Tod Goldberg - Gangsterland

Las Vegas had always been the second home for the crime families, with the Chicago crews running huge swatches of the city for decades before eventually receding into the background through the unions, particularly the Teamsters and Culinary Union, though with the corporatization of the casinos, they simply weren’t as prevalent anymore. Turns out, not even the Mafia can muscle an entire corporation.

Not as prevalent, however, didn’t mean gone. Which is why Jeff was in Las Vegas in the first place. The delivery trucks that exited from Kochel Farms on that night the previous April had gone all over the country — as far east as Vermont, as far west as California, but nothing south of Missouri, which made sense considering how the Kansas City crews still had so much influence in the steak world — but the largest concentration was in Nevada and California, home to countless hotels and steak houses. There were only a few probable locations, based on where there was actual organized crime taking place and where the trucks had stopped, at least according to their logs, which could have been falsified.

“You think Cupertine is living inside a Sizzler?” Matthew said to Jeff on the phone the morning after the raid, after Agent Poremba was able to get the trucking information Jeff had requested.

“Someone saw him,” Jeff said. “I know it. That’s enough to get us moving in the right direction.”

“What about the drivers?”

“We can’t get to them yet,” Jeff said. “They’ve got no reason to speak to you and me. In a week, maybe the FBI will pick them up, but what will they say? They’ll be lawyered up long before any questioning.”

“Maybe one of them has a conscience,” Matthew said. “Could be waiting the week is the way to do it. What’s the hurt in waiting?”

“Because this is ours, Matthew,” Jeff said. “This is what we’ve been working toward. And it’s what I’m paying you for.” Matthew sighed on the other end of the line. He was still in Walla Walla; Jeff was still in Chicago, sitting at Midway, waiting to figure out where he was going to fly to. “We can only make a dent if we do this separately.”

“This is about that night at the Four Treys. You don’t trust me anymore,” Matthew said.

“I don’t trust us together,” Jeff said.

“You know the bureau would have given Fat Monte a deal,” Matthew said. “Would that have been better?”

“His wife is showing some signs she might come out,” Jeff said.

“So, what, she can have Ronnie Cupertine toss her into Lake Michigan? She’s better off staying in a coma the rest of her life.”

“If she can talk,” Jeff said, “we’d have another chip in this. We have a week to get something solid, and if that happens, it’s all yours. I’m done.”

“That’s a big if,” Matthew said.

“It’s what we’re left with.”

“What’s your hunch?” Matthew asked.

Kochel Farms had over a hundred accounts in Nevada — sixty-nine in Las Vegas, seventeen in Reno, another dozen in Tahoe, another seven in Carson City — and over a hundred and fifty in California — thirty-two in the San Francisco Bay Area, seventy-five in and around Los Angeles, twenty in Palm Springs, and then a few more spread out in San Diego, the California side of Tahoe, and Silicon Valley.

Jeff examined the list of businesses: Kochel Farms trade was in either supplying high-quality meats — prime rib, porterhouse steaks, and the like — or low-quality meats — ground beef, rump roasts — so they worked with high-class hotels and pricey restaurants, but also with schools, ethnic meat markets, and crappy burger stands.

There was no way they’d stick Cupertine in Tahoe, he’d be too obvious, and the Mafia there was like a boutique business these days, mostly running low-level slot machine scams, the odd bit of prostitution, the occasional loan sharking business. Too family-oriented. No room for tough guys. And no one out there could afford whatever Ronnie’s asking price would have been.

He had to be strategic about this.

“I know Las Vegas,” Jeff said, “so I’ll start there, then move up to Reno. You ever spent any time in L.A.?”

“I went to Disneyland when I was eleven,” Matthew said. “So I could stake out the Haunted Mansion if you think that will help.”

“What about Palm Springs?”

“My grandparents have a time-share,” he said. “You think the Bonannos bought Cupertine and he’s calling bingo numbers now? Is that our best shot?”

“It’s not impossible,” Jeff said.

“You have some metric on how to approach this list of places?”

“One by one sounds like the only way, starting with any places that have strong old-school union or criminal ties, people who still might be willing to do a favor for the Family or who might actually need someone like Sal Cupertine,” Jeff said. “We need to shoe-leather this, Matthew. Hand out photos. Talk about the people he killed. Get anyone who might be scared of talking feeling comfortable that they’ll be protected.”

“Will they?” Matthew asked. Then: “Will I? Because that’s a question I have.”

“I know,” Jeff said.

“I want to live a long life, and I don’t want to spend all of it looking over my shoulder if we somehow muck this up.”

“Look,” Jeff said, “after this, you’re done. Okay? I’ll pay you your whole nut, and we’ll consider it a done deal, with or without Cupertine.”

Matthew didn’t say anything for a moment, and Jeff assumed the kid would say no, no, he was in for the long haul, that this was his obsession, too, and that he’d chase this white whale around perdition’s flames if need be. Instead he said, “Okay.”

Now, three days after that conversation, Jeff merged onto the Summerlin Parkway feeling no closer to Sal Cupertine and farther away from Las Vegas in general. He’d spent the last days working the Strip, Downtown, the joints clustered around UNLV, then down into Green Valley and Henderson, and it was, frankly, depressing. Sometime in the last few years, the Las Vegas he remembered had turned both into a place to bring the family — the number of people he saw pushing strollers down the Strip was truly appalling — and a place to descend into absolute, opulent, asshole-fueled debauchery. $3.99 prime rib had been replaced by $100 artisan burgers. The strip clubs were essentially legalized prostitution, twenty-four hours a day, twenty bucks to get a girl to bounce on your lap for five minutes at a time. And inside every restaurant or bar or casino or strip club, there was a group of five or ten unsmiling guys trying to look tough, wearing too much cologne and jewelry, calling cocktail girls “bitch” and tossing money at them, like they were acting out characters in a movie.

He hit several of the big old-school hotels — Circus Circus, the Sahara — some that probably had contracts with Kochel Farms dating back twenty years and which historically had strong ties to the old Culinary Union, places that might still stand up and take notice if Ronnie Cupertine needed something. But the people he met in food service there were in their twenties and early thirties and were mostly Mexican; the managers were fresh-faced corporate types, guys who’d shit themselves if someone stuck a gun in their face or would just call the cops if someone tried to shake them down. If someone higher up came down to the loading dock to pick up some gangster out of the back of a truck, there’d be fifty witnesses, none of whom would likely be willing to put their own life on the line for fifteen bucks an hour. Plus, the level of security was astounding: Cameras and armed private security guards were everywhere. The casinos were, after all, just giant banks when it came right down to it.