The Low Desert

by Tod Goldberg

  It was the mini-fridge Peaches was interested in.

  He popped it open and looked inside. Two cans of RC Cola, a bunch of mustard packets, some soy sauce, that was it.

  No green bean casserole to be found.

  He sniffed inside, to see if he caught a whiff of it, but all he detected was the aroma of the BBQ sauce that was spattered like a gunshot on the back wall of the fridge.

  Peaches sat down behind MaryAnn’s desk, went through the drawers, only found paper clips, a stapler, scissors, and balled-up old Kleenex. The picture frames on her desk, which used to hold photos of her kids when they were babies, but who were now grown, were empty.

  The kids would be easy enough to find, when the time came.

  Yesterday’s Sun-Times sports page was still open on the center of MaryAnn’s desk, a full-page ad for Cupertine Luxury Sedans splayed out next to the basketball scores, a coffee mug on one corner, an inch of coffee on the bottom, like MaryAnn had been in the middle of reading when she got the news and boned out. There was Ronald Cupertine dressed in his trench coat and a fedora, shooting his tommy gun through a credit report, just like in his dumb-ass TV commercials. Peaches thought that if people had any idea about what the life was really about, they wouldn’t play at this shit. Wouldn’t make those movies, write those books, none of it. Sure as fuck wouldn’t sell cars with it. Thinking you were a gangster because you ripped some cartoon criminal off for your floor mats? Please. Cupertine was supposedly the head of The Family, but Peaches wasn’t buying that, not with these bullshit ads and commercials. Like if it turned out Yosemite Sam was really an assassin.

  Peaches found a Sharpie and just when he was about to black out Cupertine’s teeth—a thing he’d been doing to that motherfucker in every newspaper since he was six years old—something made him stop and look at the photo. At the face staring back at him. At the shape of his jaw, his nose, the way the trench coat hung off his shoulders.

  He wasn’t the Rain Man, was he?

  No.

  Not . . . exactly. But close.

  Peaches didn’t have that Rain Man memory, Hopper was right about that, but he’d memorized the shooter’s face. And the shooter looked a lot like this motherfucker, Ronald Cupertine. Well. Shit.

  He found MaryAnn’s scissors and sliced Ronald Cupertine out of the newspaper. Folded the picture in half, slipped it into his wallet, then went over to the file cabinet and yanked open the drawer marked employee records. It wasn’t even fucking locked. These people. He flipped through the files, until he found his own. Dumped it all out. His I-9 form, driver’s license, tax information, social security number, everything. Motherfuckers had access to every aspect of his life. What didn’t they know about him? He fed it all into the shredder, watched his history turn to ribbons. Went back to the drawer and found MaryAnn’s file. Flipped through. Looked at her driver license. Wrote down her address. But then something caught his attention.

  He knew that MaryAnn’s last name was Nicolino.

  He didn’t know her maiden name was Cupertine.

  CUPERTINE LUXURY SEDANS was tucked between a Rolls-Royce and Aston Martin dealership on Rush Street, directly across the street from the gothic Archbishop Quigley Preparatory Seminary, on the bottom floor of the Federal Building, a fifteen-story redbrick-and-steel modernist box with a cliff-face exterior. It reminded Peaches of some of the outbuildings at Joliet. You could imagine how, if the sun hit them just right, they could make for a pretty picture. And then you got inside, and it was human despair of a hundred years. Peaches wasn’t lying when he told MaryAnn he’d never be going back to prison. He wasn’t ever gonna be on the even, and that meant he had to be willing to put one in his own temple if it came down to it. Which he was. Though, he had to admit, Hopper’s card did make him wonder what the limits were for the kind of favors he could offer.

  It was the early afternoon, so Rush Street was buzzing. Seminary students, businesspeople, shoppers, and tourists, all bundled against the wind and a drizzle of rain and snow. Everything was still done up for Christmas, but the people with bags today were all returning gifts. Except for the people inside Cupertine’s dealership, who he guessed had bags of money to drop on vintage Cadillacs, Corvettes, and Lincolns. Peaches had gone home, grabbed a couple hours of sleep, showered, put on a nice pair of pants, a shirt with a collar, and an overcoat. He had two guns on his body and enough ammo to take out the Chicago Bears, Cubs, and White Sox. If the Bulls showed up, he’d have something for their ass, too.

