Gangsterland: A Novel (19 page)

“So, your friends ask you where you’ve been living these last few months, what do you say?”

“Just that Bennie got me up in a big-ass crib for doing him a favor,” Slim Joe said.

“Rabbi Gottlieb?”

“Yeah,” he said, excited now, as if David wasn’t sitting there playing with his TEC-9. “You heard about that? Cuz Bennie said I couldn’t say shit about that.”

“It’s all right,” David said, the dumb motherfucker practically jumping out of his seat to tell the story. “How’d that go down?”

“Basically? I tied him up and forced about twenty shots of Jack down his throat, right? Make it look like he was drunk if they ever find his body, cuz Bennie, he was like, don’t beat him or nothing, but then the rabbi, he got mouthy on me so I ended up breaking some of his fingers and toes. I thought that shit was gonna come back on me, but then the boat motor pretty much ate him up, so it worked out fine.”

“Where was this?”

“The crib,” he said. “In the weight room. I put him right up against the mirror so he could see. I thought that was pretty hardcore, some
Reservoir Dogs
shit.” Slim Joe was giddy now.

David had always treated killing people as something you did with as little fanfare as possible. He’d done some torturing when he was younger, even broke the kneecap of a guy once. Frank Moti, an alderman in the First Ward, who Ronnie said had screwed him out of money on a zoning deal. You smack someone in the kneecap a few times with a ball-peen hammer, they throw up from the pain, there’s a mess everywhere, they can’t speak, they can’t walk, and then you try to send them to the bank to get your money and they crumble on the street, or someone sees them with their bones sticking out of their pants and they call the cops. Moti didn’t do that, instead he had a stroke right there in Ronnie’s basement, so Fat Monte ended up dumping him a block from a hospital. Guy ended up serving another dozen years at city hall with a limp and a frozen eye. Moti never said a word, and Ronnie still didn’t get his money. What was the use?

If the Family sent him out to kill someone, it was usually to make sure a secret remained a secret. Or maybe it was to keep some larger peace, or, and this wasn’t as frequent as it used to be, to exact revenge. That was street-gang shit, and it only led to bigger problems. That David himself was still alive, and not killed to keep a larger peace, in this case with the feds, weighed on him somewhat. He knew it meant either Chema or Fat Monte’s cousin Neal or, more likely, both, were dead because of it.

Though, it occurred to David that just having this conversation with Slim Joe was a kind of torture, prolonging the
inevitable and all, but in this case David needed to know certain things.

“So you killed him in the house?”

“Naw, I just beat him there,” Slim Joe said. “Drowned him in Lake Mead and then dumped him, let the boat roll up on him.” David could hear the excitement in his voice, the memory of killing Rabbi Gottlieb firing him up. “So many bodies in there, it’s amazing anyone found him. That’s like our fucking cornfields, on the real.”

“Why’d they have you do him?”

“Bennie didn’t tell me that,” Slim Joe said.

“You didn’t beat it out of him?”

Slim Joe smiled. “I might have tried some words on him.”

“And what did he say?”

“He mostly just cried,” Slim Joe said. “Then he said he wouldn’t tell no one about Bennie. I guess he heard about some job Bennie was planning.”

David was both confused and surprised. Confused that they’d even attempt to run the body business under the nose of a real rabbi since it seemed far too risky a proposition, and surprised it had taken so long for Bennie to act on what would be a readily apparent situation. If Bennie had something on Rabbi Gottlieb, like he did on Rabbi Kales, it was more likely that Rabbi Gottlieb would have run to the police, so David assumed that whatever Rabbi Gottlieb learned was not because Bennie or Rabbi Kales tried to get him into the business. The poor fucker probably found out about it by being a good and diligent human being. The wrong kind of guy to kill, in David’s opinion.

“Personally?” Slim Joe said. “I think it had more to do with him touching the kids. That’s what I heard.”

“He was molesting the kids?”

“Allegedly,” Slim Joe said. “Bennie told me he had to go.”

David doubted that. If it had been true, Bennie would have done the ugly himself. One of his kids was in that school, after all. Sounded more like a way to get Slim Joe interested in doing the job. A little motivation beyond the chance to just kill someone. He remembered needing that starting out. “That your first job?” David asked.

“Yeah,” Slim Joe said. “It was fucked-up at first, but now I feel like I got a taste for it. Hoping you’ll show me some moves down the line. Heard you were the fucking Grim Reaper in Chicago.”

“Where’d you hear that?”

“You know,” Slim Joe said, “I got the Internet.”

“So you know my name?”

Slim Joe licked his lips, reached over and flipped on the AC, even though it was only about fifty degrees outside, and then didn’t say anything. His silence was answer enough.

“You tell anyone else my name?”

“Nah. I keep the omertà like it’s my job, homie.”

Clearly
, David thought. “You didn’t mention me to your mother?”

“Naw,” he said. “I mean, I told her I met someone who was down with our idea, like, who had some real faith on it, because she knows Bennie thinks it’s bullshit, but she’s been knowing him for all her life and knows he’s all about big-dollar gigs, not this small-business shit.”

“So,” David said, “at no point did you say my name to your mother.”

“That’s what I said.” Slim Joe was getting angry now, which meant he was probably lying. He’d have to tell Bennie that. “On her grave, I swear it.”

“You don’t swear on someone’s grave before they’re dead,” David said. “That’s like asking for them to be killed.”

“Really?” Slim Joe seemed baffled by this.

“That’s what the Torah says,” David said, not that he thought that was true, but sometimes, like right before you’re about to kill someone, it’s just easier to lie.

