Gangsterland: A Novel (20 page)

“Jesus,” Bennie said. “You should’ve told me this before you did your job, I would have had Joe get this shit together.” David heard Bennie cover the phone and then shout for his wife, Rachel. David couldn’t make out what Bennie said after that, but when he came back on the line, he said, “How you want your steak, Rabbi?”

CHAPTER SEVEN

F
or the first two weeks of December, Rabbi David Cohen woke up each morning at 5 a.m. and ran a few miles on the treadmill while listening to a series of Hebrew language tapes. Rabbi Kales gave him the tapes the day after David took out Slim Joe. David had gone into the office that Monday morning, as he was ordered to do, and Rabbi Kales began saying things to him in Hebrew, and when David didn’t respond, he stopped and examined David’s books, which David still hadn’t completely unpacked, and pulled out a slim workbook titled
Modern Hebrew for Children.

“You didn’t read this?” Rabbi Kales asked.

“I tried,” David said.

“What do you mean you tried? You’ve read a hundred books; you’ve read most of the Midrash! And you only tried to read this?”

David didn’t think he could learn another language. He’d read the first ten or fifteen pages, about the alphabet and phraseology so that kids could figure out how to say prayers and maybe prime them for their bar mitzvahs, and it just wouldn’t
stick. He’d never had any facility with Italian, either, though he thought that had more to do with his mother. After his dad was thrown off the building, she didn’t let anyone speak Italian in the house, said it was the sound of his father’s stupidity and malice, the sound that had left her a widow, the sound that left her to raise a son alone.

“I’m not good with other languages,” David said. “You’re in America, speak English, that’s my opinion. Otherwise, get the fuck out.”

“Your xenophobia is lovely,” Rabbi Kales said, and when David didn’t respond, he added, “Only Jews speak Hebrew, and even then, in America, not a great many. But a rabbi who doesn’t know passable Hebrew is like a fish that cannot swim.”

Rabbi Kales gave him a series of cassettes, narrated by what sounded like an entire city of thousand-year-old Jews; he told David it was important for him not just to learn the
words
, but also to get familiar with the
voices.

At first, David couldn’t find the thread of the talks—the accents were too pronounced—and sometimes he couldn’t tell if the person speaking was a man or a woman, their voices so thick with age all he could hear was syllables. It wasn’t until he realized that whenever they spoke he started to run faster, began to sprint, that it all made sense: He couldn’t understand them because he didn’t want to hear what they were saying.

Knowing that Rabbi Gottlieb had been tortured just a few feet away from where he was attempting to learn Hebrew began to bug him, which is what got David to start jogging outside.

Out in nature—in the re-created nature of his gated community—with hills and curves and stones in the road and 7 Series BMWs blocking part of the communal sidewalk, which David was sure was against the HOA rules, he found himself
forced to concentrate more on his own footfalls than what was coming into his ears, and the result was that he began to hear the stories, began to understand the old voices, began not to be creeped out by them.

It was beneficial, the tapes and jogging out in public, Rabbi Kales telling him how he needed to get integrated into society, to not fear his congregants, to start acting like a rabbi, particularly with the holidays coming up, where he’d be asked to take on a more
interactive
role. Since killing Slim Joe, he’d spent most of his time getting schooled by Rabbi Kales at the temple, meeting a few people here and there, learning functional Hebrew directly from Rabbi Kales and the tapes. It was hard, particularly since Rabbi Kales had him learning two new languages: Hebrew and what the rabbi called “dignified language,” which basically meant he wasn’t allowed to swear anymore. At least not out loud.

While he jogged, he’d talk back to the tapes, which meant he did little more at first than nod at the other joggers he encountered, or the people rolling into their homes after the conclusion of their 9 p.m.–5 a.m. shifts at the hotel (or casino or strip club or wedding chapel or wherever else all these people seemed to flow in from), the neighborhood as busy at 5 a.m. as it was at 5 p.m. The town kept meth hours, which was unnerving. David had spent so much time over the last fifteen years doing work in the dark that he’d become comfortable alone in the shadows. Here, everyone moved under the cover of darkness. It made David feel unbalanced. Or more unbalanced, anyway.

