Gangsterland: A Novel (9 page)

“That’s what Bennie said.”

“Sometimes, I think he just says things to say things, you feel me?”

“He’s the boss,” David said.

“Is he your boss?”

Slim Joe had never asked him a single organizational question; it was as if he’d been strictly informed to steer clear of any such talk, which seemed like a reasonable possibility, which made his sudden boldness questionable.

“Just put the books in the car,” David said.

Back home, David drove a 1993 Lincoln Town Car his cousin Ronnie got for him. When he had to do a job for the Family, someone would show up with a car for him to use, something that could be torched or cleaned and resold. When he had a freelance job, he’d take the bus over to O’Hare or Midway and steal a car from long-term parking. Weird thing was that he always had his license with him, even on the jobs he did freelance, on the odd chance he was pulled over for speeding or running a stop sign—not that he’d gotten a ticket since he was a teenager. Having a valid identification was a good way to avoid ancillary problems.

He had a temporary Nevada license in his wallet—Bennie brought it by over the weekend, along with another test, this time about what happens to Jews after they’re resurrected,
which was some of the most absurd shit Dave had ever read, as it involved Jews rolling from their graves all the way to Israel, which made no sense whatsoever—and had been told over and over again that his paperwork was legit and not to worry, which was easy enough for Bennie to say. He wasn’t the guy driving around in a gold Range Rover with tinted windows, which made David feel as inconspicuous as the Sears Tower and just as big. So David drove from his house in Summerlin to the Bagel Café, located five miles away on the busy intersection of Westcliff and Buffalo, at about ten miles below the speed limit, which brought him to the restaurant fifteen minutes late.

When David walked in, he noticed first all the old people. There was a bakery section at the front of the house, and the seniors were lined up five deep by the pastry windows, the din of their hearing-aid-loud conversation bouncing off the walls of the place, the cacophony reminding David of a bingo parlor the Family ran back in the day on the South Side. On the other side of the bakery was the seating area—a U of booths around the perimeter, which looked out to the street and the parking lot, and then a dozen or so tables in the middle. David had always been freaked out by old people, never able to imagine himself living past fifty or so, not even after Jennifer had William and his life began to feel . . . different. More valuable. It just didn’t seem feasible. His father was dead by forty. Never knew his grandparents. His mother remarried and moved to Arizona as soon as he graduated high school, and he’d lost complete contact with her, though he guessed she was probably still alive. His dream of retiring to California as a top dog was just a dream, something to put in the back of his head when he was doing contract killing in Champaign. As it turned out, Sal Cupertine
was
dead. David thought he might start keeping a list
of all life’s cruel ironies, just to be sure he wasn’t imagining half of the shit that was happening.

He spotted Bennie sitting alone in a booth at the near corner of the restaurant, a bunch of papers spread out in front of him, three waters on the table. He had a pair of reading glasses in one hand, something David had never seen before.

“You’re late,” Bennie said when David slid in across from him.

“It took Slim Joe a while to get all the books downstairs,” David said.

“How’s that working out?”

“He’s fine,” David said, though the truth was he really wanted him out of the house, David not having any time to himself since the day of the shooting.

“He’s an idiot,” Bennie said.

“He’s all right,” David said, not really sure why he was defending Slim Joe.

Bennie put on his glasses and examined David’s face. “Any pain?”

“Nothing I can’t manage.”

“Swelling?”

“Around my chin some,” David said. “Probably couldn’t take an upper cut, if that’s what you’re asking.”

“Jaw looks good,” Bennie said. “The beard is coming in nicely.”

“I don’t recognize myself when I look in the mirror.”

“That was the point,” Bennie said. He gathered up some of the paper in front of him—they looked to David like blueprints and spreadsheets, actual business work—and slid them into a manila envelope. “Anyway,” he said. “You ready to start earning?”

“Yeah,” David said, not sure what he was agreeing to. Anything was better than sitting around reading and watching the
local news. Maybe Bennie would send him out to hit the weatherman on Channel 3 who needed a dog to sit next to him every day while he told Las Vegas it would be eighty-eight degrees for the fiftieth straight day, as if the stress of blue skies, dry air, and a city full of strippers was too much to handle by himself. “I need to get out of the house.”

A waitress walked up to the table then and smiled warmly at Bennie. “Hi, Mr. Savone,” she said. She was maybe eighteen, no more than twenty, tall, brown hair, had a hole in her nostril where David presumed she usually kept a ring, a little butterfly tattoo on her ankle just above her no-show socks and white Keds. The servers—male or female—all wore the same outfit: tan shorts, red polo shirt, white shoes. It looked to David that this waitress had hemmed her shorts a little higher than most of the other ladies. Not that he had a problem with that.

“How are you, Tricia?”

“Super,” she said. “How’s your wife? I haven’t seen her at temple in forever.”

“She’s been sick lately,” Bennie said.

“I hope it’s nothing serious.”

“Lady problems,” Bennie said. David marveled at how Bennie showed absolutely no embarrassment at all. “What’s it called? Endometriosis? When it gets bad, she just can hardly get up. But what can you do, right?”

“Oh, no,” Tricia said. “Well, when she’s feeling better, if you guys need someone to watch the kids for a date night or whatever, I’m happy to come over to help anytime.”

“I appreciate that,” Bennie said, and it sounded to David like the truth.

“Are you waiting on Rabbi Kales?”

“He just went to the restroom, so maybe just get him his usual,” Bennie said. “And I’ll have bacon and eggs, scrambled wet. Bring me a plate of sausage, too.”

