Thursdays were always busy for David. The children at Barer Academy—the elementary school on the Temple’s campus—visited the main Temple every Thursday for lunch, and it was David’s job to come by and smile at the children, say a few words to each, make them feel like God had just strolled in for a bite, and thus ensure that their parents wrote out a big fat check at the end of the month for no other reason than that their children were happy.
In truth, it was David’s favorite time of the week. It wasn’t that he loved children all that much—he didn’t especially, not other people’s kids, anyway—but that for the hour he spent going kid to kid, he didn’t have to pretend. He just sat down next to them and asked them about their day, their life, how things were
going
and never how things
had been
, which was different from what he dealt with normally. With the people of parenting age, it was always about their childhood, how someone had fucked them up and only God or, if he wasn’t available, David could help them deal with the past, like it was some constant growling beast that lived next door that only needed to be fed and watered and everything would be okay. The senior citizens all wanted to bitch about how things were better back then, whenever the fuck that was, and then wanted assurances that they were right, that the world had turned to shit, but that they, of course, weren’t to blame.
Today, though, David had a feeling he wouldn’t be able to find the focus to deal with the kids, not with what he saw on the embalmer’s table down at the Temple mortuary. At three o’clock he was supposed to bury someone named Vincent Castiglione, whose tombstone would read Vincent Castleberg, since Bennie liked to keep things simple. Bennie told David that morning that it was a Chicago guy so they didn’t need to worry about putting on too much of a show. “I rounded up a couple old timers to throw dirt,” he told David. “So just keep it short and sweet on the last words crap. Believe me, this guy doesn’t deserve what we’re giving him.”
David went down to the Temple’s mortuary at 11:30 to check on the stiff, like he always did with the Chicago guys if they came in whole, so that way he wouldn’t be surprised if it was someone he grew up with, on the off chance the casket opened. Since it was a Jewish cemetery, it was always closed casket, but in the years David had been attending to the funerals, particularly those embalmed and entombed by employees of Bennie’s, he noticed slightly less attention to detail when it concerned enemies of state. Still, when he got down to the mortuary and found Vincent Castiglione belly up on the embalming table still fully dressed in his police uniform, right down to his holster and gun, even though Vincent’s head was sitting on the counter inside a plastic bag, the ligature marks on his neck bright purple, it took David a bit by surprise.
“Sorry, Rabbi,” the kid working the table said. “Mr. Savone said this is how he asked to be buried and so, we, uh, we, just, uh . . .”
David put a hand up to stop the kid from speaking. He could never remember this dumb fuck’s name. He was a
Mexican, some gangbanger Bennie rescued from the pound a few years back and set up in mortuary science classes out in Arizona. Two years later he was wearing a shirt and tie and was cleaning the dead for the Family. A good job, probably. Ruben Something Or Other. He’d done a nice job on Rabbi Kales, David remembered that. “Shut the fuck up,” David said, and Ruben’s eyes opened wide. David couldn’t remember the last time he swore out loud in public, but from the look on Ruben’s face, it had the desired effect. “Strip this motherfucker clean, you hear me?”
“Yes, Rabbi,” he said.
“You get his clothes, personal effects, all that shit on his belt, including the gun, put it in a bag, something heavy. You got something canvas here?”
“Yes, Rabbi,” he said. Ruben reached under a cupboard and came up with a large black canvas bag marked with hazardous waste symbols on either side. “We use these for our uniform cleaning.”
David paused, tried to think, looked at Ruben, saw that the kid had a jade pinkie ring, two-carat diamond earrings, a thick platinum bracelet. Fucking thief was probably making six figures and he was still pinching from the dead. “You keep anything?”
“Like his organs?”
“No, you stupid wetback motherfucker,” David said, feeling it now, finding the parlance again, how easy it was to hear Sal’s voice in his mouth after so many years, though he felt a little sorry for calling the kid a wetback, particularly since he was probably born in Las Vegas. “You steal a clip? Maybe his badge? Something to show the boys later?”
