Gangsterland: A Novel

by Tod Goldberg

  “That is so cool,” Tricia said. “We all totally miss Rabbi Gottlieb.”

  “I’ve heard only good things about him,” David said, thinking, I can’t just sit here like an idiot and let Bennie push me into corners, though, at the same time he realized he had no choice, his own response a calculated answer to make this pretty young girl appeased. What was happening to him?

  “He was so young, so it’s totally sad,” she said, and David realized Rabbi Gottlieb hadn’t just moved to Reno. “The way he spoke Torah . . .” She couldn’t continue, as the power of whatever she was talking about was just too palpable.

  Bennie patted Tricia lightly on the small of her back. “A tragedy,” he said. “And Tricia, be a doll, and make sure my bacon is soft. I can’t eat that crispy stuff.” Bennie watched her walk off before he said, “Her father used to own half of North Las Vegas. Jordan Rosen. You’ll meet him at temple.”

  Great. “What happened?”

  “He started coming down to the Wild Horse,” Bennie said. “Fell in love with a girl we used to have. Said she was Iranian when shit was bad with the Iranians, said she was Iraqi when shit was bad with them, but truth was she was just brown. Real name was Karen but on stage she went by Sholeh, which she said meant ‘flame’ or ‘fire’ or ‘hot pussy.’ She had the game she played. You get these idiots in from Kansas who want to get some towel head to push her tits in their face while they say trash to her, that’s a good time. Tricia’s dad, he just wanted some strange, you know? He couldn’t stand having these tourists abusing her, so he’d buy her all night long, drop five, ten thousand a night on her. That adds up.” Bennie paused and took a sip of his coffee, put his glasses back on. “The pictures we sent him did the rest.”

  “You had to do that?” David said, testing him now, still thinking about what he’d read, pondering exactly how he was going to address this whole situation, seeing if Bennie ever made the right choice.

  “He started putting dances on his credit card, and he kept getting declined,” Bennie said. “First time, whatever, we let it slide. He’s a good customer, so I tell the manager to pay the girl for her time and that we’ll double up next time. Next time comes, same shit, so now I’m out twenty K. I gave him a few days to make good, you know, gentleman to gentleman, and he didn’t come up, says not to worry, he’s good, owns half the city, just having some liquidity issues, and so I’m reasonable, right? You’d say I’m reasonable?”

  “Yeah,” David said, thinking: Reasonably mad.

  “Two months he pulled this shit,” Bennie said. “He lives three houses from me, his wife and kids practically cousins to my wife and kids, so what can I do?” Before David could answer—and his answer would have been Beat it out of the fucker, because a debt is a debt and somehow, if you owe, you gotta pay—Bennie pointed at a tall, well-dressed older gentleman walking through the restaurant. “That’s Rabbi Kales,” he said. Rabbi Kales stopped and had a few words with the people at almost every table, his hand always on someone’s shoulder. “Watch how he works the room. That’s your lesson for the day.”

  Rabbi Kales didn’t really look like a rabbi, at least not what David thought a rabbi looked like, which is to say he thought he was going to be wearing that black getup, have the long beard, the hat, all that Hasidic garb. Instead, Rabbi Kales looked like a bank president—blue suit, not too flashy, but clearly expensive, nice shoes, though not as nice as the ones David had on, tie with a big Windsor knot, and what looked to David like a pretty decent watch. (David had a Rolex once, though he hadn’t earned it. He just took it off of a body. It eventually started to creep him out, so he traded it to a Russian for a nice GSh-18 self-loading pistol when the Family had him proctor an arms deal a few years back.) Rabbi Kales wasn’t even wearing a yarmulke, which came as a great relief to David, since he realized he’d be able to do likewise.

  When Rabbi Kales finally finished his tour of the restaurant, he sat down beside his son-in-law in the booth and gave him a handful of checks. “Take these to the bank for me, Benjamin,” he said.

  Benjamin? For some reason, David had never thought of Bennie as having any other name. The mere thought of this gave David his first reason to smile in a very long time.

