Tod Goldberg - Gangsterland

There it was. He’d known it already, of course, but he wanted to hear it, wanted Ronnie to admit it.

“I’m not your guy,” Sal said. “I’m your cousin. We’re family.”

“Of course we are,” Ronnie said.

“Just like you and my father, right?” Sal said.

“That what this is? You want to talk about your daddy? Fine. But I charge a copay for that.” Ronnie laughed. “Isn’t this what you always wanted, Sal? You’re the big man now.”

“No,” Sal said, “I’m a dead man. But you know something? I’m not gonna be dead for long. And when the FBI realizes that, and they will, Ronnie, and soon, you’re gonna wish you were, too. As long as they know I’m alive, you belong to me. Because you know what, Ronnie? I know where all the bodies are. Every single one of them. And they all belong to you.”

Sal hung up before Ronnie could respond, took a few sips of his Johnnie Walker, and made his second and final call of the evening, this time to the Chicago Tribune . He’d need to make it quick, since he still needed to get a cab to the airport, boost a car from the long-term parking lot, and then drive back to Las Vegas in time for his 2 p.m. meeting with Barbara Altman, Camille Lawerence, and Phyllis Gabler to talk about the teen fashion show they wanted to do at the temple come spring. Maybe, in a month or two, he’d see about getting an assistant rabbi, someone he could train, since the temple really needed two rabbis if they wanted to get business done. There was the book fair coming up, the opening of the new school, the never-ending brisses, weddings, funerals, bar mitzvahs. . and then there was the business Sal knew Rabbi Cohen would need to make sure didn’t lag while Bennie was away. . and maybe he’d need to get creative with that, too, maybe periodically make some business locally. . could be the other six temples in town could face some tragedies in the coming year. Who could say when Temple Beth Zion might have an electrical fire? Or when one of the conservative shuls might lose a rabbi to some kind of blood poisoning? And who was to say that the cemetery needed to remain Jewish only? Yes, those were all possibilities to consider, and like that, as the phone began to ring, Sal Cupertine could see miles and miles of empty desert turning into roads paved toward his wife, Jennifer, and his son, William. Ronnie would remain a problem, so he’d need to keep Jennifer and William safe, somehow, but that was the next step. For now, he just had to set the ball rolling.

“ Tribune City Desk, this is Tom.”

“Tom,” Sal said, “my name is Jeff Hopper, and I have some information concerning the murders that took place last year at the Parker House that I need to discuss with someone.”

Jennifer Cupertine sat outside the Artists Café on Michigan Avenue and tried to make sense of the front page of the Chicago Tribune . She’d stopped in for lunch after spending the last three hours down the block at the Museum of Contemporary Photography, where she’d been employed part-time for the last two months, combing through a huge box of photos taken in the early 1900s in France that consisted mostly of people not looking at the camera, still lifes of various breads, and very little else of artistic or historical merit. It was like that sometimes, which was fine. It was solitary yet concentrated work, which kept her from drifting too far in her mind to other, more upsetting things. Like her missing husband — who the FBI had helpfully informed her recently was probably still dead, but was not the ashes they’d given her the year previous, which apparently belonged to someone named Chema Espinoza, a fact every local news station was having an absolute field day with — but also the more pressing issues like the light bill, like the price of new clothes for William, or that she didn’t know what she was going to do with the rest of her life.

But it was hard to avoid the headline that screamed from the bottom of the front page of the paper she’d purchased to keep her and her chicken salad sandwich company:

REMAINS CONFIRMED TO BE EX-FBI AGENT

The badly decomposed severed head discovered last week in a trash bin along Ontario St. has been identified through dental records as Jeffrey Hopper, 45, the former senior special agent in charge of the city’s FBI Organized Crime Task Force. Hopper was first reported missing shortly after contacting this paper in February regarding the federal cover-up concerning the murder of three federal agents and a suspected confidential informant allegedly perpetrated last April by Family associate Sal “the Rain Main” Cupertine. Hopper alleged that the FBI, under the direction of Senior Special Agent Kirk Biglione, had willingly led authorities (and family members) to believe Mr. Cupertine had been found dead in the Poyter Landfill on or about April 17, 1998, when, in fact, the body discovered in the landfill belonged to Jose Maria “Chema” Espinoza, a reputed foot soldier in the Gangster 2–6. Cupertine has subsequently been at large despite direct evidence linking him to the April 1998 murders, as well as possibly two dozen additional murders dating back as far as the mid-1980s. .

It was easier on Jennifer to think there was a good chance Sal was dead, even if she didn’t choose to believe it was true. She could fool herself that way, could entertain the idea of moving on with her life, but now that wasn’t possible, not with Special Agent Hopper dead. Because if that man was dead, it surely meant her husband was alive.

Jennifer felt sorry for Special Agent Hopper. He seemed like a nice man. That he was dead now didn’t give Jennifer any joy, though she did wonder what had become of his partner. . was he decomposing somewhere, too? Or was he still out there, looking for her husband? Had Sal done it? Was Sal in Chicago? It didn’t seem plausible to her, not with the amount of pressure the authorities had been putting on Ronnie and the rest of the boys since Hopper’s story had hit the front page the month previous. It all sounded absurd, the stories she’d heard. . that Sal had been smuggled out in a frozen meat truck. . that Ronnie had gotten rid of anyone who knew anything. . and now it wasn’t so much about whatever the Family’s role in this had been as much as it was the FBI’s cover-up, and just what they were hiding besides the identification of bodies they’d turned up. But wasn’t that what Special Agent Hopper told her all those months ago? That it was bad PR?

Jennifer set the paper down and looked out to the street. It was sunny for the first time in weeks, and though the air was still cool, the people walking along Michigan Avenue had taken off their heavy coats in favor of light sweaters. It would be overcast again tomorrow, she knew, would probably snow again sometime before April, but today was one of those afternoons when Chicago was perfect, the kind of day she and Sal would spend in the backyard with William, doing yard work, raking leaves, tinkering with the sprinklers, complaining about how crappy their rain gutters were, neither of them ever really willing to climb up on a ladder to clean them out, much easier just to bitch about it. William hardly even talked about his father anymore, and maybe that was better, too.

What frightened Jennifer, however, was how much the child had begun to remind her of Sal. It was just little things — the way he tended to curl his thumb into his fist when he felt nervous or worried, the bits of green that were showing up in his eyes, how sensitive he was, how meticulous, how singular his focus could be — but Jennifer knew she needed to find him role models that weren’t criminals. Maybe that would mean she’d need to start dating. Maybe that would mean she’d need to sell the house and move, just like Special Agent Hopper had suggested. Maybe it meant she needed to watch William more closely, make sure he knew that his father was not a good man but was a good husband and father, a distinction that she’d only just started to make herself, but which she wouldn’t allow to happen to her son.