Tod Goldberg - Gangsterland

“The crib,” he said. “In the weight room. I put him right up against the mirror so he could see. I thought that was pretty hardcore, some Reservoir Dogs shit.” Slim Joe was giddy now.

David had always treated killing people as something you did with as little fanfare as possible. He’d done some torturing when he was younger, even broke the kneecap of a guy once. Frank Moti, an alderman in the First Ward, who Ronnie said had screwed him out of money on a zoning deal. You smack someone in the kneecap a few times with a ball-peen hammer, they throw up from the pain, there’s a mess everywhere, they can’t speak, they can’t walk, and then you try to send them to the bank to get your money and they crumble on the street, or someone sees them with their bones sticking out of their pants and they call the cops. Moti didn’t do that, instead he had a stroke right there in Ronnie’s basement, so Fat Monte ended up dumping him a block from a hospital. Guy ended up serving another dozen years at city hall with a limp and a frozen eye. Moti never said a word, and Ronnie still didn’t get his money. What was the use?

If the Family sent him out to kill someone, it was usually to make sure a secret remained a secret. Or maybe it was to keep some larger peace, or, and this wasn’t as frequent as it used to be, to exact revenge. That was street-gang shit, and it only led to bigger problems. That David himself was still alive, and not killed to keep a larger peace, in this case with the feds, weighed on him somewhat. He knew it meant either Chema or Fat Monte’s cousin Neal or, more likely, both, were dead because of it.

Though, it occurred to David that just having this conversation with Slim Joe was a kind of torture, prolonging the inevitable and all, but in this case David needed to know certain things.

“So you killed him in the house?”

“Naw, I just beat him there,” Slim Joe said. “Drowned him in Lake Mead and then dumped him, let the boat roll up on him.” David could hear the excitement in his voice, the memory of killing Rabbi Gottlieb firing him up. “So many bodies in there, it’s amazing anyone found him. That’s like our fucking cornfields, on the real.”

“Why’d they have you do him?”

“Bennie didn’t tell me that,” Slim Joe said.

“You didn’t beat it out of him?”

Slim Joe smiled. “I might have tried some words on him.”

“And what did he say?”

“He mostly just cried,” Slim Joe said. “Then he said he wouldn’t tell no one about Bennie. I guess he heard about some job Bennie was planning.”

David was both confused and surprised. Confused that they’d even attempt to run the body business under the nose of a real rabbi since it seemed far too risky a proposition, and surprised it had taken so long for Bennie to act on what would be a readily apparent situation. If Bennie had something on Rabbi Gottlieb, like he did on Rabbi Kales, it was more likely that Rabbi Gottlieb would have run to the police, so David assumed that whatever Rabbi Gottlieb learned was not because Bennie or Rabbi Kales tried to get him into the business. The poor fucker probably found out about it by being a good and diligent human being. The wrong kind of guy to kill, in David’s opinion.

“Personally?” Slim Joe said. “I think it had more to do with him touching the kids. That’s what I heard.”

“He was molesting the kids?”

“Allegedly,” Slim Joe said. “Bennie told me he had to go.”

David doubted that. If it had been true, Bennie would have done the ugly himself. One of his kids was in that school, after all. Sounded more like a way to get Slim Joe interested in doing the job. A little motivation beyond the chance to just kill someone. He remembered needing that starting out. “That your first job?” David asked.

“Yeah,” Slim Joe said. “It was fucked-up at first, but now I feel like I got a taste for it. Hoping you’ll show me some moves down the line. Heard you were the fucking Grim Reaper in Chicago.”

“Where’d you hear that?”

“You know,” Slim Joe said, “I got the Internet.”

“So you know my name?”

Slim Joe licked his lips, reached over and flipped on the AC, even though it was only about fifty degrees outside, and then didn’t say anything. His silence was answer enough.

“You tell anyone else my name?”

“Nah. I keep the omertà like it’s my job, homie.”

Clearly , David thought. “You didn’t mention me to your mother?”

“Naw,” he said. “I mean, I told her I met someone who was down with our idea, like, who had some real faith on it, because she knows Bennie thinks it’s bullshit, but she’s been knowing him for all her life and knows he’s all about big-dollar gigs, not this small-business shit.”

“So,” David said, “at no point did you say my name to your mother.”

“That’s what I said.” Slim Joe was getting angry now, which meant he was probably lying. He’d have to tell Bennie that. “On her grave, I swear it.”

“You don’t swear on someone’s grave before they’re dead,” David said. “That’s like asking for them to be killed.”

“Really?” Slim Joe seemed baffled by this.

“That’s what the Torah says,” David said, not that he thought that was true, but sometimes, like right before you’re about to kill someone, it’s just easier to lie.

Ten minutes later, they were pulling down Hillpointe, the temple coming up on the right, the cemetery and funeral home on the left, signs everywhere for the schools, Stars of David poking out around every corner. It was Sunday, so there was no construction going on, but there were a few cars parked in the temple’s lot. Across the street, however, the cemetery was empty, and though there were lights on at the funeral home, there weren’t any cars in the front lot, which was good. This was going to work out fine. David instructed Slim Joe to pull through the service entrance to the funeral home and then back behind the main building, where there was an alley between the home and the actual morgue where the bodies were unloaded. The entire lot was surrounded by a seven-foot brick fence and then rows of full-grown weeping willows, which must have cost a fortune to have planted, though David again had to admire Bennie’s forethought. It looked pretty, sure. More importantly, between the brick wall and the trees, all views were completely obstructed. Sound was duly muted, too.

“Park here,” David said, “and keep it running.” Slim Joe did as he was told, because that’s what he’d been trained to do, though David could see he found this whole proposition dubious.

“So, what’s this job?” Slim Joe said. “We gonna rob some graves?”

“You don’t know about this place?” David asked.

Slim Joe looked around. “Well yeah,” he said. “Isn’t this Bennie’s big deal?”

“Is it?”

“Yeah, I mean,” he said, “it’s why I had to off the rabbi and it’s why you’re here, right? Run this game? You thinking we cut out Bennie and go it together? Bonnie and Clyde style?”

“No disrespect?” David said, and Slim Joe just stared at him, not getting it. Whatever. David had learned enough. Slim Joe knew too much and probably told at least his mother about David, maybe even his real name. He reached over and turned on the stereo until the car filled with the sound of nothing but bass. There were some lyrics in there somewhere, David was sure, but he couldn’t make them out over the dusty-sounding boom-de-boom-de-boom-boom of the bass and the boo-ya of the shotgun fire the song employed as, David assumed, menacing authenticity. Like anyone still used shotguns.