Gangsterland: A Novel

by Tod Goldberg

  It sounded simple enough, yet when he stepped behind the podium and looked out at the playground filled with Jewish children, smelled the cooking food, heard the polite applause from the adults, and saw Bennie Savone with his arm around his wife, his wife whose father was the rabbi, his wife whose father the rabbi had done something depraved enough that he was now in bed with a gangster who was going to build an empire on corpses, in a way no other Mafia boss ever had, and had selected David to be his guy, had seen enough in him that he was going to let him be responsible for the growth and the prosperity of not just his criminal plan but, it seemed, also his noncriminal plans to grow a temple Las Vegas . . . well, he felt a huge surge of pride.

  All this time waiting for something big to happen. All the years he told Jennifer that they were going west to get beyond that Chicago shit. All the ways he’d wondered if he’d ever see fifty, or if he’d be thrown off a building. All the nights he’d driven back across the Illinois state line in a stolen car, ten grand in his pocket from a freelance job so they could get the transmission fixed, get a stove that didn’t leak, help Jennifer’s dad pay his medical bills after he got his hip replaced, or just to get them through the slow time during the coldest, frozen months of winter.

  All that . . . and here he was, he’d done it, he’d made it. Now all he had to do was bide his time, do what Bennie asked, listen to Rabbi Kales, make all the right moves. And when the time was right, he’d be done with all this tsoris, he’d have money in the bank, and then, then, he’d go get Jennifer and William. Maybe it wouldn’t be only a year or two. Maybe it would be more like five or seven. And that would be fine. The Jews had wandered the desert for forty years. He could do five standing on his head.

  David opened his mouth slightly at first, to make sure he wouldn’t wretch, found Rachel in the audience, realized what he was looking for wasn’t even her, wasn’t any friendly face in particular, more like the idea of a friendly face, because he knew at some point in his life he was going to disappoint Rachel, would probably leave her a widow, because that’s how the game always ended for people like Bennie, and then he leaned into the microphone and said, “Shalom.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  That afternoon, after David helped the teenagers wrangle the last of the sugar-addled kids off the playground and break down the tents and deflate the dreidel, he walked across the street to the funeral home, where he found Bennie pacing out front.

  “You have a good time today, Rabbi?” Bennie asked. He was still on the phone, so he covered the receiver with his hand.

  “It was fine.”

  “Looked like you were going to puke for a minute there.”

  “I don’t like public speaking,” David said.

  “You want me to get you some Valium? Maybe another steak?”

  “I’ll make it work.”

  Bennie put a hand up to indicate he was back on the phone. “Here’s the deal,” Bennie said, “you tell Danny to get out of town, I don’t care where he goes. Let this shit blow over, and then we’ll deal with it after the holidays. Last thing I want is to get subpoenaed on Christmas Eve, because that’s how they’d do it, right? Okay.” Bennie closed his phone and slipped it into his pocket, then gave a snort. “You know what’s unsatisfying? You can’t hang up on anyone anymore. You can’t slam the phone down. I just get to flip it closed. Used to be you could get some aggression out on a phone, not anymore. Now I just get to stand here and be pissed off.”

  “You got a problem?”

  Bennie eyed David curiously. “You want to know?”

  “Doesn’t matter one way or another,” David said.

  “So you’re my consigliere now?”

  “That’s a bullshit word,” David said.

  “Yeah,” Bennie said, “I always thought so, too. I blame Coppola for that stupidity.” He rubbed that spot on his neck absently. “I’d kill someone for a cigarette right now.”

  “Easier just to have a cigarette and leave the killing to someone else.”

  “Can’t,” Bennie said. He pointed to his scar. “See that? Thyroid cancer. Seven years clean of the bug. Not gonna start inhaling cancer just to feel better about myself. Nearly died from that shit. Probably will die from it at some point. Cancer’s the one thing more efficient than you ever were.” He rubbed the scar again. “Some shit went down last night at the club. Guy gets his hands all over one of the girls on the floor, so the bouncers tell him to knock it off or go to the VIP room. The guy tells one of our bouncers to go fuck himself, and so they dragged him out back and stomped the shit out of him.”