Ruben exhaled deeply, walked back to a small desk in the corner of the embalming room, and pulled open a drawer, rifled around a bit, like he couldn’t find what he was looking for, though David knew better so he kept his glare on the kid, and eventually came out with a wallet. “I think Bennie said I could hold onto this,” Ruben said, though he handed it to David like it was contagious.
“From now on,” David said, because it just felt so good to be on this train again, “you don’t think. Got it?”
“Yes, Rabbi,” Ruben said.
David watched as Ruben removed all the clothes from the body. Aware that Ruben was probably coming to conclusions of his own today, David tried to remain nonchalant with the process, absently thumbing through the officer’s wallet. There was over three grand in folded hundreds in the wallet, along with a handful of gold credit cards. Fucking Chicago cops. When he was younger, David thought of them as the enemy even though half of them were more crooked than he was, but now he understood they were just guys with shitty jobs trying, like he had, to make the grass green. You earned it, partner.
When Ruben was finished stripping the body, he stuffed everything into the bag and then sealed it up with medical tape and set it down in front of David. “That’s all of it,” Ruben said.
David hefted the bag up and bounced it a little, making sure he could feel the weight of the gun, probably a Glock. Ruben was still standing in front of him, though he didn’t look too terribly respectful. He had this sneer on his face that David thought made the kid look like he’d eaten some bad clams, but which probably scared a lot of people
not used to seeing how people really looked when they were angry. The one thing about being a thug and a rabbi, David had learned, was that it was nice always feeling vaguely feared and respected at the same time. Now, though, he’d have to do a little bridge building, as Rabbi Kales used to say, if he wanted to make sure things didn’t get beyond his control.
“I’m sorry I called you a wetback,” David said and handed Ruben the cash from the wallet. Ruben nodded and pocketed the money. “I got a little caught up in the moment.” Ruben nodded again. Didn’t anyone know how to accept an apology anymore? David took one last look around, figuring that the next time he saw a room like this, he’d be the one on the table, and then realized he’d forgotten something important. “Tell me something, Ruben,” David said, back in the voice of Rabbi David Cohen. “What do you intend to do with the head?”
Ruben just shrugged. “I dunno, Rabbi. What are you going to do with the uniform and gun?”
David thought about this, figured the truth would serve him here; figured that was where he was now, toward a path of more obvious truth. “I’m going to take them home, wash both, and then go from there.”
As far as exit strategies went, David had to admit that his was a little hastily drawn, but when it’s go time, it’s go time. It was 3:15, and though he didn’t need to do it, he’d gone full bore with his eulogy of the newly minted Vincent Castleberg, which didn’t seem to bother the five octogenarians Bennie had assembled for the funeral. He recognized a couple of the men from other funerals, but now couldn’t remember if they
were for real funerals or fake ones. It didn’t really matter, since these guys were so old and so mobbed up that even if he’d pulled out his dick and jerked off onto the casket, they’d keep quiet about it. Bennie always plied the old wise guys with lunch and a couple bucks for their time and then had his boys chauffer them back to their houses at Sun City.
But since David had decided that today was his last fucking day cutting dicks and burying pricks and listening to the world’s problems while completely ignoring his own issues—the Hasidic rabbis always talked about this, David realized, saying that if you had proper remorse for your sin, you actually got closer to God, actually became a better person, whereas depression made you a sad, violent, insolent fuck, or, well, something a lot like that—he figured he ought to put things in proper perspective for the late Vincent Castiglione, née Castleberg. So he eulogized himself, instead.
He told the five men about his family life, about his father working as a union millwright, dying young from smoking and drinking (though he’d actually been thrown off of a building), about how he ended up running with some guys from the neighborhood who taught him which joints broke the easiest (this got a knowing nod from the guys), how his mom ended up remarrying and moving to Florida after he graduated from high school, how he fell in love with this sweet girl named Jennifer who made him happy, how he ended up getting into the business and made some poor choices in regards to an important contract and ended up “retiring” to Las Vegas, finding God, and, well, the rest was history. David changed a few important details, naturally, but found that the more he told his story, the better he felt about the choice he was about to make.
