Gangsterland: A Novel (24 page)

Jeff had learned what Matthew’s demeanor meant over the course of the last several weeks. Sometimes, he was silent because he wanted to listen carefully to what was being said around him—like when they’d been with Paul Bruno—so that he could figure out how to play a particular situation. Sometimes, he was silent out of simple necessity: He didn’t know enough about being an agent to argue Jeff’s thoughts on an issue, though that didn’t mean acquiescence. No, it actually meant he’d attack the topic an hour or a day or a week later, after he’d formed a determined opinion. It was one of Matthew’s most admirable qualities, Jeff thought, and one not all that common in field agents.

Other times he kept his mouth shut so he could contemplate an issue he found difficult to parse. Like when they found out
that Neto Espinoza, Chema Espinoza’s brother, died of a heart attack while in custody at Stateville. That wouldn’t have been all that vexing if Neto hadn’t been twenty-six at the time of his death, or if he hadn’t been, according to his death certificate, otherwise physically fit. And then today, after the prison released Neto’s death-in-custody report to them and it showed exactly what Jeff thought it would show: nothing. Just a regular heart attack for a completely healthy young man.

“That’s the reason I became a cop,” Jeff said, “and an FBI agent.”

“Really? I thought you just wanted to catch bad guys.”

“That was part of it, sure,” Jeff said. “But after a while, you see enough stupidity, you have to begin to wonder about the root causes. You don’t have to be evil to make the wrong choice. Don’t need to be good to make the right choice. You could save a kid from choking to death at McDonald’s one day and that night, to celebrate, you go out and get sloshed at the bar and plow your car through a bunch of disabled orphans. Next thing you know, you’re the worst person on earth.”

“Maybe people are just fucked-up,” Matthew said.

It was hard to argue that point. It had taken Jeff and Matthew weeks to find out the exact disposition of Neto Espinoza for just that reason. Finding out he was dead was easy—it was public record, after all—but when Jeff and Matthew went to question Neto’s mother, she was unwilling to talk to either of them. It didn’t matter that one of her sons was dead and another was missing. Jeff didn’t bother to tell Mrs. Espinoza what he knew about Chema, figuring that information would only get her killed, too. Not that he imagined many people in the Family would come down to Twenty-Fourth and Karlov to handle their business, the idea of rolling into the heart of the
Gangster 2-6 territory probably not all that enticing even if the Family did employ many in their ranks. The Gangster 2-6 needed the drugs the Family provided, but their allegiance was to each other, not a bunch of Italians, and certainly not a bunch of Italians who may have killed some of their boys.

None of that mattered to Mrs. Espinoza. That Jeff and Matthew were investigating at all was the problem: The entire Espinoza family was gang-affiliated—Neto and Chema’s father, an OG in the Gangster 2-6, was doing fifteen at Logan—so Mrs. Espinoza wasn’t going to say a thing to anybody.

They had to move through back channels, Jeff calling every contact he had in the prison system to try to get anything beyond confirmation that Neto was dead in hopes of gleaning information that might lead to the Family’s attempts to cover their tracks with Sal Cupertine. If Neto had been murdered, that would mean another link in the chain, another person who could provide information, another cracked window. Problem was, no one wanted to give him anything, not with all the heat that had come down on the Illinois prison system recently, the stories of graft and obstruction of justice so regular that they began to dwarf the crimes of the men and women who got sent away.

So Jeff did the one thing he didn’t want to do, which was contact Dennis Tryon’s office. Dennis was an old classmate from UIC who’d moved into prison management at Stateville just in time for a decade of corruption scandals to erupt around him. Stateville’s history of laxity—which included Richard Speck himself appearing on a videotape with mounds of cocaine and handfuls of money, talking about what a great time he was having in prison, before taking time out to give a blow job to another inmate—now made even the smallest corruption
possible front-page news. So asking Dennis to give him anything on the side was strictly verboten.

