“I can’t tell you,” Kristy said, “that I was working on the corner of East Sahara and Maryland Parkway, no.”
“I see,” David said. David had a fondness for Kristy Levine that he couldn’t quite place. He knew she was an FBI agent, but he also knew that like Bennie, she was staring at the dead end of life, even if her road was perhaps a little longer than Bennie’s, but who could tell? “Perhaps you can also not tell me if I need to keep all of this extra security?”
“Who are you worried might show up?”
“Terrorists?”
“Rabbi,” Kristy said, “if terrorists wanted to blow up the Temple, they would. Worse than we saw at the Commerce Center.”
“Vivid,” David said.
“I just want you to know what the reality of the situation is, Rabbi. Do the armed guards stop your average Carson City skinhead who wants to kill a Jew? Yes. But does it stop a terror cell from killing all the Jews? Not even a little bit.”
“Then who should I worry about?”
“Are you running from the Russian mob?”
“Not at present.”
“Good,” she said, “because half the guys patrolling your grounds are on their payroll.”
David walked over to the window. It faced the playground of the Tikvah Preschool, which the Temple kept open all weekend long, so the kids could come and play in a safe environment. There was a guard about twenty yards away, walking a slow figure eight on the lawn, another watching from his car in the parking lot. In the car, they were strapped for war: AR-15s, flash grenades, enough tactical gear to dress a battalion. On their person, two guns: a service revolver on their hip and a Glock on their ankle. “What about these two?”
Kristy stood beside David, close enough that he could feel her breath coming fast from her nose. “They’re clean,” Kristy said after a while. “But the guy standing in front of the mortuary? If he invites you out for drinks, tell him you’re busy.”
That was Officer Kiraly.
“I’ll keep that in mind,” David said.
“What’s it like,” Kristy said, “to look different?”
“What did it look like to you when you shaved your head? Lost your eyebrows? Had your eyelashes disappear?”
“I finally understood why people get cremated,” she said. “I looked like a corpse. Unrecognizable.”
“Do I look unrecognizable to you?”
Kristy said, “No, of course not.”
“Nor to me,” David said. “This work has taken away a persistent pain. I miss my chin a little, but my nose? Not so much.” He smiled. “I’m a vain man, Kristy, and I happen to think I look better now. Despite what Rita said.”
There was a knock on the open door. David turned around, found Ruben standing in the doorway. “Excuse me, Rabbi?”
“Yes, Ruben?”
“You have a funeral in thirty minutes. Just wanted to make sure you had time to meet with the family first?”
“Of course,” David said. He pointed at Kristy Levine. “Have you met Ms. Levine?”
“No, I don’t think so,” Ruben said. He walked across the room, confident as ever, and shook her hand. “I am Ruben Topaz, the executive director of the Kales Mortuary and Home of Peace.”
“Please,” she said, “call me Kristy.”
“The family is waiting for you, Rabbi.”
“Thank you, Ruben,” David said.
“Makes you want to die, that one,” Kristy said, once Ruben was gone.
“You’d be surprised.” David checked his watch. “Unfortunately that means I need to leave you to clean up the rest of this. Can you stack the chairs for me, Kristy? Or just drag them into the storage closet?”
“Of course, Rabbi,” Kristy said. “Are you locking up anytime soon?”
“No, no, as long as there are kids here, we’ll keep everything open,” David said.
“So it would be okay if I stayed? I just find it very peaceful here.”
“Of course,” David said. “It is your temple.”
“Thank you, Rabbi,” Kristy said. David was almost out the door when she added, “Do you really believe kindness can redeem a person in the eyes of God?”
“I have to,” David said.
THE LAST BODY RABBI DAVID COHEN WAS SCHEDULED TO BURY THAT DAY WAS someone named Lon Levy. Sixty-three, no spouse, lived at the new Sun City Anthem in Henderson, died two days ago, so he was on a deadline to get in the ground, Jews real strict about getting into a pine box and under a shovel of dirt in three days. But since the service was scheduled for 5 p.m., David had a pretty good idea old Lon was going to be some Chinese gangster transported from San Francisco, since Jews were not big with evening funerals. Bennie told David about the business he’d been getting from the Woh Hop To lately, a Hong Kong Triad gang that was looking to colonize in Las Vegas.
Bennie’s cellie up in Carson City had been a Woh Hop To OG named Simon, and the two had hit it off. Basically, the Woh Hop To were keen to capitalize on the lack of state taxes in Nevada, the easy incorporation laws, and the opportunities to run mortgage fraud, everyone looking for a less violent future. So Bennie helped broker a land deal, even got Simon and his homies a place to live, over in the Rivers-Upon-Craig, a new European-style development going up on Craig Road, which was still the hinterlands but wouldn’t be for long. In the meantime, Bennie told him Simon had been good for three dozen bodies while David was stuck in the hospital.
“All pristine,” Bennie told David. “No blown-out eyes, no knife wounds to major organs. No one set on fire. I told him, for our purposes, best thing you can do is cut their throat and bleed them out like a deer, pack ’em in ice and head out.” And so that’s what they’d done, particularly since the active street war with the Wah Ching had escalated into high-profile kidnappings and extortions, except no one ever got anyone back, their bodies disappearing into the manicured graves of Summerlin. These fuckers didn’t give a shit about who they took, either. It was men, women, children, and pets. Bodies were bodies. All of which were profitable for Bennie, save for the bunnies and spaniels.