Gangsterland: A Novel (26 page)

Fat Monte eventually took his seat, threw back the rest of his beer, and leaned back. “Now,” he said, “who the fuck are you guys?”

“We’re looking for Sal Cupertine,” Matthew said. “Have you seen him lately?”

“Last I heard,” Fat Monte said, “you guys found him toasted to a crisp in some landfill.”

“Nah,” Matthew said. “That was Chema Espinoza.” The waitress swooped by then and dropped off the ten shots. Fat Monte immediately downed one, paused, took down another, Jeff not saying a word, watching Matthew set his hook, going about it real smooth, letting Fat Monte make the next move . . . though downing two shots of what smelled like Jägermeister probably qualified at least as a tell if not a move.

“Maybe I need to have my lawyer here,” Fat Monte said eventually.

“
Maybe
,” Matthew said, his voice low, not angry, not loud, just matter of fact, telling Fat Monte how it was going to be. “
Maybe
I just put the word out that Fat Monte Moretti now spends his Sunday nights in Roscoe Village taverns surrounded by a bunch of accountants and their tucked-in polo shirts.
Maybe
I drive down to Logan and tell Chema and Neto Espinoza’s father that Fat Monte Moretti and his wife live in an unsecured walk-up on Damen, and
maybe
one night you and the wife are sitting on the sofa eating popcorn and watching
Friends
, and
maybe
four or five 2-6 Gangsters roll up on your place, tie you up, and rape your wife in front of you, then
maybe
get a little cornhole practice on you, too, just to make sure they still remember how to survive in prison.”

Fat Monte took this all in without saying a word. He took another shot and then examined the empty glass, then pointed at Jeff. “I know you,” he said.

“Oh yeah?” Jeff said.

“Yeah, I couldn’t place you at first, but now I remember. You were the one who kept trying to pin that Diamond murder on me, right? Hopper? That you?”

Jeff tried his best not to seem surprised, tried to figure out how the hell Fat Monte knew he was the one moving the pieces around that investigation, then realized that it made sense. The Family kept records, too. Interesting. “That’s right,” Jeff said.

“Never did get that to stick, did you?” Fat Monte said.

“No, never did,” Jeff said. “Fortunately there’s no statute of limitations.”

“No witnesses plus no statute of limitations equals you walking around holding your dick,” Fat Monte said.

“Between us?” Jeff leaned across the table, so that he was only a few inches away from Fat Monte’s face, so close he could smell Fat Monte’s acrid breath, the creepy bastard actually breathing out of his mouth in these short, quick pulses. “I didn’t mind you killing a drug dealer. One less piece of paperwork I had to worry about. But what gets me, Monte, is why you’d kill Chema and Neto Espinoza. My guess is that Chema saw whatever went down with Sal.” He paused for just a second, tried to think of his next words carefully, see how Fat Monte reacted. “Probably saw the trade go down. Or he could have just been the driver, since I can’t imagine Sal Cupertine sitting by while your fat ass drove him around in the dark. Okay, fine. You can’t be leaving witnesses around. But Neto? He was already in prison and wasn’t going to be leaving any time soon, not with a million dollars of H on his ticket. That just seems . . . sloppy . . . to me. Because then I gotta walk that back, see who Neto is down with, see that he was on your crew, and that up in Stateville he somehow ends
up rooming with Lemonhead Nicolino. You couldn’t have farmed the job out to the Aryans?”

Jeff sat back, took a sip of his beer, and let Fat Monte process the information.

“You don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about,” Fat Monte said.

“Thirty-seven times, Monte? You think I wouldn’t notice Neto was stabbed thirty-seven times in the chest?”

Fat Monte had another shot halfway to his mouth but thought better of it. He set the glass back down on the table. Jeff thought he saw a little shake in his hand. “Maybe you think I’m a little bitch like your friend Paul Bruno,” Fat Monte said. “See, I don’t scare. Prison doesn’t scare me, either, so why don’t you just go ahead and call your assault team down to secure the bar and take me in.”

