That’s what this was all about. Matthew understood now, better than ever before, that it was not Jeff Hopper who was the center of everyone’s anger about this case. It was Sal Cupertine, the man who got away with it. The last living Cupertine.
“No matter. We’ll backtrack you. I’m sure you’ve been sloppy. Sal Cupertine will be dead by the end of the week.” Peaches stood. “Sit him up.”
Biglione lifted Matthew by his shoulders, his mouth close to his ear, whispered, “Be calm, Agent; it’s almost over.” Matthew could see the Salton Sea again. The egrets had settled once again on the beach.
Mike took a plastic bag from his backpack. Inside was a gun. Matthew had purchased it himself. A Glock 19. First paycheck from the FBI, made it his personal handgun. Bought in a shop in Bethesda, day after Christmas, place called the Pied Sniper, his mom with him. The gun he’d given his sister the night she disappeared. The gun used to kill Ronnie Cupertine’s wife and children. The gun that made him the most wanted man in America.
Matthew Drew understood then that these were his last moments.
Matthew Drew also understood that he’d won.
He’d found Sal Cupertine.
He’d accomplished something no fucking gangster, cop, or fed had ever done: He’d caught Ronnie Cupertine slipping. He’d hobbled him, turned him into a vegetable.
Kirk Biglione had done him a solid, of a kind. He always imagined he’d go down fighting, but in the end, what was the use? Everybody dies. He could barely remember what these men had said, words drifting off of him now, falling into the sun-dappled water.
The little one, Mike, put the gun in Matthew’s right hand, which was useless now, a mop at the end of his arm, pinned his trigger finger to the side of the gun, swept Matthew’s arm straight out, toward the sea, and fired, twice, then let the gun drop to the ground.
Egrets filled the horizon.
A billowing cloud, moving.
Like heaven filling the sky, undulating whiteness.
It was beautiful.
Kirk Biglione, the man who’d shaken his hand and welcomed him to the FBI, the man who’d fired him, the man who’d in 1973 watched Sal Cupertine’s father plummet off the IBM building and done nothing, the man who for forty years had been unable to buy himself out of that one piece of knowledge, a frozen moment that had come back to him every day since, picked Matthew’s stolen gun up off the ground, said, “Sorry, hoss,” and shot Mike in the face—Matthew thinking, Surprise, motherfucker—before he put the gun to the side of Matthew’s head and fired once. Maybe twice. Matthew wouldn’t ever know.
FOURTEEN
SATURDAY, APRIL 20, 2002
LAS VEGAS, NV
RABBI DAVID COHEN HAD HIS TORAH STUDY GROUP AT 11:00 A.M. ON Saturday, so he slept in, took his morning jog at nine o’clock, figuring most of the chemicals would have burned out of the morning haze by then. Bennie told him to be ready by ten thirty; they needed to talk before the ride over to the Temple.
Already the manicured streets inside the Lakes at Summerlin Greens were packed. On the sidewalks, women pushed babies in street-legal strollers that looked like they were rolling on dubs. Men in shitty casino tuxedos sat on their front porches or stood against their SUVs, smoking cigars and reading the Review-Journal, every douche in the city acting out scenes from The Sopranos before their degenerate-gambler shift at the Palace Station. Meanwhile, on the golf course, landscaping crews fanned out, making sure each blade of grass was the same length, assuring not a single biting insect was anywhere near, the itinerant Mexican workers modern-day coal miners, except instead of dying from black lung they’d get unique cancers from the tanks of malathion on their backs, and they’d have no recourse to sue, since half of them weren’t really even here, officially speaking.
It was like this behind every gate in the whole goddamned town. The gates provided the illusion of privacy and exclusivity, but really it was just a bunch of prisoners walking the yard, twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, everyone greeting each other with the same silent nod, no one engaging in anything close to personal interaction. Which was just fine by Rabbi David Cohen. But if you kept your holiday decorations up too long or ran your sprinklers at the wrong hours or parked your car too far from the curb or, worse, failed to ask permission of your neighbors to paint your own house, the Snitch Brigade would have the jackbooted HOA motherfuckers on your lawn, assessing fines, threatening to take your house, all manner of shit that, if they’d ever chosen to visit David on the wrong day, would end with one of them in a non-HOA-approved shallow grave. It amused David that the Rambo fantasies he knew his neighbors harbored—everyone a trained killer in their imagination—was how he’d lived most of his life. He didn’t believe that might made right, but he knew he was capable of violence and would not be caught, that he could live that way.
Jennifer had changed him. His son, William, had improved him. The value of their lives outweighed his own desires. He would do what he had to do, not what he wanted to do. It made it possible to believe he would find them again.
This week made it clear he’d need to leave a trail of bodies to get there. But today, after Torah study, he was scheduled to bury half a dozen of them. David didn’t know how many were real and how many were fake and, at this point, it didn’t really matter. Bodies needed to get in the dirt, so David practiced the Kaddish as he ran, getting the Hebrew familiar on his tongue again.
David made the turn at Pebble Beach Way, heading toward Sawgrass Street—his usual route except he was going at about quarter speed and could feel every breath like he was inhaling shards of glass—and encountered precisely what he hoped to find: a “For Sale” sign wedged into the lawn in front of Jerry Ford’s butter-yellow McMansion. A box of flyers was attached. David pulled one out.
MOTIVATED SELLER
WINE CELLAR
SOLAR PANELS
STEREO SOUND
INDOOR & OUTDOOR HOT TUBS!
$2.1 MILLION
Not exactly priced to move.
The gate in front of their home was wide open, so David walked up the driveway to the front porch. David rattled the lockbox on the front door, heard the key bouncing around. Normal situation, he’d pick the box and be in the house in minutes, but it was like I-15 on the streets right now; someone was probably on the phone to the HOA already.
David walked across the front lawn, peered into one of the six-foot-tall picture windows, where the blinds were parted slightly. The only illumination was coming from a single overhead light in the foyer, but that was enough: the house was empty.
Good.
“Help you, sir?”
David looked at his reflection in the window. Standing about ten feet behind him, hand on his gun, was one of the private security guards David—and everyone else in the Lakes at Summerlin Greens—paid $740 a month in HOA fees toward. They could have paid a little less for guards who weren’t armed, but everyone in the Lakes at Summerlin Greens was unified in their desire to have an armed response to doorbell ditchers, Mormons, and Canadian renters.
David turned his head, tugged his hood off his face, so that he could see the guard from his peripheral, make sure it wasn’t some Family hitter playing dress-up. But in fact it was a slightly overweight young man called Lavar that David had met before. Lavar worked full time in the HOA office by the front gate. Some days he did security, some days he worked the concierge desk, some days he probably cleaned the fucking pool.
“It’s me, Lavar,” David said. “Rabbi Cohen. I’m going to turn around slowly. Please don’t shoot me.” David faced him completely now, hands up, what passed for a smile trying to escape the darkness, David’s new face not much better than his old one at accepting orders to relay kindness.
“Rabbi, I didn’t recognize you,” he said. “When did you get back?”
“A couple weeks now.” He pulled his hood all the way down and walked down the lawn, hands still up, in case someone got to the motherfucker; you never could be too sure these days. “I had some work done, as you can see.”