So he shouldn’t have been surprised when at five thirty in the morning on the first day of Hanukkah, he came around the corner of Pebble Beach Way, heading toward Sawgrass Street, and found a man in a suit standing there. He was about David’s
size—a little over six foot, fit, but not overly so—but looked to be a decade up on David in age. The first thing David thought was that he was a fed. He reminded himself he wasn’t supposed to be paranoid, that no one in Las Vegas was looking for him, and that he didn’t look like Sal anymore, a fact that surprised David every time he looked in the mirror, particularly now that he had a full beard speckled with bits of gray.

Still, his first inclination was to snap the guy’s neck and keep moving. There was something wrong with this idea, David now understood, even if it seemed simpler than whatever was going to come next.

The man approached him without any trepidation, already talking, though David couldn’t hear him over the cassette he was listening to. The man didn’t appear to have a gun, or handcuffs, or any kind of walkie-talkie or a cell phone, and was standing next to an idling Mercedes. Not even the best fed got to roll in a Mercedes, so David removed his headphones and tried to look surprised and not murderous while still maintaining enough distance that, if need be, he could act on whatever volition he had. Not paranoid. But not a fucking pussy, either.

“Sorry, sorry,” the man said. “I didn’t see you had phones on.” He extended his hand, and David shook it. “Jerry Ford. Like the president, except I’ve got all my hair, at least for now.”

David didn’t respond. He was trying to figure out why this man had been lying in wait for him. He looked vaguely familiar in the same way people in dreams look vaguely familiar.

“I live right here,” Jerry said, when the pause became awkward, “and have been meaning to come out and chat with you. Seen you every morning and just didn’t make the connection before. Sort of expected the whole
mishegas
with the crap hanging off of your clothes and whatnot.”

The butter-yellow house was three blocks from David’s, and the Mercedes—a butter-yellow convertible—registered, too.

“Not
crap
,” Jerry kept on, “never
crap
, God, but, what do you call that stuff that the Hasids wear around their waist?”

“
Tzitzit,
” David said. Rabbi Kales had warned him that once people knew he was a rabbi, they’d have all kinds of questions, the pressure of which made David stay up every night and, even before the jogging, wake up early every morning. It was the same schedule he kept back home, anyway, just with more reading.

Jerry snapped his fingers. “That’s it, that’s it,” he said. “I don’t know why I was expecting the full black getup with the . . . how do you pronounce that again?”

“
Sit-sis
,” David said.

“Oh, like you’re telling your sister to take a seat, right?”

“Right.” David wasn’t positive this was correct. He was positive, however, that he had the authority to be wrong and not be challenged, which he rather liked.

“I don’t know why I thought that,” Jerry said. “Rabbi Gottlieb, Rabbi Kales, they’re both like you, right?”

“I never knew him,” David said. “Rabbi Gottlieb.”

“Helluva nice guy,” Jerry said, in a way that made David doubt the sentiment. “Never took him for a drunk. Never took him to be much of a boater, either, but then who knows, right? Private lives of rabbis must be a thing of great mystery.”

“I’m sorry,” David said. That was something Rabbi Kales had imparted to him lately: Start conversations by saying
I’m sorry
, and people will assume you’re apologizing for being very busy, even when you’re just trying to get away from them. Then just say
but
, and if you’re lucky, the person on the other end of the conversation will get to their point or leave you be.

“No, no, I’m sorry, you’re a busy man, I’m sure,” Jerry said. “And I just ambushed you on your run like some kind of criminal. I keep odd hours, like you, and thought this might be the one chance I had to chat with you for a minute, finish a business conversation I never got to finish with Rabbi Gottlieb.” Jerry fished a business card out of his suit jacket pocket and handed it to David. “I own my own biomedical business, and I’ve been trying to get into a conversation with the funeral home at the temple, where, it should be noted, I am a member in excellent standing.”

