“Rabbi,” Jerry said, “I ask them the same number of questions I ask you.”
Fair enough. They hadn’t robbed the Home of Peace, so it wasn’t Sal’s problem. This Boris character surely knew that Bennie was involved out in Summerlin and kept his shit to this side of town, on the other side of the tracks.
“How is any of this your problem?” Sal asked.
Jerry said, “I was supposed to do a pickup on Sunday. But I didn’t end up getting here until today.”
“It’s not your fault the power went off.” Jerry didn’t respond, just kept his eyes on his feet. “Is it?” Sal said. “Is it your fault?”
“I own this entire floor. I rent the space to Dr. Belsky. He’s been complaining about power surges shutting him down for weeks. I was supposed to get someone out here while he was on vacation. So. Yeah. Maybe it’s my fault. Power isn’t out anywhere else in the center. Not even downstairs.”
Sal stared at Jerry for a moment. He looked scared. He should. “How long have you owned this place?”
“Eighteen months.”
“Let me ask you a question,” Sal said. “Don’t lie. Did you suggest this line of business to the Russian mob like you suggested it to me?”
“My wife,” Jerry said, “I knew she was unhappy in our marriage. I figured if I had just a bit more capital, I could get us the beach house, we could retire, have that good life.”
“The question,” Sal said. “Answer it.”
“I did, in fact, bring them this business opportunity.”
“Is there any way to connect this place to the Temple?”
“I keep paperwork on everything, to be legit,” Jerry said. “I get audited like everybody else. So yes. The Temple is on my books. Dr. Belsky is on my books. It’s all aboveboard.”
“This,” Sal said, “is not aboveboard.”
“In my books,” Jerry said. “It has the appearance of being aboveboard, okay? You think I’m going to memorialize a criminal operation? Everything I put on paper is the real. You have nothing to be worried about.”
How much scrutiny could Temple Beth Israel and the Kales Mortuary and Home of Peace take? Cops come sniffing around, that wasn’t much of a problem. Half the force worked for the Temple as it was, but more importantly, Las Vegas Metro didn’t care about white-collar shit. They certainly weren’t looking into financial crimes at synagogues, churches, and mosques. If someone showed up dead on the ground, yeah, they were going to investigate, but short of that, you had to be one dubious institution to draw their attention when every gangster, cartel boss, Russian oligarch, and Al-Qaeda soldier on the planet was landing at McCarran four times a day in G-200s.
But if the FBI showed up again? With subpoenas? And forensic accountants? Men offering deals? How long before Ruben went state’s? How long before Miguel told a man in a black suit about that summer when he buried twenty Chinese men missing their pinkies in graves named for Jewish women?
Oh, he had something to worry about, all right.
Sal walked out of the freezer without another word, back through the warehouse, and into the dentist’s office, Jerry a few steps behind him. The power was back on, cool air blowing through the vents, the electric hum of machinery ticking back to life. It was close to 12:30 a.m. now.
Sal pulled down his mask, gulped in the fresher air.
“When is Dr. Belsky due back?”
“A week.” Jerry yanked his mask off, used it to wipe sweat from his face.
“Ponderosa closes when?”
“Never.”
“Never?”
“This is Las Vegas, Rabbi.”
Shit. He had to think on this for a moment. Jerry Ford was a dead man. Boris Dmitrov was going to have him killed for this. Bennie Savone was going to kill him, too. It would be a race to see who could get to him first.
Truth was, nothing said Jerry couldn’t work with as many crime families as he wanted, but this situation was going to put him in a position to save his ass by going to the FBI and flipping on everyone. It was the only way out. That he’d come to Rabbi David Cohen for help was desperate. Surely it was a thing that seemed like a good idea at the time, because at some level, of course, Jerry knew Rabbi David Cohen was not who he said he was, figured that if he got him involved in this situation, he could possibly save both their asses by, in fact, indicting both their asses.
If he worked on the equation long enough, Jerry would eventually land on the answer to all of this, and it ended with him fucked for life. Jerry would not have an opportunity to get ghost. Jerry was already dead. Now, it was strictly about buying time, for everyone.
Sal should have known this would be his downfall. He could never control this part of the Temple’s business. It was greedy and stupid of them to ever get involved with LifeCore. But Rabbi Kales wanted an empire. And Bennie Savone was going to give it to him. That was their plan. That plan took cash.
“What do they use to sterilize everything?” Sal asked.
“An autoclave,” Jerry said.
“Show me,” Sal said.
Jerry walked him over to the lab, across from the administrative office. The autoclave was a top-of-the-line horizonal Sonz unit, out of China. Four feet tall. Three feet deep. You could sterilize a man in here if you cut him in half. Back in Chicago, in his workshop on West Fulton, he had an old-school industrial autoclave that you could walk into, which was nice, whereas this looked like a particularly nice washer-dryer combo that could communicate to NORAD, judging by the four different digital displays and the sound of the whirring hard drive. He opened the door, looked in. He could pour at least two feet of fluid straight into the machine. Pressure steam everything with gasoline if he wanted.
Yeah. This would work.
“Get me every volatile chemical in this office,” Sal said.
“I don’t understand . . .” Jerry began, but Sal put up a hand to stop him.
“You asked for my help. If you don’t want my help, the time to tell me is right now. Otherwise? No fucking questions.”
“This is not a question. Well. It is. But it’s the prelude to something else. Don’t stab me in the ear, okay?”
