Gangsterland: A Novel

by Tod Goldberg

  “Matthew Drew.”

  “You a student?”

  “I graduated UIC last December,” he said. “Quantico sent me back here to see if maybe it would be a good fit. So I’m just waiting to see where I’m assigned.”

  “So you’re an agent?”

  “Yeah,” he said. “I guess I am.”

  “What’s your specialty?”

  “If it were up to me, I’d be on Hostage Rescue,” he said. “I qualified for an assault team.”

  “Why are you running boxes for me?”

  Matthew shrugged. He was young—maybe twenty-five, Jeff guessed—but big through the shoulders, maybe played small college football. “I guess I’m the guy who runs your boxes until I’m otherwise directed.”

  “This case,” Jeff said, “what do you know about it?”

  “Just what I saw on the news.”

  “C’mon,” Jeff said. “You spend the whole morning hauling up boxes on big, bad Sal Cupertine, and you don’t stop to read one or two files?”

  This got the kid to smile. “I might have looked over some stuff,” he said.

  “What do you think? You think that body was Cupertine’s?” Jeff handed the file he was reading to Matthew, but he didn’t open it right away, which told Jeff he’d probably spent some time with it already.

  “You want my opinion or an educated guess?” Matthew asked.

  “Both,” Jeff said.

  Matthew opened the file and started thumbing through the documents. “Body was found three days after the killing, but with garbage that had been picked up five days earlier,” he said. “So he was stashed, I’d say, not put in a garbage can somewhere. They actually carried him and pushed him under a bunch of trash. No teeth. No hands. No feet. I mean, no nothing, really. It’s a pretty brutal way to kill a guy who’d done a lot of good work for you, isn’t it?”

  “You tell me,” Jeff said.

  “Seems excessive. I mean, he was their top muscle. So he messes up and kills a couple good guys . . . bad news, right? But not as bad as if he was skimming or planning a coup. If they killed him for messing up, my guess is that they’d do him decently. The wallet? That’s too sloppy for them. No way they’d let his wallet get into the mix.”

  “So?”

  “So that’s not him.”

  “Why fake his death? Why kill another guy?”

  Matthew closed his eyes for a moment. “Maybe his cousin Ronnie’s influence. Maybe as an appreciation for his services. Maybe they were scared to go after him. Maybe all that. It doesn’t make a lot of sense. I think that’s the problem. Easier to just make it him and get on with things. Easier for the families of those guys and for us, too.”

  Matthew was right about that, but the thing that niggled at Jeff had nothing to do with the four men Sal Cupertine had killed at all. Certainly their deaths mattered. Certainly. What got to Jeff was that he knew Sal Cupertine believed the agent named Jeff Hopper was dead. That he saw Jeff’s name on the bill and decided he’d go upstairs and take Jeff Hopper out, put a bullet in his face, or choke him to death like he did Cal, and how, in his mind, that was an okay thing. How wherever he was now—and Jeff was certain he was out there somewhere—he thought he’d killed Jeff Hopper.

  And maybe he had killed Jeff Hopper for a while. Six months, give or take. Now Jeff Hopper wanted Sal Cupertine to know: He was alive, and he was coming for him.

  “You have a sport coat or something in your cubicle?” Jeff asked.

  “No,” Matthew said. He had on a pair of tan slacks—probably Dockers—and a nicely pressed white polo shirt that now was dotted with smudges of dirt and dust from unloading the boxes.

  Jeff checked his watch. It was a little past two o’clock. “You live nearby?”

  “Yeah,” he said, “just down by the college.”

  “You got a suit there?”

  “Yeah,” he said.

  “Okay,” Jeff said. “Go change your clothes and come back. We’re going into the field.”

  “Sounds good,” Matthew said calmly, though Jeff could tell he was excited. He apparently didn’t know yet that Jeff Hopper was a pariah. “Where are we headed?”

  “Sal’s house,” Jeff said.

