ronnie wouldn’t put him in the game.

  Fuck.

  It didn’t matter.

  The game was over.

  Sal loved that kid. Loved all those kids. The oldest two were girls. Suzanne and Lana. They were teenagers now. Then there was James. And Dana, the youngest, also a girl.

  That other leg. Maybe it was one of theirs. The pinkie toe still had a dash of red polish on it.

  He had to get his shit together. What did this mean? Who would kill Sharon and the kids and let Ronnie live? Because if Ronnie was dead, it would be news. If Sharon and the kids were dead, that would be news, too. Sending them here meant whoever killed them didn’t want that fact getting out. Even if they were missing, that would set off alarms. Bennie would hear something, people would start making moves, Sharon had family, too. Her dad had died in prison. Shanked through the eye at Stateville. Probably on Ronnie’s orders.

  But there was nothing.

  Which meant either no one knew they were dead or no one cared that they were missing, which meant everyone thought they’d gone to the feds.

  Next bag that showed up could be Jennifer and William.

  Or it could be the rest of Ronnie’s kids.

  It wouldn’t be Ronnie himself. You disappear Ronnie Cupertine, it would be like disappearing Jimmy Hoffa. Geraldo Rivera would show up. Al fucking Roker.

  David zipped up both bags, went to the waiting area, but Ruben wasn’t there. He looked through the window and saw that he was standing outside, on the phone. When he saw David in the window, he hung up, came inside.

  “Who the fuck were you talking to?” David asked.

  “Nobody,” Ruben said.

  “‘Nobody’ is not the right answer.”

  “My wife, okay? Chill.”

  Chill.

  “You making plans to get out of town?”

  “Nothing like that,” Ruben said.

  “Your wife and kids like having Mitzy around, Ruben? She a good dog? Where they think she came from? The pound?”

  “Man,” Ruben said, “don’t bring my family into this shit.”

  “Don’t make me,” David said. Ruben swallowed. “Now. Where’d those bodies come from?”

  “Drove up from Palm Springs in a hearse, like the last couple OGs. Some tribe business.”

  Someone from Chicago was moving bodies through the tribes. But it also meant whoever was moving bodies didn’t want Sharon and James to be found, ever, in Chicago. That they were willing to ship them out meant it was a problem. That they dug them up meant they were worried someone would eventually come looking. But they wouldn’t have sent them here if they knew David was going to see them. “That’s not where they’re from.”

  “How do you know?” Ruben asked.

  “Because I know them.”

  Ruben seemed confused. “Jews?”

  “No.” David thinking: I’m going to have to kill him. I’m going to have to kill him and his whole family. “How long have they been dead?”

  “A couple weeks, my guess. Longer, they wouldn’t smell like that,” Ruben said.

  “Miguel see them?”

  “No, I’m not fucking stupid.” He started to pace. “Look,” Ruben said. “I’m not about this shit, okay? I’m ready to walk.” Ruben pointed over his shoulder, toward the cemetery. “You know that bullshit with Melanie? That’s not out of my head, Rabbi. I’m going out to her grave, two, three times a week and saying prayers and shit. I add this into it? No. Not for me. Prison you get out of one day. This shit has me boxed in forever. This is some serial killer shit. And I am not with it. Period.”

  David thought for a moment. He had to get back to the bar mitzvah or someone would come looking for him.

  He had two choices.

  Give Sharon and James the burial they deserved or give them vengeance.


  Or maybe there were three choices.

  “I need you to embalm them,” David said.

  “No,” Ruben said. “I did that shit once for you and didn’t ask no fucking questions. But this is a bridge too far, homes. If Mr. Savone knew what I did, I’d be a dead man. You hear me? I’d be fucking dead. Then do it on this woman and whatever is left of that fucking kid? No. I’d be fucking dead.”

  “Ruben,” David said, as calmly as possible, “you are already dead.”

  “What?”

  “You are born to die,” David said, calm, everything calm. “You don’t get to choose when. You only get to choose how you want to live. Do you want justice for these people?”

  “You know them?”

  David wished he hadn’t said that, but he had, and now here they were. “Yes.”

  “Well?”

  “They are my family.”

  “Your family?”

