“What happened?” Peaches said.
“Motherfuckers with shovels is what happened.” Lonzo laughed. “And then the government showed up and that’s how that goes.”
Peached understood that well enough. It’s why he had a plan to better himself since the first time a jail cell closed behind him. Got interested in real estate, accounting, civil engineering. Got out, took classes at community colleges. Got his real estate license. During the year he spent in Joliet, read a book a day. None of that Tom Clancy submarine shit. Kept that up on the outside, too.
Lonzo’s phone started to buzz again. “You mind?” he asked. Peaches waved his assent. He was a good boss, the kind who empowered people. He’d read Iacocca’s biography. “The speed of the boss is the speed of the team.” He liked that shit. Get people moving how Peaches moved, they’d come up.
When Ronnie was dead, Peaches would do things differently. Keep a lower profile. Be like a ghost, so that when people saw him, they’d be awed by the experience, not sure if they should be scared or filled with wonder. He certainly wouldn’t be sponsoring soccer leagues and shit. Less you try to look innocent, more likely you’ll do some shit that makes you look guilty.
Fact was, some unforced errors made Peaches adjust his business plan.
Like when Ronnie’s wife and kids showed up cut into pieces in a bunch of garbage bags in Portland. Peaches had them murdered and buried in the first place, once it became clear Ronnie was never gonna be much more than a bag of skin, but then Sugar Lopiparno convinced him that The Family had a process for getting rid of bodies that was impeccable, a show of fealty. It was a part of The Family business still fire-walled from Peaches, like the location of Sal Cupertine. Not knowing was smart, in a practical sense: Peaches couldn’t get caught up in either situation when they eventually fell apart, and already, that was happening. Two weeks after getting rid of Ronnie’s wife and three kids, they ended up on the national news, the Chicago Reader going so far as to show a photo of a foot sticking out of a garbage bag, painted toenails and everything.
If Sugar hadn’t seemed as stunned as Peaches, he’d be dead already, too. But then the cops traced the bullets in the bodies to Matthew Drew’s gun, which Peaches’s guys stole from Drew’s sister before they killed her—which made Peaches feel like the luckiest man alive—so he got to play dumb, too, tell everyone in The Family that Matthew Drew was now their number one focus, killing Ronnie’s family, that shit wasn’t right, wives and kids off-limits . . . which was true to these Greatest Generation Italian fucks, but not to Peaches. He’d kill anyone. He did not give a fuck. So now the FBI, Chicago cops, and the Mafia all had the same target: Matthew Drew. Which gave Peaches some leverage to get shit done.
If it were up to Peaches, he’d let the old guard die. But Ronnie Cupertine’s lawyer had paper that said he was to be given every life-saving measure, which meant this fucking guy might live on machines until cockroaches ruled the world. They’d held private funerals for Ronnie’s wife and kids, which meant there were still hundreds—maybe thousands?—of cards from friends and family and associates expressing their condolences, which meant Peaches had to then subcontract out the writing of thank-you cards, employing his three baby mamas to do the work, and then getting Sugar and a few of the boys to sign Ronnie’s name.
No one told Peaches that being Ronnie Cupertine required so much fucking stationery.
Another result of all this: Chicago was upside down. Bloods and Crips were doing that Blood and Crip shit, seventeen-year-olds killing one another over streets in LA they’d never visit. Gangster Disciples were at war with Latin Kings over some shit that started in the pen and spilled to the streets. Gangster 2-6 was beefing with La Raza, even though both were Latin gangs, to see who could suck cartel dick faster. Even the Asian gangs, like Hop Sing and Asian Boyz, were at one another’s throats, something to do with heroin, a girl, and someone disrespecting someone else, shit jumping off like it was the Tong Wars of the 1930s. And where traditionally The Family might step in and settle everything down—because without The Family, the gangs didn’t have any products to sell, so they listened even when they didn’t want to—Peaches was content to let everyone kill one another.