  He pushed open the double glass doors of the dealership. Marble floors. Soft music. Pretty women dressed all in black in glass offices, ten-keys on their desks, stacks of papers. A salesman talking to an older woman looking at a town car. Another salesman inspecting a Seville, popping Lemonheads into his mouth. A waiting area with leather couches. The whole showroom and office space stretched the width of the building in the shape of an L, and then there was an artful-looking staircase cut into the floor, leading into the basement, where Peaches figured they kept more cars and the service area.

  There was a security guard in a blue sport coat sitting behind a raised, curved reception desks about nine feet from a cherry-red ’68 Eldorado. He was too fat to be an off-duty cop. Too old, also. Looked like he was in his late fifties. Had bags under his eyes you could take with you on a weekend away. Nose was smashed in the middle, and he had an old flat white scar that stretched from his chin down to somewhere beneath his collar. He was still thick across the shoulders, and he had huge head. This guy was security all right. But not a guard. Peaches guessed he’d done well in the prison boxing game.

  “Help you, sir?” he said when Peaches walked up. He had a gold name tag on his breast pocket. Said his name was Dom.

  “Yeah,” Peaches said. “I’m looking for the Rain Man.”

  Dom said, “You better move along.” Which was not the answer you’d give if you’d never heard of the Rain Man, Peaches thought.

  “Or what?”

  “This is a public place,” Dom said. “You got something you need to discuss? You run it up the right channel. This is the wrong channel.” Calm. Cool. Not a problem. Just letting him know. “You wanna buy a car, you’re in the right place. You wanna start some trouble, you’re in the wrong place, son.”

  “I’m not your son.”

  “No,” Dom said, “but you’re somebody’s son. And they probably love you. So get moving and you’ll see them again.”

  Peaches thought about this. His father was dead. He hadn’t seen his mother in ten years. He had an auntie in Green Bay. He could lose her. That would be fine. “Here’s the situation,” Peaches said. “I saw the Rain Man kill a guy last night. I didn’t realize until afterward that I was being framed for it. Luckily, I’m not too fucking stupid, and so I am here, not in jail looking at a life bid. So. I wanna talk to someone with juice, not a fucking bitch-ass security guard too fat to stand. I’m gonna go sit on the leather sofa over there by the free coffee and donuts. When someone with some fucking juice shows up, how about we go sit in one of these nice glass offices and have a conversation, in this public place, about how I’m going to be compensated for this shit.” He opened up his overcoat, showed Dom his guns. “That clear for you, granddad?”

  “You don’t know who you’re fucking with,” Dom said, wearily.

  “I know exactly who I’m fucking with.”

  Dom sighed. He stood up. Motherfucker was about six foot eight. Hands like anvils. Peaches felt his pulse quicken, then remembered he had guns and guns don’t care how tall you are.

  “Have a seat. You want a Coke or something, just let one of the girls know.” And then Dom disappeared down a long hallway filled with more glass-walled offices, toward the back of the building, where there were two double doors made of some dark wood, not a panel of glass to be found.

  TWENTY MINUTES LATER, a black Lincoln Navigator double-parked in front of the dealership and two men got out. One big. One small. The big guy was in the passenger seat, th
e little guy in the back. The big guy ran about three hundred pounds and six foot three. The little guy ran about two hundred pounds and five foot six. Only the little guy walked into the showroom. The other stood outside, smoking. Watching. Dom pointed at Peaches, and the little guy walked over to him.

  “You the guy?” the little one said.

  “That’s right.”

  He looked Peaches over, something like recognition dawning on him. “You Junior Pocotillo’s kid?”

  “Who wants to know?”

  “Who wants to know? Jesus. He didn’t make you smart.” He motioned with his hand. “Scoot over.” Peaches did, and the little guy sat down next to him. Took off his gloves. Stuffed them in his jacket pockets, then took off his jacket, laid it over the back of the sofa. Sniffed. Looked around. Like maybe he was worried someone would recognize him. “Paul Bruno. Your pops used to come into my butcher shop. You remember that? I used to give you suckers. Would have called me Bruno.” Peaches had some vague recollection of this. He would have been five, six years old. “Good guy, your pops. If he’d stuck around Chicago, he wouldn’t have gotten into that shit up north. Go fucking around with no backup, people get wise and realize they can problem-solve using the back of your head. Who the fuck got him? Mexicans?”