  Bennie went through the checks, one by one, nodding each time. “Not a bad pull,” he said. “Maybe we should come back at dinner.”

  Rabbi Kales didn’t reply. He was too busy eyeballing David, that jovial table-to-table demeanor David witnessed now long gone. “So,” Rabbi Kales said finally, “you’re him.”

  “I guess so,” David said.

  “Did you bring your books?”

  “They’re in the car,” David said. “You want I should get them?”

  Rabbi Kales gave a short laugh, not much more than a snort. “In your entire life,” he said, “have you ever heard anyone, other than the people you worked with previously, use a phrase like You want I should get them?”

  David felt his face getting very hot. “I don’t—” he began, but Rabbi Kales cut him off with a wave of his hand.

  “You’re smart,” Rabbi Kales said. “Speak like it.”

  David didn’t know if he was smart. He liked to think he wasn’t dumb, even sort of liked learning new things, provided it didn’t come at the expense of doing something he really wanted to do. He didn’t believe in street smarts, since that meant you were a failure in some other part of your life but somehow were cagey enough to make shit work out among the uneducated trolls who lived under the bridge. But David was aware that he didn’t sound smart. “I only know how to talk one way,” David said.

  “We’ll fix that,” he said. Not rude. Not condescending. Just factual. David admired that. It was a different kind of toughness. “Rabbi Gottlieb, you should know, was a very popular man. You have your work ahead of you.”

  “Where did he go?” David asked.

  “Right off the side of a boat,” Bennie said.

  “He was a fine boy,” Rabbi Kales said quietly. “And an excellent rabbi. He didn’t deserve his fate.”

  “Yeah, well, who does?” Bennie said.

  “He was a religious man, Benjamin,” Rabbi Kales said.

  “Then he should be happy,” Bennie said. “He’s in a better place.”

  “You know nothing of our religion,” Rabbi Kales said. He spit the words out with such venom that David actually backed away from the table and banged his knee on the underside of it with a force that knocked water out of the glasses, all of which seemed to get Rabbi Kales to settle down a bit. “For my granddaughters, at least,” he continued, “you might want to know what happens to them when they die. It’s the sort of question children tend to ask.”

  Yeah, David thought, yetzer hara for sure.

  Thankfully, Tricia reappeared then with everyone’s orders: plates of pork and eggs for Bennie, lox and onions for Rabbi Kales, David’s lone bagel. David had never been happier to see a waitress in his life. Everything he’d witnessed thus far had him completely confused: There was, apparently, some belief by Bennie and his father-in-law, Rabbi Kales, that he’d be working as a rabbi. Not pretending to be a rabbi as a cover story while he chilled out for a few months, years, whatever.

  There was no good reason either Bennie or Rabbi Kales should think he was qualified for any kind of work with kids, or any kind of work that didn’t involve killing people. It was his unique, cultivated skill set.

  What David really couldn’t figure out was Rabbi Kales. What could Bennie possibly have on him? Bennie was married to his daughter, they had kids, and apparently Bennie was somehow involved enough in the day-to-day operations of the temple that Rabbi Kales wasn’t in the least bit worried about being seen giving him money in the middle of a restaurant.

  “Listen,” David said. He leaned across the table and spoke as quietly as he could while still being heard. “I’ve been a good soldier here. You guys wanted to change my face? Fine. Change my face. You want me to read five hundred books on Judaism? Fine, I’ll read the bo
oks. You want me to take tests? Write essays? No problem. Give me a number 2 pencil. You want to coop me up in solitary confinement in that house with that half-wit Slim Joe for six months, I grin and make it through. Now, either someone tells me what the plan is, or I bounce. And when I bounce, people get hurt. That’s all I’m saying.”

  No one said anything for a moment, so David sat back, took a bite of his bagel, and chewed it angrily, or what he presumed Rabbi Kales and Bennie would see as anger, though really he chewed it with relief for finally speaking his mind (plus he could finally chew with actual purpose, which was a nice surprise). Whether or not he’d made the wrong play was a slight concern.