Hearing Paul Bruno’s name immediately gave Jeff pause. That Fat Monte knew he was a snitch made Jeff reconsider a few things. It shouldn’t have been a surprise, not with Ronnie Cupertine’s connections. Maybe he had a guy in the bureau. Or maybe he just bugged all the cars he sold and serviced out of his shop. Most likely, though, he was keeping tabs on Paul Bruno. It’s what Jeff had predicted for Bruno’s fate, he just didn’t want to believe it could come to pass so quickly.

“You want to be on the hook for Paul’s murder, too?” Jeff asked, just to see how Monte reacted. “Because I’m happy to add that to your ticket.”

“You’d need to find a body first,” Monte said.

“Funny thing,” Jeff said, “I didn’t even know he was missing.”

Fat Monte started to say something, stopped, and then started to laugh. “Maybe he committed suicide,” he said. “You never know.”

“Pretty hard to hide your own body,” Jeff said.

“I got somewhere to be,” Fat Monte said. He took another shot, slammed the glass onto the table, and then started to stand up. Before Jeff could even make a move, Matthew reached out with his right hand and grabbed Fat Monte Moretti by the balls and yanked down. Fat Monte shrieked and fell to both knees and then onto his side. Matthew stood up as though to help him back up, but in the process managed to also kick Fat Monte in the face. Not too hard. Just hard enough to break his nose.

“Whoa,” Matthew said, as friendly as can be, “easy there.” He reached down and seized Fat Monte by the back of his neck and hefted him back up onto his stool. Fat Monte’s face was a bloody mess, his nose now pointing to the right, his eyes filled with tears. “Maybe you should go a little easy on those shots.” A waitress came rushing over with a rag filled with ice, which Fat Monte took without saying a word.

“Is he going to be all right?” she asked.

“He’ll be fine,” Matthew said.

“Do you want me to call an ambulance for you, Monte?” she asked.
Monte.
She knew his name; he was a regular at the Four Treys now, the kind of guy who the servers knew by name, the kind of guy who wasn’t likely to make a scene now because this was where he actually came to chill out, where he came to not be who he was during business hours . . . whenever those happened to be for members of the Family.

“Yeah,” Fat Monte croaked out, “call 911.”

The waitress turned to Jeff. “Is he being serious?”

“I don’t think so,” Jeff said. “But then, you probably know him better than I do.”

“Are you being serious, Monte?” she asked. “Do you want me to call your wife?”

“No,” Fat Monte said.

“No you don’t want me to call your wife or no you’re not being serious?” the waitress asked.

“Both,” he said. “And bring me some Tylenol, doll, if you could.”

“You’re not gonna sue or anything, are you, Monte?” the waitress asked. Fat Monte shook his head, which looked like it hurt. “All right then,” she said, and she walked away.

“Nice girl,” Matthew said once she was gone. “You sure you don’t want her to call your wife, Monte? How about your mommy?”

“Fuck you,” Fat Monte said, though there wasn’t much behind it. It occurred to Jeff that this might be the first time in his adult life that Fat Monte had actually been on the other end of a beatdown, even if a single punch hadn’t been thrown. That was the thing about being trained how to fight versus just picking it up on the streets. You learned how to do the most amount of damage with the least amount of exertion. Matthew managed to emasculate Fat Monte in two distinct ways. “How the fuck am I supposed to explain to my wife how I ended up with a broken nose?”

“Maybe you should ask yourself how you’ll explain it to Ronnie Cupertine,” Jeff said.

Fat Monte pulled the rag from his face, examined all the blood—as if he thought looking at it might somehow fix the situation—then pressed it back up against his nose. “What kind of feds are you?”

“Tell me about Sal Cupertine,” Matthew said, “or one day you’ll be walking down the street and I’ll be inside of a building with a sniper’s rifle, aimed right here.” Matthew reached over and touched a spot on Fat Monte’s back. “You feel that? That’s
the part of your spine that controls your bladder, your bowels, all your sexual functions. That’s where the bullet is going to go. And you know what? It will be perfectly legal because you’re a known criminal with a gun and I’m an FBI agent. You’ll be shitting into a bag for the rest of your life, trying to make your limp dick work. Maybe I’ll just go ahead and do it when you walk out of this place tonight, because I’m sure you’ve got some heat on you and you’re surely on probation. Save us all some time.”

“I want my lawyer,” Fat Monte said.