“And what about for you?” Tricia gave David that same warm smile, which immediately made him feel uncomfortable. When was the last time he’d even
seen
a woman, much less spoken to one?

“Rabbi,” Bennie said, “you want some bacon and eggs, too?” Bennie not just fucking with him now, but also letting him know that he needed to act like a Rabbi in this place.

“I guess I’ll have an onion bagel and coffee,” David said. A plate of fucking sausage would work, too, the mere thought of it making his mouth turn on for the first time in months. No, no, not sausage. A plank of honey ham and a couple eggs fried in the ham fat and some corned beef hash. Glass of buttermilk to wash it down. Why were they meeting at a deli when Bennie knew Rabbi David Cohen couldn’t eat anything he might want?

Tricia took down his order but didn’t scurry on, which David really wanted her to do. The combination of his ham fantasy and her legs, which had to be ten feet long, was distracting. “So, I have to ask,” Tricia said, “are you going to be the new youth rabbi we’ve been hearing about?”

“He is,” Bennie said before David could answer. “He’ll be taking over in a couple of weeks.”

David couldn’t help but think of something he’d read a few mornings ago about the nature of good and evil, which basically said that no man was born entirely one or the other, that the moral freedom to be a complete asshole is inherent in all men. If you were largely a decent human, that was called
yetzer tov.
If you were not, that was called
yetzer hara.
Bennie Savone, the fat fuck, with his order of sausage and bacon,
with his complete inability to inform David of things like the fact that he was about to become some kind of youth rabbi, clearly had made his choice. This was a personal choice to surprise him, put him off-center, show him that he had no control over anything. The Jews, they were always going on about personal liberty and truth—what did they call truth?
The seal of God
, not that David believed in God, but the sentiment was concise enough.

“That is so cool,” Tricia said. “We all totally miss Rabbi Gottlieb.”

“I’ve heard only good things about him,” David said, thinking,
I can’t just sit here like an idiot and let Bennie push me into corners
, though, at the same time he realized he had no choice, his own response a calculated answer to make this pretty young girl appeased. What was happening to him?

“He was so young, so it’s totally sad,” she said, and David realized Rabbi Gottlieb hadn’t just moved to Reno. “The way he spoke Torah . . .” She couldn’t continue, as the power of whatever she was talking about was just too palpable.

Bennie patted Tricia lightly on the small of her back. “A tragedy,” he said. “And Tricia, be a doll, and make sure my bacon is soft. I can’t eat that crispy stuff.” Bennie watched her walk off before he said, “Her father used to own half of North Las Vegas. Jordan Rosen. You’ll meet him at temple.”

Great. “What happened?”

“He started coming down to the Wild Horse,” Bennie said. “Fell in love with a girl we used to have. Said she was Iranian when shit was bad with the Iranians, said she was Iraqi when shit was bad with them, but truth was she was just brown. Real name was Karen but on stage she went by Sholeh, which she said meant ‘flame’ or ‘fire’ or ‘hot pussy.’ She had the game she
played. You get these idiots in from Kansas who want to get some towel head to push her tits in their face while they say trash to her, that’s a good time. Tricia’s dad, he just wanted some strange, you know? He couldn’t stand having these tourists abusing her, so he’d buy her all night long, drop five, ten thousand a night on her. That adds up.” Bennie paused and took a sip of his coffee, put his glasses back on. “The pictures we sent him did the rest.”

“You had to do that?” David said, testing him now, still thinking about what he’d read, pondering exactly how he was going to address this whole situation, seeing if Bennie ever made the right choice.

“He started putting dances on his credit card, and he kept getting declined,” Bennie said. “First time, whatever, we let it slide. He’s a good customer, so I tell the manager to pay the girl for her time and that we’ll double up next time. Next time comes, same shit, so now I’m out twenty K. I gave him a few days to make good, you know, gentleman to gentleman, and he didn’t come up, says not to worry, he’s good, owns half the city, just having some liquidity issues, and so I’m reasonable, right? You’d say I’m reasonable?”

“Yeah,” David said, thinking:
Reasonably mad
.

“Two months he pulled this shit,” Bennie said. “He lives three houses from me, his wife and kids practically cousins to my wife and kids, so what can I do?” Before David could answer—and his answer would have been
Beat it out of the fucker, because a debt is a debt and somehow, if you owe, you gotta pay
—Bennie pointed at a tall, well-dressed older gentleman walking through the restaurant. “That’s Rabbi Kales,” he said. Rabbi Kales stopped and had a few words with the people at almost every table, his hand always on someone’s
shoulder. “Watch how he works the room. That’s your lesson for the day.”

Rabbi Kales didn’t really look like a rabbi, at least not what David thought a rabbi looked like, which is to say he thought he was going to be wearing that black getup, have the long beard, the hat, all that Hasidic garb. Instead, Rabbi Kales looked like a bank president—blue suit, not too flashy, but clearly expensive, nice shoes, though not as nice as the ones David had on, tie with a big Windsor knot, and what looked to David like a pretty decent watch. (David had a Rolex once, though he hadn’t earned it. He just took it off of a body. It eventually started to creep him out, so he traded it to a Russian for a nice GSh-18 self-loading pistol when the Family had him proctor an arms deal a few years back.) Rabbi Kales wasn’t even wearing a yarmulke, which came as a great relief to David, since he realized he’d be able to do likewise.

When Rabbi Kales finally finished his tour of the restaurant, he sat down beside his son-in-law in the booth and gave him a handful of checks. “Take these to the bank for me, Benjamin,” he said.

Benjamin? For some reason, David had never thought of Bennie as having any other name. The mere thought of this gave David his first reason to smile in a very long time.