Tod Goldberg - Gangsterland

“You covered all of this ground tonight?” David said.

Vincent Zangari chuckled again. It sounded like someone swallowing chicken bones. “Let’s just say we’ve had some discussions on the topic recently. Always good to have a contingency plan.”

“You mean other than ‘Keep your mouth closed’ and ‘You have rights’?”

“That’s the best contingency plan of all,” Vincent said. “One last thing. Mr. Savone did relay to me this evening how important it was for you to plan on an efficient way to clean the house. Not tonight, or even tomorrow, but shortly. Do you understand?”

“I understand,” David said.

“Very well,” Vincent said. “I’ll be in touch with news as it comes. And Rabbi? Answer your phone, okay? I don’t like having to call all over town looking for you. Seriously. You’re lucky to be alive right now.”

David found Rabbi Kales sitting behind his desk reading the Torah. Rabbi Kales’s office was twice the size of David’s and had a sitting area with two sofas facing each other, a low coffee table between them set with an ornate porcelain tea service, though David had never seen anyone drinking tea in the rabbi’s office, not even the rabbi. David sat down on one of the sofas and picked up the samovar. “Where did you get this?” David asked.

“It belonged to my parents,” Rabbi Kales said. “And before that, it belonged to their parents, in Russia.”

“Where in Russia?”

“Ukraine, to be exact,” Rabbi Kales said. “But I wasn’t sure you’d know the difference.”

“I know the difference,” David said, wondering if Rabbi Kales remembered telling him about his family once before, when they first met. Maybe Rachel was right. Maybe he was shedding some space. “When was this?”

“They came here in 1909,” Rabbi Kales said, though David remembered him saying it was 1919. Maybe it didn’t matter.

“And they brought this all the way over from the Ukraine?”

“Yes,” Rabbi Kales said.

“And you never drink out of it?”

“It’s very fragile.”

“How fragile could it be if it’s lasted all this time?” David asked. He picked up one of the teacups. It was decorated with a pastoral scene — a green field filled with blooming flowers, and in the distance, the blue of the sea — and was rimmed in what felt like actual gold. “You should use it. Your grandparents didn’t bring it all the way over from the Ukraine just to be a decoration.”

“One day, it will be Rachel’s, and she can do with it as she chooses,” Rabbi Kales said.

David set the cup down. “So that’s how it works? It’s an inheritance?”

“No,” Rabbi Kales said. “I received it when I got married, as did my parents. It did not seem right to pass it on to Rachel when she married.”

“Because of Bennie not being Jewish?”

“My wife didn’t approve, no.”

“You never talk about your wife,” David said.

“You never talk about your wife,” Rabbi Kales said.

Fair enough , David thought. “Listen,” David said, “there’s going to be a transition here.”

“I’m aware of that,” Rabbi Kales said.

“Whatever you and Bennie have, that’s between you two. I’ve got a job to do.”

“As you indicated earlier,” Rabbi Kales said. He rubbed at his eyes and then walked over to the sofas and sat down across from David. “How long do you expect it will take?”

“It’s already happened,” David said.

“No,” Rabbi Kales said, “I mean how long until you’re expected to kill me?”

“I guess that will be up to you,” David said.

“You think that?”

“I don’t see you running to the cops. I trust you will help me keep Rachel’s mouth shut,” David said, though he wasn’t convinced she hadn’t already run her mouth. “I don’t have any orders right now.”

“But you are aware that the orders are coming.”

“Rabbi Kales,” David said, “they are always coming.”

“How would you do it?”

“Painlessly,” David said.

“I believe you,” Rabbi Kales said. He shook out another cigarette and lit up right there in his office.

“Might be the best thing would be to get cancer,” David said. But then he had an idea, something that was already right in front of him. “Alzheimer’s wouldn’t hurt, either.”

Rabbi Kales cocked his head. “Pardon me?”

“Maybe not Alzheimer’s, exactly,” David said. “Maybe just dementia. You got any history of that in your family?”

“They used to just call it being senile. My father was senile. His mother was senile, I remember that, her babbling in Russian about going back home to where she felt comfortable.” Rabbi Kales sighed. “Half of the people in the parking lot at Smith’s, at any given time, are probably senile. It’s very sad.”

“It doesn’t have to be,” David said. “Could be that you just wake up one morning and you’re a little confused. Not sure where you are, go outside with two different shoes on, whatever. Think of it as an early retirement.”

Rabbi Kales stared at David for a long time without speaking. “How much time will that buy me?” he said finally.

“Could be forever. If Bennie doesn’t think you’re a liability, there’s no need to get rid of you.”

“Is that what he thinks? That I’m a liability?”

“You know too much,” David said flatly. “That’s how it works. One day, he’ll decide I know too much, and someone will come for me, too.”

“You’re too valuable,” Rabbi Kales said.

“For now,” David said. “But this whole place is changing. Whole world is changing. Not a lot of room for gangsters anymore. Everything that used to be illegal is legal now.” David hadn’t minded being a hit man — it was a legit job in the field, as it were — but the idea that now he was, for all intents, also an undertaker was showing him just how little a skill set like his was really going to be needed in the future. You didn’t need a gun to rob someone anymore, you just needed a spreadsheet.

“How old are you, David?”

“Thirty-five,” David said. Shit. No, that wasn’t true. He was thirty-six now. He’d had a birthday in September. How had he forgotten to celebrate his own birthday? And now he was halfway to thirty-seven. Damn. Time fucked with you in Las Vegas.

“You talk like you’re my age.”

“I’ve seen some shit,” David said.

Rabbi Kales stubbed out his cigarette on the underside of the coffee table and then picked up one of the teacups. This one was covered in vines that spun out from the handle, where a fine drawing of a tree sprouted. “This one was always my favorite,” he said. “My nana used to let me hold it for one minute at a time, but only if I was sitting and only on carpet.” Rabbi Kales chuckled lightly. “She’s been dead for sixty years, and I still think about her. Isn’t that odd?”

“Not so much,” David said.

“But you see, she wasn’t given a choice about when she was to die, so every day could have been her last.”

“That’s true for everyone,” David said.

“That is not true,” Rabbi Kales said. “I can’t tell you how many of my relatives died in the camps, David. Do you think they had any choice?”

“They could have fought back,” David said. “Maybe they did. You don’t know.”

“They killed the entire village my family came from in Ukraine. Not a Jew left standing. Unless they had tanks and planes, no amount of fighting would have saved them from that.”

“All respect,” David said, and he actually meant it, “this is a choice you made to enter into this life, with Bennie, with me, with all of this shit. And now I’m giving you a choice of how to leave it. You can either wait for me to show up one day with a gun, or you can fade away and buy some time.”