  “That’s the story.”

  “Didn’t have to happen.” He shook his head. “That’s the thing I want to implore to you. None of this has to happen. You’ve got some choices ahead of you.” He pointed to the guy outside. “That big ugly motherfucker is named Fat Monte Moretti. That mean anything to you?”

  Peaches had heard of Fat Monte. He’d been breaking legs—and worse—for the Family since he was a teenager. A good career. Not exactly a model for Peaches, because Peaches didn’t have his size, so he had to make up for it with smarts and the fact that he simply did not give a fuck if he had to kill a guy. Fat Monte was known to be more of a sadist. Kind of guy who’d cut your eyelids off but let you live. So Peaches said, “Yeah, I know his reputation.”

  “You come to his cousin’s place of business and ask about the Rain Man, only two things are gonna happen. One, they find your body. The other, they don’t. But seeing as I knew your pops,” Bruno said, “let’s see if we can’t figure out a more amenable situation. So. Tell me what happened.”

  The lady who’d been looking at the town car was buying it. The salesman who’d been examining the Seville had moved on to a sky-blue Corvette. Whole place was a hive of bees. Phones ringing. Service people coming up the stairs, salesmen going down. It was like watching a highly choreographed Rube Goldberg machine, the end result being some motherfucker walking out with an overpriced old car.

  “C’mon, kid. You’re the one showed up flashing gats and shit,” Bruno said. “That’s what you call ’em now? Gats?”

  Fuck it. Peaches told him everything. From getting called into Allied to hearing the shooting to talking to the Rain Man to meeting the FBI agent and then kicking in the door back at Allied. Bruno listened intently. When Peaches finished, Bruno got up, went over and picked through the donuts, came over with a maple bar and a glazed old-fashioned, set them down on a napkin at the little coffee table in front of the sofa, broke off part of the maple bar, part of the old-fashioned, put them both in his mouth. Chewed with his eyes closed, Peaches watching him the whole time, trying to figure out what the fuck this guy’s game was. He said he was a butcher?

  “Well,” Bruno said. “First thing. You’re lucky to be alive. The Rain Man isn’t normally the chatting type. Second thing. If he left you alive, it’s not because he was trying to frame you. I promise you this. Generally speaking, the people you’re talking about are not in the business of framing people. Now, maybe giving themselves a little space, sure. Creating a situation, a diversion? Sure. And so maybe that was you. But here you are. You got that G-man’s card on you?”

  Peaches took it out of his wallet, showed it to Bruno. He actually chuckled. “Get out of jail half-off,” he said. “That’s clever.” Bruno looked outside at Fat Monte, now working on a cigar. “How much you want for this card? You like Cadillacs? How about that Eldorado?”

  Peaches did like Cadillacs. But he wasn’t entirely sure where this shit was going. “I lost my job today,” he said. “On account of MaryAnn and Silas Nicolino seemed to have disappeared. Cuz I guess they thought I’d either be fucking dead or in jail. Some boogeyman tried to hook a mob murder on me. And if I’m understanding things, everyone in this place is Family, am I right?”

  “Not me,” Bruno said.

  “You’re just a butcher?”

  Bruno leaned forward and broke apart the donuts again, popped pieces into his mouth, took a sip of coffee. “Your pops,” he said, “snitched out The Outfit. Ronnie Cupertine, if he knew you were involved, would feel real bad about this situation. MaryAnn and Silas, they don’t know shit. Not exactly historians. They’re cousins of cousins. Nobodies. Doing as they were told. My opinion, lack of institutional knowledge is gonna be the fucking ruin of this whole game, but that’s not your problem. Your problem is that you’ve come to Ronnie Cupertine’s place of business and thrown around a bunch of threats. So here I come, what you might think of as a middleman. I’m what’s currently standing between you and Fat Monte putting you in a landfill. Maybe not today. Maybe not tomorrow. But one day. So. I’d like to not put that stress on Mr. Cupertine. He don’t ever need to know you existed. So, let me ask you again. How much do you want for that FBI agent’s business card so that we can all go about our lives not looking over our shoulders?”

  “Fifty thousand dollars,” Peaches said. “And the Eldorado.” He paused. “But I want it painted blue.”

