Lana listed the mothers of nearly every fucking soldier in Chicago and the Las Vegas retirement community they’d settled into. The fathers were all dead or in prison. This was not good.
“How long have you been here?” Sal asked.
“I don’t know,” she said. “Eighteen months? Two years? I barely leave the building. My COPD is killing me.” She let out another sob. “I just miss Monte and Neal so much,” Lana said. “Do you know what they did to Neal? Is he possibly alive, too?”
He’d been dumped in a Chicago landfill, along with Chema Espinoza, the night Sal was disappeared. They never found his body. What Mrs. Moretti didn’t know was that her son shot him. She could live the rest of her life without knowing that.
“He’s long dead,” Sal said. “I’m sorry.”
“You used to babysit him; do you remember?”
“I do,” Sal said.
“He and Monte were my last family,” she said.
“What about his son? Out in Springfield?” Fat Monte had a kid with the granddaughter of the owner of Kochel Farms.
“That whole family is in prison for what they did to you,” she said. “Boy is in the system now. Probably has a different name. Do you see? All of this. Because of you.”
“Because of Ronnie,” Sal said.
Lana took a Kleenex from her pocket, blew her nose, wiped at her eyes. “Let me tell you something, Salvatore. You can blame Ronnie for all the bad things in the world. But you never walked away. You made your choice.”
“I don’t walk away,” Sal said. “That’s who I am.”
“Macho bullshit,” Lana said. “It’s the opposite of who you are. It’s what your cousin Ronnie wanted you to be, and you were so weak, you let him turn you into that. You preferred being the Rain Man to being a real man.” She spit again, but this time into her Kleenex. “Your father was trying to walk away. He killed my husband so he could walk away. So you could have a better life.”
“Is that true?”
“Of course it is,” she said. “Your mother never told you?”
“No,” Sal said. But it all made sense now. The money and the guns in the trunk. His mother’s shock. Dark Billy had done one last job, and it was to save his family. And in the end, he’d died trying.
At the far end of the hall, Rabbi Kales’s front door opened. Light and the sound of CNN flooded the hallway for a few seconds, until Rabbi Kales walked out—completely nude, a sandwich in one hand—dragged a chair out, sat down, and began to sing. Was that . . . “Hava Nagila”?
“Oh, shit,” Sal said.
“You better help,” Lana said.
“Yeah,” Sal said. “Do I need to worry about you?”
Lana said, “What can I do to you?”
“There’s a reward,” Sal said. “Wrong person finds out I’m here, they might try to collect. That would be bad for them and bad for you.”
Lana said, “I’m just an old woman. No one will believe Sal Cupertine is a rabbi in Las Vegas.”
BY THE TIME RABBI DAVID COHEN AND A NURSE NAMED PERRY MANAGED TO wrangle Rabbi Kales back inside his apartment, he’d started in on the Neil Diamond catalog. David found Rabbi Kales’s robe in the kitchen sink; then he and Perry put Rabbi Kales into bed.
“All right,” David said, once Perry was gone. He tucked Rabbi Kales in. “Are you comfortable?”
“Yes, Rabbi,” Rabbi Kales said. A smirk.
“Oh,” David said, “you know I’m a rabbi?”
“I know you think you’re a rabbi.” A smile. And then a deep belly laugh. “Nice of you to come visit, Rabbi. I’ve been pretending for so long, I don’t know if I’m myself or not.”
“You motherfucker.” Had he faked . . . all of this? All these months?
Rabbi Kales pointed at the small sofa beside the bed. “Sit.” David did. Rabbi Kales put on his glasses, went to his closet, came out in pajamas. “Turn on the lamp. Let me see your face.” Rabbi Kales sat beside him, inches away, and examined David’s face. “And this is the original you?” he said.
“Close enough,” David said. Then he told him what had just happened with Lana Moretti.
“She’s a strange woman. I’ve had breakfast with her too many times. She puts mustard on her eggs.”
“My father killed her husband,” David said.
“She hold a grudge?”
“No, he had it coming. But I’m not confident she’ll keep her mouth shut.”
Rabbi Kales took off his glasses, slid them into the pocket of his pajama top, like he was wearing a suit. “What are you going to do?”
“I’ve got two options,” David said. “Kill her and every single person from Chicago who steps foot in Las Vegas, or just get out of Las Vegas. Which do you advise?”
“Have you located your wife and son?”
“Not yet,” David said. He hadn’t told anyone about Matthew Drew because it was all so desperate. It put everyone’s life in jeopardy. David wasn’t foolish enough to believe Drew wouldn’t double-cross him, not when the reality was that David—or Sal—killed his friend, killed those three CIs and their informant, and all the others. He wasn’t so desperate that he didn’t have some contingencies in case Drew failed. “I’ve got a guy on it.”
