Tod Goldberg - Gangsterland

On this day, however, Bennie pulled up in front of the house and then called Slim Joe, who then handed the phone to David. “You ready to get that shit out of your mouth?” Bennie asked.

“Since the day it happened,” David said.

“Then let’s go,” he said. “I’m out front.”

“Really?” David said.

“It’s a blessed day, Rabbi,” Bennie said, and then he hung up.

David walked out the front door, and he felt mostly normal, except for the fact that he didn’t have a gun on him. He hadn’t had one all this time, of course, but now here he was out in public, or as public as a house behind a private gate can be, and he realized that it was the first time in twenty years that he didn’t have a weapon of some kind on his person.

“You look good,” Bennie said when David slid into the passenger seat.

“I’m down thirty pounds,” David said. He hadn’t been able to open his mouth for almost six weeks. He’d gone to sleep in some doctor’s office one night after midnight and woke up the next morning with incisions on either side of his head, back behind his ears, that felt like someone had hit him with a hammer, which, in fact, they had. They’d broken his jaw with a hammer and chisel, moved it down, smoothed out all the rough edges, and then locked him up. Talking was hard enough; having Slim Joe make him protein shakes nearly induced suicide. “Maybe I should get my jaw wired,” Bennie said. “My wife’s dream.”

Bennie drove down the long driveway and waited for the gate to open. It was at least twelve feet high, David saw, and there were cameras mounted on each corner, though David had never seen a closed-circuit TV in the house. He’d remember to ask about that. Bennie turned right, and David realized for the first time that he was in a neighborhood of homes just as sprawling as the one he’d been living in. Just as sprawling and, he noted, just the same. No character, David thought as they drove, just a bunch of houses painted somewhere between brown and mauve, each with a fountain with spitting cherubs out front. Where were the walkups and Craftsman homes? Weirder still were the street names: Anasazi, Hualapai, Turquoise Valley.

As they drove, David also noticed full neighborhoods on one side of the street and then nothing but empty lots on the other with elaborate signs promoting the next new community, always with names like The Lakes at Town Center Commons, and always with a smiling white family rendered in a drawing. Not even a pretense of being politically correct or multicultural. His own housing development was called The Lakes at Summerlin Greens, not that he’d seen a lake or any greens. Though judging from the land movers he saw out in the empty fields, both were coming at some point.

“Where the fuck are we?” David finally asked.

“Summerlin,” Bennie said.

Summerlin. David had read about this place in the newspaper. A master-planned community built by Howard Hughes. “Why does everything look the same?”

“Welcome to Las Vegas,” Bennie said.

They drove in silence for a few minutes, David soaking in the world. They kept going around traffic circles, made all the more absurd by the lack of other people on them. “Where are the casinos?” David asked.

“The Strip,” Bennie said. He pointed to the south. “And then there’s a bunch of little shit holes around town. Places to play cards. Get a drink. See Eddie Money play. That sort of thing.”

“The casinos,” David said, “that part of what you do?” He’d avoided asking any questions about the operations of the Savone family, but now that it was clear he was going to be spending some time around these parts, it felt prudent.

“Nah,” Bennie said. “Not on the front side. We got influence in restaurant and hotel unions, we got a few cement and steel contracts, we run a couple construction outfits, we get some influence on the books, but you can’t just buy a casino anymore. It’s not like it used to be. Place like the Bellagio? You’re talking ten thousand employees. And anyway, it’s an open city. Half these other families aren’t smart enough to figure how to avoid prison time just by signing the wrong box, so I just let them, and if they come to me for advice, I’ll give it to them. We’re all better off if we can work together out here, but if you don’t know how to form an LLC, that’s not my problem. I’m happy to let some other family try their luck on the low-hanging fruit, find out how rotten it is these days, you know?”

David didn’t, not really. He was straight muscle in Chicago, paid primarily not to know, and that had been fine, at least until recently. He understood that the Family in Chicago made a lot of their money on heroin and cocaine, but the real money came from garbage and landfill, mostly. City contracts, he understood, brought in the real cash. And that was another reason why the feds typically kept their distance: No one wants to have garbage piled up on the streets. But the nuts and bolts of the economy were left to people further up the line, like his cousin Ronnie.

“This Jew stuff,” David said, but then he stopped himself. He’d forgotten about Bennie’s wife and kids. “No disrespect intended,” he continued, “but I don’t understand it.”

Bennie scratched at something on his neck. He turned onto the Summerlin Parkway and then onto I-95 heading south and all the while staying quiet. Which was fine with David. He was content not to say another word for the rest of his life.

“Let me ask you a question,” Bennie said finally. There was an edge to his voice. Annoyance, maybe. Maybe he was going to pull over and shoot David in the face. There was no telling, but David was pretty sure that Bennie wasn’t the kind of guy who’d want to fuck up his upholstery, never mind his suit, a perfectly tailored Armani number that must have been expensive. “You go to college?”

“No,” David said, though it felt like all the reading he was doing now was making up for that.

“You ever been overseas?”

“Canada a couple of times,” David said. He didn’t mention an overnight business trip to Jamaica, figuring there was no good reason to let Bennie know about that. Three hours there trying to decide how best to dispose of five dead Jamaicans.

Bennie scratched that spot again on his neck, and David noticed that he had a bunch of little red bumps running from his Adam’s apple all the way to his chin. Razor burn; but the spot Bennie was scratching was actually a fine raised line that was a deeper shade of red. He’d noticed it before, not thinking anything of it, but now that he was up close he could see that it was a surgical scar. That or someone tried to slit his throat.

“Why not?” Bennie asked.

“Why not what?”

“Why haven’t you left the country?”

“My wife,” David said, “is always getting on me about wanting to go to the Bahamas. Once we had a kid, though, you know how that shit goes.”

“You don’t have a wife,” Bennie said. Annoyed again. Or just being nasty. The prick.

“No,” David said, “I guess I don’t.”

“What about college?”

“I was already in the business full on by the time I was nineteen,” David said.

“You ever hear of a place called Harvard?” Bennie asked.

“Yeah,” David said.

“You ever hear of a place called Europe?”

David thought he knew where this was headed. “Yeah, I’ve heard of both of those places.”

“You think there’s a bunch of guys like you and me running around Harvard and Europe? You think if you walked into Harvard just to ask where the toilet was that they’d tell you?”

“Me or the new me?”

“The guy-who-shoots-people-in-the-back-of-the-head you.”

“I don’t know,” David said.