Gangsterland: A Novel (5 page)

The weird thing—one of the weird things, anyway—was that since David received his new identity, Bennie hadn’t bothered to show his face at the house. He usually showed up for the midnight doctor’s appointments to check on the progress of David’s various operations, firing questions about healing time and when it might be appropriate for David to increase his physical activity, ironic since Bennie was a good one hundred pounds overweight. So David knew his concern wasn’t entirely altruistic. David didn’t mind his visits. It was better than trying to make conversation with Slim Joe.

On this day, however, Bennie pulled up in front of the house and then called Slim Joe, who then handed the phone to David. “You ready to get that shit out of your mouth?” Bennie asked.

“Since the day it happened,” David said.

“Then let’s go,” he said. “I’m out front.”

“Really?” David said.

“It’s a blessed day, Rabbi,” Bennie said, and then he hung up.

David walked out the front door, and he felt mostly normal, except for the fact that he didn’t have a gun on him. He hadn’t had one all this time, of course, but now here he was out in public, or as public as a house behind a private gate can be, and he realized that it was the first time in twenty years that he didn’t have a weapon of some kind on his person.

“You look good,” Bennie said when David slid into the passenger seat.

“I’m down thirty pounds,” David said. He hadn’t been able to open his mouth for almost six weeks. He’d gone to
sleep in some doctor’s office one night after midnight and woke up the next morning with incisions on either side of his head, back behind his ears, that felt like someone had hit him with a hammer, which, in fact, they had. They’d broken his jaw with a hammer and chisel, moved it down, smoothed out all the rough edges, and then locked him up. Talking was hard enough; having Slim Joe make him protein shakes nearly induced suicide. “Maybe I should get my jaw wired,” Bennie said. “My wife’s dream.”

Bennie drove down the long driveway and waited for the gate to open. It was at least twelve feet high, David saw, and there were cameras mounted on each corner, though David had never seen a closed-circuit TV in the house. He’d remember to ask about that. Bennie turned right, and David realized for the first time that he was in a neighborhood of homes just as sprawling as the one he’d been living in. Just as sprawling and, he noted, just the same. No character, David thought as they drove, just a bunch of houses painted somewhere between brown and mauve, each with a fountain with spitting cherubs out front. Where were the walkups and Craftsman homes? Weirder still were the street names: Anasazi, Hualapai, Turquoise Valley.

As they drove, David also noticed full neighborhoods on one side of the street and then nothing but empty lots on the other with elaborate signs promoting the next new community, always with names like The Lakes at Town Center Commons, and always with a smiling white family rendered in a drawing. Not even a pretense of being politically correct or multicultural. His own housing development was called The Lakes at Summerlin Greens, not that he’d seen a lake or any greens. Though judging from the land movers he saw out in the empty fields, both were coming at some point.

“Where the fuck are we?” David finally asked.

“Summerlin,” Bennie said.

Summerlin. David had read about this place in the newspaper. A master-planned community built by Howard Hughes. “Why does everything look the same?”

“Welcome to Las Vegas,” Bennie said.

They drove in silence for a few minutes, David soaking in the world. They kept going around traffic circles, made all the more absurd by the lack of other people on them. “Where are the casinos?” David asked.

“The Strip,” Bennie said. He pointed to the south. “And then there’s a bunch of little shit holes around town. Places to play cards. Get a drink. See Eddie Money play. That sort of thing.”

“The casinos,” David said, “that part of what you do?” He’d avoided asking any questions about the operations of the Savone family, but now that it was clear he was going to be spending some time around these parts, it felt prudent.

“Nah,” Bennie said. “Not on the front side. We got influence in restaurant and hotel unions, we got a few cement and steel contracts, we run a couple construction outfits, we get some influence on the books, but you can’t just buy a casino anymore. It’s not like it used to be. Place like the Bellagio? You’re talking ten thousand employees. And anyway, it’s an open city. Half these other families aren’t smart enough to figure how to avoid prison time just by signing the wrong box, so I just let them, and if they come to me for advice, I’ll give it to them. We’re all better off if we can work together out here, but if you don’t know how to form an LLC, that’s not my problem. I’m happy to let some other family try their luck on the low-hanging fruit, find out how rotten it is these days, you know?”

David didn’t, not really. He was straight muscle in Chicago,
paid primarily not to know, and that had been fine, at least until recently. He understood that the Family in Chicago made a lot of their money on heroin and cocaine, but the real money came from garbage and landfill, mostly. City contracts, he understood, brought in the real cash. And that was another reason why the feds typically kept their distance: No one wants to have garbage piled up on the streets. But the nuts and bolts of the economy were left to people further up the line, like his cousin Ronnie.

“This Jew stuff,” David said, but then he stopped himself. He’d forgotten about Bennie’s wife and kids. “No disrespect intended,” he continued, “but I don’t understand it.”

Bennie scratched at something on his neck. He turned onto the Summerlin Parkway and then onto I-95 heading south and all the while staying quiet. Which was fine with David. He was content not to say another word for the rest of his life.

“Let me ask you a question,” Bennie said finally. There was an edge to his voice. Annoyance, maybe. Maybe he was going to pull over and shoot David in the face. There was no telling, but David was pretty sure that Bennie wasn’t the kind of guy who’d want to fuck up his upholstery, never mind his suit, a perfectly tailored Armani number that must have been expensive. “You go to college?”

“No,” David said, though it felt like all the reading he was doing now was making up for that.

“You ever been overseas?”

“Canada a couple of times,” David said. He didn’t mention an overnight business trip to Jamaica, figuring there was no good reason to let Bennie know about that. Three hours there trying to decide how best to dispose of five dead Jamaicans.

