Gangsterland: A Novel (30 page)

“She still not well?” David didn’t know how to properly address this issue, nor did he want to, but it seemed like Bennie wanted to talk about a whole host of things today. The strange thing was that more and more, Bennie was coming into his office for conversations that started first as business and then spiraled into whatever was going on at home. “She still got that problem?” he finally continued.

“Yeah,” Bennie said. “Two beautiful daughters, I’m not complaining, right? I just thought, down the line, maybe we’d try for one more, see if we could get someone I could throw a football with. Doctor’s telling us no. And then there’s the pain. You can’t just take a Tylenol for what she’s going through, so she’s stoned on Ativan half the time.”

“He who bears his portion of the burden will live to enjoy the last hour of consolation,” David said.

Bennie whipped forward, his eyes open now.

“It’s from the Talmud,” David said. “Moses.”

“I know what it’s from,” Bennie said. “My father-in-law likes that one. You believe that crap now?”

“No,” David said. “It’s something I read that stuck with me. I’ve got all kinds of quotes at the ready.”

That was true, mostly.

What was also true was that David kept finding himself with
these tiny earthquakes of epiphany, particularly when he read about the sanctity of life. He wasn’t particularly well-read in his former life—mostly
Sports Illustrated
and whatever paperback he picked up at the grocery store to flip through while he waited on a job, though he was particular enough to know that he hated Tom Clancy and anything about the Mafia, so he stayed away from those true crime books, too, since he was also somewhat worried he’d find something he did in one of them—and thus the mere process of digesting all these religious texts was filling his brain with whole new pathways of thought.

He wasn’t sentimental about most things, and he’d been good about keeping Jennifer and William on the back burner as much as possible; but every now and then he’d read something in the Talmud or the Midrash that he’d immediately be able to apply to his own issues, and suddenly he’d have a way to deal with what he’d previously thought was a problem only he’d ever had. Which, he also recognized, was ludicrous.

“She wants to take you to lunch,” Bennie said.

“Who?”

“Rachel. You listening to me, Rabbi?”

“I don’t think that’s a great idea,” David said.

“She needs someone to talk to who isn’t going to just throw pills at her, give her some spiritual advice.”

“And that person is me?” David said.

“You’re having lunch with her tomorrow at Grape Street,” Bennie said. “This isn’t a negotiation.” His cell phone rang then, and Bennie looked at the incoming number with something close to disgust. “My lawyer,” he said under his breath, so his daughter wouldn’t hear. “I gotta take this. You watch Sophie for a minute?”

“Sure,” David said. Bennie stepped out of the office, and in few seconds David could see him pacing out on the sidewalk, always pacing. He was a man with problems, that much was true, though David sort of admired him, all things considering. He had this long con rolling, he had the strip club, he had this in with the Jews, which gave him some protection in the court of public opinion—even Harvey B. Curran was taking him light in his column lately, talking about how people who go to strip clubs can assume that the bouncers aren’t all a bunch of clergymen and should treat them accordingly and how Bennie Savone was doing so much for the community—and then, well, there was this little girl sitting on the floor talking to her Barbies.

Over the years David had found it difficult to hate someone who cared about their kids. It didn’t mean he wouldn’t still kill the person, only that it made him wonder who the person was before they got tossed up in a situation with the Family.

One day, David’s own son, William, would get curious about him. David knew that. And what would he find out? That he was a psychopath. Jennifer would try to tell him otherwise, but the kid, he was smart, sensitive, too, like Jennifer was, and he’d figure out his father was a piece of shit. And then maybe he’d figure out his grandfather was, too, because no good man gets thrown off of the IBM Building. How far back would William take it? To the beginning of Chicago? David’s own father used to tell him that their great-grandfather was one of the guys running liquor when the World’s Fair came to town in 1893, but who knew, really? Maybe William would find out all of it and realize he came from a long line of criminals and he’d become a fed and would one day knock on the temple door to arrest his old man.

Some things
, David thought,
kids just didn’t ever need to know about their parents.
David moved from behind his desk and sat down on the floor next to Sophie.

“What are Barbie and Ken up to?” David asked.

“They’re going to clean houses,” Sophie said, “just like you and Daddy.”

CHAPTER ELEVEN

R
abbi David Cohen never returned to the scene of a crime. It’s how people ended up getting fingered by previously forgetful witnesses or caught on surveillance cameras. And yet here he was pulling into the same parking spot Slim Joe had used in front of the tanning salon on his last day alive. Of course, no one had bothered to report Slim Joe missing, since he was the kind of guy most people were happy to not see again—and David never bothered to ask Bennie about Slim Joe’s mother, but it was safe to assume she was on a permanent vacation now.

Since Bennie had instructed David to never set foot inside a casino on account of their facial recognition software, David couldn’t really complain about Rachel Savone’s desire to meet at a neighborhood restaurant like Grape Street even if it happened to be in the same shopping center as Slim Joe’s favorite tanning salon. It was one of those restaurants David would never visit on his own—he had a standing policy that forbade him from ever going into a joint that had a chalkboard outside, and this place, he saw when he got to the front door, had two,
one with a list of the day’s specials, another with a list of appropriate wine to go along with each special.