  “That who I’m burying?” David asked.

  “No,” Bennie said. “He’s over at Sunrise Hospital. Paralyzed from the neck down, apparently bit off his own tongue, lost an eye. They tossed him in a Dumpster when they were done with him, didn’t realize he still had some buddies inside.”

  “That’s stupid,” David said.

  “No, what’s stupid is that it’s all on camera,” Bennie said. “Pawn shop next door records everything. Only legit pawn shop in the fucking world and it’s next to my club.”

  “The bouncers are your guys?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Were you there?”

  “Yes and no,” Bennie said. “If my wife asks, yes. If someone else asks, no.”

  “Were you doing something illegal?”

  “No,” Bennie said. “This new dancer, Sierra, she wanted to suck my dick, I wasn’t gonna deny her.” He actually looked remorseful for a moment. “Rachel’s been sick for almost a year.”

  “You trust this Sierra?”

  “I don’t even know her real name,” Bennie said.

  “You should give them up,” David said.

  Bennie considered this. “Gang enhancement, they could get twenty on this,” he said.

  “They get twenty, you might get life if they decide to really probe; which sounds better to you?” David said. “Unless they’re the type who’d flip, get them a decent lawyer, maybe he gets a plea and they get five years, out in three on good behavior.”

  “These aren’t good-behavior guys,” Bennie said. David could see the wheels turning in Bennie’s head, however, the idea taking root. “That how you do it in Chicago?”

  “We don’t get caught in Chicago.”

  “I wouldn’t be so sure of that.” He checked his watch. “Jesus, I gotta get to the mall before sundown to pick up presents for the girls. This eight nights of presents thing is a real slog. I’ve been trying to convince Rachel we should just light the candles and sing the Neil Diamond songs for eight days and give out presents on Christmas. She’s not hearing it. We’ve got a tree. That’s her one concession. When I was a kid, my dad used to climb up on the roof on Christmas Eve and would leave a bunch of reindeer prints in the snow, throw some glitter down the chimney.” He paused, lost in the memory. “What about you?”

  “My dad was dead by the time I was ten,” David said. “I don’t really remember much before that.”

  “How did he go?”

  “Straight off the IBM Building.”

  “The IBM Building? Like off the top?”

  “It was still being built,” David said. “They tossed him out a window on the thirty-second floor.”

  “Chicago does its business, I’ll say that,” Bennie said. A minivan pulled down the street, and Bennie waved at the driver, motioned for him to pull over, which he did, directly in front of the funeral home. The doors slid open, and six old men stepped slowly out onto the sidewalk. Two of them had walkers, the rest of them should have; David thought that if they were under eighty years old, he’d eat his shoe. Bennie shook each man’s hand warmly, others he also hugged, one he actually kissed on the cheek. A bunch of old thugs, David realized, their gangster suits and tommy guns traded in for Sansabelt pants and oxygen tanks.

  Bennie handed the driver a roll of bills. “Give them a hundred each,” he told him. “Walk them over, then go pick up some pasta over at the Venetian and bring it back
in, say, ninety minutes. Keep whatever’s left.”

  “What was that?” David asked when the driver walked away after the meandering men.

  “Those are your mourners,” Bennie said. “Bring them in from Sun City.”

  “You’re not worried about that?”

  “You know what it would take to get a warrant for a wire on a funeral home? A cemetery? Much less a temple? Besides, I have no business interest in this place. I’m just a concerned member of the temple, happy to lend my checkbook to worthy causes.”

  The front door of the funeral home opened, and a Mexican guy in a dark gray suit stepped out. David had seen him on a few occasions in the last couple weeks, usually walking back and forth to the temple with paperwork for the business office. Whenever they made eye contact, the Mexican would drop his eyes, like he was afraid he’d catch on fire just from looking at him. “Mr. Savone,” he said, “everything’s ready if Rabbi Cohen would like to begin.” He handed Bennie two manila folders.

