Tod Goldberg - Gangsterland

“I’ve been calling you all night,” Rabbi Kales said when David walked up. He looked panicked. “Where have you been?”

“I left my phone in my car,” David said.

“Where have you been?” Rabbi Kales repeated.

“You don’t want to know,” David said. “Let’s just leave it at that.”

“I thought the worst.”

“The worst about what?”

Rabbi Kales waved him off. “He’s in jail,” Rabbi Kales said. “Benjamin.”

“Jail? What the fuck are you talking about?”

“The FBI raided the Wild Horse this evening,” he said.

Fucking feds. If it was Super Bowl Sunday or Christmas or Thanksgiving, you could expect a knock on the door. “What did they get him on?” David asked.

“Conspiracy,” Rabbi Kales said.

Shit. That was a federal charge. When the feds wanted to have the freedom to poke around until they found something worthwhile, they always went the conspiracy route, since they could convict a boss for what his soldiers did, or what his soldiers covered up, or even what his soldiers were thinking about doing.

David tried to collect his thoughts. If it was the conspiracy he and Rabbi Kales and Bennie were involved in with the funeral home and the bodies, Rabbi Kales would already be in cuffs, too. If it had anything to do with David whatsoever, there’d be feds and marshals and cops and reporters lining the street like the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. And if it was just some local shit — the building commission or something equally mundane — David was sure Bennie had enough people in his pocket to take care of that, at least forewarn him about a raid on Super Bowl Sunday. Bennie didn’t talk much about the political side of his life, but it was in the papers every day which “reputed mob figures” or “jiggle-joint owners” (or whatever euphemism the Review-Journal came up with that particular day) were donating to which races for mayor, city council, judge, sheriff. . hell, even the dogcatcher was getting checks from guys with vowels at the end of their last names.

All of which made Bennie no different than Ronnie Cupertine when it all came down, both of them selling rides of one kind or another and peddling influence so long as no one got hurt.

And there it was.

“The tourist,” David said.

“You’re really blaming a paralyzed man for this?”

“I’m not blaming him,” David said. “I’m blaming the situation.” One of those bouncers rolled, said something to someone; had to be. The FBI doesn’t get out of bed on Super Bowl Sunday unless they think they’ve got something for the newspapers. That’s how they work. In Chicago, everyone involved would already be in a body bag, that’s for sure: the bouncers, the victim, maybe the victim’s family, and then maybe they’d burn down the club, too, just to clean the slate entirely. . the realization of which made David actually catch his breath.

It wasn’t the first time he’d come to the conclusion that he should be dead for his role in the fuckup at the Parker House. But it was the first time he realized that he wasn’t dead for some specific reason. Cousin Ronnie got David’s ass smuggled out of Chicago and killed either Chema or Neal, or both, just to make it look good. . and then had Paul Bruno killed. . and then Fat Monte put a bullet in his wife’s head, and then another in his own, rather than deal with whatever Hopper had said to him. It had taken a while, but Ronnie wasn’t just cleaning the slate, he was pouring lye on it and burying it in Siberia.

David had told Bennie to give up the bouncers, which he had, got them good attorneys, everything, and yet, the Wild Horse still got raided. The bouncers didn’t know enough to give up anything other than what the feds already knew — that maybe Bennie Savone wasn’t exactly an angel — and David was certain Bennie told the boys he’d take care of them if they ended up doing time, provided they kept their mouths shut. And they were likely to do time for the crime they’d obviously committed, and deservedly so in David’s opinion, particularly with the beating caught on camera. So it had been about keeping them from getting a longer sentence, keeping them from being recognized as part of an organized crime conspiracy, which didn’t give the bouncers any good reason to start putting Bennie’s name on the street. Might as well come out of prison with some money in their pocket. David just didn’t see the feds getting enough from a commonplace beatdown — even if the guy ended up paralyzed — to actually move against Bennie Savone.

Which meant they got their information from somewhere else, from someone who knew enough about Bennie’s operations that they could ring up the feds and offer some kernel of information that would get the suits up and running.

“Where’s Rachel?” David asked.

“Home, with the girls,” he said. “Benjamin hasn’t been arraigned yet, so there’s not much that can be done until tomorrow when the bail is set.”

“If there’s a bail,” David said.

“He’s just a businessman,” Rabbi Kales said.

“Never been arrested?”

“Never,” Rabbi Kales said.

“Pays his taxes?”

“Yes, of course.”

“His business taxes, too?” David thought of all the bosses who’d gone down not for murder but for ducking the IRS. That was the one lesson Ronnie Cupertine had imparted to everyone in the Family: Pay your taxes. You like driving on nice streets? You like taking the L places? You like breathing fresh air? Pay your fucking taxes. You like staying out of prison? You don’t want a visit from the Rain Man? Pay your fucking taxes.

“How should I know?” Rabbi Kales said.

“Because you know everything else, seems like.”

Rabbi Kales tossed his cigarette onto the pavement and ground it out under his shoe, fished in his pocket, and came back out with a pack of Camels and a lighter and lit back up. “I haven’t smoked in fifteen years,” he said. “I don’t know why I ever stopped.”

“This will get resolved,” David said, though who the fuck knew. If they had Bennie on a conspiracy charge, that meant they probably convened a grand jury first, secured an indictment, maybe for conspiracy to obstruct justice or something similarly minor compared to everything else Bennie Savone had actually done during the course of his life. “Bennie’s got a good lawyer. The thing to concentrate on right now is Rachel.”

“She’s fine,” Rabbi Kales said. “You don’t need to worry about Rachel.”

“She didn’t sound fine when she was telling me she was planning on leaving her husband,” David said. “She didn’t sound fine when she told me you knew.”

“You don’t need to worry about Rachel,” Rabbi Kales said again.

“Maybe she should worry about me,” David said.

Rabbi Kales took a long drag off of his cigarette and then exhaled through his nose. He flicked the still-burning cigarette into the parking lot and for a few moments watched it burn. “Do you think you frighten me?” he said eventually.

“I think I probably should.”

“Your son’s name is William,” Rabbi Kales said. “He is in preschool at Mt. Carmel Academy, though your wife is having a hard time paying his tuition. Your wife, Jennifer, recently took a loan out on your home, even though it was paid off, in full, a few months after your death. Unfortunately, your wife is having a difficult time finding a job, since the name Cupertine doesn’t exactly make her easy to hire, since people either think she is related to your cousin, who I understand is a reputed mob figure, or was the wife of Sal Cupertine, who killed several federal agents. That must be a difficult weight to carry simply by virtue of who she fell in love with as a teenager, wouldn’t you say?”