Tod Goldberg - Gangsterland

“Didn’t McMahon back up Favre a few years ago?” Matthew said.

“I dunno,” Fat Monte said. “Couple years, I didn’t follow football.”

Yeah , Jeff thought, must be hard to keep up with the movements of second-string quarterbacks while you’re in prison . The Packers kicked off, and Fat Monte turned his attention back to the game. The last time Jeff saw Fat Monte was in surveillance photos from late 1997, right before he got sent up for six months on a possession beef, Jeff trying in vain to stick the murder of James Diamond, a Cicero drug dealer who was shot to death outside his house, on him, lining up witness after witness. . only to have each and every one of them disappear or change their stories. Unlike Sal Cupertine, whom no one ever saw, Fat Monte was spotted everywhere back then. He was over six foot and, back in 1997, weighed at least three hundred pounds. That he drove a black Navigator on twenty-inch tires didn’t exactly make him inconspicuous.

Now, though, he was slimmer, more muscular, probably from hitting the weights and the steroids while in prison, probably still hitting the steroids, Jeff noticing that Fat Monte had pimples crawling up the back of his neck, odd for a guy in his late thirties unless he was juicing. Jeff also saw that Fat Monte had a wedding ring now, too, which explained why he was living in Roscoe Village. Even the mob gets gentrified eventually. In fact, that Fat Monte was sitting inside the Four Treys instead of one of the Family’s video poker bars in Bridgeport was probably all Jeff really needed to know to understand how the world was changing.

“Finally,” Fat Monte said. “You see that? Young’s been avoiding Rice all day. Jesus Christ.”

“You got any money riding on this?” Matthew asked.

“None of mine,” Fat Monte said. “Besides, no one here wants to bet with me.” Fat Monte laughed at his own joke, or what Jeff presumed Fat Monte considered a joke. Maybe he was laughing at his general state of affairs: sitting in a yuppie bar in Roscoe Village with absolutely no action on the biggest game of the year. There was a timeout in the game, under a minute left, and Fat Monte took the opportunity to stand up and stretch his legs.

“You look like you’ve lost some weight,” Matthew said.

“Yeah? You seen me before?” Fat Monte said, interested now, and not in a good way, Jeff saw.

“A few times,” Matthew said. “Though they say surveillance cameras add fifteen pounds. You, it looked more like fifty.”

Fat Monte looked over his shoulder and then around the room, probably for uniformed cops or at least a few guys wearing FBI windbreakers, Jeff watching him calculate what this all meant. . and probably calculating the odds of doing something stupid, like pulling out his own gun. Jeff was sure Fat Monte was packing, probably had a piece in his jacket, which was hung over the back of his chair, though not even someone like Fat Monte was dumb enough to try to shoot someone in the middle of a bar, particularly not someone who was probably law enforcement. And, on top of that, law enforcement that had the jump on him.

“Whatever this is,” Fat Monte said, “I’m gonna watch the end of this game first. You don’t like it, just go ahead and shoot me in the back of the head and get it over with.”

Matthew gave Jeff a shrug. What the hell. Jeff asked a waitress for a couple of glasses, refilled Fat Monte’s beer, poured one for Matthew, one for himself, and sat back to watch. Steve Young completed a pass to Terry Kirby for a couple of yards, then another to Garrison Hearst, the 49ers moving down the field, fourteen seconds left, the whole bar screaming and yelling at the TV right until a time-out was called and Jeff heard fifty people expel the same breath. Fat Monte saw the beer, took a sip.

“Answer me this,” Fat Monte said, “am I going to jail tonight? Because if so, I’m gonna get a shot. You guys want shots?”

“We’ll see how things go,” Matthew said.

“You federal?” Fat Monte asked. “Because I’d know you if you were local.”

“Yes,” Jeff said, figuring that was his spot to interject.

“Fed guys working a Sunday night,” he said. “I must be pretty special.” He took another sip of his beer and turned back to the TV. What did Jeff really know about Monte Moretti? He liked to hurt people. He wasn’t one of Ronnie Cupertine’s new-breed gangsters, guys who made money and didn’t do a lot of outside damage. No, he was the guy Ronnie turned to, still, to keep that cliché alive, the guy who broke arms and talked tough and did time. On the organizational chart, Fat Monte Moretti was listed as a capo, but in truth he was more like a high-ranking soldier, since he still liked to do his own grunt work, since he couldn’t keep himself out of jail for more than a year at a time. He had his own rackets, and then he did work directly for Ronnie, like this whole Sal Cupertine issue.

On the TV, Steve Young stumbled back from center, the clocked ticked from eight seconds, to seven, to six. . and then he threw a strike to Terrell Owens in the end zone. Fat Monte jumped up from his chair and shouted, “Fuck the Packers! Fuck the Packers!” and soon the rest of the bar joined in, until there was a chorus of drunk yuppies and one Family enforcer chanting together, which then turned into a series of high fives, hugs, and fist pumps. The Bears hadn’t even made the playoffs, but the Packers had lost, which was enough for the bartender to announce one-dollar shots for the next half hour. Fat Monte pulled out twenty bucks, handed it to a waitress, and told her to bring ten shots of whatever and keep the change, baby girl.

Fat Monte eventually took his seat, threw back the rest of his beer, and leaned back. “Now,” he said, “who the fuck are you guys?”

“We’re looking for Sal Cupertine,” Matthew said. “Have you seen him lately?”

“Last I heard,” Fat Monte said, “you guys found him toasted to a crisp in some landfill.”

“Nah,” Matthew said. “That was Chema Espinoza.” The waitress swooped by then and dropped off the ten shots. Fat Monte immediately downed one, paused, took down another, Jeff not saying a word, watching Matthew set his hook, going about it real smooth, letting Fat Monte make the next move. . though downing two shots of what smelled like Jägermeister probably qualified at least as a tell if not a move.

“Maybe I need to have my lawyer here,” Fat Monte said eventually.

“ Maybe ,” Matthew said, his voice low, not angry, not loud, just matter of fact, telling Fat Monte how it was going to be. “ Maybe I just put the word out that Fat Monte Moretti now spends his Sunday nights in Roscoe Village taverns surrounded by a bunch of accountants and their tucked-in polo shirts. Maybe I drive down to Logan and tell Chema and Neto Espinoza’s father that Fat Monte Moretti and his wife live in an unsecured walk-up on Damen, and maybe one night you and the wife are sitting on the sofa eating popcorn and watching Friends , and maybe four or five 2–6 Gangsters roll up on your place, tie you up, and rape your wife in front of you, then maybe get a little cornhole practice on you, too, just to make sure they still remember how to survive in prison.”

Fat Monte took this all in without saying a word. He took another shot and then examined the empty glass, then pointed at Jeff. “I know you,” he said.

“Oh yeah?” Jeff said.

“Yeah, I couldn’t place you at first, but now I remember. You were the one who kept trying to pin that Diamond murder on me, right? Hopper? That you?”

Jeff tried his best not to seem surprised, tried to figure out how the hell Fat Monte knew he was the one moving the pieces around that investigation, then realized that it made sense. The Family kept records, too. Interesting. “That’s right,” Jeff said.