  “Thanks, Ruben,” Bennie said. “Give us five minutes.”

  “Of course,” he said, and he disappeared back inside.

  “That’s Ruben,” Bennie said. “You haven’t met?”

  “No,” David said.

  “Good,” Bennie said. “He was my first project. Plucked him out of the pound and sent him out to Arizona to get a degree in mortuary science. He’s been here for five years.”

  “What does he know?” David asked.

  “Just enough,” Bennie said. “He’s solid. He does his job, gives everybody that comes through the respect and dignity they deserve, unless otherwise directed.”

  “What’s his take?”

  “Salary and benefits,” Bennie said. “And as far as he knows, you are what you are, and Rabbi Kales is what he is, so don’t start thinking about how he’s just another person you’ll eventually have to kill.”

  It didn’t matter to David what Ruben was paid. He just wanted to know how Bennie was keeping him quiet and what David would need to do if he wanted to keep him quiet, too, if this shit with the body tissue came to fruition. Though, the more he thought about it, the more it seemed prudent to clue Bennie in, give him a cut of the action versus being forced to cut him in at some later date.

  Bennie gave David the folders. “This is who you’re burying today,” he said.

  David opened the first folder and read for a moment. It said that the person was named Lionel Berkowitz, that he was sixty and that the family requested a private service and simple headstone noting his life and death. A simple recitation of the Kaddish and a few remarks would be sufficient. A full sermon was typed out for him to recite, the Hebrew prayers rendered phonetically, just in case. “Why even bother with this?” David asked.

  “That’s what the family wanted,” Bennie said. “We do what the families tell us.”

  It was a curious thing to say, more mysterious than Bennie was prone to be, so David opened the second file and saw that it was for a woman named Rhoda Kochman, age seventy-three, born Rhoda Heaton in Saint Louis to Lonnie and Edith Heaton, preceded in death by her beloved husband Raymond Kochman, a founding member of Temple Beth Israel, survived by . . .

  “What is this?” David said.

  “Your four o’clock,” Bennie said.

  “Someone hit a seventy-three-year-old lady?”

  “I don’t know how she died,” Bennie said. “Rachel probably does. They were on a bunch of planning committees for the book drive. Lady was at my house more than I was.”

  It dawned on David then that he wouldn’t just be presiding over the funerals of the war dead, that he might not know one body to the next who was a natural death versus a murder. Probably better all the way around, David realized, and certainly a smart decision by Bennie. But it got him wondering about something. “Rabbi Gottlieb,” David said, “he do both?”

  “A few times. But it wouldn’t be prudent to speak poorly of the dead,” Bennie said. “Rabbi Kales wouldn’t approve.” Bennie checked his watch again. “I need to get moving, and you need to get to throwing dirt.”

  “If someone comes from Chicago,” David said, “I want to see them first.”

  “Closed casket,” Bennie said. “No can do.”

  “I wasn’t asking permission,” David said.

  Bennie stared at David without speaking for ten, fifteen, thirty seconds. “Fine,” he said, eventually. He paused again. Another fifteen unblinking seconds. “But that means you see every body that comes through. You prepared to do that?”

  “Nothing I haven’t seen before.”

  “You see a dead kid before? You ever see that? Like a toddler? A newborn? You ever see a stillborn?”

  “Know that the reward unto the righteous is not of this world,” David said.

  Bennie took a deep breath, then another. “You better go tell Ruben you want to see the bodies. Tell him you want to do some sort of religious shit to them. He won’t know any better.”

  Bennie started to walk away, then turned around. He already had his phone out. “You really think I should give them up?”

  “They know anything important?” David asked.

  “They’re just muscle,” Bennie said.

  “This guy they paralyzed, he a local?”

  “A dentist from Omaha,” Bennie said. “In for some implant convention at the MGM. Wife, couple kids.”

  “Give them up,” David said.