Lying to him, however, wasn’t. At least in theory. So Jeff called his office the previous day and simply asked for whatever documents could be mustered for what he described as a “wide-ranging FBI investigation.” It was a common code for a federal fishing exhibition, a nice exchange of information that the bureau and the prison carried on fairly regularly. He didn’t bother to mention to the clerk that he was on paid administrative leave. Jeff hoped the form would reach Dennis’s desk and Dennis would just sign off on his old friend’s request. It’s how business was usually conducted between people who trusted each other.

Still, Jeff had spent enough time visiting Stateville in the past several years to know that any number of nefarious deeds were possible in that shit hole. They’d cleaned up some in the last few years, though not so much that a death connected to the Family, or the Gangster 2-6 for that matter, might occasionally go uninvestigated if the price was right . . . which is what the absence of paperwork on Neto Espinoza confirmed. He was a disposable person in a family of criminals. The kind of person Dennis Tryon probably didn’t give one shit about.

Jeff took out his cell phone and tried calling Paul Bruno. He’d spoken to him twice after their visit, once to tell him that Neto was indeed dead, and once to ask him if he had any contacts at the slaughterhouses still, see if anyone might give him any information on anything that seemed shady in the last several months. And then . . . nothing. It was general policy not to leave messages on a CI’s voicemail, so at first Jeff just called and hung up, then eventually left a message anyway.

“Shit,” Jeff said, and he closed his phone.

“Nothing?” Matthew said.

“Says his voicemail is full,” Jeff said.

They walked a few more yards in silence, the crunch of ice beneath their boots the only soundtrack to what both were coming to realize.

“Tonight,” Jeff said, “we’re going to have a conversation with Fat Monte. You ready for that?”

“I was ready a month ago,” Matthew said.

A horn honked, and Jeff turned to see a black Dept. of Corrections Cutlass, the official car of any decent prison, coming up behind them. Jeff and Matthew stepped off the road to let the car pass, but instead it pulled to a stop, and Dennis Tryon stepped out.

Dennis was a few years older than Jeff and had worked in criminal justice since he was eighteen. Jeff remembered that. It was one of those things Dennis used to say when they were in school, the ultimate trump card, that he’d been working with bad guys since he was a teenager. Now, though, he had the paunch of a man in his sixties and the sagging neck to match, even though he wasn’t yet fifty. He wore navy-blue wool pants and a blue-and-white striped shirt that bulged out over his belt, a red tie, a blue sport coat. Jeff liked Dennis a decade ago, though he wasn’t sure he still did.

“Shouldn’t you be behind a desk somewhere?” Jeff said.

“You didn’t come by the office to say hello,” Dennis said.

Jeff wagged the envelope containing Neto Espinoza’s report in front of Dennis’s face. “I got what I came for.”

“Did you know you’re on paid administrative leave?” Dennis said.

“I was aware of that, yes,” Jeff said.

“You failed to mention that when you asked for Neto Espinoza’s death records.”

“I didn’t think it was important,” Jeff said.

“Of course not,” Dennis said. A shiver went through him and he pulled his sport coat closed. He couldn’t button it over his gut, so he just held the two sides together. “Christ, it’s cold as hell out here. I hear Chicago is socked in. That right?”

“There something you want to talk about, Dennis?” Jeff asked.

“I called your office,” Dennis said, “and they said you are on an extended vacation. Stateville isn’t the kind of place most people visit while on vacation. Even fewer people do independent investigations into the natural death of drug mules.” He paused and looked at Matthew, who was watching the whole interaction with something close to amusement. “And you,” Dennis said to Matthew, “who are you, exactly?”

“Just a friend,” Matthew said.

“I’m sure,” Dennis said. Another black Cutlass pulled down the road, and Dennis straightened up, tried to look dignified. The Cutlass slowed as it went by, so Dennis gave it a wave, as if to let the driver know Jeff and Matthew weren’t escapees. “Jeff always was great about making friends,” Dennis said, once the car passed. “You keep in touch with anyone else from school?”