David stared at the card trying to make sense of what was happening. He couldn’t. “I’m sorry,” David said again, and, tried to hand Jerry his card back.

“No, no, hold on to it,” Jerry said. “I’m not trying to sell you anything. Rabbi Gottlieb and I talked about this at some length before his accident, and then Rabbi Kales wouldn’t take any of my calls. I tried to go through the rabbi’s son-in-law, and he gave me the runaround, said he was just a fund-raiser, which I totally get. Need to keep business and family separate, right?”

“I haven’t gotten to know Mr. Savone very well,” David said, “but the Talmud tells us that business is a test of our ethics. And I know Mr. Savone is an ethical man.”

“No argument,” Jerry said. “My business is in tissue, and tissue doesn’t discriminate. We do a lot of work with the dental school at UNLV and the med school out in Reno, plus private medical interests around Nevada, little bit in Oregon, trying to move out into Utah, but the Mormons are a
golem
, am I right?”

Jerry stared at David like he was looking for some kind of approval. It was one of the weird things David had noticed about the Jews. They wouldn’t always come right out and tell you they were Jews once they found out you were a rabbi, or
even just with strangers they thought were also Jews; instead they’d drop these code words into the conversation, these bits of Yiddish, just to let you know on the sly that they were in the tribe. It was like how the wannabe gangsters used to talk, every other word was
whacked
or
respect
or some shit they picked up watching
The Godfather
, like everyone was running around talking about going to the mattresses.

“You shall inquire and make search and ask diligently,” David said. He’d read that in the Talmud, and it sounded like something Rabbi Kales might roll out without explanation, so he gave it a spin.

“I get that, I get that,” Jerry said. “Thing is, I’m trying to develop a partnership with a funeral home or two locally for those people who want to donate their tissue, and, quite honestly, we have some of the cleanest bodies around. Even the old ones live pretty clean, right?”

“I’m sorry, but,” David said.

“No, no, I understand. It’s not pleasant conversation. But,
for our people
, you understand, this is a great opportunity to give back to the local community. And, of course, there are rules about this stuff. The temple would be compensated. That was the thing Rabbi Gottlieb and I were talking about, and he just couldn’t wrap his mind around Rabbi Kales ever getting into it. But I’m seeing you out here running every day, and I’m seeing a sophisticated young man, who, I understand, has the rabbi’s ear now. And I’m thinking, you know, maybe there’s a better chance for a symbiotic relationship to develop here.” Jerry paused, as if trying to find that final bit of noninformation that might interest David, not knowing he’d already stumbled through it when he mentioned some form of compensation. “It would be a
mitzvah
, is what I’m saying. Good for the Jews.”

“How much?” David said.

“A big one,” Jerry said. “A very significant
mitzvah
.”

“No,” David said. “How much would the temple be compensated?”

“Oh,” Jerry said. He seemed honestly surprised. “It depends on your service.”

“So we wouldn’t be getting paid for getting you the . . . what did you call it? The tissue? Just for our actual removal of things. Am I understanding you?”

“Right, right,” Jerry said. “That’s the law.”

“How much do you get?”

“I do all right,” he said. “I’d like to do better, which is why we’re having this conversation.”

“If I’m to explain this to Rabbi Kales,” David said, “I need to explain to him how this might return to the temple in some positive light, you understand.”

“I see,” Jerry said. “You’re talking about getting press for this?”

“No,” David said. “No press. Never.”

“Right,” Jerry said. “Say we’re talking about some corneas. We have an excess of good corneas here in the United States, but I can sell them to companies in China, India, places like that, really help people all over the world. I don’t know if that’s what you’re talking about.”

It wasn’t. But it was interesting. “How much do you make on a deal like that?” David asked.

“I get maybe fifteen or twenty thousand for them,” he said. “Not all pure profit, of course.”