  Both Bennie and Rabbi Kales seemed surprised, neither of them used to getting told what was what, but if there was one thing he’d learned in his life, it was that as soon as you let someone else dictate the terms of your survival, you are a dead man. That’s why even though he’d been part of the Family all these years, he still worked freelance and didn’t concern himself with whether or not someone got pissed about not getting a pinch of his take. If they wanted a bite, they could try to come and take it.

  “Tell me something, David,” Rabbi Kales said, his voice perfectly calm, his whole demeanor at ease. “Do you understand what you’ve read, or do you just memorize?”

  “I get what I get,” David said. “Some things, they just seem like weird stories that someone came up with after a meth run.”

  Rabbi Kales took a bite of his breakfast—lox and onions, neither of which appealed to David, at least not in their raw form, seemed to be popular in the place, David noticing half the octogenarians had big slabs of the pink fish on their plates—and chewed for a few moments, his eyes still on David, everything about him placid. “Give me an example,” Rabbi Kales said.

  This was all getting too strange. David had essentially threatened to kill both of the men sitting across from him, but neither seemed to take any offense. Back home, someone would already be dead. Nothing was the same in Las Vegas, not even the deli they were sitting in, which was like someone had cut and pasted a Chicago deli into the middle of the desert. Even David: sitting in a booth in a thousand-dollar suit making threats he didn’t even know how to make good on anymore. And now he was getting quizzed on sacred religious texts, as if he were a normal person, not someone who’d put, what, fifty people into the ground? Maybe more like seventy-five. Shit, maybe one hundred. He’d never kept count, had never tried, really, but he could see each of them. Remember all the details. Because that’s what he did. He kept that on file in his head, ready to be accessed at any time. It was his risk-management plan, knowing that the softest part of the windpipe is actually down by the clavicle, and that if you want to be humane, you press on the carotid artery for about thirty seconds and the guy will pass out first, and then you can break his windpipe without much struggle. But what was he gonna do now? Reach across the table and stab a rabbi in the throat with a butter knife? Suffocate him with his bagel and schmeer? And then kill a couple dozen senior citizens on his way out the door?

  “Well,” David said after some more thought, “that Ezekiel is a piece of work. The Orthodox drop his vision of the Valley of Dry Bones into half their writings. I mean, that guy was a complete whack job of the first order, and yet every other book I’ve got in the car talks about him like he’s this creature of the divine. My opinion? He’s got dementia or schizophrenia. Not a level guy in the least.”

  Rabbi Kales tried to stifle a smile, but it didn’t work. “Well,” he said, “you’re lucky that Temple Beth Israel is Reform. You won’t have to deal with much of that sort of thing.” He took another bite of his lox and onions, took a sip of tea, wiped the corners of his mouth with his napkin, which somehow made him look elegant, and then sighed. “You see these people in here, David?”

  “Yeah, I see them,” David said.

  “Do you know why they are all here?”

  “I don’t know,” David said. “The bagels aren’t bad.”

  “They’re here because it’s their community,” he said. “This is not the best food in the city. It’s not even the best bagel, you should know. But this deli stands for who they are, their traditions. This food I’m eating? It’s a connection to my father. In 1919, as a little boy, he was smuggled out of Russia, Ukraine, to be accurate, across the Black Sea to Romania inside a bag of potatoes, with his own baby brother in the bag beside him, dying. Can you imagine what that must have been like?”

  “I’ve got some idea,” David said.

  “You have no idea,” Rabbi Kales said, “because you’ve never been pursued for being born, for what exists spiritually and metaphorically in you. But all of these people here? They have the same ancestral stories, or, many of them have worse stories. The books you have? They have the same books. The food you’re eating? They have the same food. Ezekiel may seem to you to be insane, and maybe he was. But for everyone here, whether they know it or not, he is a witness to both the beginning and the end, and that is at least worthy of some respect. Sitting here, just to have a simple meal, is a connection to a collective history, much of it born out of misery that had nothing to do with any of them directly. You, you’ve had to accept the consequences of your horrible choices.”