Jeff didn’t keep in touch with many people. That he kept in touch with Dennis Tryon had mostly to do with their infrequent meetings at the prison, though Jeff had no delusions that Dennis was simply one of the good guys or one of the bad guys. You work in prison management, those roles are generally
pretty fungible, which made everything about Dennis questionable. He’d helped Jeff on a few occasions, Jeff had helped him on a few occasions, and even those interactions were strictly business, albeit salted with periodic attempts at familiarity, Dennis always going on about his wife, Lisa, who worked at the zoo in Chicago, and his son Devin, who had some developmental problem, or showing Jeff photos from his hunting trip; Jeff promising that the next time he came out, they’d get a beer in Crest Hill afterward, really catch up, that sort of thing.

Not exactly a friendship. More like two people with a tacit understanding that they should treat each other better than common strangers.
The debt you pay for shared experiences
, Jeff thought.

“No,” Jeff said. “I don’t want to ruin the possibility of chance reunions.”

Dennis laughed. “See?” he said to Matthew. “Jeff has friends everywhere.” He walked back to the Cutlass and popped open the trunk, then came back holding a bulging manila envelope sealed with packing tape. “You left this,” Dennis said, and he handed the envelope to Jeff.

“If whatever is in this envelope is bad enough that we gotta go through all of this,” Jeff said, “then I’m not sure I want you to give it to me.”

Dennis said, “I read about that Family business in the paper, figured that was your people. I probably should have called you, but I thought you probably didn’t need to hear from anyone else.”

“I didn’t hear from anybody,” Jeff said.

“That’s the problem with this business,” Dennis said. “Everyone’s too damn proud.” He patted Jeff on the shoulder.

Dennis Tryon got back into his Cutlass. He pulled back up
the street, made a U-turn, and came to a stop across from where Jeff and Matthew were still standing. He rolled down his window, motioned Jeff over.

“Yeah?” Jeff said.

“Listen,” Dennis said. “Don’t get yourself killed. No one would come to your funeral for fear of being recognized.” He extended his hand out the window, but Jeff didn’t take it right away. “Shake my hand,” Dennis said.

“I don’t know if I should,” Jeff said.

“Thing is, Jeff, it’s probably no worse than what you expect.”

“That’s the problem I’m having,” Jeff said. “You didn’t need to give me this stuff. I already knew something was crooked.”

“Well,” Dennis said, “be that as it may. I see some stuff here that makes me sick. But I’ve got five more years until I can take early retirement. When that day comes, there’s gonna be no second thoughts, that much I can assure you.”

“So maybe you should hold on to this,” Jeff said, “in case you need to blackmail someone.”

“I won’t lie. I thought about that,” he said. “I reckon that makes me no better than the animals I’ve been tending.” Dennis took a balled Kleenex from his pocket and blew his nose. “Whatever you do with that,” Dennis pointed at the envelope, “just know that maybe five years ago that boy would have been a chew toy in this place.”

“All I’m going to do is read it,” Jeff said.

“Well, good, then,” Dennis said. “You think you’ll get back into the bureau?”

“No,” Jeff said. “Not now, anyway. So don’t worry, I’m not here to cause any problems for you.”

“I know you’re not,” Dennis said. “I didn’t say anything to your office, you should know.”

“It doesn’t matter, really,” Jeff said. He paused and thought about the steps that had brought him to this moment, the litany of mistakes that he accumulated trying to be the good guy. “Just tell me I’m not going to find out Ronnie Cupertine is an honorary guard or something.”

Dennis laughed in a way Jeff didn’t find in the least bit authentic. “Well,” Dennis said, “next time you come through, call first. We’ll have lunch.”

“I’m not ever going to come back this way,” Jeff said.

Dennis rolled his window back up, gave Jeff a two-fingered salute, and was gone.