Tod Goldberg - Gangsterland

Slim Joe opened his mouth to say something, and David shoved the TEC-9 in, felt Slim Joe’s front teeth crack and give way, and squeezed the trigger once, putting a bullet right through Slim Joe’s medulla oblongata, David’s preferred sweet spot, and into the headrest. The human skull was the best silencer in the world, and the nice, new ergonomic safety design of modern headrests provided plenty of sound cushion, too. The rap music, however, really did the trick.

He set the gun back on his lap, took out a small packet of wet-naps from his pocket, and carefully wiped the gun down and then put it in Slim Joe’s hand, made sure his prints were all over it, and then dropped it on the floor. He then took a few moments to wipe down all the surfaces he’d touched, pulled out Slim Joe’s phone and wiped that down, too. It was more than he needed to do, more careful than he needed to be by a mile, since no one would ever find Slim Joe’s body or this car, but still: You were either a professional or you weren’t. No need to be sloppy just because you feel like you’re in control.

David checked himself in the rearview mirror, made sure there wasn’t any spatter on him — last thing he wanted was to be walking around with bits of Slim Joe stuck to his face — then killed the Mustang’s ignition, took one last look around the car to make sure he hadn’t left anything important sitting about, and then stepped out into the late morning.

It was brisk outside with a nice breeze, not like the gales that came off the lake back home, and Rabbi David Cohen caught the whiff of cooking meat coming from somewhere in the neighborhood. It was about ten thirty, pretty early for someone to be having a barbecue, though not outside the realm of possibility in a twenty-four-hour town like Las Vegas. Steak and eggs, that’s probably what it was. Yeah, that would work, the idea of red meat finally starting to sound palatable. Hit the whole plate with a little Tabasco, maybe get some breakfast potatoes, maybe a nice cigar, call it brunch.

David walked across the street to the temple, where his Range Rover was parked, let himself in the back door with his keys, avoided the actual synagogue, where he heard some laughing and talking, like maybe there were a couple of people having a normal conversation, unaware that there was a dead gangster about one hundred yards away, and then entered his office. It was still dusty and dark with all the books stacked up on the shelves and the floor, plus all of Rabbi Gottlieb’s non-personal effects — stacks of probably unread issues of The New Yorker , articles clipped out of the Review-Journal , a corkboard filled with coupons for free car washes. He’d clean the place himself, let a little light in, see what he could get rid of. This was his place of business now, so he didn’t want to get too cozy, because cozy was soon lazy, and he wasn’t ever going to be that.

He fished a scrap of paper from his pocket, then dialed out on the office phone.

“You done?” Bennie asked. Not even a hello.

“Yeah,” David said. “He’s back behind the mortuary, just like you said.”

“Anyone see you there?”

“Only Slim Joe,” David said.

“Okay,” Bennie said.

“Listen,” David said. “His mother, she probably knows my name.”

There was silence for a moment, followed by a long sigh. “Shit,” Bennie said. “He could’ve been running the Wild Horse in a couple years, you know? Dumb fuck.” He paused for what seemed like a long time. “Well, she would have begun to wonder why he wasn’t calling anyway. All right. I’ll send someone out to Palm Springs in the morning, get it taken care of. You good? You need anything?”

“Steak and eggs,” David said.

“What’s that?”

“I want some steak and eggs,” David said. He thought for a moment, then added, “and buttermilk pancakes.”

“Go get yourself some steak and eggs and buttermilk pancakes then,” Bennie said.

“You want your new rabbi out eating a nonkosher meal?”

“Jesus,” Bennie said. “You think you’re on a cruise ship? Anything else?”

“Couple cigars,” David said. “And some breakfast potatoes, with the skin on. Maybe some of that blueberry shit. Compote.”

“Jesus,” Bennie said. “You should’ve told me this before you did your job, I would have had Joe get this shit together.” David heard Bennie cover the phone and then shout for his wife, Rachel. David couldn’t make out what Bennie said after that, but when he came back on the line, he said, “How you want your steak, Rabbi?”

For the first two weeks of December, Rabbi David Cohen woke up each morning at 5 a.m. and ran a few miles on the treadmill while listening to a series of Hebrew language tapes. Rabbi Kales gave him the tapes the day after David took out Slim Joe. David had gone into the office that Monday morning, as he was ordered to do, and Rabbi Kales began saying things to him in Hebrew, and when David didn’t respond, he stopped and examined David’s books, which David still hadn’t completely unpacked, and pulled out a slim workbook titled Modern Hebrew for Children.

“You didn’t read this?” Rabbi Kales asked.

“I tried,” David said.

“What do you mean you tried? You’ve read a hundred books; you’ve read most of the Midrash! And you only tried to read this?”

David didn’t think he could learn another language. He’d read the first ten or fifteen pages, about the alphabet and phraseology so that kids could figure out how to say prayers and maybe prime them for their bar mitzvahs, and it just wouldn’t stick. He’d never had any facility with Italian, either, though he thought that had more to do with his mother. After his dad was thrown off the building, she didn’t let anyone speak Italian in the house, said it was the sound of his father’s stupidity and malice, the sound that had left her a widow, the sound that left her to raise a son alone.

“I’m not good with other languages,” David said. “You’re in America, speak English, that’s my opinion. Otherwise, get the fuck out.”

“Your xenophobia is lovely,” Rabbi Kales said, and when David didn’t respond, he added, “Only Jews speak Hebrew, and even then, in America, not a great many. But a rabbi who doesn’t know passable Hebrew is like a fish that cannot swim.”

Rabbi Kales gave him a series of cassettes, narrated by what sounded like an entire city of thousand-year-old Jews; he told David it was important for him not just to learn the words , but also to get familiar with the voices.

At first, David couldn’t find the thread of the talks — the accents were too pronounced — and sometimes he couldn’t tell if the person speaking was a man or a woman, their voices so thick with age all he could hear was syllables. It wasn’t until he realized that whenever they spoke he started to run faster, began to sprint, that it all made sense: He couldn’t understand them because he didn’t want to hear what they were saying.

Knowing that Rabbi Gottlieb had been tortured just a few feet away from where he was attempting to learn Hebrew began to bug him, which is what got David to start jogging outside.

Out in nature — in the re-created nature of his gated community — with hills and curves and stones in the road and 7 Series BMWs blocking part of the communal sidewalk, which David was sure was against the HOA rules, he found himself forced to concentrate more on his own footfalls than what was coming into his ears, and the result was that he began to hear the stories, began to understand the old voices, began not to be creeped out by them.

It was beneficial, the tapes and jogging out in public, Rabbi Kales telling him how he needed to get integrated into society, to not fear his congregants, to start acting like a rabbi, particularly with the holidays coming up, where he’d be asked to take on a more interactive role. Since killing Slim Joe, he’d spent most of his time getting schooled by Rabbi Kales at the temple, meeting a few people here and there, learning functional Hebrew directly from Rabbi Kales and the tapes. It was hard, particularly since Rabbi Kales had him learning two new languages: Hebrew and what the rabbi called “dignified language,” which basically meant he wasn’t allowed to swear anymore. At least not out loud.