  “My insurance is going to go through the roof. Would have been easier if they’d killed him.” Bennie looked out toward the Strip. You couldn’t see any of the casinos from this vantage point, couldn’t see anything other than houses and palm trees and blue sky. “You know what Bugsy Siegel said about this place? It turns women into men, and men into idiots. If he saw this place today? He’d think he walked into an insane asylum.”

  “Maybe give that newspaper guy a call,” David said.

  “Curran?”

  “Beat him to the punch,” David said. “Give him a quote. Tell him you’re ashamed of what happened and that you’re going to see that this guy gets the best treatment available. All that.”

  “And then, what? Go in and smother him?”

  “Maybe do the right thing,” David said, “and pay his bills.”

  Bennie pinched his mouth, contemplated for a few seconds. “Happy Hanukkah, Rabbi,” he said.

  “You, too,” David said.

  Dead bodies didn’t bother Rabbi David Cohen. He’d seen plenty of them over the years. That’s what David believed to be true, anyway, as he followed Ruben into the mortuary to look at the bodies of Lionel Berkowitz and Rhoda Kochman.

  David and Ruben walked through the funeral home—the portion that actually looked like a home, in this case someone’s grandmother’s house, replete with couches covered in velvet, thick curtains, ornate coffee tables, pastoral art, and, inexplicably, plates of butter cookies everywhere, which is maybe why it was called Kales Mortuary & Home of Peace, since it was hard to imagine feeling anything but drowsy and restful in that joint. And then they were outside, back where David killed Slim Joe, the mortuary only a few feet away and closing fast.

  “You ever see a dead body before?” Ruben asked.

  “Yes, of course,” David said.

  “Someone who’s been in an accident?”

  “Yes.”

  “Not like a drowning or an OD,” Ruben said. They were at the door now, which had a sign that said AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY, and Ruben was visibly nervous.

  “I get it,” David said.

  “Because, as you know, we don’t do much restorative work unless the family asks for it,” Ruben said, “and in this case, uh, Mr. Berkowitz’s family was very specific that he be left alone.”

  “Ruben,” David said, “do you mind if I call you Ruben?”

  “Of course not, Rabbi Cohen.”

  “Ruben, do you know what happens to the Jews when the End of Days comes?”

  “No disrespect,” Ruben said, and David had to stop himsel
f from grabbing Ruben by the throat and choking him to death, “but I’m not really up on a lot of the more religious aspects of Judaism. I appreciate everything you do and Rabbi Kales, too, but I’m just not a believer in that way.”

  “That’s fine,” David said. “What happens is that the dead are flushed with the Dew of Resurrection, and we return as our most vibrant selves, and then we roll through a series of underground tunnels to the Mount of Olives in Israel.”

  David hoped Ruben wouldn’t question him on that, since it was one of the strangest things he’d learned in all the eschatology he’d read. “The point, Ruben, is that even the most horribly disfigured Jews will eventually be whole again,” David said. He paused for a moment, trying to think of something else he could add to convince Ruben that whatever he was about to see was not going to make him pass out. “It is one of the thirteen principles of our faith, Ruben, and when the time comes, it will make sense. That is what we believe.”

  “Okay then,” he said. Ruben opened the door, and David followed him past a reception desk, where a young woman sat reading People magazine, and down a narrow hallway, which led to the morgue. Ruben stepped through a set of double safety doors, and the first thing David saw was the body of a naked man, belly up on the embalming table.

  There was another young Mexican kid, this one in medical scrubs, cleaning the body. The room smelled like a mixture of disinfectant and body odor, though David didn’t know if that was coming from the dead guy or the one cleaning him, along with a pungent smell that reminded David of rotting lamb (and which, he realized, would forever preclude him from eating lamb). There was a refrigeration unit against one wall and then three other tables, which David was pleased to see were empty, and the room was lit with bright halogens that gave the space a white glow. He didn’t know the guy on the table; all he knew was that he didn’t have a funeral the next day, so it must have been one Rabbi Kales was doing, or someone working freelance was coming in.

  “Miguel,” Ruben said to the kid working on the naked dead guy, “this is Rabbi Cohen. He’s taking over for Rabbi Gottlieb.”