David walked back to his car and, as discreetly as possible, removed the butterfly knife he kept in his sock, and put it in the glove box. No need to tempt fate, particularly since the idea of spending an hour anywhere talking to Bennie’s wife without some kind of medication—be it in pill or liquid form—had him considering ways to potentially kill
himself
, not to mention anyone who might make him, something he was always wary of when out in public, even though he still didn’t recognize himself in the mirror.

This all had the potential to turn black quickly. But before he could make a break for it, Rachel pulled up in her little silver Mercedes convertible, the top down even though it was only about sixty degrees outside. She was on the phone, and when she saw David she waved at him but didn’t hang up.

David watched her for a few moments, tried to decide if he found her attractive or if it was just that he hadn’t spent any time alone with a woman—in a physical way—in almost a year. It was easy for him to dismiss these thoughts at the temple, since most of the women there were so wracked with worry or guilt or some kind of existential crisis that he wasn’t able to look at them as women at all. They were just bundles of problems clothed in expensive leisure wear.

With Rachel, though, David felt a small sense of familiarity. It wasn’t that she reminded him of Jennifer exactly. As far as he could tell, they were completely different from one another in almost every plausible way—Jennifer would no sooner drive around in a convertible Mercedes while talking on a cell phone than she would ride on the back of a motorcycle with her ass hanging out—except in one sense: They were both married to bad men.

It took a special kind of woman to decide that hitching up with a mob hit man and freelance professional killer (or, in Rachel’s case, a Mafia boss who probably didn’t kill a lot of people with his own hands anymore but likely had done a fair share of that sort of thing back when they were dating) was a fun way to spend not merely a few dates but also the rest of her life.

Maybe it was exciting at first, when everyone was young and stupid and watched a lot of dumb movies, but once things got solid, once bills came due and there were kids and broken radiators and car payments and funerals, along with all the other tiny disasters that made up the daily life of a married couple, you had to want it. You had to call what you had love. You had to look at that person in bed next to you and respect him, even if you knew the truth about what he was.

“Sorry I’m late,” Rachel said when she finally reached David. “It’s been a crazy day.” She was wearing a light blue sweater set, black trousers that widened around her ankles, so that David couldn’t see her shoes, no sunglasses. She had on the same jewelry she always wore—diamond earrings, the simple gold necklace, the nice wedding ring he’d first noticed at the Hanukkah carnival—and carried an expensive-looking handbag.

“I just got here,” David said.

“If you’re anything like my father,” she said, “you’ll just love this place.”

“What about Mr. Savone?”

“Oh, he won’t come here,” she said. “He won’t go anywhere near a wine bar.”

After ordering, it took Rachel twenty minutes to finally address the purpose of their meeting, filling up the time with idle chatter
about the temple before letting them both get in a few bites of their Caesar salads. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m just sitting here babbling. You must get so tired of listening to women babble.”

“It’s fine,” David said, because it was, for the most part. She hadn’t yet asked him to solve anything, which was different than every other conversation he’d had over the last two months.

“No, no, it really isn’t,” she said. “When my father was your age, he didn’t have to deal with what you have to deal with. He could come home at the end of the day and not feel like he’d been party to every single injustice of the world, just the ones facing the Jews.” She took a sip of wine—she ordered a bottle of Merlot immediately upon sitting down, and most of it was gone—and then stared at David for a long moment. “Why don’t you have a wife yet, Rabbi, if you don’t mind me asking?”

“Married to the job,” David said. It was a line he’d used about ten thousand times since taking his position at the temple, every young mother in the place wanting to set him up with a single friend, every old-timer wanting to introduce him to their daughters or granddaughters.

“Everyone says Las Vegas is a great place to be single,” she said, “but I don’t believe that. It can be pretty lonely if you’re looking for a girl to start a family with.”

“Well, that’s not my priority right now.” David tried to smile at Rachel, but it didn’t feel natural. It never felt natural. It wasn’t that his face still felt like a mask, though it did; rather, it was that he’d spent so many years trying not to smile, growing up so hard, anything that was happy had the elastic snap of shit, so it was easier to just treat everything evenly. Once he got in the business, he didn’t want to be one of those assholes who ended up with a nickname like “Smiley” or “Gums.”

“If it becomes one,” she said, “let me know.”

“I will,” he said.

“My father says you’re an excellent young rabbi,” Rachel said.

“Your father is a kind man.”

“My father can be an asshole,” Rachel said, without a trace of anger, “but I love him.” She took another sip of her wine and then refilled her glass with the rest of the bottle. “I’m sorry we haven’t had the chance to talk much, because everyone says you’re an incredible listener. Claudia Levine thinks you’re wonderful.”

“Yes, well,” David said.

This got Rachel to smile. “My father teach you to say that?”

“It’s taught on the first day of rabbinical school,” he said, and they both laughed.

“This feels good,” Rachel said. “I don’t remember the last time I laughed.”

“If you could just laugh and cry in a single sound,” David said.

“Maimonides?” Rachel asked.

“Springsteen,” David said. This made Rachel laugh again. David took a sip of his wine, felt his face get a little warm, felt the muscles in his shoulders relax a bit. It wasn’t like drinking Scotch, but at this point, it was better than drinking water. Maybe things would turn out okay today.

Three tables over, David saw a familiar face. “Is that Oscar Goodman?” he asked.