“How many of them die every year?” David asked. The preschool kids grossed the joint a cool two million dollars, though someone probably had to teach them something, and feed them, and that preschool looked like it cost more than a few bucks, too. But funerals? That was another kind of beast. When Carlo Lupino died a few years back — and granted he was old-school Chicago Family, so there was a whole production — David remembered hearing it ran over seventy-five thousand dollars once you factored in food, flowers, embalming, the casket, the service, all that. Even a simple service was going to run ten, fifteen, maybe twenty-five Gs. There was cash in the body business, David knew that firsthand; burying them, however, that’s where the real money was.
“What did you say?” Bennie rubbed that spot on his neck again, that spot that looked like someone had garroted him. Rabbi Kales looked pale.
“He asked how many,” Rabbi Kales said. He actually sounded rattled for the first time.
“Yeah,” David said, “that’s what I asked.”
“Depends,” Bennie said. He wasn’t rattled in the least. He seemed fairly giddy. “Good year? Usually between 750 and 900. Of course, we don’t bury all of them. Some get shipped back to Boca Raton or Seattle or Palm Springs. Some get buried across town at the old Jewish cemetery, though I don’t see that happening much in the future. Anyway, we’ve had a lot more lately.”
“Lately?” David said.
“Next year is already looking good,” Bennie said.
Rabbi Kales pushed on past Bennie and made a show of fumbling in his pockets for something. David took this to mean he didn’t want to hear whatever was coming next.
“How is this week looking?” David asked.
Bennie shrugged. “Who is to say?”
“It’s okay,” David said, getting it now, or thinking, maybe, getting part of it. “I’m a rabbi. We have the privilege of confidentiality.”
“Thanksgiving is usually a slow week,” Bennie said. “But the first of the month tends to be a busy time.”
“Here?”
“Everywhere,” Bennie said. “We’ve got a few wealthy clients who’ve found that they prefer our cemetery services to those in their own hometowns.”
“These clients,” David said. “They live in Chicago?”
“Some of them. Some of them live in New York. Some of them live in Los Angeles. We’ve got some new clients in Cleveland. Detroit just opened up a few opportunities.”
“And they’re all. . Jews?”
“They are when they get in the ground,” Bennie said.
“Who presides over these funerals?”
“Why you do, Rabbi Cohen.”
The Jews, they were pretty specific about their funerals. No embalming. No open caskets. No waiting around, either. The Jews wanted you in the ground within twenty-four hours, bad to wait more than three days. They also advocated simple pine boxes; they were big on their people returning to the earth and doing so as quickly as possible.
Bennie Savone. The guy was a genius. What better place to bury war dead than a cemetery? Feds would need an act of God to get a court to agree to start disinterring bodies in a Jewish cemetery. Even if they did, what would they find and how would they find it? They could pile a couple bodies into one coffin, and who would ever know?
“Who knows this?” David asked.
“It’s a small circle,” Bennie said. “The three of us. My guy Ruben, who you’ll meet, who works on the bodies across the street.”
“Slim Joe?”
“He knows you,” Bennie said. “But not for much longer. I didn’t like that shit he said today.”
“You got my place bugged?”
“Number one, it’s not your place,” Bennie said. “Number two, I did it for your own safety. You want that dumb fuck turning state’s on you?”
It made sense. All of it. Why Bennie was willing to buy him from the Family. His new face. The reading. . all the reading. . and now this more direct revelation.
“What’s my take?” David asked.
“You’ll be provided for,” Bennie said.
“What’s my take?” David said again.
“Depending upon how effective you are,” Bennie said, “twenty, twenty-five percent.”
“Of what?”
“Of a lot,” Bennie said. “Plus, I see you doing some additional work around town, starting with your friend Slim Joe. You comfortable doing that?”
“Who gets the other seventy-five?” David said, not bothering to answer Bennie’s question.
“This place look cheap to you?”
How much would it take for him to get back to Chicago? How much would it take for David to get back to Jennifer and William? To buy the kind of freedom he wanted, he’d need more than just a few hundred thousand dollars. How much would he need to get Sal Cupertine back? He’d need millions. “I want an accounting,” David said.
“Now you’re a businessman?” Bennie said.
“I guess I am,” David said.
“Fine,” Bennie said. He looked at his watch. “Any more demands? I’ve gotta pick up my wife and take her to the doctor.”
“No,” David said, and then he added, “not at this time.”
“Great,” Bennie said. He took an exaggerated look over both of his shoulders and then reached into his sport coat and pulled out a nine and handed it to David. “Don’t make a mess unless you want to clean it up.”
“When do you want it done?”
“Yesterday,” Bennie said, “but give the kid his Thanksgiving. Give his mother her last good memory, then we’ll maybe do her, too. Last thing I need is for her to start yapping.”
“Root pulls aren’t my thing,” David said.
“She’s my cousin,” Bennie said. “So don’t think it hurts you more than it hurts me, okay? Anyway, if you’re lucky, she’ll be back on a plane by Sunday and you won’t need to deal with it. You make the call. You think she knows about you, we’ll make it look like an accident. You any good with poisons?”
“No,” David said. The idea of killing Slim Joe’s mother didn’t appeal to him in the least, but he understood the message that was being relayed: No one was off-limits when it came to this proposition.
“I’ll figure something out,” Bennie said.
Rabbi Kales found what he was looking for then — his key chain — and unlocked a wooden door just a few feet from the main office entrance, which was glass embossed with a huge Star of David. David could see a middle-aged woman sitting behind a reception desk. She had a phone to her ear and was absently flipping the pages of a magazine. She looked up when Rabbi Kales opened the office door wide and sunlight flooded into the hallway, along with a plume of dust. She gave David a vague half smile, which made sense when Rabbi Kales said, “This was Rabbi Gottlieb’s office. It will be your office now. You’ll bring your books in here.” He stood in the doorway while he said this, only the side of his face visible to David. “We’ll meet each morning at seven for your lessons. I can’t have you working with the children until you are up to speed, you understand.” He turned then and regarded David. “You do understand, don’t you?”
“Yes,” David said. For the first time in seven months, he understood everything.
CHAPTER FIVE
Paid administrative leave. Special Agent Jeff Hopper thought about those three words as he walked across the parking lot outside of the Chicago field office. Taken separate from each other, they didn’t mean much. Put them together, at least in FBI parlance, and they meant that you’d flamed out in spectacular fashion, not worthy of actual firing, as the FBI didn’t like to fire full agents unless they did something that might get them arrested. It was easier to put them on paid administrative leave and reassign them into oblivion — the Anchorage, Alaska, field office, or, worse, San Juan, Puerto Rico — after two or three years’ worth of investigation into their actions (or, occasionally, inactions). The idea was that the time on paid administrative leave and the weight of the investigation would cause the agent to quit and find other work. The FBI even offered kind letters of recommendation when agents on paid administrative leave were interviewing for private sector jobs. Hopper knew this all too welclass="underline" As senior special agent, he’d once been the guy writing the letters.