  “If you’ll pardon me,” David said, though he made sure he kept his voice down, “what about your horrible choices, Rabbi?” David knew enough about Jewish history through his reading to know that what Rabbi Kales said was absolutely true, but that didn’t mean he wanted the lecture, nor the sanctimony. “You’re sitting here, too, and you’re sitting with me and with Bennie, not your, uh, what is that word? Mish something or other.”

  “Mishpocha,” Bennie said. “That’s the word you’re looking for.”

  “Right,” David said . . . and he suddenly felt undercut by Bennie, who, as it turned out, actually was Rabbi Kales’s mishpocha, at least through marriage. “That.”

  “Your people shall be my people,” Rabbi Kales said. “I’m sure you’re familiar with that?”

  Truth was, Jennifer had a framed print of that passage from Ruth in their bedroom, right under a photo of them on their wedding day, May 5, 1988. The memory of this suddenly paralyzed David, the realization—one he’d had several times—being that he was beginning to forget details of her face already. Not how she looked, but specific lines and moles and dashes of pigment, and how they both looked in that picture. He couldn’t conjure his own face anymore, either. And then a new level of sadness ran through him: He’d missed their ten-year anniversary. Rabbi Kales was right, that was the problem: This was all a consequence of his own profound mistake.

  “You feeling okay?” Bennie said.

  “I, uh,” David began, but he couldn’t say anything. All the tables surrounding them were filled not just with old people . . . not just old Jews . . . but old men and women, together. Staring at each other across their meals, kibitzing about their lives, their pasts, just the minutia of everyday existence. Couples. Old married people.

  David needed to get out of this deli.

  “My jaw,” David said. He kept his eyes focused on his lap, didn’t dare look up at Bennie, since he was pretty sure he had tears in his eyes. Christ. Had it come to this so quickly? Six months and a few weeks and a couple thousand pages of Judaica, and he was suddenly a big fucking puss. The Jews, the thing was, they didn’t get down with this woe-is-me shit. They took vengeance, you fucked with the wrong person, you woke up with Mossad standing over your bed. “It’s, uh, I need a Percocet. It’s tightening up. Shooting pain into my eyes.”

  “Fine,” Bennie said, all business. “Why don’t you take Rabbi Kales back with you to get your baby aspirin, and then we can meet back at the temple in, say, thirty? Give you both some more time to argue about what the food means.”

  Rabbi Kales hadn’t taken his eyes off David the whole time, or at least that’s what David felt. Rabbi Kales exuded a sort of kindness that David had never experienced. The man was a hard motherfucker,
that was clear enough; weird thing was that he also seemed like he had a real vested interest in other people’s wellness, something David was not particularly familiar with.

  “That would be fine,” Rabbi Kales said. When David finally got his shit together enough to look up, he saw that Rabbi Kales was still staring directly at him. He looked profoundly sad.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  “You ask good questions,” Rabbi Kales said. They were weaving through the streets of Summerlin, David still keeping his speed low, though with Rabbi Kales periodically waving at people in the cars beside them, David didn’t know why he even bothered. “Inconspicuous” was apparently not a word in Rabbki Kales’s vocabulary. He had a volume of the Talmud on his lap and was flipping through it, not reading, just looking at the pages and at the notes David had left in the margins. He closed the book, but kept his hand on it, his thumb running back and forth over the gold-leafed pages.

  “When you know a test is coming,” David said, “it’s easier to figure out what you don’t understand.”

  “Is that your philosophy?”

  “No,” David said, though, now that he thought about it, it was probably better than “everybody dies,” which had managed to get him through the previous thirty-five years. “Just something I’ve noticed.”

  “Yes, well,” Rabbi Kales said, “it is the basis of much of what you’ve been reading. Trying to figure out the unknowable. Place order onto chaos. All anyone wants to know is how they’ll find happiness, what it will feel like to die, and what happens next.”