Gangster Nation. Tod Goldberg

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ out in Walla Walla, Hopper worried that the Family might come after them, which hadn’t transpired. “Look,” she said, “I don’t pretend to know what it’s like to be up in your head, but Matt, I’m right here, and I need you.” She sat down on the edge of his bed. “Also, wash your sheets. It smells like a frat house in here.”

      “How do you know that?”

      She waved him off. “Mom says she can’t send me any more rent money,” she said, “and that she’d appreciate it if you’d return her calls every now and then, too.” Their mom lived alone, back in the family home in Maryland, which she was trying to sell. Matthew had shared this apartment with Nina for two years, splitting costs while they both got on their feet, Nina in college, Matthew at the FBI. He’d kept paying half the rent even after he lost his job, with the money Hopper gave him, because Matthew didn’t want her with a bunch of roommates. He told her he didn’t think it was safe, which, he recognized now, was silly. Nothing is safe. Nowhere is safe. But that money was gone. And his unemployment was up, too.

      The last few months, they’d both subsisted on a little bit of inheritance they’d received from their father’s life insurance.

      “I’ll call her,” Matthew said.

      “I’m worried,” Nina said. She leaned back on Matthew’s bed, closed her eyes, and shook out her hands and feet, an old habit she’d carried from childhood.

      “I’m fine,” he said.

      “Clearly you’re a liar,” she said. She sat back up. “Mom doesn’t think she can help out on tuition, either. I’m going to get a loan.”

      “No,” Matthew said. “You don’t have to.” He tried to sound bright. “I’m going to take care of everything. Okay?” He picked up the Post-it. “I’m going to call this, first thing.”

      And then he actually did. It was a headhunter for a new Indian casino opening outside Milwaukee, who told Matthew that he’d been referred to them. Matthew figured it was someone at the FBI doing him a favor. They needed a head of security to run the whole shop, six figures, moving expenses, everything. The headhunter told him he could write his own ticket, maybe end up in Las Vegas in a few years, get a house with a pool, no more winter, basically be retired for the next thirty-five years . . . if he spent two, three years making it work in Milwaukee. It was close enough to Chicago that he could still keep an eye on Nina, but far enough away that he wouldn’t be running into Gangster 2-6 shot callers and Family enforcers at Target. It also meant he couldn’t drive over to Cupertine’s house whenever he wanted, couldn’t roll by his car dealerships (not that Ronnie Cupertine ever showed up at any of them), couldn’t wait out by one of the Family’s bars in Bridgeport or Andersonville, couldn’t run by his murder warehouse to check on the Teddy Ruxpin.

      And, all things considered, that was probably a good thing.

      Because what Matthew Drew had come to realize was that he was obsessed with Ronnie Cupertine, but Ronnie Cupertine didn’t give a shit about him. Probably never had. Hadn’t even noticed he was being stalked. Matthew had lone wolfed him for so long, he wasn’t even sure he knew why he wanted to kill him anymore. Oh, sure, he blamed him for Jeff Hopper’s death, but the fact was he didn’t even know if Ronnie had been directly responsible. Matthew could dig up the bodies of Al Capone and J. Edgar Hoover, piss on them, rebury them, and the net result would be the same as putting one between Ronnie Cupertine’s eyes: Jeff Hopper would still be dead, his men would still be dead, and both of their killers would still be out there. Matthew’s career would still be over, and the Mafia would beat on, the FBI would beat on, history forgetting about it all, the minor wars of thugs and government agencies usually not enough to merit any civilian review whatsoever.

      You wanted to be remembered, you had to kill innocent people.

      Sal Cupertine, wherever the fuck he was, would never know any different. Ronnie Cupertine was a Mob boss, a killer, sold shitty cars, but he wasn’t the only one. Every crime these days was organized. The Cartels moved heroin and coke into the cities, the Mafia middled it to the gangs, the gangs sold it to the people, the people got hooked, lost their jobs, had to rob a liquor store for the fifty bucks they needed to score . . . and the cycle started all over again. That wasn’t Ronnie Cupertine’s fault. That was just his job.

      The obsession, Matthew then understood, had become the result of the thing, not the thing itself.

      The thing was Sal. He’d killed the FBI agents. He didn’t need to do that. He wanted to do that.

      It was disorganized.

      No planning.

      The thing was Sal Cupertine. If he had to, Matthew would get that tattooed on the back of his hand so he wouldn’t forget going forward. Every time he raised his fist, he’d know why.

      •

      Now here it was, Saturday morning at the ass end of a twelve-hour shift running the casino’s security, Matthew ducking into the high-roller restroom, the one with all the marble fixtures. Bottles of Drakkar, Polo, Grey Flannel, and something called Joop lined the countertop—high rollers in a Wisconsin Indian casino being a relative thing, at least as it related to their smell—along with an array of toothpicks, mouthwash, mints, and Hershey’s chocolates.

      The Chuyalla were the biggest employer for miles, the hotel and casino the best thing to happen to the region since a women’s prison was built up in Fond du Lac a few years earlier. In fact, the tribe had its own cops, its own courts. The Chuyalla was one of the few Wisconsin tribes that operated its own justice system, everything except prisons.

      There was an old guy in a velvet vest named Curtis who sat on a stool next to the sink and expected money for handing you a towel. When Matthew felt low—which was often lately—he thought about Curtis, who had to be pushing eighty, and how he spent his whole day listening to, and smelling, people’s bodily functions. Not even doctors got paid enough for that indignity, not even the ones who were curing cancer or doing brain surgery. Because people never did really heal, always waiting for the next thing to break.

      But he didn’t really empathize with Curtis. At some point, he’d made a choice—this was his life. So when he spied Curtis there, with the jaundiced caste to the skin around his eyes and the picked-open scabs on his forearms, Matthew didn’t want to help the man out with a dollar. He wanted to tell him to move to Oregon, where they had assisted suicide. Stop waiting for the end. It was already here.

      “How you doing, boss?” Curtis asked.

      “Fine,” Matthew said. He was heading to his preferred stall, the handicapped one at the very end. In Matthew’s experience, anytime someone called you “boss” what they were really saying was: I think you’re a fucking asshole.

      Matthew closed the door to the stall and locked it, sat down, closed his eyes, counted backward from two hundred. Then he started over from three hundred and did it again and again and again. He didn’t even need to go to the bathroom. He just wanted to not worry about anything for a few minutes. It’s bad when your one sanctuary is literally the shittiest place on earth, but that’s where Matthew Drew found himself these days. He was working in a fucking Indian casino because he needed the money, looking the other way when Native Mob OGs bought chips in the morning and cashed them in at midnight, never once playing a single hand in between and beating up on any rival gangs who showed their face on the game floor.

      Lucky to even have this job.

      Twenty-seven years old going on infinity.

      Ten СКАЧАТЬ