“How long can I wear a tourniquet?”
“Five hours,” Biglione said. “Plus or minus.” He leaned closer. “That ear is going to be a problem. You’re gonna need plastic surgery.”
“Yeah,” Peaches said. His new friend Lori Silausk would know where there was a friendly IHS clinic. Soon, he’d have his own; situations like this firmed that in his mind.
“You finish off Cupertine?”
“No,” Peaches said. The flames were inside the casket now. The smell was not one he’d encountered before. It was like charcoal and melting copper and sulfur all at once. “We came to . . . an accord.”
“Fuck does that mean?”
Peaches said, “We agreed you had to go.”
Peaches kicked over the can. Gas splashed on Biglione, pooled around him, Biglione about to say something, but it was too late. Peaches had lit a match, tossed it, and Biglione was a torch, the big man running, screaming, flailing into the desert, Peaches thinking he’d put the fucker out of his misery and put one in his back, but it turned out he didn’t need to. Biglione collapsed, set fire to the creosote around him, the fire dancing from body to bush and back again, screaming, and then nothing but the sounds of cooking meat.
Peaches checked his cell phone for service.
Four bars.
Good.
You could die out here without a phone.
Got into Kirk’s car. Adjusted the seat. Drove out of the desert. Hit the 395. Opened his windows, let the desert air get the smell of Biglione and his cousin Mike off of him, chewed another couple Oxy, the pain in his face getting a little further away, the pain in his arm still throbbing with his heartbeat, the tourniquet doing its job. Hit the radio. Found a song he liked, Johnny Cash singing about prison. He’d get to Palm Springs, get his arm taken care of, get his ear fixed, or maybe keep his ear that way if it looked badass, he’d need to figure that out, but fuck Chicago, he didn’t need that place, he could run The Family from somewhere sunny, maybe make his move on Lori Silausk sooner than later, maybe get her husband washed right quick, Peaches Pocotillo flying high now, everything cool, everything in focus, everything real cool.
TWENTY-THREE
SUNDAY, APRIL 21, 2002
LAS VEGAS, NV
SEVEN IN THE MORNING, SENIOR SPECIAL AGENT POREMBA CALLED KRISTY Levine, told her to meet him in an hour behind the Smith’s supermarket on West Lake Mead, five blocks from Temple Beth Israel, to be dressed for tactical work, and then he was gone. So at 8 a.m., when she pulled behind the store, she expected to find Poremba waiting for her by himself, but instead there were sixty agents in Kevlar, checking their AR-15s, adjusting their wraparound sunglasses, drinking coffee from Styrofoam cups. She found Poremba in his SUV, watching everything.
“The fuck is going on?” Kristy asked.
“We’ve got four strike teams hitting the Temple, the funeral home, Rabbi Cohen’s home, and Jerry Ford’s home, soon as we have a warrant.” He checked his watch. “Which should be in five minutes.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“What did you find on Rabbi Cohen?” Poremba said.
“Nothing,” she said. It was true. She’d been up until 3 a.m., trying to find anything she could on the man she’d told all of her personal secrets to, the man who had cooled her fear of death, and learned that there are thousands of Rabbi David Cohens in the world, that it was like looking for a needle in a stack of needles, but there was no proof that this David Cohen had ever existed, which she told Poremba.
“It’s because he doesn’t exist,” Poremba said. He reached over, picked up a file from his passenger seat, handed it over. Inside were his medical records from Summerlin Hospital, which included his name and social security number, none of which Kristy had been able to get the previous night. “The social security number belongs to a gentleman named Joe Delotta, Bennie Savone’s nephew, who hasn’t been seen since 1999. Surprisingly no one has reported him missing. Bill at the hospital was paid by the Temple, weekly, which gave them a 15 percent discount. You want to guess the cost for reconstructive plastic surgery and three months of around-the-clock care? $1,601,924.29. And then the Temple bought their own wing, another ten million.”
Kristy thumbed through X-rays. “How many times has he had plastic surgery?”
“At least three, according to the records,” Poremba said.
“I can’t get a prescription for Percocet from CVS without them running a full background check on me,” Kristy said. “And he just walks into a hospital with someone else’s social security number?”
“Pay with cash,” Poremba said, “anything is possible.”
Money plays. The age-old Las Vegas edict. Kristy tried to assemble all these facts in her mind. “Why did you have me looking,” she said, finally, “if you were going to go behind me and get this?”
“He was your rabbi, Kristy,” Poremba said. “I didn’t think you were inclined to believe he was anyone but the man he purported to be. You would look for proof that you weren’t a dupe, and I didn’t have that kind of time.”
“I had no reason not to believe him,” she said. She handed the file back to Poremba. “You sure he’s Cupertine?”
“No,” Poremba said. “That’s why we’re here.”
“Ford is dead,” Kristy said. “I found him with a bag on his head at LifeCore last night. I would have told you, but here we are. Maybe send Vegas Metro over to do a wellness.”
“You sure you saw what you saw at LifeCore?” Poremba asked.
“Hard to miss a dead body,” she said.
Poremba put a stick of spearmint gum in his mouth, inhaled, took stock of his surroundings. “Hopper had him. Cupertine.”
“So did Matthew,” Kristy said. “He must have.”
Poremba shook his head, sadly. “We’re going to dig up every single grave in that cemetery until we find Hopper’s remains. We’ll run DNA on those remains for thirty years if we have to. He’s coming home.”
“They could be in someone’s hip replacement by now,” Kristy said.
“No,” Poremba said. “Cupertine made sure his head was left in Chicago, where it could be found, identified, and given proper burial. Cupertine respected the game. Hopper’s bones are out there. We bring in Cupertine alive, I bet you five bucks he tells us exactly where Hopper’s buried.”
Poremba’s cell phone rang. He answered, listened for a few moments, then said, “Thank you, sir,” and put his phone back in his pocket. “You ready?” he said to Kristy.