  “That’s right,” David said. He walked down the hall, Ruben behind him, brought him back into the morgue. He unzipped Sharon’s bag, the smell enveloping the room immediately. “That’s my cousin Sharon. If you flip her over, you’ll find a tattoo of a dolphin on her hip. Got it in college. One of those stupid things people do.” He unzipped the other bag. “That’s her son, James. He’s eleven. Never had a bad day in his life. I don’t know if all that shit in the bag is him, because he’s got three sisters, too, and if he’s dead, and their mother is dead, and there’s an extra leg in there? Well, that means they’re all dead. That means, sometime soon? You’re going to drive out to the desert and there’s gonna be three more bags, except this time, it’s gonna be little girls.”

  “They said Monday or Tuesday they’d have more,” Ruben said.

  Everything went without a hitch, he’d be at home, recovering, but in no condition to assist with this problem.

  “Okay. This is what you’re going to do. I want you to embalm them. Don’t remove any bullets you find. And when the next bodies come, if they look like what I said, embalm them, too. Then put them in your hearse and drive to Los Angeles or San Francisco or Portland. Yeah. Portland.” He wanted him to drive to Chicago, but that was too obvious. Leave the bodies somewhere public, where they’d be found, pictures would be in the paper, get on the news, a hotline would be set up. If he needed to, David would call in a tip himself. You don’t kill women and children and get away with it. David was learning that every day. These motherfuckers would, too. “Middle of the night, dump the bodies at the first church you find. Doesn’t matter the denomination. Then come home. Can I trust you to do this?”

  Ruben said, “Mr. Savone will have me killed, Rabbi.”

  “If he wanted you dead,” David said, “you would already be dead. Mr. Savone is not a man who waits around. So my advice to you is to make yourself indispensable. You do this favor for me, I’ll be the guy who warns you.”

  Ruben nodded his head once, but didn’t say anything. He was an inch away from breaking. Maybe less.

  “You did the right thing, Ruben,” David said. “Do you understand that? You did right.”

  “It don’t feel right.”

  David checked his watch. He needed to get back. He zipped up the bags. “I go into the hospital tomorrow. You ever get another bag with a woman and a boy? You come and get me. I don’t care if I’m in surgery, understood?”

  “Yes, Rabbi,” Ruben said.

  •

  David walked out the front of the funeral home just as Miguel was returning. He had two Starbucks cups and a half-eaten doughnut in his hand.

  “I’m glad I got to see you. I wanted to tell you good luck with your surgery, Rabbi,” Miguel said. “You need anything, my wife and me, we just got a place over by the Smiths on Lake Mead? So I could get you groceries or whatever, Rabbi.”

  “When did you get married?”

  “Oh,” he said, “it was just a small thing at St. Anne’s, a couple months ago.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” Not that he and Miguel talked much. But it was the sort of thing David liked to know about. He made a mental note to have Esther get them something off their registry.

  “Oh, I guess I thought you knew.” He lifted up his left hand, showed the simple gold band he had. “We been together almost two years, so, seemed right.” He shifted from foot to foot. “Can I tell you something personal, Rabbi?”

  “Of course.”

  “In a way, you’re responsible for this.” He leaned in toward David, lowered his voice. “Do you remember that night I thought the funeral home was getting robbed?” David did. Miguel had walked in on him while he was on the phone, negotiating the transfer of a body. Miguel almost hadn’t made it out alive that night. “You asked me what I had to live for, you know?”

  “No,” David said, “I asked you what you were willing to die for.”

  “Yeah,” Miguel said, “I guess that’s kind of the same thing, but different. I took it to heart, though. Like, what did I have. And I didn’t have anything. Now I do. You know, so, I’m more invested in my actions, is what I’m trying to tell you.”

  “What are you asking me for here, Miguel?”

  “More responsibility,” he said. He stood up straight. “I’d like to go to funeral director’s school, like Ruben did. So I can grow in the company.”

  “You want to be like Ruben?”

  “Yes,” Miguel said.

  “I’ll talk with Rabbi Kales when I return,” David said. “See what we can do.”

  “That’s all I can ask,” he said.

