And like that, Kristy Levine found Sal Cupertine. Now, where the hell was he?
TWENTY-FOUR
SUNDAY, APRIL 21, 2002
LAS VEGAS, NV
BARRIO NAKED CITY SHOT CALLERS LIVED A FEW BLOCKS OFF THE STRIP IN the shadow of the Stratosphere Casino, literally: the sun rising in the east cast the entire West New York Avenue neighborhood in the tower’s shadow, its highest point dying inside a low-slung two-story, L-shaped dingbat. The building had a flat roof and was surrounded by an exterior stair that was trying to be a floating staircase but looked cheaper than that. Its exterior walls were stucco but painted a surprisingly elegant blue-gray, and all of the aluminum windows had been replaced with vinyls. Unlike every other apartment complex on this side of town, this one was being taken care of: there were only six apartments in the dingbat, and each had a reinforced metal security door. The building was surrounded by a six-foot wrought iron fence, spiked at the top, and the two entrances had sophisticated keypad entries.
Inside the fence, the lawn was deep green and looked like it had been cut using scissors. There was also a kiddie pool and a tricycle parked in the shade. Four brand-new cars parked in the lot out front—matching black F-150s, a black Mustang, and an Audi—somehow lacked the dents and scrapes of everything else in the neighborhood.
A garbage-strewn vacant lot on one side of the building stretched for two city blocks, David making out abandoned grocery carts and piles of burnt things. Across the street, surrounded by nine-foot chain-link fencing, were buildings belonging to the Culinary Union, their logo ten feet tall. Only three blocks behind the dingbat, down on Industrial, was the Wildhorse, Bennie’s strip club. That’s how old Las Vegas was. You could be in a place like the Wildhorse, with every actor, rapper, visiting athlete, and fucking bachelor party and insurance conventioneer in town getting their dicks teased by barely legal girls, or you could be going to work for the most powerful union in town, and then, one right turn away, a street completely owned and operated by a violent gang.
That most people didn’t realize Summerlin was the same way was an irony David couldn’t help but ponder, even on a morning like today, with Ruben Topaz in the back of the hearse.
David had been in these parts a few times with Bennie, when Bennie had errands to run, David his muscle of choice. They’d pick up money, or guns, and once they collected photographs of a guy running for DA, Barrio Naked City always solid to help him out on shit he couldn’t trust his own soldiers to do. Not unlike the Gangster 2-6 back home, an alliance that got Chema Espinoza dumped in a landfill the night Sal got out of Illinois, and had ended Lonzo’s life just a few hours ago, both for being in the wrong fucking place at the wrong fucking time.
David parked his hearse perpendicular to the F-150s, Mustang, and Audi and sat on his horn until someone came out of an apartment. A woman wearing a tank top, shorts, and a scowl came from a first-floor apartment, gun in hand, and not some shitty little thing, a real .357, shouting in Spanish.
David rolled down a window. “No habla,” he said.
“Who the fuck is you?” she said.
“I work with Bennie Savone,” he said. “I need to talk to whoever is in charge.”
“This motherfucker,” she muttered then disappeared into the apartment. She came out five minutes later in a sweatshirt, holding a baby, and unlocked the gate from the inside. “Come on, then,” she said.
“You’re the boss?”
“Dora Lechuga,” she said, “boss bitch. Look it up.”
“Why don’t we stand out here,” David said.
“You don’t come to my home and tell me where to stand,” she said. She shifted the baby to the crook of her right arm. “Come inside or get the fuck out.”
DORA LECHUGA’S APARTMENT WAS FILLED WITH LEATHER FURNITURE—TWO leather sofas, a leather recliner, a leather ottoman—and framed photos of her and a man at Disneyland; at the Eiffel Tower, except not the one in Paris, the one about a mile away; and in front of the Golden Gate Bridge from the deck of a cruise ship. And then there was one giant photo, maybe two feet tall, of the couple on their wedding day, barefoot on a beach, kissing, a big orange sun crashing into the Pacific behind them. Dora’s husband was a huge motherfucker. Six foot six, maybe, all muscle and ink, the kind of guy who looked like he enjoyed fighting, was probably good at it, and also probably would be dead from a steroid-induced heart attack before he turned forty-five. The portrait hung over the mantle of a fake fireplace filled with candles. Toys were scattered over the floor of the small family room. The apartment’s kitchen was vintage 1969, right down to the yellow linoleum, but it was clean.
“Don’t touch nothing,” Dora told him when she went to put her baby down. “I don’t want your fingerprints on my shit.”
So David sat on his hands until, a few minutes later, Dora returned to the kitchen, opened the fridge, took out a Coke, put it on the table, then went to the sink, ran hot water on a towel, reached under the sink for a bottle of hydrogen peroxide, handed both to David.
“You’re covered in blood spatter,” she said.
David wiped his face, his neck, his hands, ran the towel over his hair, too. Dipped each of his fingers into the hydrogen peroxide, got the blood from his nails, Dora watching the entire time. He cracked open the Coke, took a sip, felt it burn down his throat, the caffeine hitting just right. He’d planned to go home before all of this, but that was impossible, he knew, from the helicopters hovering over Summerlin . . . and the message he received from Officer Kiraly, informing him he wouldn’t be able to pick him up today because the FBI was detaining him at the Temple, and if at all possible, could he please come by and explain everything?
Money well spent.
At that point, he could have dumped Ruben’s body on the side of the road and headed east.
At that point, he probably should have dumped Ruben’s body on the side of the road and headed east.
But he couldn’t.
The Talmud told him: If I am not for myself, then who will be for me? And if I am only for myself, then what am I? And if not now, when?
He did manage to dump Aquafreddo and the Zangucci brothers, however. Left them right in the church in Ragtown, just in case they were Christians.
David pointed to the portrait hanging over the fake fireplace. “Where’s your husband?”
“My guess would be chow. Or walking circles in the yard.”
“Where?”
“Lovelock,” she said. A prison, located between Reno and Winnemucca, not a bad place. Mostly minimum and medium security.
“How’s that?”
“Easy time,” she said. “Thanks to Mr. Savone. You see him, give him my thanks.”
“I will,” he said. “What’s he in for?”
“Strong-arm robbery.”
“Five?”
“Seven,” she said.
“He must be good at it, then.”
