Sal said, “Don’t make me do this, Rachel.”
“It’s you or it’s someone like you,” Rachel said. “Isn’t that right? Let it be someone he loves.”
EIGHTEEN
SATURDAY, APRIL 20, 2002
LAS VEGAS, NV
WHEN DAVID MADE IT BACK TO RABBI KALES’S FLOOR, THE GROUP WATCHING the Tom Cruise film had doubled in size. Judging by the din, the white zin was flowing.
David was halfway down the hall when someone shouted, “Rabbi, is that you?”
He turned around to see Shoshana Friedman a few feet behind him. Or was it Shoshana Hall? Or was it Edelmen? She’d been married and widowed at least twice during his time at the synagogue. He couldn’t remember the order of names now because his brain was occupied with figuring out a more difficult mystery: On Shoshana’s arm was an apparition. A memory. Fat Monte Moretti’s mother, Lana Moretti. At least eighty, the skin on her neck looked like crepe, but her lipstick was the same bloodred she wore every day of her life, her eye shadow frosted blue, her hair so high it tickled God’s feet.
David smiled, made sure his mouth opened all the way, and said, “Yes, hello, Shoshana, how are you?” He grasped her hands, held them. “I’m just on my way to see Rabbi Kales.”
“Of course, of course,” Shoshana said. She turned to Lana, who looked like she too was witnessing a ghost.
Lana said, “You’re Dark Billy’s son. He killed my husband. And because of you, my son is dead and my nephew Neal is dead, you fucking cocksucker.”
She was right. Word was Dark Billy iced Germaio Moretti the night before he tried to skip town. Fat Monte punched his own ticket after Jeff Hopper and Matthew Drew fingered him in Sal’s disappearance, but she probably didn’t realize Fat Monte was the one to ace out Neal, though Sal would have done it if he’d had the chance, since Neal drove Sal to Kochel Farms on the night he got disappeared.
“I’ve been busy!” David laughed. “I’m sorry, I didn’t catch your name?”
“I’m so sorry, Rabbi,” Shoshana said. “She probably needs to move to the memory care unit.”
“Shut up, you cunt,” Lana said, “my memory is just fine. This man is no rabbi. He’s Sal Cupertine. A button man for The Family. I’ve known him since before he was fucking born.” She stomped toward David, stopped mere inches from him. “Don’t pretend you don’t know me; it’s disrespectful. I fed you a thousand lunches when your mother was too depressed to get out of bed, even after my husband died.” She spit on the ground between them. “Salvatore, you were my son. I bathed you. I know every birthmark on your body.”
“I’m so sorry!” Shoshana said again. She grabbed Lana by the elbow. “She watches these mafia movies all day long. Come on, Lana, please. Let Rabbi Cohen go on his way.” She tried to pull at the old woman, who stiffened, dug in her heels.
“No, no, it’s all right,” David said, his eyes fixed on Lana’s, to let her really see him. “I have experience with this. Why don’t we go for a walk?” David put an arm over Lana’s shoulder and squeezed, which is to say he lifted her a few inches off her feet and carried her down the hallway, away from the library, toward a sitting area with two leather chairs, a stack of People magazines, and a view of the parking lot. He learned toward her. “This man you think I am, if he were standing in front of you, and you said these things about him, what do you think he would do?”
“Shoot me in the back of the head,” she said. “All that bullshit about shooting people in the back of the head, all this Rain Man shit about you never forgetting anything, you were a myth. But my boy? He was real. He should be running The Family now, not some Chuyalla fucking Indian from Wisconsin. You ruined The Family. Now here you are. So pretty in your suit, while my son rots. I should claw your eyes out.” She was practically panting now, her face beet red. If she kept at this much longer, she’d probably stroke out.
He set her down in the chair beside the window. Then, very quietly, Sal Cupertine said, “Lower your fucking voice.”
“Or what?”
“Or I’ll throw you out the fucking window.”
“You kill women now?”
“I’ve made exceptions in the past.”
“Your mother would be horrified by you.”
“My mother was horrified by me,” Sal said. “So that’s not the insult you think it is.”
They sat for fifteen, thirty seconds until Lana said, “So you’re not dead. The papers were right.”
“First time.”
“You know what happened to my son?”
Happened was a bit of a misnomer. He shot himself and his wife, except his wife lived, at least for a while. “I want you to know, Monte was fair to me. He could have killed me and he didn’t. He was like a brother.” A deeply fucked-up, sickly violent, hard-drug-abusing, steroid-ingesting piece-of-shit brother, but a brother. “What happened after that night is all on Ronnie. Ronnie snitched us all out, Mrs. Moretti. Whatever Monte thought he had to do, that’s on my cousin.”
Lana put a finger on Sal’s chest. “You were the spark. Everything was fine until you killed those agents.”
Lana began to cry.
How many was that today? Three?
“What are you even doing here?” she asked.
“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you,” Sal said.
“People think you are a rabbi?”
“Consider it like witness protection,” Sal said, “but without the feds.”
“I wish my Monte had known this was a choice,” she said.
“I had no choice in the matter,” Sal said. “And what are you doing here?”
“I wanted out of the cold,” she said. “Half of Chicago is here now.”
“What do you mean?”