  Jeff Hopper was always surprised by the houses bad people lived in, since they tended to look just like the houses good people lived in. In the case of Sal Cupertine’s house in Lincolnwood, there was even a white picket fence out front, which went along nicely with the brick driveway shaded by a towering blue ash. The blue ash even had a tire swing, something Jeff had always imagined he’d have one day, too, if he ever managed to have children, though at this point in his life that likely meant step-children. Turning forty-five without a wife, and with no clear prospects in sight, had confirmed that.

  Hopper had Matthew make another drive around the block so they could rendezvous with the surveillance car at the end of the street, which was a peculiar place to watchdog a house, since they had to spend their whole day looking through their rear and side mirrors. Jeff couldn’t help but wonder how long that detail would last. Maybe another month? Two months? The house was likely bugged, and Jennifer Cupertine’s car had a tracker on it, so there was no real cause for concern that she’d skip out of town to find or meet up with her husband without the FBI being aware, though there was still the small chance that Jennifer and her son were in danger from the Family, an idea Jeff found unlikely. That was some Russian mob shit that even the Italians looked down on.

  Matthew pulled up next to a black Chrysler, and Jeff rolled down his window so he could talk to the agents inside. There were two of them, both about Matthew’s age and build, which meant they were probably spending their free time cursing the recruiter who’d told them they’d be on the front line in the war on crime.

  “Anything we should know?” Jeff asked. He didn’t recognize either man, which meant they probably didn’t recognize him, either. Better all around.

  “Been pretty quiet,” the one in the driver’s seat said.

  “How long?”

  He looked at his watch. “I don’t know, maybe ninety days. Coop, that sound right?”

  Coop, the agent in the passenger seat, had a row of playing cards spread out on the dashboard and was too busy playing solitaire to even look at Jeff. “Yeah,” he said. “Give or take a month.” He flopped down a nine of hearts but didn’t seem to know where to put it.

  “Okay,” Jeff said. “When was the last time anyone from the Family stopped by?”

  “Never,” the driver said. “It’s all wives and girlfriends. Ronnie Cupertine’s wife came by with two little ones about a week ago. Stayed about ten minutes and left in tears. That was a fun day.”

  “Yeah?” Jeff said.

  “Yeah,” the driver said. “The next hour, Jennifer stood out on the front lawn with a hammer and beat the shit out of that big tree next to the driveway. When she got tired of that, she came out into the street with a picnic basket filled with food and spent the next, I dunno, twenty minutes throwing fruits and vegetables at us.”

  “She has a pretty good arm,” Coop said.

  That explained why they were parked so far down the street.

  “Okay,” Jeff said. “We’ve got some questions for her, so if Al Capone shows up, call me on my cell.”

  Jeff handed the driver his card, and when the agent looked at the name, it was clear he recognized it. “Yeah,” the driver said, “I’ll do that,” and then he crumpled the card up and dropped it onto the pavement between the two cars.

  Matthew didn’t give Jeff an opportunity to say anything, hitting the gas fast enough to make it clear he was polite enough not to say a word. He drove their same black Chrysler down the block and then pulled onto the Cupertine’s driveway, just as the manual suggests. Let the suspect know that you’re comfortable enough to park on their property . . . while also, obviously, blocking their ability to drive away. Matthew took off his seat belt, but Jeff put a hand on his chest. “Hold up,” he said to him.

/>   “What are we doing?” Matthew asked.

  “Waiting for Mrs. Cupertine to come outside,” Jeff said.

  “What if she never comes?”

  “She’ll come,” Jeff said. “And when she does, feel free to ask questions.”

  “I don’t feel comfortable doing that,” Matthew said. “I’m not familiar with all the particulars of the case.”

  “You know that this lady’s husband killed three agents and a CI,” Jeff said. “Isn’t that enough?”

  “I guess so,” he said. “Should I turn off the engine?”

  “No, let it run,” Jeff said.

  Matthew sat there quietly for ten minutes, didn’t even turn on the radio, didn’t roll down the window. Jeff was impressed. It wasn’t like an FBI agent, even a new one, to sit quietly by. But the kid did fidget in his seat a few times. Then he cracked his knuckles.

