“You ever want to know why The Family is still in business and The Outfit is just a bunch of Italians dying in prison, spend a little time looking into his fucking background.”
Kristy said, “I’m listening.”
“I’m not doing your job for you,” David said, “without a deal on the table.”
“I’m not high enough on the chain to give you anything,” Kristy said.
“Seems like Senior Special Agent Poremba is,” David said. Kristy shifted uncomfortably. There was no way she wasn’t wired. There was no way there weren’t three or four agents already in this restaurant, waiting in the kitchen probably, maybe the manager’s office, recording all of this. This wasn’t a movie. The FBI wasn’t going to let the Rain Man hold an entire deli hostage. And what was it David wanted? From the moment his father dropped from the sky, his life was ruled by retribution. Vengeance, in one form or another. The result was what he’d always feared most: the loss of Jennifer and William, now sown.
“Give me one day,” David said, “and the location of the people who killed my wife and son. Then I’ll give you everything you want. I will give you the entire Family. Every single person Ronnie Cupertine had me kill. Every politician on the take. Every dirty cop. I will give you all of Bennie Savone’s operations. I will tell you where every single body we laundered through that cemetery is buried and who they are, if I can remember. But I want one day.”
“You know I can’t let you loose to kill someone,” Kristy said.
“You let Whitey Bulger roam the streets of Boston.”
“This look like the 1970s to you?”
“You let the Five Families fight World War II for you.”
“Let me get J. Edgar Hoover on the line,” Kristy said. The waitress came by and Kristy ordered an onion bagel and a chocolate shake. “Turn on the news, Rabbi. The mafia doesn’t matter to the world. You go public with this? You’ll get buried beneath some made-up threat on the Statue of Liberty. You don’t matter. You’ll be lucky to make it onto the local eleven o’clock news tomorrow. You’re a curiosity. A relic.”
“The FBI let Ronnie Cupertine send me out into the world for twenty years.” David picked up Kristy’s cell phone, spoke into it, like it was a microphone, which it probably was. “And then you, Senior Special Agent Poremba, let Matthew Drew roam free. What do you think he was planning on doing to Biglione? You’re lucky he’s not in a shallow grave right now.” He leaned across the table, let Kristy really see him for the first time, let her see the Rain Man for all he was, let her see the face those FBI agents died staring into. “All I was, ever, was a tool. A weapon. And now I’m your weapon, if you give me that one thing. Because the minute you put me into prison, I’m a dead man. I want witness protection or you get nothing, ever. You think I don’t matter, and maybe you’re right, but you know who does matter? Corrupt FBI agents. There’s always room on the news for corrupt FBI agents.”
The waitress dropped off Kristy’s shake. She took a sip. Pushed it across the table toward David. “Crazy thing,” she said, “chemo made me allergic to chocolate, so feel free if you’re so inclined.” She spent a few seconds taking in the crowd. “First time I’ve ever been here and not seen Harvey B. Curran. Surprised you didn’t call him.”
“Who do you think will receive Matthew’s journals?” It was true. He’d gone into U.S. Vaults and Security, a private safe deposit box operation over on Alta that didn’t require a driver’s license to rent a box, just a cash deposit, since most of the people who had boxes were strippers, pimps, and gamblers, and rented three. In one, he dropped Matthew’s notebooks. In the other two, he left the rest of the cash from Jerry. Paid for ten years’ rent up front. Put Harvey B. Curran down as the emergency contact. If David didn’t return for them, he was dead or in prison. And then Harvey would really have a story.
“You’ve thought of everything,” Kristy said. She reached into her purse, took out a Glock, and left the gun there on the table, like a taunt. “Except there’s a real possibility you don’t get out of this restaurant alive. You consider that?”
The restaurant was packed. A line out the door. Conversation spreading like disease, table to table, friends saying hello, so much red lipstick, the constant clanking of silverware, plates scratching across tables, Yiddish and English and even a little Spanish and babies crying and laughter.
“More than you know.”
The waitress dropped off Kristy’s bagel, didn’t seem to notice the gun, or didn’t care. Las Vegas, everyone had a fucking gun.
“You going to eat the lox?” Kristy asked.
“No.”
Kristy took a piece of lox, put it across her bagel, took a big bite, chewed it slowly. “You like living here, Rabbi?”
“Not at first. Grew on me.”
“See,” Kristy said, “I can’t stand it. I can’t stand that people come here to act like assholes. I can’t stand that people believe anything, anywhere, was better when organized crime was in control. I can’t stand that I’ve become habituated to the notion that an entire city is out to fuck me, that even my rabbi, my rabbi, was part of a long con and is now trying to fucking blackmail me. Who’d believe that?”
“No one,” David said.
“And yet it’s true,” she said. Kristy’s cell phone rang. Not the one on the table, the one in her purse. She turned it over. Showed it to David: LEE POREMBA PRIVATE. “You mind if I get this?”
“Go ahead,” David said.
She hit the speaker button. “Lee, you’re on speaker. Something I can do for you?”
“Tell him he has a fucking deal,” Poremba said, “with some caveats.” And then he was gone.
She put the phone away.
David waited for the rush of activity.
Waited for the guns to be pulled.
Waited for the sirens.
But . . . nothing.
She picked up another piece of lox, folded it in half, took it down in a bite, not like Rabbi Kales, who liked to chew contemplatively.
Kristy spun her Glock around on the table. “I should put one between your eyes.”
“I am not who you are angry with.”
“That’s because I’m not your wife or child.”
He could crack the salt shaker in half and slit her fucking throat.
He could. He knew it.
“Why,” David asked, “would you be so cruel?”