  Bruno nodded. “Okay. Let’s do $100,000. You should have asked for a million and then negotiated. You’ll learn. Now here’s the other side. Chicago? That’s done for you.”

  “I’m on parole,” Peaches said. “I can’t just bug out.”

  “We can take care of that.” Turns out everybody could.

  “You got that kind of juice?”

  Bruno said, “This ain’t some street-hustler shit.”

  Okay.

  “How long I gotta stay away?”

  “You hear Fat Monte is dead,” Bruno said, “wait a year after that, in case he comes back.”

  Peaches said, “And if I want to come looking for the Rain Man, what then?”

  “You think he gives a shit about you? Kid. Rain Man was there, he was on someone’s bill. Joey the Bishop, he was big-game. You taking this shit personally is the wrong life path, my friend. You’re just a tiny little piece. You’re a getaway car. So don’t be thinking you’re important. You’re not. Coulda been anyone. You got picked. It’s too bad. I get that. No one likes to feel like a mark. And turns out, MaryAnn picked the wrong motherfucker. So. Let’s call it $150,000. That’s enough to set yourself up for a nice life up in the lakes. Maybe I can put in a word with some friends up there that your pop pissed off. Make it easier for you.”

  “You’re scared,” Peaches said.

  “No,” Bruno said. “I’m smart. One day, you’ll learn the difference. ‘Fuck the world’ point of view don’t make you wise.”

  Bruno stood up, motioned at Fat Monte. He got into the Navigator, drove off. Bruno picked up his coat, put it back on. “And that means you gotta go, but first, I’m gonna need your guns.”

  “I’m not giving you shit.”

  “Listen to me,” Bruno said. “I’m gonna give you $150,000 in cash and a fucking Cadillac for a business card. You’re not gonna turn around and put one in my face. You can buy more guns. I can’t get another face. So either you give them to me, or Dom comes over here and turns you upside down. Maybe shakes you until you’re dead. Because frankly, you pissed him off.”

  Peaches looked over at the reception desk. Dom had on a pair of reading glasses and was flipping through an US Weekly. “He don’t look pissed off.”

  “Man’s professional,” Bruno said. “We got customers in here. This deal exp
ires in five seconds.”

  Peaches handed him his guns, Bruno putting them in his overcoat pockets.

  “Wait here,” Bruno said, and then he disappeared down the hall and through the double doors.

  Peaches walked over to the Eldorado. It only had forty-three thousand miles on it. If they hadn’t fucked with the odometer, which he doubted. He also doubted that he’d get out of Chicago before the car blew up around him, which is why he asked for it to be painted. Give him time to get some distance, make them deliver the car to him, then let someone take a look at it, see if there was fucking TNT in the trunk. A hundred and fifty thousand dollars was a lot of money, but it wasn’t fuck-you money, Peaches recognized that. But he figured he could buy some high-grade heroin with it, start making some moves up north, see if this butcher motherfucker could help get some traction with the Native Mob. Junior, he’d burned that bridge by going solo, but Peaches, he was a businessman. That FBI agent was right. He needed to clique up.

  A hundred and fifty thousand dollars to not call the FBI wasn’t a bad bribe, what with the car. He wasn’t a snitch, anyhow.

  Bruno came back, holding a duffle bag. Plopped it on the hood of the Eldorado. Unzipped it. Inside, stacks of cash. Zipped it back up.

  “You got a vault down behind those doors?” Peaches asked.

  “Yeah,” Bruno said. “Don’t spend any time thinking about housing it. You’d need to come with a tank.” He put out his hand. “Give me the card.” Peaches did. He thought Bruno would tear it up, but instead he carefully slipped it into his own wallet. Interesting.

  “The big guy back behind those doors?” Peaches asked.

  “Mr. Cupertine?”

  “Yeah.”

  Bruno pointed at the ceiling. There were a dozen cameras. “He’s everywhere. Like Santa. He’ll know if you’ve been bad and then you’ll be on a fucking list. So. Don’t be bad.” He waved over a salesman. The guy who’d been working on the Seville earlier. “Lemonhead,” Bruno said, “this motherfucker right here? He worked for your brother down at Allied. There was a misunderstanding and so Mr. Cupertine would like him to have this car.”