  “You play a sport? In college?”

  “Lacrosse,” Matthew said.

  “Some place with a bunch of ivy around it?”

  “Tufts,” Matthew said.

  “That a good school?” Jeff messing with him now.

  “Better than some,” Matthew said. “More expensive than most.” He cocked his head and then did roll down his window. “I think the venetian blinds are moving.”

  “Yeah,” Jeff said, “Mrs. Cupertine has taken a couple looks.”

  “You know,” Matthew said, “it’s not like she killed the agents.”

  “I know that,” Jeff said.

  “Then why are we sweating her to come out? Why not just go to the door?”

  “I want her to get a good look at us,” Jeff said. “That way she won’t be scared to come outside and talk. We go knock on the door and badge her, maybe her kid gets all flustered and starts screaming and crying and throwing a tantrum. Then the dog starts barking and it’s all gone to shit. I don’t want that. When she’s ready, she’ll come outside and ask us questions.”

  “That standard procedure?”

  “No,” Jeff said. “Standard procedure would be that we just go about our business and pretend that body in the dump was Sal Cupertine.”

  “Those guys back there,” Matthew said. “Did that bother you?”

  “A little bit,” Jeff said.

  “Here’s what I don’t get,” Matthew said. “And I mean no offense in this. But how do you still have a job?”

  “Because I haven’t quit,” Jeff said.

  Matthew rapped his fingers on the steering wheel. Jeff liked that the kid wasn’t scared to ask a question. Didn’t seem worried that he might say the wrong thing, or if he was, had determined that Jeff wasn’t the kind of guy to pull rank on him. Truth was, six months ago, he was that guy. He was that guy going all the way back to Walla Walla. Maybe all the way back to his crib in Seattle. Raised like that by his father, a man he despised until he died. Then just as soon as his dad was six feet deep, their relationship improved markedly.

  “Here we go,” Matthew said. The front door opened, and a young boy ran out, followed in short order by his mother. William was just a small child, Jeff could see, no more than four or five. He had Jennifer’s blonde hair but his father’s olive complexion and deep-set eyes. If William was lucky, Jeff thought, his mother would get rid of all remnants of his father and let him start fresh. Move to Nebraska or something and live his entire life thinking his father had never been a part of his life. Could you do that to a four-year-old? Probably. At three, for sure. But by five, they’d retain too much. The kid still had a chance not to be infected by the Family.

  Jennifer stood on the front porch and watched her boy. He ran around the side of the house and came back riding a Big Wheel. He pedaled past the car and out into the street and then turned back around and cut up the passenger side and down the long driveway, before banking left and disappearing. A few moments later, he came shooting back around the house. Jennifer stepped off the porch then, sidestepped what looked to be several dinosaurs engaged in battle with each other on the front lawn, and came over to the Chrysler. She was tall—maybe five feet nine—and her long blonde hair spilled into the car. She had green eyes, though they were mostly red on this day, and the deep, dark circles around them weren’t doing her any favors, either.

  “Please get off my property,” Jennifer said. Polite. Nice. Like it was just another inconvenience in her life, like having Jehovah’s Witnesses showing up when you’re watching television.

  “I just have some questions for you,” Jeff said.

  “Who are you? FBI or cops? Not the press, that’s clear enough by your nice ties.”

  “FBI,” Jeff said. Jennifer gnawed at the skin surrounding her right pinkie nail. It looked raw, and Jeff wanted to reach across Matthew and pull it from her mouth, as if she were a child. Jeff couldn’t remember everything they had on her in their files, but what he did recall indicated to him that she wasn’t the average Family wife: the former Jennifer Frangello was in art classes at Olive-Harvey, getting good grades, parents were both dead—cancer and heart disease—and neither were related to any known crime families. She was just a person who happened to fall in love with a sociopath. Happens every day, and if he could figure out why, well, he’d retire and get his own afternoon talk show. “If this is a bad time for you, we can come back.”