David finished with the burial Kaddish, surprised to hear the men each mutter “amen” at the proper times, and then watched as the faux mourners went about tossing clumps of dirt on the coffin. The most ambulatory of the men, dressed smartly in light blue slacks and a white shirt, both originally purchased sometime in the 1970s, walked over and shook David’s hand. “A fine service,” he said. “Really got the spirit of the poor fucker, if you pardon the expression. I’m not a Jew, but ten, fifteen years from now, if I die, I’d be happy to have you put me in the dirt.”
David drove back to his house and packed up what he’d need for his trip—he’d been paid in cash for fifteen years and didn’t spend too much of his own money, so he had enough to last him a long time if he was able to last a long time, or, at least, Jennifer and William might have a chance for a decent life; a better life, anyway—and then took his laptop outside to poach his neighbor’s wi-fi signal, purchased a one-way ticket back to Chicago using Vincent Castiglione’s Visa card, first class, leaving McCarron at 7:00 PM , a little over three hours from now, plenty of time for him to do what he needed to do and then hit the highway. And then David destroyed his laptop, beating it to death with the butt of Castiglione’s Glock.
It felt good smashing the computer, but it felt better to have a gun in his hand again. David tried to think of the last time he’d really beaten someone good with a gun, but couldn’t draw a bead. Used to be . . . Well, fuck it, David thought, used to be’s don’t count anymore, just like Neil Diamond said. David worked up a nice sweat pounding on the computer, got himself warm for the task at hand.
Vincent Castiglione was a little thicker through the middle than David, but his uniform fit well enough. If he had more time, David would run it through the washer and dryer again, see if he could get the uniform to shrink, get some more of that dead stink out of it, too. Still, he did stop to look at himself in the mirror before leaving the house, and it was like getting a glimpse at an alternate life: Sal Cupertine looked pretty good as a cop, David decided. He checked his watch. It was nearly five o’clock. He thought about what Bennie would look like when he saw David in a cop’s uniform; what Bennie would look like with a hole in the middle of his fat fucking face courtesy of Vincent Castiglione’s service Glock. He thought about how, once he was on the road, cops would search airports in Las Vegas and Chicago for Castiglione; how they would swarm the home of Bennie Savone, once Bennie’s wife found him without his face. David was sure they’d recognize the uniform on Bennie’s video surveillance. He took one last look around his own home. Sal Cupertine could have been Sgt. Cupertine. A real fucking mensch.
Walls
W
e were not consulted. It was the 1970s. And then it was the early 1980s. What would happen was that men would come to the door, smelling of Brute, or smelling of cigarettes and the fine leather interior of their Gran Torinos or TR7s, and they would say, “I’m here to pick up Sally. This the right house?”
We’d say, “Yeah, come on in. She’s getting dressed.” Or we’d say, “Do you mean Mommy?” Or, and this was rare, but it happened because we were young and angry and when your parents have divorced and all you have to show for it is a mother who has suddenly decided that she’d like to fuck as many men as possible, and a father who it turns out was gay but you wouldn’t know that until long after he was dead and you found the photos and the letters, but who, at the time, was dating a woman named Miss Lisa who hosted
Romper Room
on Channel 2, we’d say, “Are you our new daddy?” It was cruel, but we were smart and we were sad and we had agendas.
We kept a list. We updated it nightly. We remember you. That’s what this is all about. We remember you. We thought you’d stay. We thought, on the day before the last night, when you sat us down and said that you’d stay but that our mother was crazy, was ruining your life, was ruining our
lives, too, and if you had any legal rights, why, you’d take us out of this house. You told us you’d just wait until our mother went to work and you’d back up a big truck and we’d all just move our stuff into it. We’d take the two dogs, Sam and Roxanne, and we’d pull up the yellow shag carpet in the family room, the hundreds of
Star Wars
action figures, the posters of Peter Frampton, the posters of Rick Springfield, the posters of Heather Thomas, the Easy-Bake Oven, the RISK board, the photo albums from when we still had the beach house, back when Mom still looked so young, still had that Jackie O thing going for her. Dad used to be in those photos, too, but he’s gone, cut out, just a shoulder or a foot or the brim of a hat barely visible in a jagged corner.