Tod Goldberg - Gangsterland

Thing was, no one had ever even been able to question Sal Cupertine. He’d never been arrested. The only time he’d ever left prints at one of his killings was at the Parker House. Everything the FBI had used to develop Cupertine’s profile was based on supposition and secondary evidence, which was usually enough to catch a serial killer, since serial killers were often insane, which made it easier to catch them since their insanity usually fell along predictable medical lines. A sane person was much more difficult to figure out.

“You don’t actually think he’s in Chicago, do you?” Matthew asked after Jeff shared his thoughts.

“No,” Jeff said. “I doubt he’s even in Illinois.”

“Canada?”

“Maybe,” Jeff said, “but I can’t see Sal Cupertine fitting in with the syndicate in Windsor. They’re all white-collar fraud these days. Tech stuff. Mortgages. Not a lot of violence, just a lot of money. They don’t have a good reason to harbor an international fugitive. It would bring too much heat on them. Even if he went to Toronto or BC, it’s a different kind of Mafia. For one thing, they speak Italian.”

“Cupertine doesn’t?”

“No,” Jeff said. “And I don’t see him picking up French, either.”

“But he’s smart, right? Isn’t that what the files said?”

“Yes,” Jeff said. “Or at least he has a good memory. They called him Rain Man.”

“Nice to know even the Mafia goes to the movies,” Matthew said. “So maybe he just moves to Canada and lives a nice humble life.”

“He doesn’t have any skills,” Jeff said. That was the problem with all the mob guys Jeff had ever managed to get into witness protection. They never knew how to do anything but rip people off. He heard Sammy the Bull was already back into the game in Arizona. Just asking to get killed.

“Mrs. Cupertine, she was believable to me,” Matthew said. “Perhaps that makes me naïve. But I feel if Sal Cupertine is within a couple hundred miles of her, there’s no way he’s not already back in town.” He pulled the straw out of his milk shake and gulped down half of the glass and then wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. He is a kid , Jeff thought, there wasn’t any way of disputing that. That wasn’t a bad thing; perhaps he could look at things with a fresh perspective. “What about Vegas?”

“Too hard to keep him hidden,” Jeff said. “There’s a mob gossip columnist in town. He covers the comings and goings of the families like they’re members of a boy band.”

“Don’t you think Ronnie Cupertine knows where he is?” Matthew said.

“I’m going to guess he’d say he’s in the landfill, right where we found him.”

“That’s bullshit,” Matthew said. “Why doesn’t someone grab him, put him in a dark room, and spray him with a fire hose until he gives up the information?”

“Because we’re not the CIA,” Jeff said. “Or the KGB.”

“I bought my car from him,” Matthew said.

“You and half of Chicago,” Jeff said. “That’s part of the problem.” Ronnie Cupertine wasn’t just connected in the mob sense, he was part of the very fabric of Chicago — benefit lunches with the mayor, golf with Gold Coast politicos on both sides of the aisle, luxury suite to see the Bulls, black-tie events at the Field Museum, the entire city driving his chop shop cars. Word was he had a deal with an Albanian syndicate in Canada for the high-end rides, but there was never anything solid on that.

That Sal Cupertine was still alive was all thanks to Ronnie Cupertine; Jeff was sure of that. A savvy businessman, he’d figure out a way to get the most out of his cousin Sal. Jeff really wanted to sit across from Ronnie Cupertine and have a conversation, but that wasn’t going to happen. At least not yet. Ronnie Cupertine was the kind of guy who knew his rights, the kind of guy who kept lawyers on his speed dial, the kind of guy who wasn’t going to get suckered into admitting the sky was blue.

“I’m going to need at least two thousand dollars a month,” Matthew said then, “plus expenses.”

“What expenses?”

“How should I know?” Matthew said. “I’ve never been a private detective before. Between that and unemployment, I’ll be fine for a few months. Keep my sister off the streets.”

“I don’t think it will take a few months,” Jeff said. “I feel like we’ll be able to track him down before Christmas.”

“What gives you this confidence?” Matthew asked.

Jeff had no idea why he thought this. With no leads — the FBI having announced he was dead didn’t exactly cause the tip lines to light up — and not even a solid clue as to where Sal Cupertine might be, Jeff would be starting from below ground. But Matthew was right: Someone knew where Sal Cupertine was, and if one person knew, two people knew. And if two people knew, there was a pretty good chance four people knew. A criminal organization requires a hierarchy — there was no way Ronnie Cupertine was going to have blood on his hands, literally or figuratively — and that meant there were probably several moving parts between Sal Cupertine killing four men at the Parker House and the charred body found in the dump.

Jeff thought about his savings — the twenty grand he’d stashed away. If he caught Sal Cupertine, Jeff Hopper could write his own ticket, even if that meant he just went back to eastern Washington and sat around in his underwear all day.

“Look,” Jeff said, “give me three months, that’s all I’m asking. If after three months we aren’t any closer, you go your way, I’ll go mine, and I’ll pay you another two months’ salary as severance.”

Matthew picked up a french fry and blew the salt off of it before putting it in his mouth. “What if we catch him?”

“Same deal,” Jeff said.

“So you’re going to give me ten thousand dollars whether or not we catch Sal Cupertine?”

“I need your help,” Jeff said. There was no way he could take this on by himself. And in a more tangible sense, he needed Matthew physically — if it came down to a fight, Jeff Hopper felt like he could do what needed to be done, could still handle himself with a gun, but there was no denying that having someone qualified for assault team duty as his backup wasn’t a bad thing.

Matthew ate another fry and finished off his shake. “This is insane,” he said.

Jeff agreed.

“We do this, we get him,” Matthew said, “do you think I have any chance of getting picked back up?”

“No,” Jeff said. “Not by the bureau. Maybe NSA will like the self-determination angle, but who knows. I’ve got some contacts in private security, guys doing paramilitary and intelligence jobs on contract, things like that. That’s where the real money is.”

“It wasn’t about the money for me,” Matthew said.

“I wanted to be a superhero, too,” Jeff said, “and here we are.”

Matthew shook his head. Jeff couldn’t tell if it was in disgust or resignation or just simple frustration. Maybe it was something else all together. Either way, he followed it up with a brusque laugh and said, “What time do we leave for Milwaukee?”

The first time Jeff Hopper met Paul Bruno was in late 1995. Bruno had just been released from county — in fine Chicago form, he’d done two months after getting picked up for assault after trying to collect on a gambling debt, and then pled down to a minor racketeering charge, a term that didn’t even exist until 1927, when the Employers’ Association of Greater Chicago coined it in response to the constant shakedowns from organized crime figures in the Teamsters — and came sniffing around the bureau for opportunities to snitch once he realized a jail cell was not a place he ever wanted to visit again.