  “This is a good time,” she said. “Most of my neighbors are still at work, so they won’t come outside to watch the freak show.” She stopped to examine her finger. It had begun to bleed, so she gathered up the hem of her T-shirt and squeezed it around her hand. “I’m sorry about whatever you think my husband did,” she said. “I mean, I’m sorry about your friends. Were they your friends?”

  “They were,” Jeff said.

  “No one deserves to go out like that,” she said.

  “That’s where we agree,” Jeff said.

  “My husband,” Jennifer said, “he’s a good person. I know you don’t believe that. He loves his son. He’s a caring person. A very caring person.”

  For some reason, Jeff didn’t doubt that. He’d listened to all the wiretaps they had on him from his meetings with the boys—even the last one—and what Jeff took away was that he seemed . . . professional. Had an okay sense of humor. They’d even caught him briefly, and unexpectedly, on a wire a few months earlier, when they were working on the Russians, and he’d spent a good fifteen minutes standing outside a Subway near the college talking on his cell phone about cough medicine. Called his wife “baby.” Told her that he loved her before he hung up. Went inside and ordered a tuna fish sandwich. Just like a normal person.

  “Your husband,” Jeff said, “is a hit man for the Family.”

  “He’s never been arrested, do you know that?”

  “Of course,” Jeff said.

  “You know these people you call the ‘Family’ threw his father off of a building? So why would he work for people who did that to him?” Jennifer began to tear up, and Jeff wondered how hard it would be to live her life for one day. He didn’t try to empathize with the people he investigated, generally speaking, but then Jennifer wasn’t someone he was investigating.

  “I’m not here to harass you,” Jeff said.

  “The cops keep showing up whenever I go out. They don’t come here, because they probably know you guys are listening to everything, but they’ll roll up behind me when I’m out getting groceries. William, he loves it. But you know Chicago cops. They aren’t investigating anymore. The ones that stop me now, they think Sal is off somewhere going state’s evidence, so they’re here making sure I’m doing okay, asking me if I need anything, offering me money or whatever. Last guy? He came up to me at Tino’s pizza down the street, asked me what I needed, so I told him the best thing he could do would be to pay my electric bill. I was just joking, though I wonder if he did it, you know? Maybe next time I’ll ask him to get my cleaning.”

  “Is that what you think?” Jeff asked. “That he turned state’s?”

  “I think if I sit out here and talk to you, Ro
nnie will send his wife over to talk to me again.”

  “Would that be why you didn’t hold a funeral?” Matthew asked.

  Jennifer cocked her head and regarded Matthew with a look that Jeff thought was a mix between amusement and utter sadness. “Look at you,” she said. “Have you ever wanted for anything in your life?”

  “Everyone wants something,” Matthew said, the young agent composed, cool, maybe a touch condescending, which was okay; he was FBI, after all. Then Jeff saw for the first time that Matthew had a wedding ring on his finger, and it all made some sense. He might have been a young agent, but he still had a life, still had more shit going on than Jeff, really. “It boils down to how they go about getting what they want, doesn’t it? For me, anyway.”

  “Aren’t you smart, with your Brooks Brothers suit and your class ring. You think that gives you the right to talk to me like that? You’re not even old enough to valet my car.”

  “Let’s take it easy,” Jeff said.

  “No, to answer your question,” she said. “I didn’t have a funeral because I don’t want to believe he’s dead. Don’t want his son to believe he’s dead, either. Maybe he did turn state’s and he’s living out in Springfield or something, eating steak every night and telling you everything he knows about his cousin Ronnie’s used-car business.”

  “Is that what you want?” Jeff asked.

  “It’s what I hope,” she said. “It’s the best-case scenario. Otherwise I have to believe the shoe box of ashes in my hall closet is my husband, and I can’t handle that.” William came around the front of the house again on his Big Wheel, his legs pumping away on the pedals. Jennifer stood upright and watched as he spun around the car again before heading toward the backyard. “William, be careful,” she said, though it wasn’t loud enough for him to hear. It seemed almost reflexive.

  “Your son has a lot of energy,” Matthew said. “My son is about his age. Never gets tired. My wife, Nina, is always looking for new ways to wear him out.”