Tod Goldberg - Gangsterland

“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.

Bennie went through the checks, one by one, nodding each time. “Not a bad pull,” he said. “Maybe we should come back at dinner.”

Rabbi Kales didn’t reply. He was too busy eyeballing David, that jovial table-to-table demeanor David witnessed now long gone. “So,” Rabbi Kales said finally, “you’re him.”

“I guess so,” David said.

“Did you bring your books?”

“They’re in the car,” David said. “You want I should get them?”

Rabbi Kales gave a short laugh, not much more than a snort. “In your entire life,” he said, “have you ever heard anyone, other than the people you worked with previously, use a phrase like You want I should get them ?”

David felt his face getting very hot. “I don’t—” he began, but Rabbi Kales cut him off with a wave of his hand.

“You’re smart,” Rabbi Kales said. “Speak like it.”

David didn’t know if he was smart. He liked to think he wasn’t dumb, even sort of liked learning new things, provided it didn’t come at the expense of doing something he really wanted to do. He didn’t believe in street smarts, since that meant you were a failure in some other part of your life but somehow were cagey enough to make shit work out among the uneducated trolls who lived under the bridge. But David was aware that he didn’t sound smart. “I only know how to talk one way,” David said.

“We’ll fix that,” he said. Not rude. Not condescending. Just factual. David admired that. It was a different kind of toughness. “Rabbi Gottlieb, you should know, was a very popular man. You have your work ahead of you.”

“Where did he go?” David asked.

“Right off the side of a boat,” Bennie said.

“He was a fine boy,” Rabbi Kales said quietly. “And an excellent rabbi. He didn’t deserve his fate.”

“Yeah, well, who does?” Bennie said.

“He was a religious man, Benjamin,” Rabbi Kales said.

“Then he should be happy,” Bennie said. “He’s in a better place.”

“You know nothing of our religion,” Rabbi Kales said. He spit the words out with such venom that David actually backed away from the table and banged his knee on the underside of it with a force that knocked water out of the glasses, all of which seemed to get Rabbi Kales to settle down a bit. “For my granddaughters, at least,” he continued, “you might want to know what happens to them when they die. It’s the sort of question children tend to ask.”

Yeah , David thought, yetzer hara for sure.

Thankfully, Tricia reappeared then with everyone’s orders: plates of pork and eggs for Bennie, lox and onions for Rabbi Kales, David’s lone bagel. David had never been happier to see a waitress in his life. Everything he’d witnessed thus far had him completely confused: There was, apparently, some belief by Bennie and his father-in-law, Rabbi Kales, that he’d be working as a rabbi. Not pretending to be a rabbi as a cover story while he chilled out for a few months, years, whatever.

There was no good reason either Bennie or Rabbi Kales should think he was qualified for any kind of work with kids, or any kind of work that didn’t involve killing people. It was his unique, cultivated skill set.

What David really couldn’t figure out was Rabbi Kales. What could Bennie possibly have on him? Bennie was married to his daughter, they had kids, and apparently Bennie was somehow involved enough in the day-to-day operations of the temple that Rabbi Kales wasn’t in the least bit worried about being seen giving him money in the middle of a restaurant.

“Listen,” David said. He leaned across the table and spoke as quietly as he could while still being heard. “I’ve been a good soldier here. You guys wanted to change my face? Fine. Change my face. You want me to read five hundred books on Judaism? Fine, I’ll read the books. You want me to take tests? Write essays? No problem. Give me a number 2 pencil. You want to coop me up in solitary confinement in that house with that half-wit Slim Joe for six months, I grin and make it through. Now, either someone tells me what the plan is, or I bounce. And when I bounce, people get hurt. That’s all I’m saying.”