Ten minutes later, they were pulling down Hillpointe, the temple coming up on the right, the cemetery and funeral home on the left, signs everywhere for the schools, Stars of David poking out around every corner. It was Sunday, so there was no construction going on, but there were a few cars parked in the temple’s lot. Across the street, however, the cemetery was empty, and though there were lights on at the funeral home, there weren’t any cars in the front lot, which was good. This was going to work out fine. David instructed Slim Joe to pull through the service entrance to the funeral home and then back behind the main building, where there was an alley between the home and the actual morgue where the bodies were unloaded. The entire lot was surrounded by a seven-foot brick fence and then rows of full-grown weeping willows, which must have cost a fortune to have planted, though David again had to admire Bennie’s forethought. It looked pretty, sure. More importantly, between the brick wall and the trees, all views were completely obstructed. Sound was duly muted, too.

“Park here,” David said, “and keep it running.” Slim Joe did as he was told, because that’s what he’d been trained to do, though David could see he found this whole proposition dubious.

“So, what’s this job?” Slim Joe said. “We gonna rob some graves?”

“You don’t know about this place?” David asked.

Slim Joe looked around. “Well yeah,” he said. “Isn’t this Bennie’s big deal?”

“Is it?”

“Yeah, I mean,” he said, “it’s why I had to off the rabbi and it’s why you’re here, right? Run this game? You thinking we cut out Bennie and go it together? Bonnie and Clyde style?”

“No disrespect?” David said, and Slim Joe just stared at him, not getting it. Whatever. David had learned enough. Slim Joe knew too much and probably told at least his mother about David, maybe even his real name. He reached over and turned on the stereo until the car filled with the sound of nothing but bass. There were some lyrics in there somewhere, David was sure, but he couldn’t make them out over the dusty-sounding
boom-de-boom-de-boom-boom
of the bass and the
boo-ya
of the shotgun fire the song employed as, David assumed, menacing authenticity. Like anyone still used shotguns.

Slim Joe opened his mouth to say something, and David shoved the TEC-9 in, felt Slim Joe’s front teeth crack and give way, and squeezed the trigger once, putting a bullet right through Slim Joe’s medulla oblongata, David’s preferred sweet spot, and into the headrest. The human skull was the best silencer in the world, and the nice, new ergonomic safety design of modern headrests provided plenty of sound cushion, too. The rap music, however, really did the trick.

He set the gun back on his lap, took out a small packet of wet-naps from his pocket, and carefully wiped the gun down and then put it in Slim Joe’s hand, made sure his prints were all over it, and then dropped it on the floor. He then took a few moments to wipe down all the surfaces he’d touched, pulled out Slim Joe’s phone and wiped that down, too. It was more
than he needed to do, more careful than he needed to be by a mile, since no one would ever find Slim Joe’s body or this car, but still: You were either a professional or you weren’t. No need to be sloppy just because you feel like you’re in control.

David checked himself in the rearview mirror, made sure there wasn’t any spatter on him—last thing he wanted was to be walking around with bits of Slim Joe stuck to his face—then killed the Mustang’s ignition, took one last look around the car to make sure he hadn’t left anything important sitting about, and then stepped out into the late morning.

It was brisk outside with a nice breeze, not like the gales that came off the lake back home, and Rabbi David Cohen caught the whiff of cooking meat coming from somewhere in the neighborhood. It was about ten thirty, pretty early for someone to be having a barbecue, though not outside the realm of possibility in a twenty-four-hour town like Las Vegas. Steak and eggs, that’s probably what it was. Yeah, that would work, the idea of red meat finally starting to sound palatable. Hit the whole plate with a little Tabasco, maybe get some breakfast potatoes, maybe a nice cigar, call it brunch.

David walked across the street to the temple, where his Range Rover was parked, let himself in the back door with his keys, avoided the actual synagogue, where he heard some laughing and talking, like maybe there were a couple of people having a normal conversation, unaware that there was a dead gangster about one hundred yards away, and then entered his office. It was still dusty and dark with all the books stacked up on the shelves and the floor, plus all of Rabbi Gottlieb’s non-personal effects—stacks of probably unread issues of
The New Yorker
, articles clipped out of the
Review-Journal
, a corkboard filled with coupons for free car washes. He’d clean the place
himself, let a little light in, see what he could get rid of. This was his place of business now, so he didn’t want to get too cozy, because cozy was soon lazy, and he wasn’t ever going to be that.

He fished a scrap of paper from his pocket, then dialed out on the office phone.

“You done?” Bennie asked. Not even a hello.

“Yeah,” David said. “He’s back behind the mortuary, just like you said.”

“Anyone see you there?”

“Only Slim Joe,” David said.

“Okay,” Bennie said.

“Listen,” David said. “His mother, she probably knows my name.”

There was silence for a moment, followed by a long sigh. “Shit,” Bennie said. “He could’ve been running the Wild Horse in a couple years, you know? Dumb fuck.” He paused for what seemed like a long time. “Well, she would have begun to wonder why he wasn’t calling anyway. All right. I’ll send someone out to Palm Springs in the morning, get it taken care of. You good? You need anything?”

“Steak and eggs,” David said.

“What’s that?”

“I want some steak and eggs,” David said. He thought for a moment, then added, “and buttermilk pancakes.”

“Go get yourself some steak and eggs and buttermilk pancakes then,” Bennie said.

“You want your new rabbi out eating a nonkosher meal?”

“Jesus,” Bennie said. “You think you’re on a cruise ship? Anything else?”

“Couple cigars,” David said. “And some breakfast potatoes, with the skin on. Maybe some of that blueberry shit. Compote.”