Gangster Nation. Tod Goldberg

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СКАЧАТЬ with the dignity of a funeral, because who the fuck knows when you’ll ever see the couple again, and who the fuck knows when they’ll see you again. So you get your look right, you don’t glam it up, you don’t whore it up, even though it’s Las Vegas. No one ever got kicked out of a place in Las Vegas for dressing elegantly. If David was going to wear the tallith, the least everyone else could do was put on a fucking tie and some closed-toe shoes.

      In the back were the professionals: the lawyers, the accountants, the doctors, the investment guys, the real estate team, the city councilmen, the casino executives, Andy from Summerlin Rolls-Royce, Carter from JetVegas, Kendra from Caesars Palace Forum Shops Private Shopping Concierge Services, the local ABC meteorologist—Ginger or Bianca or something in between those names—in a plunging red dress, all of them clustered near the bar, talking the whole fucking time, but pausing now, David’s eyes on them, sensing that the big moment was about to happen, when God left and the party started. Behind the professionals, the tuxedoed catering staff set up the elaborate dinner under pitched white tents. The three-piece wind ensemble unpacked their instruments.

      And, watching from his lawn, stood Bennie Savone.

      David wrapped the wineglass in a clean white towel and held it aloft for all the guests to see. “Talmud says the breaking of the glass is a symbol of the fall of the Temple of Jerusalem,” David said. “But I believe it is to remind us that there are sharp edges in life.” Pause. Chin tilted up half an inch. “Thus.” Pause. Octave down. “We must temper joy with the remembrance of and preparation for sorrow.” David found the oldest person in the audience—one of the Solomon clan, David had met him earlier, cousin Louis from New York, wearing a yarmulke made of fine silk, Louis telling David its entire provenance, which involved a tragic summer in Poland, a month stuck at Ellis Island, his mother dying at thirty-seven, and then, eventually, a very successful furniture business in upstate New York, where he was considered the Sleeper-Sofa King of Troy—and extended a hand in his general direction, everyone turning to look at the old codger, as if he were the living embodiment of the Exodus. “For we are the witnesses of history.” Pause. Raise the voice. Smile. Tilt the head back down half an inch. “Love needs no permission. For we are taught that ahev is a natural convergence of giving and being open to emotion. And so, Michael and Naomi, I tell you to make your own traditions, but keep, too, our shared history close, remembering, always, that your people are our people.”

      Rabbi David Cohen set the wineglass down in front of Michael and Naomi and was just about to tell them they could kiss, but he didn’t get the chance. The couple both began to curb-stomp the living shit out of the wineglass. Then Michael swooped Naomi up into his arms and kissed her flush on the mouth, both of them wide-eyed and laughing through the kiss, everyone shouting Mazel tov! Mazel tov! even though Naomi had sliced her foot open on the glass and had stained the hem of her wedding dress with blood.

      2

      Lovely ceremony, Rabbi,” Bennie Savone said. He was standing at the bottom of his lawn, eating from a bag of sunflower seeds and watching Sophie, the youngest of his two daughters, pedal boat around the lake. He wore a polo shirt and shorts, no shoes, a court-mandated ankle bracelet. Technically, David could visit Bennie whenever he wanted, since house arrest allowed for visits from clergy, but Bennie didn’t want to take that chance. He’d done six months inside on a Conspiracy to Obstruct Justice beef related to the vicious beating of a patron at the Wild Horse by two of his bouncers, still had another five months of home detention, and didn’t want to give the feds any reason to start looking at his associates. But he’d sent a message through Rabbi Kales.

      “I expected to see your wife at the ceremony,” David said.

      Bennie said, “Rachel and Sarah aren’t currently speaking.”

      “Since when?”

      “I don’t know,” Bennie said. “Rachel doesn’t tell me shit these days.” He offered Rabbi Cohen the bag of sunflower seeds, but David demurred. “My guess is that Sarah told Rachel something she didn’t want to hear, like maybe she didn’t want some criminal’s wife at her daughter’s blessed day.”

      “There were plenty of criminals there,” David said.

      “Maybe she just doesn’t like me,” Bennie said, which was probably true, too. She had good reason.

      Bennie had been picked up in 1999 and charged with conspiracy, which meant the feds had free rein to find whatever shit they could uncover, though the only thing that stuck was the obstruction charge on the beating, which wasn’t even a federal charge. Bennie kept his books clean, paid his taxes, made sure his boys at the club paid theirs, made sure the girls did, too. Not that they were running an entirely legal enterprise, only that Bennie wasn’t dumb enough to make it obvious. Bennie’s lawyer, Vincent Zangari, got him a quickie plea deal just in case the dentist died before they could get to trial, which would have been bad, since then Bennie would be looking at an accessory charge on a murder, which was a mandatory twelve-year RICO sentence. As it was, the fucker was paralyzed and breathing through a hole in his neck, which made him a pretty convincing witness, even if he couldn’t talk.

      Bennie called in some favors from the judicial bench, made sure he wasn’t going to be doing time in some ass factory, ended up getting six months in the minimum-security wing up at Warm Springs in Carson City—which was like doing time at a Radisson: shitty, but not torture—followed by six months home detention.

      And that calmed shit down.

      For a while, anyway.

      Then the owner of Panthers Gentleman’s Club—a local named Vic Acosta, doing front work for some low-level Miami boys—skipped town after getting indicted on tax evasion a few months ago and the feds seized his club. The IRS was owed fifteen million, which they weren’t gonna get selling the building, so they figured they’d recoup it on the pole. They brought in the U.S. Marshals to run the joint, which wasn’t great for business, even after they dropped the price of lap dances from twenty dollars to ten. When that didn’t work, they got a food license, started to move steak and lobster in addition to tits and ass, tried to cater to gentlemen, as if gentlemen still came to Las Vegas. Still nothing. So they tried an Italian buffet, started giving the girls health benefits, since they were now federal employees, figuring they’d get some high-class girls that way, not realizing conventioneers didn’t want a high-class girl. Their last big move was a billboard on the Strip advertising Actually Legal Girls.

      That got the national media interested, everyone from 20/20 to the Today show to the National Enquirer coming to town to do stories on how tax dollars were paying the hourly wages of lap dancers, which eventually dovetailed into tales of how antiquated the Italian American Mafia had become. While the Chinese Triads were training teenagers to hack half the world, the Mafia was still running protection schemes for a couple grand a month. While the Russian Mob was counterfeiting credit cards and stealing a million dollars a week from gas and oil companies overseas, the Mafia was running sex rings and blackmail scams. The Mexican Cartels owned an entire fucking country . . . and the Mafia was breaking city councilmen’s legs for unpaid debts on the Super Bowl. And who was scared of the Mafia anymore, anyway, when kids on the block had automatic weapons? People got shot in the head just for waking up and going to school.

      Then they made it personal: Talking about how Al Capone had morphed into that Teflon pussy John Gotti. How Joseph “The Animal” Barboza, who ate the faces of his enemies, gave way to the likes of Sammy the Bull, who only stopped snitching long enough to write a tell-all book and flirt with Diane Sawyer on TV, all while still under witness protection. Or how Whitey Bulger had skipped Boston with the FBI’s assistance—not that he was real Mafia, just a dumb Irish thug, not that it mattered to Al Roker, that giggling fuck—long before Sal Cupertine, the Chicago Family enforcer known as the Rain Man—Matt Lauer acting up, too, the fuck: СКАЧАТЬ