Bennie scratched that spot again on his neck, and David noticed that he had a bunch of little red bumps running from
his Adam’s apple all the way to his chin. Razor burn; but the spot Bennie was scratching was actually a fine raised line that was a deeper shade of red. He’d noticed it before, not thinking anything of it, but now that he was up close he could see that it was a surgical scar. That or someone tried to slit his throat.

“Why not?” Bennie asked.

“Why not what?”

“Why haven’t you left the country?”

“My wife,” David said, “is always getting on me about wanting to go to the Bahamas. Once we had a kid, though, you know how that shit goes.”

“You don’t have a wife,” Bennie said. Annoyed again. Or just being nasty. The prick.

“No,” David said, “I guess I don’t.”

“What about college?”

“I was already in the business full on by the time I was nineteen,” David said.

“You ever hear of a place called Harvard?” Bennie asked.

“Yeah,” David said.

“You ever hear of a place called Europe?”

David thought he knew where this was headed. “Yeah, I’ve heard of both of those places.”

“You think there’s a bunch of guys like you and me running around Harvard and Europe? You think if you walked into Harvard just to ask where the toilet was that they’d tell you?”

“Me or the new me?”

“The guy-who-shoots-people-in-the-back-of-the-head you.”

“I don’t know,” David said.

“Sure you do,” Bennie said. “Some gangster walks into Harvard and asks where the toilet is, they’re gonna take him down the service elevator and show him where the janitors piss. Same
thing in Europe. Say you walk into, I don’t know, The Hague. Do you know what The Hague is?” David told him he didn’t. “It’s where they have trials for war crimes. The courtroom of the world, basically. It’s in the Netherlands. You know what happens if you and me walk in there right now? They throw us against the wall and frisk us, ask us if we’re fucking Cosa Nostra, like either of us even speaks Italian, throw us in a cell with a bunch of guys with towels on their heads.”

“What are we doing in the Netherlands?” David asked.

“Forget the Netherlands. The point is this: You ever see any Jews getting shown to the service elevator or on trial for war crimes? You ever see anyone named David Cohen getting jacked up on RICO charges?”

“The difference is,” David said, “they got half the world trying to kill them all the time.”

“Exactly,” Bennie said. “You mess with one Jew, you’re messing with all of them.”

David thought about this, thought about how he was seriously concerned about his own cousin pulling his card over the shooting . . . which was a valid concern, considering he was pretty sure Fat Monte had killed
his
cousin Neal that same night, just to close the circle of information. Even the Kosher Nostra were all about family, literal family and cultural family. David couldn’t think of a single instance of one of those guys getting lit up.

“So,” David said, “you want me to be your guy on the inside with the Jews?”

Bennie started to smile, but then stopped himself, rubbed at that spot on his neck. He was a strange cat. There was something cunning about him, about the way he never came at you directly with information, instead let you come up with
questions. “You really able to remember shit like they say?” Bennie asked.

“I guess so,” David said. Up ahead, David could see the looming casinos of the Strip, including one that looked like a giant syringe.

Bennie got off the freeway on Rancho and turned left, wound around a few streets, and then pulled into a parking lot beside a sprawling park. There was an RV in front with two black guys sitting on plastic chaise lounges on the blacktop, smoking cigarettes and roasting hot dogs over a tiny barbecue. The RV had a painting of the sun setting over a mountain lake across its entire back end. It had a personalized Arizona license plate that said
RAMBLER
, and the license plate frame said
RALPH & LINDA’S WAGON
.

“These guys, they’re gonna get that shit out of your mouth.”

“They doctors?” David asked.

“The guy who did your surgery had an accident,” Bennie said.

“I’ll wait for him to heal,” David said.

“It wasn’t that kind of accident,” Bennie said, and he pointed at one of the black guys—he was maybe fifty-five, had a thick gray beard, and wore frameless glasses—“He used to be a doctor. He knows what he’s doing.”

“When was he a doctor? Vietnam?”

“He’s someone we go to when we can’t use our Blue Cross,” Bennie said. “All he needs to do is snip a couple tension wires.”

“That are in my mouth,” David said.

“Your choice, Rabbi. Either he does it or maybe we go back to your place and have Slim Joe do it. He has pretty steady hands when he’s not on the meth.”

David didn’t think Slim Joe was on meth. The kid was too lazy to cook. But he got the point, so he stepped out of the Mercedes.

“Which one of you is the doctor?” David asked. He wanted to make sure at least Bennie knew who was who.

“That would be me,” Gray Beard said. He didn’t bother to look up or even to stop turning his dog over the open flame.

“This is the guy I was telling you about,” Bennie said. He reached into his pocket and pulled out his wallet—took five bills out and handed them to Gray Beard, who then handed the money to the other man, who counted the money, nodded twice, and slipped it into his sock. “How long is this gonna take?”

Gray Beard stood up and walked over to David. “Smile big,” he said, and David did. Gray Beard peered into his mouth and shook his head once, almost imperceptibly. “Who did this work?”

“Dr. Crane,” Bennie said.

Gray Beard took a hold of David’s chin and moved it from side to side. “That hurt?”

“Yeah,” David said.

“Less or more than it did a month ago?”

“Less,” David said.

“That’s good, at least,” he said. David didn’t like that
at least
part. “You get titanium rods in there?”

David had no idea, so he just shrugged, but Bennie said, “Yeah, for the elongation.”

“I’m going to stick my finger in your mouth,” Gray Beard said to David, not asking, just letting him know it was about to happen. The finger smelled like a combination of cigarette smoke and deli mustard, tasted like that, too, and for a moment David thought he might vomit, which would be a particularly difficult proposition in his current position. “Just breathe through your nose,” Gray Beard said quietly. He began to poke around toward the back of David’s mouth, pressing alternately
on the gums on the top and bottom of his mouth. “That hurt? You just nod your head.”