“How is it,” Kristy asked Sal once they were driving through the streets of Westwood, “that they know you’re a mob hit man and they still treat you like a rabbi? They don’t even hold the door open for me.”
“Never underestimate,” Sal said through his destroyed mouth, “the value of celebrity.”
“I’ve been on TV, too, you know,” she said.
“Yeah,” Sal said, “but you’re not dead.”
THEY PARKED BENEATH THE FEDERAL BUILDING IN THE UNDERGROUND LOT and took the elevator to the fourteenth floor. The conference room’s walls were covered in whiteboards, each filled with names and faces. There was a board that said CHICAGO. A board that said LAS VEGAS. Another read NATIVE MOB/GANGSTER 2-6/CARTEL. And one more: LAW ENFORCEMENT/TERROR NEXUS. On each, lines spider-webbed around, connecting players to jobs, jobs to players, and periodically there would be an upside-down cross next to a name or face, to indicate they were dead.
Six FBI agents were already in the room when Sal sat down, along with two lawyers—one for Sal, one for the government—two dozen bagels, and three carafes of coffee. Kristy took Sal by the wrists and unlocked his cuffs.
“You’re going to be good, right?” she asked, just like she always did, but this time she added: “Because I will break your face again.”
“You got lucky,” Sal said. “Torque did most of the work.”
Sal rubbed his forehead, where there was now a small divot above his right eyebrow. He didn’t doubt that she could, in fact, break his face again. The doctors at UCLA seemed surprised he still had his eyes inside his head. After his most recent round of plastic surgeries, his doctor—a thirty-something woman named Dr. Gilbert—told him, “You need to avoid getting hit in the face for the rest of your life.”
She held up an X-ray of his skull. “You have more cadaver bones in your face than originals. Whoever did the last plastic surgery on you? They need to get recertified. You’re lucky you didn’t die of sepsis or that your optical nerve hasn’t been eaten away yet.”
“I got a MRSA infection when I was in the hospital last time,” Sal said.
“I know,” she said, “you still have it.” She held up another X-ray. This was of his forehead. “You notice a small red bump over your right eye?”
“That whole part of my face,” he said, “is without feeling.”
“That’s good,” she said, “because we cut it off. You had MRSA hiding there. Waited much longer, you’d be dead. Any fatigue leading up to this?”
“Yeah,” Sal said. He looked at the U.S. Marshal in the doorway. “It’s what’s preventing me from running out.”
“I bet,” she said.
The door opened and Senior Special Agent Lee Poremba stepped in. All the other agents stood when he entered, except for Kristy.
Poremba was smaller than Sal thought he’d be—he’d imagined someone over six feet tall—but he was a compact five foot nine, lean but muscular, with the kind of face that reminded Sal of a toaster—square with rounded edges, but with a kind of classic utilitarian flourish—and a precise haircut. He’d met him at the hospital in Las Vegas, but Sal had been on so many drugs, all he remembered telling him was that he was welcome to jack him full of every truth serum on the planet and he still wouldn’t tell them where he’d hid Matthew’s notes.
“We’ll do that,” Poremba had told him. “Now that we have your consent.”
Poremba extended his hand. “You must be Sal Cupertine,” he said, as if he thought Sal didn’t remember that previous conversation . . . or wanted to indicate to him that he should forget it.
“No,” Sal said, shaking Poremba’s hand. “That guy’s dead.”
“Right answer.” Poremba sat at his side, so that Sal was sandwiched between Poremba and Kristy. “Fill me in on Chicago,” Poremba said, and one of the lackeys produced a laser pointer and started going through a litany of Ronnie Cupertine’s major and minor sins, Sal Cupertine’s role in them, and Ronnie’s current vegetative state; though after about half an hour, Sal could tell Poremba wasn’t really paying attention. In fact, he was watching Sal, as if gauging Sal’s reactions.
“Back up,” Poremba said. “Tell me about finding Hopper’s head.” The agent told the story of how the head was discovered—a homeless man searching for a meal in a dumpster—months after Hopper disappeared in Nevada. The head was embalmed and only in the dumpster for a few hours, maybe less than two, cops reporting it was still frozen “through and through.”
Poremba turned in his seat to face Sal. “How did his head get in a dumpster in Chicago if you didn’t leave Nevada after your arrival?”
Gray Beard had gone on a road trip with Hopper’s preserved head in his freezer, but that wasn’t for public consumption. “I guess that was Ruben,” Sal said.
Kristy went through her paperwork. “Nope,” she said after a while. “Records show he was in the office that whole week. You want to try again?”
Sal looked at his lawyer. His name was Abe Berger. The government appointed him since dead men have no money, but as far as Sal could tell, the man was hard as fucking nails. He’d gotten him this far. “This where I say I take the fifth?” Sal asked.
“You signed the agreement, Sal,” he said. “There’s no taking the fifth.” The deal was he’d give up . . . everything . . . and get a suspended ten-year sentence—Sammy the Bull only got five, but they learned the hard way about that, since he was already back in the joint.
“I must have forgotten,” Sal said, “that I did drive to Chicago for a day.”
“Jesus Christ,” Abe said. “Can we take a time-out?”
“No,” Poremba said. “This is immaterial, really. Just something I have a personal interest in. So, how’d you get there?”
“Stole an RV,” Sal said.
“And what did you do with the RV when you brought it back?”
“Set fire to it in the desert.”
“And when I look at Ruben’s records of funerals,” Kristy said, “you’ll have an entire week off?”
Sal said, “Probably not. Because we were running a vast criminal empire that I was pretty sure would crumble, eventually, so, you know, I had him tell lies. Even on spreadsheets. Excel is not a holy sacrament, Agent.”
This got a snort from one of the lackeys, which visibly annoyed Poremba. “Let’s take ten,” he said. “But you stay here, Sal. Everyone else, go get a snack.”
“You need me?” Abe asked. He had a pack of cigarettes in his hand already and a phone to his ear.
Sal took a look at Poremba, who gave the slightest shake of his head.
“No,” Sal said, “I don’t think so.”