  David made his way up back up the block. It was a Saturday, so in addition to all of the cars across the street for the bar mitzvah, inside the lush green cemetery David made out at least ten cars parked at different junctures. He knew who would be out there. Cliff Grossman came every Saturday with a radio, sat at his wife’s grave, plucked weeds, had lunch. Lenore Pincus would be at her daughter Jackie’s grave, reading. Visiting families from out of town, dressed for a day on the Strip and with flowers bought from Manic Al’s, checking maps to find Nana’s final resting spot.

  Jews believed the dead existed beyond life as spiritual beings; however, the only remnant of their time here was their deeds. There were no ghosts, no holy visitations. Jews didn’t preserve their dead bodies, because they didn’t matter. The simple pine box, the quick burial, it was all so that the corporeal vessel could disappear quickly. But still, the Jews came to witness their dead, both the ones they loved and the ones they’d never known. Even places of massacre had turned holy.

  Torah said, Remember thy last end and cease from enmity.

  Sal Cupertine couldn’t do that.

  Talmud said, If not for this day . . .

  If not for this day he could be any David. But David Cohen was of the Book. It was in him. It was him.

  A gust of wind blew in from the west and David instinctually reached for his yarmulke, but it was gone. He’d left it in the morgue.

  David crossed the street, nodded at two of the security guards, passed the temple, passed the Barer Academy, reached the Performing Arts Center, climbed the steps, and found Casey Berkowitz standing there, smoking, along with a man who looked to be one of the MMA guys. He was short, maybe five-eight, but stout, and covered in tattoos, including what looked like the 23rd Psalm on his forearm, his shirt sleeves rolled up to show it off. His skin was pink and thick with veins. He looked like the kind of cheap meat Paul Bruno’s father used to feed to the neighborhood dogs.

  “Rabbi,” Casey said. “I was looking for you.”

  “Please put your cigarette out,” David said.

  “I paid for this space,” Casey said. “I can’t smoke a cigarette out here? A hundred thousand dollars and you get to tell me what I can and can’t do? I saw your friend Rachel Savone smoking like a chimney out here and you said nothing.”

  Detective Behen lingered
about twenty feet away. He was on his phone, but when David looked his way, he gave him a nod.

  “Are you drunk?” David asked.

  “Everyone’s drunk,” Casey said. “I paid for an open bar.” He blew smoke out toward David. Then he said to the bag of meat beside him, “This is the guy I told you about.”

  “You’re the man who threatened my boy here?” Bag of Meat said. “With the scissors? That’s you?”

  “I’m the rabbi,” David said. They were both drunk, though this motherfucker looked like he was maybe coked up, too. He’d be using someone’s else piss if he wanted to fight anytime soon.

  “I don’t care if you’re Jesus Christ,” Bag of Meat said. “You don’t threaten my boy here, or you and me are going to have problems.”

  “What does that mean, exactly?” David asked.

  “It means you pay Mr. Berkowitz the respect he’s earned.”

  “Yeah,” David said. “I’ll do that when it happens.” He took a step back, created a little distance, made sure Detective Behen saw him. He did. Started to head over. David squared toward Casey and Bag of Meat, showed his full face to both men—what was left of it—and said, his voice slightly above a whisper, “I ever catch one of you motherfuckers alone on the street, you’re fucking dead.”

  Which is when Bag of Meat, who at the time was the thirteenth-ranked middleweight MMA fighter in the world, but who in three days would indeed be fucking dead—found hanged in his garage, because nobody threatened people who worked for Bennie Savone, nobody—sucker punched Rabbi David Cohen flush under his right eye, collapsing the remaining structure of his face before David even knew he’d been punched.

  Epilogue

  The Branding Iron Café was the only place in these parts, especially in the snow, where you could get a decent drink and a steak. So at five o’clock on New Year’s Eve, Caroline Evans and her father, Levi, piled into his Subaru Outback and made the drive from Loon Lake to Clayton, parked between a motorcycle and Chevy truck, and went inside. There were two men at the bar, ten feet between them, and on the television Washington State played Purdue in a bowl game. Somewhere far away, judging by the weather. Texas or Florida or maybe even California. Certainly somewhere a lot warmer than eastern Washington.