Tod Goldberg - Gangsterland

She could not lose them both.

Jennifer finished her sandwich, paid her bill, and headed back toward the museum. Yes, she would make some changes, she had to, that’s all there was to it. But she would stay in Chicago, if for no other reason than days like today, when everything seemed to remind her of how good it used to be, how even the wind blowing through her hair reminded her of Sal, reminded her of how he used to tuck her hair behind her ear when they were facing each other in bed, which she hated, but which she wished she could feel just one more time.

Jennifer Cupertine was headed up Michigan Avenue, back toward the museum, when she came across a large, black-and-gold RV parked near the corner of Harrison, taking up three parking meters. Two black men sat outside in folding chairs right in the middle of the sidewalk, like they were having a picnic. As she got closer, she noticed they had a little portable grill out with them too, which one of the men was trying to ignite, no easy task with the wind.

“Beautiful day,” one of the men said when Jennifer got close. He was the older of the two, with a long gray beard, glasses, nice shoes. The other man was too busy with the grill to even look up.

“Yes,” Jennifer said. She didn’t know why she responded to the man. She never spoke to strangers on the street, or anywhere, for that matter, and she immediately regretted it when Gray Beard stood up and blocked her path. She stuck her hand inside her purse, where she kept one of Sal’s old guns now, because she didn’t know who might come for her some day, too. Not that she knew how to use it. And not that she’d probably need it at this moment, considering there were hundreds of people walking around her, though Jennifer tended to always feel alone in crowds these days, as if she were the one person no one could see.

Gray Beard smiled at her, though, and for some reason that put her at ease. “It’s polite to stand up when a pretty woman walks into your house,” he said, and then he stepped out of her way. “You have a nice day, now,” he said.

“I will,” she said, and she conjured her own smile. It came hard, but there was something oddly comforting about common kindness.

Jennifer made her way across the street and into the museum. Her little cubicle — which she shared with a graduate student from Columbia College named Stacy, whom she never actually saw, since they worked opposite days — was up the stairs from the first-floor exhibit hall, inside a tiny administrative space that also included a broken photocopier and a minifridge. She set her purse down and then noticed a thick manila envelope on her chair, her name printed on it in thick block letters. There was no postage on the envelope, no note indicating who it was from, no “handle with care” stamp, which was pretty much what every package sent to her attention at the museum came affixed with.

Odd.

The envelope was sealed with so much duct tape that it took Jennifer a good thirty seconds to cut across the top with her crappy scissors — the museum made a point of stocking dull scissors, in Jennifer’s opinion, to avoid the accidental cutting of precious items — and dumped the contents on her desk.

Or at least attempted to, since the banded stacks of hundred-dollar bills inside the envelope wouldn’t budge through the little opening she’d made.

“Jesus,” she said. She reached into the envelope and started pulling the stacks out. One, two. . three. . four. . five. . six. . seven in all. “Jesus,” she said again. At the bottom of the envelope was a single piece of paper, folded once, lengthwise. And there, in her husband’s precise cursive, was a note:

I will send more when I can. I love you and William. I always have and I always will.

Jennifer shoved the money into her purse, grabbed the manila envelope, and then ran out to the information desk at the front of the exhibition hall, where another graduate student — this one named Chad — sat reading a textbook.

“Did you put this envelope on my desk?” Jennifer asked. She tried her best to sound calm, but waving the envelope like a crazy person probably wasn’t helping.

“No,” Chad said, “I put it on your chair. The guy who dropped it off said he wanted to make sure you didn’t miss it.”

“Right,” Jennifer said, “right.” She tried to breathe. Tried to feel her fingers. Tried to concentrate on not drawing any attention to herself, in case anyone was watching. “The man. What did he look like?”

“Just some delivery guy,” Chad said with a shrug. “Black guy with a gray ZZ Top beard.”

“When?”

“Right after you went to lunch. Are you okay? You look sick.”

“Chicken salad,” Jennifer said, already pushing her way through the museum’s double doors back out onto Michigan Avenue. She ran halfway down the block toward Harrison, though she could plainly see the RV was already gone. She knew it would be, knew her husband wasn’t sitting inside watching her walk by, knew that the man with the gray beard was just a messenger, but she wanted to be near someone Sal had been near, wanted to tell that man with the gray beard to deliver a message back to her husband: that she would wait, that she would be right here waiting, for as long as it took. . and to never send money, ever again. That she didn’t want it. That she would rather be destitute than take one more dime that came with another man’s blood on it.

Never again , Jennifer Cupertine thought as she turned and walked slowly back to the museum, aware suddenly of the weight seventy thousand dollars and a gun made in her purse, after this one time .

I’ve been blessed by the help of so many people during the years I wrote this book: Dan Smetanka, editor extraordinaire, should have received hazard pay for the work he did on this novel — I am so grateful for his careful, inspired, and insightful notes, thoughts, deletions, additions, strong-arm tactics, and hour-long phone calls to keep me off the ledge. Likewise, I’m so thankful for the steady hands of my agents Jennie Dunham, who has been by my side since the start and who always provides wise counsel, firm editorial advice, and just the right amount of forceful intervention, and Judi Farkas, who has navigated so many rough seas for me she should probably have her own boat by now.

This novel came out of a short story entitled “Mitzvah” that I wrote for Las Vegas Noir , edited by Jarret Keene and Todd James Pierce. I owe both Jarret and Todd a huge amount of gratitude for knowing that I could come up with something dark and violent about Summerlin. I don’t know if any of these characters would exist if I hadn’t been asked to write that story, so I thank you both for including me in your book. And thank you to Stacy Bierlein for her astute editing of the story when it appeared in Other Resort Cities , a line change that opened up an entire novel in its wake.

Mark Haskell Smith, for his great notes and his continued moral and ethical support; Gina Frangello, for her help with all things Chicago and life; Daniel Krugman, for answering all of my odd questions about funerals and undertaking; Geoff Schumacher, my former editor at a variety of defunct Las Vegas newspapers, for his excellent book Sun, Sin, and Suburbia: An Essential History of Modern Las Vegas , which was an invaluable resource; Vitaly Sigal for his insight into Russian Jews, criminals, and criminal defense; the poor rabbis who responded to my tortured metaphorical and existential queries on AskMoses.com in the middle of the night (really, they are there all night long); Ross Angelella, for his middle-of-the-night support and wisdom, and for giving me a better title; Carl Beverly and Sarah Timberman for believing in the idea long before it became a novel; my siblings, Lee Goldberg, Karen Dinino, and Linda Woods, who travel this same path as I do, and whose unending support means the world to me; Agam Patel, my partner in crime at the University of California, Riverside, who everyone thinks knows how to bury a body, but who actually knows how to keep one upright; all my talented and smart colleagues at UCR Palm Desert Low Residency MFA, whose tremendous work inspires me, and all my students, whose promise and dedication embolden my spirit; Rider Strong and Julia Pistell, my Literary Disco partners and dear friends, who are also my de facto literary therapists twice a month; Mechtild Dunofsky, for sanity, and her insight into the motivations of people. Mikayla Butchart, for catching all my mistakes — there are few things more valuable on the planet than a copyeditor.