“No one can replace Rabbi Gottlieb,” Rabbi Kales said, “not in our hearts, nor in mere presence, and we all wear the tragedy of his passing each day here at Temple Beth Israel, particularly today, on the first holy night of Hanukkah, when we celebrate the onset of a true miracle. I think you will come to find Rabbi Cohen to be a kind and faithful servant of the Torah.” David saw the adults in the audience nod, almost imperceptibly, and David understood that the rabbi was proving David’s very point: He was telling them what to believe, and because they believed in Rabbi Kales, they believed what he said. “Like all of us, Rabbi Cohen is still learning that life looks somewhat different here in Las Vegas.” The audience laughed, since no one was actually from Las Vegas, at least not according to the statistics David read in the paper. Even Bennie chuckled, though probably for entirely different reasons. “So please do keep in mind that Rabbi Cohen is still in training, both as a rabbi and as a Las Vegan, which means I don’t want to hear of anyone inviting him to any poker games for at least another six months, and he is never allowed anywhere near the Strip when the rodeo comes to town, and that’s an order!” More laughing, the rabbi putting on a nice little nightclub patter now, full of inside jokes, bringing the room back up. It was a holiday, after all. “Especially not in the company of my son-in-law.” And the house came down, as much as a house can come down when it’s also filled with a bunch of sticky six-year-olds, wealthy Jews, and a Mafia boss who happened to own the Wild Horse strip club and was inexplicably married to the rabbi’s daughter.
Rabbi Kales stepped away from the podium and motioned for David to take his place. They’d practiced this moment earlier in the morning; Rabbi Kales told him to simply thank everyone, tell them how happy he was to be in Las Vegas and how he hoped to be of service to the temple, and then get the hell off the stage.
It sounded simple enough, yet when he stepped behind the podium and looked out at the playground filled with Jewish children, smelled the cooking food, heard the polite applause from the adults, and saw Bennie Savone with his arm around his wife, his wife whose father was the rabbi, his wife whose father the rabbi had done something depraved enough that he was now in bed with a gangster who was going to build an empire on corpses, in a way no other Mafia boss ever had, and had selected David to be his guy, had seen enough in him that he was going to let him be responsible for the growth and the prosperity of not just his criminal plan but, it seemed, also his noncriminal plans to grow a temple Las Vegas. . well, he felt a huge surge of pride.
All this time waiting for something big to happen. All the years he told Jennifer that they were going west to get beyond that Chicago shit. All the ways he’d wondered if he’d ever see fifty, or if he’d be thrown off a building. All the nights he’d driven back across the Illinois state line in a stolen car, ten grand in his pocket from a freelance job so they could get the transmission fixed, get a stove that didn’t leak, help Jennifer’s dad pay his medical bills after he got his hip replaced, or just to get them through the slow time during the coldest, frozen months of winter.
All that. . and here he was, he’d done it, he’d made it. Now all he had to do was bide his time, do what Bennie asked, listen to Rabbi Kales, make all the right moves. And when the time was right, he’d be done with all this tsoris, he’d have money in the bank, and then, then, he’d go get Jennifer and William. Maybe it wouldn’t be only a year or two. Maybe it would be more like five or seven. And that would be fine. The Jews had wandered the desert for forty years. He could do five standing on his head.
David opened his mouth slightly at first, to make sure he wouldn’t wretch, found Rachel in the audience, realized what he was looking for wasn’t even her, wasn’t any friendly face in particular, more like the idea of a friendly face, because he knew at some point in his life he was going to disappoint Rachel, would probably leave her a widow, because that’s how the game always ended for people like Bennie, and then he leaned into the microphone and said, “Shalom.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
That afternoon, after David helped the teenagers wrangle the last of the sugar-addled kids off the playground and break down the tents and deflate the dreidel, he walked across the street to the funeral home, where he found Bennie pacing out front.
“You have a good time today, Rabbi?” Bennie asked. He was still on the phone, so he covered the receiver with his hand.
“It was fine.”
“Looked like you were going to puke for a minute there.”
“I don’t like public speaking,” David said.
“You want me to get you some Valium? Maybe another steak?”
“I’ll make it work.”
Bennie put a hand up to indicate he was back on the phone. “Here’s the deal,” Bennie said, “you tell Danny to get out of town, I don’t care where he goes. Let this shit blow over, and then we’ll deal with it after the holidays. Last thing I want is to get subpoenaed on Christmas Eve, because that’s how they’d do it, right? Okay.” Bennie closed his phone and slipped it into his pocket, then gave a snort. “You know what’s unsatisfying? You can’t hang up on anyone anymore. You can’t slam the phone down. I just get to flip it closed. Used to be you could get some aggression out on a phone, not anymore. Now I just get to stand here and be pissed off.”
“You got a problem?”
Bennie eyed David curiously. “You want to know?”
“Doesn’t matter one way or another,” David said.
“So you’re my consigliere now?”
“That’s a bullshit word,” David said.
“Yeah,” Bennie said, “I always thought so, too. I blame Coppola for that stupidity.” He rubbed that spot on his neck absently. “I’d kill someone for a cigarette right now.”
“Easier just to have a cigarette and leave the killing to someone else.”
“Can’t,” Bennie said. He pointed to his scar. “See that? Thyroid cancer. Seven years clean of the bug. Not gonna start inhaling cancer just to feel better about myself. Nearly died from that shit. Probably will die from it at some point. Cancer’s the one thing more efficient than you ever were.” He rubbed the scar again. “Some shit went down last night at the club. Guy gets his hands all over one of the girls on the floor, so the bouncers tell him to knock it off or go to the VIP room. The guy tells one of our bouncers to go fuck himself, and so they dragged him out back and stomped the shit out of him.”
“That who I’m burying?” David asked.
“No,” Bennie said. “He’s over at Sunrise Hospital. Paralyzed from the neck down, apparently bit off his own tongue, lost an eye. They tossed him in a Dumpster when they were done with him, didn’t realize he still had some buddies inside.”
“That’s stupid,” David said.
“No, what’s stupid is that it’s all on camera,” Bennie said. “Pawn shop next door records everything. Only legit pawn shop in the fucking world and it’s next to my club.”
“The bouncers are your guys?”
“Yeah.”
“Were you there?”
“Yes and no,” Bennie said. “If my wife asks, yes. If someone else asks, no.”
“Were you doing something illegal?”
“No,” Bennie said. “This new dancer, Sierra, she wanted to suck my dick, I wasn’t gonna deny her.” He actually looked remorseful for a moment. “Rachel’s been sick for almost a year.”
“You trust this Sierra?”
“I don’t even know her real name,” Bennie said.