Tod Goldberg - Gangsterland

“No, it’s fine,” Rabbi Cohen said. He smiled then, but only half of his mouth seemed to work just right. Like maybe he’d had a minor stroke at some point.

Esther returned with a cup of coffee and the morning’s Review-Journal under one arm. “Rabbi Cohen, this nice man has been waiting to speak with you,” she said.

“Of course,” Rabbi Cohen said. He gave Esther that same crooked smile. No, it wasn’t a stroke, Jeff decided. The guy just didn’t seem comfortable smiling. “Why don’t you take Mr. Hooper to my office while I wash up. Is that fine with you, Mr. Hooper?”

“Yes, that’s fine,” Jeff said. “And it’s Hopper, not Hooper.”

“Of course,” Rabbi Cohen said. There was that smile again. There was something funky about his teeth, too, Jeff thought, like maybe his bite was off, his teeth not quite matching up. “And Esther, if you could do me a small favor,” Rabbi Cohen continued, “if you could run down to the Bagel Café and pick up an order of lox for Rabbi Kales and take it to his house, I would appreciate it. I was to bring him lunch this afternoon, but this morning has been a trying one, as you can imagine, with Mrs. Goldfarb, and I thought we’d close the offices until this afternoon’s funeral.”

“Oh, yes, Rabbi Cohen,” she said. “I’ll do that right away.” She nodded solemnly, like the rabbi had just asked her to put down his dog. This was not a world Jeff understood, clearly.

The rabbi excused himself then, so Jeff followed Esther down the hall to a small, neat office. It had chest-high bookcases lining one wall, the books all spine out and at the front edge of the shelf, not a single one out of place. There was a wide oak desk that faced the door, a high-backed black leather chair behind it, two less-comfortable-looking chairs in front of it. There was a window behind the desk, too, and it was open just a crack, and Jeff could hear the sound of children playing nearby. Recess, probably.

On the other side of the office, there was a large dry-erase calendar filled with events affixed to the wall — Jeff could only guess what the Valentine’s Day Kugel Off! might possibly entail, never mind the Y2K&U talk that was scheduled for the end of the month — and beneath it was a wooden cabinet topped with a few knickknacks: a teacup and saucer, a framed diploma from a rabbinical school on a metal stand, a menorah. There wasn’t a speck of dust anywhere.

Esther set Jeff’s cup and newspaper on the edge of the desk.

She kneaded her hands together in what appeared to be honest worry.

“Esther, are you okay?” Jeff asked.

“Rabbi Cohen has never entrusted me with an errand before. It’s a big step. He didn’t specify if he wanted bagels as well and I certainly don’t want to assume, since you know what that does!”

“I say go ahead and get the bagels,” Jeff said. “Who was ever upset to get a bagel, even if they didn’t ask for one?”

This brightened Esther considerably. “That’s an excellent point.” She patted Jeff on the knee. “Thank you. That’s such a wonderful way of looking at the world.”

After Esther left him in the rabbi’s office, Jeff tried to imagine what it would feel like to have bagels be the weight of your world.

He’d give the rabbi ten minutes, and then he’d head off to Michelangelo’s Deli, one of the more promising locations on his list for the day, since Jeff had never known an Italian deli that wasn’t hiding something. The joint was an old Las Vegas establishment dating from the 1960s that had just opened a new storefront in a strip mall on Lake Mead and Rock Springs. Their old location, across from the Commercial Center on Sahara, was one of those places Jeff used to like to visit when he came to gamble, since they weren’t exactly hiding the fact that there was something other than meats being served, at least not with the number of guys in sweat suits who kept walking in and out of the kitchen counting cash.

Jeff picked up the newspaper and examined the articles. Russian astronauts were going to point giant mirrors at the sun, which would then bounce light onto parts of the Earth for a few minutes. Questions were being raised by a recent spate of U.S. bombings of Iraq. The president of Chechnya announced his country would now be ruled under sharia law. Jeff flipped to the local news section. Construction on the spaghetti bowl to snarl traffic for weeks. $75 million wagered on super bowl, casinos rake in $2.9 million in profits. Local plastic surgeon presumed dead. And then there was a photo of that Bennie Savone character again, this time next to a column by Harvey B. Curran, the mob’s own town gossip:

The street is still buzzing about jiggle-joint operator Bennie Savonegetting nicked on conspiracy charges related to the beatdown two of his bouncers gave Lewis McDonald, 42, a dentist from Nebraska, that left the tooth-man paralyzed and missing an eye. The indictment is sealed, but word is that Savone ordered video from the club’s security system destroyed, then sent a friend over to Ace’s Pawn to see about acquiring their tapes. All this after offering the family of McDonald serious seven-figure cash in hopes of keeping them quiet on the criminal front and forestalling what would likely be a crippling civil suit against his gentleman’s club, The Wild Horse. The feds are also closing in on Savone for what one source says are “credit card irregularities,” which might be anything these days, but if you’ve ever been to the Wild Horse, you know that a glass of water costs $10, $100 if you want ice. Savone’s got pit bull legal eagle Vincent Zangarion the case, so he’s surely been told to “keep his mouth closed” and that “he’s got rights,” but that might not keep the feds from taking a closer look at some of the sweetheart construction contracts Savone has made on both sides of the Strip. Savone hasn’t found any trouble over the course of last decade, so it’s a good chance he’ll be back in no time for his weekly brunch at the Bagel Caféwith his father-in-law, Rabbi Cy Kales, to talk about the expansion of Temple Beth Israel, Savone Construction Partners’ ambitious project in Summerlin. For wiseguys like Bennie Savone, “no time” to the feds usually means 60 days until they’ll get around to setting a bond.

Jeff sat there for a moment and tried to reread the column. His heart was beating so hard that he wasn’t quite able to focus on the words. Jeff had never heard of Bennie Savone prior to arriving in Las Vegas. It was impossible not to know about the Wild Horse, since they had advertising all over the city — on top of cabs, inside the weekly rags, guys wearing Wild Horse T-shirts walking up and down the strip and handing out flyers that promised “the most Wild ride in town”—and the club itself was the size of a football field. . a football field covered in topless women, no less.

All the words in the column were ones Jeff knew, but he’d never seen them put together before. A wiseguy. A strip club. A rabbi. A temple. It was like the beginning of a bad joke. It was also the first time since last April that Jeff Hopper felt like Sal Cupertine was anywhere near his grasp. He didn’t know how the dots connected yet, didn’t have even the faintest idea how it had come to pass, but what he did know was simple and tangible: Last April, on the same night Sal Cupertine killed four men in the Parker House in Chicago, a truck departed Kochel Farms and ended up at Temple Beth Israel in Las Vegas, maybe fifty yards from where Jeff was sitting, seven days later. That was a fact. It was also, apparently, a fact that one of Temple Beth Israel’s rabbis was the father-in-law of a reputed wiseguy named Bennie Savone, who, if the gossip column was to be believed, was spearheading the development of the temple’s sprawling campus.