Matthew actually started to laugh. Jeff thought Matthew was enjoying this a bit too much. Here was Fat Monte Moretti, one of the most feared gangsters in all of Chicago, a man probably responsible for a dozen or more murders, asking for his lawyer, undone by a broken nose and the realization that sometimes you really don’t have any rights.

“Let me put it to you this way,” Jeff said. “You’re free to go any time. But understand that as soon as you walk out the door, you’re a dead man. Either my partner here will shoot you, or it’s gonna be the Gangster 2-6, or it’s going to be someone in the Family, once we put out the word that you were seen at this nice bar consorting with the FBI. You could say we’re actually here to help you.”

“Help me?” Fat Monte said. “This asshole broke my fucking nose and now wants to hobble me.”

“I know you helped get rid of Sal Cupertine,” Jeff said. “I know you killed Chema. I know you had Neto killed. So that’s two bodies on your sheet, plus aiding a fugitive who murdered federal agents. And now I’m pretty sure you killed Paul Bruno, too, because you opened your stupid mouth. You want that weight? You willing to spend the next five hundred years in prison? Because that’s what you’re looking at, Monte. No more
in and out in a year. No more Ronnie greasing things so you’re living like a kingpin somewhere. Because now you’re a liability to him. So I’m talking the rest of your life in a supermax, solitary confinement for twenty-three hours a day. That’s if you live through the week. All that, and your wife will have a bounty on her ass from the Gangster 2-6 for you killing two of their boys. You ready for that?”

“I talk to you,” Fat Monte said, “what can you do for my wife?”

Matthew shot Jeff a quick look. Fat Monte hadn’t just taken the hook, he’d swallowed it all the way down. Jeff wasn’t totally convinced this was the case, actually, though if there was something to be gleaned from all this, it was that Fat Monte understood what Jeff said was entirely true. Though, if Fat Monte actually went to his lawyer, well, there could be some problems . . . namely that Matthew was impersonating an FBI agent . . . though the odds were fairly good that Fat Monte Moretti would probably have some problems alleging that his civil rights had been violated, particularly since he was a known felon.

“We can get her protection right away,” Jeff said, which was a lie. But it was a lie he’d figure out how to make good on, if need be. He still had a few friends, somewhere.

“Like a house in Phoenix or some shit?” Fat Monte said. “Maybe a little place on an island? Get her some new tits, also? Maybe you put her up in business, like an ice cream shop or some little boutique place selling sweaters and scented candles?”

“This isn’t TV,” Jeff said.

“So don’t play me like I’m on TV,” Fat Monte hissed. He pulled the rag from his face and picked up a napkin from the
table and dabbed at his nostrils to check for bleeding. It was down to just a few trickles, though once he saw himself in a mirror, he wasn’t going to be pleased. “Unless I see some marshals in this joint, you don’t even have the authority to make that kind of promise. You’re not the first feds to come knocking on my door with offers of immunity and shit.”

Jeff had long worked under the impression that Fat Monte wasn’t very bright. Of all the members of the Family he’d investigated, he was the one clear liability, the one part of upper management prone to common stupidity—over the years, in addition to his notable felonies, Fat Monte was pinched for drunk driving, got nicked for beating down a valet he accused of stealing three dollars in change from his car, even once tried to get on a commuter flight with a vial of cocaine in his pocket—never mind his propensity to kill other humans. Now, though, sitting here with him, Jeff was beginning to understand that Fat Monte wasn’t very bright, but he’d acquired some level of institutional intelligence.

“Okay, then,” Jeff said. He stood up and put his coat back on, Matthew followed suit, and then Jeff asked a passing waitress for a pen, scribbled his cell phone number on the back of a napkin, handed it to Fat Monte. “You call me, and I’ll get an ambulance for you.”

“That’s it? Your pit bull breaks my fucking nose, threatens me, and then you leave?”

“You don’t need to be Ronnie Cupertine’s bitch,” Matthew said. “You tell us where Sal Cupertine is, that’s all, and maybe we’ll forget about Chema and Neto.”

“They’re already forgotten,” Fat Monte said.

“Just like you’ll be when you’re not of any use anymore,” Jeff said. “I’m not asking you to tell me what crimes Sal Cupertine
committed. I have that information. I’m just asking for a location. You point to a spot on a map, and your wife is safe for the rest of her life.”