Gangster Nation. Tod Goldberg

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СКАЧАТЬ the Timber Factory Lofts, but for two years, nothing had come to pass; the sign offering Executive Loft Spaces Starting in the Low 800s! didn’t even have a phone number on it. So Matthew broke in one night—which was hardly breaking and entering, since there wasn’t even a lock on the door—scoped out a suitable space, set up the chair, rolled out some Visqueen, even found an old Teddy Ruxpin at Goodwill and tossed it on the floor, came in one night with a boombox, blared a mixture of punk rock and Sarah McLachlan for forty-five minutes, checked the acoustics and the taste of the neighbors.

      Warped Tour or Lilith Fair, no one said a thing.

      He could take a hacksaw to Ronnie Cupertine, and as long as he played music at the same time, no one would give a shit.

      Then Matthew proceeded to phase two, which entailed watching Ronnie for months.

      He didn’t have anything else to do.

      Two years ago, he’d spent six months hiding out in Jeff Hopper’s house in Walla Walla after Hopper turned up dead, trying to piece together what the fuck happened. Hopper had gone to Las Vegas, Matthew to Palm Springs, to follow a lead on Sal Cupertine’s disappearance, after Hopper figured out that Cupertine was smuggled from Illinois in a frozen meat truck, most likely to Nevada or California. The two of them were to reconnect in a few days, make their next move, except Matthew never heard another word from Hopper. He just disappeared. Then he turned up dead. But not before telling the Tribune everything Jeff and Matthew had learned in their investigation . . . save for any mention of Matthew’s name, which was probably why he still walked the earth.

      It didn’t make any sense. It was the opposite of everything he and Matthew had been working toward, their entire focus being the capture of Sal Cupertine for the murder of those three FBI agents and the CI. Delivering actual justice, not this media bullshit. Going to the press before he had Sal Cupertine in cuffs, and without telling Matthew ahead of time? No. That wasn’t his style. And neither was the giant picture of Hopper that graced the front page of the paper, right next to a grainy photo of Sal Cupertine. Jeff would never consent to that.

      After leaving Walla Walla, when Hopper’s estate was settled and the bank sent a sheriff over to give Matthew the boot, Matthew spent another month at a Ramada in Springfield waiting to get called in on the corruption trial of Kirk Biglione, his former boss at the FBI. That never came to pass, either. Biglione took a deal before anything went to the jury, the FBI admitting that they’d disregarded evidence to keep a long-running—and ill-fated—surveillance program of the Family going, even admitting that they delivered a box of ashes to Sal Cupertine’s wife, Jennifer, that were actually the remains of Chema Espinoza, a soldier in the Gangster 2-6 who was doing scut work for the Family and ended up in that landfill for his troubles. That would have been a decent civil lawsuit if Sal Cupertine hadn’t been a Mafia hit man and if Jennifer Cupertine was interested in being deposed, which Matthew figured she probably wasn’t. Biglione didn’t even get any time, just a suspended sentence, and was now doing big-money corporate security in Detroit, making a hundred times the salary he pulled from the government.

      Matthew kept tabs on him, waiting for his next fuckup. Biglione had fired Matthew for doing the right thing. That wasn’t something he was going to forget. Ever.

      But Matthew kept tabs on everyone these days . . . which made tracking Ronnie Cupertine easy. Ronnie had come out of the whole FBI corruption scandal without a single charge against him, his crimes dumped on Fat Monte Moretti, who was dead, and Sal Cupertine, who was in the wind and on his way to becoming something of an urban legend, and then half a dozen soldiers and capos willing to take a five-year bid for shit they didn’t do. If the courts, the FBI, or the media couldn’t hold Ronnie Cupertine accountable, Matthew Drew figured he could.

      Catching him? That was another matter.

      Ronnie Cupertine’s Gold Coast manor had a six-foot wrought-iron gate out front, topped with cameras, and there was a private security guard out front, some rent-a-cop with a badge, flashlight, Glock, and walkie-talkie, usually sitting in the front seat of an armed response squad car—not unusual in a neighborhood where Cupertine’s neighbors included most of the Cubs roster and a quarter century of Chicago’s robber-baron industrialists. What was unusual was that Ronnie also owned the house across the street and the one next door, on the corner, giving himself a de facto compound, all on public streets, which was smart. You couldn’t bug a public street. Likewise, Matthew couldn’t just park his car in front of Ronnie Cupertine’s house, not unless he wanted his plates run, the Family good about having tendrils in mundane government operations like the DMV. He also didn’t like the idea of getting shot at from three different angles, since those two houses were filled with a rotating band of Ronnie’s guys.

      But half a block away was a brand-new Starbucks where Matthew could sit all day if he pretended to peck away at his laptop. So he’d grab the big chair by the window, nurse latte after latte, and watch Cupertine pace his sidewalk, taking calls.

      He always had one of his kids with him, usually the little girl, Cupertine knowing no one would take a shot at him with his kid right there. Still, one of his Family guys would always be a few steps behind, thick with Kevlar; even the Mafia had body armor these days. With a sniper’s rifle, Matthew could take Cupertine out from that distance, no problem, and not even get blood spatter on the kid. Could put one in Ronnie’s body guy with no problem, too, since he wasn’t wearing Kevlar on his face. Might even put a bullet into the armed response vehicle down the block, just for kicks.

      But he wasn’t an assassin.

      Not yet, anyway.

      So Matthew waited for Ronnie to slip—run outside in his underwear to get the newspaper, step out for a smoke by himself on the day his body guy had the stomach flu—thinking then that maybe he could poison the security guy . . . or involve himself in a minor hit-and-run, if need be.

      Matthew just needed a tiny opening.

      It never happened.

      Ronnie Cupertine was never alone. He never fucked up. There wasn’t a single moment when Matthew could have exacted his plan without needing to kill two or three other people in the process. Ronnie flew out of town, he flew with three guys. He drove to Trader Joe’s for some artichoke dip, he drove with two guys and a second car running interference. He went to his daughter’s ballet recital, there was a guy at the front door, a guy at the back, a guy on his body.

      Not that any of them ever noticed Matthew. They were meat, plain and simple. But they were human beings. Just because they had shitty jobs didn’t mean they deserved to die.

      But then, one day, Matthew woke up in the Chicago apartment he was back to sharing with his sister, Nina, two miles from the FBI office he was legally barred from, and didn’t pretend to go out on a job interview—instead he actually went on the interview, not because he wanted to, but because the night before, Nina walked into his bedroom and handed him a Post-it with a phone number. “You got a call while you were out,” she said, “doing whatever it is you do.”

      “Great,” he said. He stuck the Post-it to his desk calendar, which he hadn’t changed since 1999.

      “It was about a job.”

      “Wonderful,” he said.

      “They called yesterday, too,” she said.

      She stood there in his doorway, arms crossed over her chest, not moving. “Look at you. What are you doing to yourself?”

      “I’m trying to figure a few things out,” he said.

      “By doing what?” СКАЧАТЬ