He knew, in the end, the street gangsters would do something stupid, like light one another up at a White Sox game over who had the right to wear the black hat, and then he could pick up the business he was interested in. Sit back in the cut, let the baby gangsters play at this, and then buy up their houses (Peaches Pocotillo was buying up gang-infested blocks like it was Monopoly, washing his casino money into property no one was interested in) and start doing things his way, until such time The Family revolted, too.
Which would happen. Peaches was 100 percent on that. If he wanted to avoid that—and he did, now that he was getting deep into the casino business and The Family still owned the connection on that—Peaches needed to know how they got rid of their bodies. And he needed to find that motherfucker Sal Cupertine, eliminate the last person who might reasonably wrench control away from him, the last loose end who anyone in The Family felt loyalty toward. No one in The Family was gonna take Peaches out now, not while he was making everyone money while the boss was in la-la land. But if Sal made himself known again? Oh, he needed to be ready.
It was yet another reason why Peaches wasn’t flying: He wasn’t showing up anywhere without a gun. Too many people wanted him dead.
Lonzo hung up, shook his head. “Would kill for a son.”
“They lose?” Peaches asked.
“Won by four,” Lonzo said, “but her best friend was on the other team so now there’s beef.” He shook his head, like he was clearing the deck, getting ready for the next thing. “What time we meeting your nephew tomorrow?” he asked.
“One,” Peaches said. His nephew, Mike, had been in the desert going on three months now, “consulting” with a local tribe on a casino project out in Indio, mitigating some problems between the Mexican Mafia and the Native Mob. Peaches was worried that Mike was on some Fredo shit out here, but his nephew assured him everything was cool. “You book us somewhere nice?”
“The Riviera,” Lonzo said. “Elvis and Sinatra played there.”
“Elvis doesn’t mean shit to me,” Peaches said.
“No?”
“Child molester,” Peaches said. “I read a book about him. Priscilla was fourteen when he knocked those boots.”
“No shit?”
“No shit.”
Lonzo shivered. “My girl is eleven. That’s fucking wrong, homie.”
“What I’m saying.”
The two drove in silence for a moment, until Lonzo said, “This meeting, it gonna turn wet? Just want to prepare mentally.” Which meant: he’d chop up a few more lines. One line, Lonzo was good company. Two lines, Lonzo was the guy you wanted to be with when shit jumped off. Three lines, Lonzo was fucking Idi Amin. Four lines, better hope he recognized you or that someone hid the automatic weapons and power tools.
“I’m a businessman now,” Peaches said.
“Homie,” Lonzo said, “no disrespect on this? But I heard you burned down an entire neighborhood in Chicago.”
“Who told you that?”
“Streets.”
Peaches didn’t like that shit being out there. He was in his forties now. The notion of “the streets” spreading rumors about him—even though, in this case, they were true—made him feel like a low-rent celebrity, like some fool at the end of the bench for the Bulls when Jordan was out there killing, some Jud Buechler shit. “Say it’s true,” Peaches said. “That somehow change your opinion of me?”
Lonzo rapped his knuckles against the steering wheel. “No, no,” he said. “But then I also heard it was the Rain Man’s house.”
Peaches shrugged. “You friends with the man?”
“Blow up a man’s house when it’s just his wife and kid living in it, that seems like it’s outside the game.”
“His wife was snitching,” Peaches said. “Her son shot a man in the back of the head. Seven years old, popping fools. The point is, these are not good people.”
Lonzo remained quiet for a moment, likely doing the math. “Ronnie okayed that?”
“Ronnie ordered it,” Peaches said, which was a lie. Ronnie wasn’t ordering shit, not even fucking Jell-O.
“Sal Cupertine finds out you blew up his house,” Lonzo said, “that’s gonna piss the man off.”
“He’ll never step foot in Chicago again,” Peaches said. He hoped he was wrong. That was the whole plan. Get his ass to Chicago. Put him into Lake Michigan, one bone at a time.
