Hospitals never went out of business. Shit, Peaches even had an investment strategy around hospitals that Ronnie Cupertine had taught him, back before he moved into one full time. The Family made millions over the years by buying up real estate near hospitals and penitentiaries, selling the land for huge profits to development companies and then getting the bids to build the houses or sanitation dumps, or getting institutional-cafeteria contracts for shitty meat, running rackets where no one ever thought of having a fucking racket. That was The Family way of doing business and not getting caught: Own things legitimately, then run a con based on need, not want. You want to build a golf course next to Stateville so all the guards and their captains can shoot eighteen after work? Great. You’re gonna need to buy the land from Ronnie Cupertine, and you’re gonna need to pay him to run it, to bring the food to it, to pave the parking lot, to sell you overpriced golf balls.
But Peaches was a practical man. He knew he couldn’t own a hospital, no matter how much money he had. Plus, he didn’t want to have to deal with those bodies. But you could own all the things those bodies needed to live.
Because what was keeping hospitals in business wasn’t the patients. It was the surgeries and the treatments and the legal drugs. It was the longevity. It was the increased life expectancy. The termination of terror management. People weren’t so scared to die anymore because so many outlived the desire to stay alive. All those good drugs that would keep your body alive while turning your brain into a bowl of oatmeal.
Peaches didn’t need to control cocaine. Peaches needed a fucking patent. Who did he need to kill to get a patent? Didn’t even need to be Oxy or Percocet. Could be some blood pressure medication. Some asthma shit. Hell, Peaches took a pill every morning for his cholesterol. Had for fifteen years. It was genetic. Wasn’t even like he ate bad. How many others were just like him? Millions and millions. Some broken strand of DNA that was making someone rich.
Aside from the patent, what Peaches figured he really needed was a clinic. Indian Health Services operated clinics on reservation land all over the country, but then independent doctors also had offices, too, many of them little more than pill farms. There could be a dispensary angle, but there also had to be some legit work happening, get a balance going.
Move pills, pimp elective plastic surgery—tit jobs, nose jobs, chin fillers, eyebrow lifts, all that easy cosmetic shit, no one dying on the table for a new smile—plus some light urgent care. Not so high-end that he couldn’t lose a body or two every now and then from a stroke or heart attack. Could be owning a clinic would take care of some of the problems running the Native Mob and The Family presented. Be nice to not have to worry about where to send a guy with a bullet hole in his shoulder. Find a Native doctor to front the practice; one of his baby mamas had to have a cousin he could blackmail. Peaches would provide the real estate, the start-up cash; a big key would be expanding off of reservation land fast. He liked Palm Springs. Lots of old fuckers from out of town who might fall and break their hip or get pushed. Little towns, out-of-the-way locations, spots where he could drum up business if things got slow. Maybe even get a few ambulances.
It was an epiphany Peaches frankly didn’t see coming. But that’s how it was these days now that he was the boss of bosses. He was fucking enlightened. He could see through black holes.
“Here he is,” Lonzo said, breaking Peaches from his reverie, all of this so bush-league he almost didn’t notice Mike pulling up behind the wheel of a red convertible Jaguar, some fat fuck beside him, some woman with hoop earrings show dogs could jump through in the backseat.
“Yeah,” Peaches said, his future so clear now that he already was picturing Mike in his coffin, because once Peaches’s epiphany became real, he couldn’t have someone like Mike involved.
Mike was already dead.
Peaches stared at Lonzo, tried to do the math on him. He probably could live.
For a bit.
MELVYN’S WAS THE KIND OF PLACE WITH PHOTOS ON THE WALL—DORIS DAY, Bob Hope, President Reagan, Clint Eastwood, Sonny fucking Bono, and Elvis pedophile Presley. The restaurant was filled with old ladies in white tennis skirts and pink polo shirts with the collars popped, diamond tennis bracelets, and tit jobs that made them look like college girls from the side, horror-movie mannequins from the front.
Everyone in the place—save the men picking up the dishes and then Peaches, Lonzo, and Mike—was as white as a snowflake, apart from their brown liver spots. Peaches had never seen anything like it. Gold Coast fucks didn’t bother with all the plastic surgery. They were happy to be old and rich. But also, there were Black people with money in Chicago. Apparently not in Palm Springs.
The two people with Mike—Lori Silausk, from the tribe, and Lester Aquafreddo, from the mob—were already picking at salads when Peaches walked up. He’d left Lonzo at the bar, in case he needed someone to come up from behind. When Mike introduced them, Silausk extended her hand, but Aquafreddo didn’t even look up. “Am I interrupting you?” Peaches asked when he sat down.
“Sorry, sorry,” Aquafreddo said, “the Caesar is like fucking crack. I’m eating like I’m out on bail.” He wiped his mouth with the back of his left hand while extending his right. Hands like canned hams. “Your nephew here, he says you can solve all of our problems.”
