Gangsterland: A Novel (27 page)

“While I do . . . what? Five hundred years? That what you said?”

“You chose this life, Monte,” Jeff said, his voice rising, and it was all he could do not to grab Fat Monte by his collar and shake him, but he managed to stay calm, managed to extend a single finger in Fat Monte’s direction instead of his gun. “Your wife didn’t. She could ask Jennifer Cupertine about that, see how life really works when your old man is left to sway in the wind by the Family. See how far the omertà goes when she can’t afford to flush the toilet.”

“Fuck you,” Fat Monte said again, and there still wasn’t much behind it.

“That’s what Ronnie Cupertine does,” Jeff said. “You don’t believe me, just you wait until he sees you with your twisted face and your story about how the feds roughed you up. He’s gonna have a lot of questions about why you’re not in jail, and next thing you know, we’ll be pulling your crispy body out of the landfill, too.”

Jeff started out the door, Matthew a few steps behind him, and it was only then that he realized how quiet the bar had become, primarily because he’d shouted at Fat Monte Moretti, killer of men and a regular at the Four Treys Tavern in bucolic Roscoe Village. Bad form, sure, but whatever.

Even though they’d been gone less than thirty minutes, the inside of Jeff’s Explorer was already freezing once they made it
back, the steam rising from both men fogging the windows. Jeff took his gun from his ankle holster and put it back in the glove box. Matthew didn’t seem to notice. Jeff checked his reflection in the rearview mirror, wiped a speck of dried blood from his forehead.

“I could do it, you know,” Matthew said. “Put one right in his back.”

“I know,” Jeff said.

“I want to do it now. What’s stopping us from doing it right now?” Matthew said.

“Put your gun away,” Jeff said.

“We should take it to the next level,” Matthew said. He took his gun out, examined it for a moment. “I want to hurt him.” He looked at his hands, wiped them on his pants. “I’ve got his blood all over me.”

“You violated his civil rights,” Jeff said. “If you were still working for the FBI, I’d have to fire you.”

“I want to hurt him,” Matthew said again, like maybe he was trying to make sense of his own revelation. He dumped the gun in the glove box.

“I know,” Jeff said. He pulled off Damen, turned right on Roscoe, then came back down Wolcott and onto Henderson, headed back toward the bar.

“What are we doing?” Matthew said.

“I want to see what he does,” Jeff said. “If he walks home, back to the wife, we got him. If he sits in there and calls a couple of his boys, starts plotting how he’s going to kill us, we’ll need to make different arrangements.”

“He doesn’t even know my name,” Matthew said.

“He could get it,” Jeff said. “He knew who I was.”

“Do I need to worry about my sister?”

“We’ll know soon enough.” Jeff parked half a block away from the bar, in front of a blue walk-up that had both Cubs and Sox banners flying out front. Jeff took out his cell and tried Paul Bruno’s phone again. Voicemail still full. Shit.

“Anything?” Matthew said.

“No,” Jeff said. Matthew nodded, kept staring out the window, waiting for Fat Monte, or a bunch of guys in sweat suits, to appear. “If he’s dead,” Jeff said, “that’s on me.”

“It’s on him,” Matthew said. “What did you say to Fat Monte? That he chose this life? Same thing for your friend.”

“Maybe so,” Jeff said, though he didn’t want to believe that.

Jeff dialed 411 and got the number for Paul Bruno’s mother. Mrs. Bruno picked up on the third ring.

“Ma’am,” Jeff said, “my name is Jeff Hopper. I’m friends with your son. I was wondering if you’d heard from him recently.”

“Are you friends from the neighborhood?” she asked.

“No,” Jeff said.

“You one of his boyfriends, then?”

“No,” Jeff said. He tried to figure out a polite way of telling the truth and then just decided he’d tell the truth as it was. “I knew him from his work with the FBI.”

“Oh,” she said. “You were his handler, is that right?”

“That’s right,” Jeff said.

“Oh,” she said again. Jeff heard her sigh, and he wondered how much she actually knew about her son. “I haven’t heard from him in weeks. He normally called every other day or so. More often since his father passed. It’s been almost a month. Do you think he’s all right?”

“No,” Jeff said. “Ma’am, if I were you, I would file a missing person’s report. Get an investigation going.”

“Oh, I see,” she said. “Maybe I can ask you a question?”

“Sure,” Jeff said.

“Do you think I’m stupid?”

“Ma’am?”

“I just want to know if you think I’m stupid,” she said. Her voice sounded choked, and Jeff realized she was crying.

“Of course not,” Jeff said.

“Then please don’t call here again,” she said, and she hung up.

Jeff set his phone down. It was 1999, a whole new century was about to start, and people were still too scared to do the right thing. Chicago was still the kind of place where people feared the authorities and respected the crime bosses, even after all this time. “Paul Bruno is dead,” he said quietly.

Matthew nodded. “What do you want to do about it?”

“This whole thing,” Jeff said. “It’s stupid. Right? Isn’t that what you tried to convince me of? Back at the White Palace? That this was a fool’s journey?”

“I’m here, aren’t I?”

“Where else do you have to go?”

“You know who killed him,” Matthew said. “You just sat there and had drinks with him. I’ve got his blood all over my pants.”