“You don’t want me solving your problems,” Peaches said.
“You know Ronnie and me, we have some history,” Aquafreddo said, leaning across the table toward Peaches, his voice just above a whisper, like they were in on some conspiracy. “From back in the old days, when there was no vacationing in Palm Springs. Just the streets and making those dollars.”
“I don’t know anyone named Ronnie,” Peaches said. “I know someone named Mr. Cupertine. Is that who you’re referring to?”
Aquafreddo chuckled, rubbed an imaginary wrinkle from his shirt, which was pulled tight across his gut. He was one of those guys who liked being fat, like it was a sign he was tougher than a cardiac arrest. Peaches never understood that. He was fit because he respected himself. “All right,” he said. “Next time you see Mr. Cupertine, tell him I said hello. It won’t get you shot or anything.”
These fucking guys and their loose lips, Peaches thought. The worst secret criminal organization on the planet. He looked at Lori Silausk. He wasn’t used to dealing with women in leadership roles, but it didn’t bother him. Most times, women didn’t feel like they were planning to kill you where you stood. “You have any greetings to extend, Ms. Silausk?” Peaches asked.
“My cousin,” she said, “he’s married to a nice Chuyalla girl.”
“Oh yeah?”
“Desiree Thompkins,” Silausk said.
“Where from?”
“Some shitty town in Wisconsin,” Silausk said, trying to be funny. “Over in Lake Country.”
“Don’t know her,” Peaches said. He thought he might. Chuyalla wasn’t huge and Peaches had made it a point to know anyone who might have some capital for investment purposes.
“Now she’s Desiree Palovich,” Silausk said. Peaches did know her. He’d run her credit and everything. “They live in Seattle now. Work in sustainable garments with Nike. Shoes made of hemp. Every couple months, she sends us a bunch of samples to try out. Like walking on knives.”
“Palovich. Silausk. Sounds Polish,” Peaches said. Looked Polish, too: Silausk had sandy-blond hair and soft-brown eyes.
“Everything gets corrupted,” Lori said. “My family, they’ve been here since this was the shore of Lake Cahuilla.”
“I don’t know what that means,” Peaches said.
“Used to be a lake stretched all the way from here to the Gulf of Mexico,” she said. “It’s where our band got their name. But my last name? It has no meaning. It’s just letters. I mean, what’s Pocotillo?”
“Originally? I don’t know,” Peaches said. In Illinois and Wisconsin, people paid respect on it. His father, he’d been an OG, came up with the Cupertines, played high school football with them. But then he got run up with some Outfit bullshit, did time, snitched out some motherfuckers, got out, tried to be scarce, until one day he caught a bullet. His grandfather served in World War II, came back a shooter for hire. An old story. But out here? This fucking town? No one gave a shit. “Probably came from ocotillo. From a pretty flower to bad motherfucker in three generations.” Out the back window, he could see the San Jacinto Mountains, palm trees, people sitting by a pool. Place like this, in Chicago? Peaches would burn it down for insurance money before he’d dine in it. Plus, he liked to do his own cooking. “Nice place. You come here a lot?”
“It’s a safe space,” Aquafreddo said. “Owner gives free meals to broke wiseguys. After Gotti got pinched and left a bunch of us out in the cold, word got out you could come here, get a warm meal, a bucket of scotch, and some respect. Hard to start earning when you’re seventy-five and your prostate is in a bag somewhere at Cedars.” Aquafreddo gave Lori’s arm a squeeze, which made her look uncomfortable. She wasn’t a gangster, Peaches had sussed that out easily enough, but she also didn’t seem to be put off by hanging out with killers and crooks. She had those big earrings, sure enough, but everything else about her seemed moderately conservative. Blue jeans, a white blouse, a wedding ring, one big diamond, surrounded by four smaller ones, platinum setting, maybe $7,000 originally. Someone loved her, all right, but it wasn’t someone flashy. If he didn’t know she was married to a Native Mob shot caller, he’d guess someone with a business degree. Could be both, he supposed. “Ain’t no fucking retirement plan in this job, right, Lori?”
“Okay, Lester,” Silausk said. “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves.”
Peaches looked at Mike, who squirmed in his seat. “Something need to be put on the table?”
“Lester’s talking about maybe getting the casino out here unionized,” Mike said. “I told him, we don’t do that back east. That not even Mr. Cupertine has union sway anymore. All that Jimmy Hoffa bullshit is the old ways.”
“And yet you’re still looking to bring the Teamsters into a sovereign nation?” Peaches asked.
“Carpenters and Millwrights, actually,” Aquafreddo said. “Same guys built half the high-rises in Chicago when you were still in diapers.”
“The fuck is a millwright?” Peaches said.