“That’s what gets me,” Jeff said. “What makes Sal Cupertine any different? Why bother looking for him if it all just perpetuates? Could be any of these assholes who work for the Family.”

“The FBI any better right now? They let Sal Cupertine walk,” Matthew said. “You said it yourself. They’ll wait until it’s convenient to start looking for him. And you know what? They won’t find him. And the czars at Stateville? Doesn’t someone have to do the right thing? I mean, isn’t that what this is about, Jeff? Doing the right thing?”

“I don’t know anymore,” Jeff said.

“You better figure that out,” Matthew said, “because I’m riding with you now, and I can’t just throw my life away. I need to find this guy if I want to have a career, or else I’m going to be the most qualified security guard at Citibank.”

Ten minutes later, as Jeff and Matthew sat in the front seat of Jeff’s idling Explorer, a single woman crossed the street in front of them and entered the Four Treys. She came back out less than a minute later, hand in hand with Fat Monte Moretti.

Jeff was woken up at four o’clock in the morning by the sound of his cell phone ringing. He picked it up and looked at the number on the caller ID, but he didn’t recognize it. He hoped it was Paul Bruno, calling from Canada or something, but was fairly certain that wasn’t going to be the case.

“Hopper,” he said.

“Why do you law enforcement people always answer the phone like that?” Fat Monte said. “Anyone ever teach you to say hello?”

“It’s FBI policy,” Jeff said. “Always smart to identify yourself, takes the mystery out of things.”

“Yeah, I bet,” Fat Monte said.

“Something I can help you with, Monte?” Jeff asked. “Or are you just making sure I gave you a working number.”

“You know,” Fat Monte said, “your people aren’t that sharp. There was another body in that dump.”

“Oh yeah?” Jeff said.

“A white guy,” Monte said. “About the same height and weight as Sal. But you find the faggot Mexican and make
him
. That’s why you’re never going to win, you get that?”

“What’s to win, Monte?” Jeff said.

“Tonight,” Fat Monte said, “why didn’t you just take me in? Why bust me up and let me go home? That’s not how you guys normally do business.”

“New policy went into effect,” Jeff said, “right after one of your guys killed three feds.” He sat up in bed and turned on a light, looked around for his minirecorder, since it wasn’t every day that a member of the Family called in the middle of the night with, it sounded like, a few things to get off his chest. Jeff was pretty sure he’d left the recorder outside in his car, and he wasn’t about to go running outside in his underwear when it was zero degrees outside. He fumbled through his nightstand and came up with a pencil but no paper. He’d write on the wall if he had to. “You want to talk to me about that day, Monte? That why you’re calling?”

“You gotta make me a promise,” Fat Monte said. “I tell you some shit, you go back out to the dump, and you get that fucking body. Because I can’t have that on me.”

Jeff tried to remember if there’d been any chatter about any guys from Fat Monte’s crew missing around the time of Sal’s disappearance, but part of his brain was still in REM. And anyway, Chema Espinoza wasn’t listed in any of the files. The FBI didn’t care much about the guppies, not when there were whales like Fat Monte swimming around.

“It’s been months, Monte,” Jeff said. “Whoever you threw in there has probably been picked clean by the rats.”

“Don’t fucking say that,” Fat Monte said. “Jesus Christ, don’t say that shit. Get some of those cadaver dogs and get out there tomorrow, right? Tomorrow. Promise me you’ll get those cadaver dogs out to the dump, or this phone call is over.”

“Okay,” Jeff said. He was startled by the desperation in Fat
Monte’s voice. There was something happening here, and it wasn’t good. “Okay. I’ll get them. I’ll get dogs and radar and everything, okay? Whatever you need, we’ll get it. We’ll go out together if you want.”

“Nah, nah, fuck that,” Fat Monte said. He was silent for a moment, and Jeff heard what he thought was the clink of ice in a glass. “One other thing. You keep my wife’s name out of this. She’s got family and cousins, and they don’t need to know what kind of life she was living, okay?”

“There’s no reason to bring her into anything,” Jeff said. That Monte said “was living” immediately bothered him. And he didn’t say “keep my wife out of this,” he said “keep my wife’s name” out of it. “Where are you right now, Monte? Why don’t I meet you, and we can talk.”

“Like I need another beatdown? My balls finally stopped hurting.”

“It won’t be like that,” Jeff said. “We’ll sit down, have a cup of coffee, you can tell me whatever is on your mind.”

Fat Monte laughed at that. “Look,” he said. “I’m going to tell you two things, and that’s all I got with this. You walked into my life today and ruined it, you get that? Ruined it. Nowhere I can go now, you get that?”

“I get that,” Jeff said. “But I’m giving you a chance that Neto and Chema didn’t get.” He paused. “Or my guys that Sal murdered. I’m giving you a chance to get out of this with your life.”

“You don’t really believe that, do you?” he said. “Because maybe that’s the line you gave Bruno when you flipped him and now he’s dead. You know Ronnie don’t forget, right?”

“So then what is this?” Jeff said.

“Making my own bed,” Monte said. He cleared his throat, and Jeff heard the clinking of ice again. “First thing, you get
that body from the dump, you call my mother. You got her phone number?”

“Yes,” Jeff said. He had phone numbers for every extended member of the Family, and the FBI had bugs on most of them, too.