Gangster Nation. Tod Goldberg
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in the Lincoln?”
Mike was idling in a blue zone out front. “My nephew.”
“That’s a five-hundred-dollar ticket, parking there,” Lonzo said.
“He has a handicapped placard,” Peaches said. It was impossible to park in Chicago, and Peaches wasn’t going to be one of those assholes who got shot walking to his car in some dark parking structure. Handicapped parking was always well lit, always close to the door.
Lonzo raised his eyebrows. “No shit? I’ll have to look into that.” He reached into the Trader Joe’s bag, came out with two twenties, dropped them on his plate, then pointed out the diner’s window. “Get what you need from your car and then tell your guy you’re riding with me. He can go park somewhere, read a book or something. Leave the space for someone with a real problem.”
“That’s not how I work,” Peaches said.
“Wasn’t a request,” Lonzo said.
Lonzo wasn’t a guy who got off making threats. Peaches looked down the counter. There were two uniformed cops sitting at the far end, staring straight ahead, drinking coffee, eating toast. An old lady, oxygen tank at her feet. A black guy sitting with a white girl, eating off each other’s plate. Two older men in suits, sipping coffee, reading the paper, not a fistfight between them.
When he looked back at the cops, they were both staring at him with notably blank expressions.
Okay.
“Expensive help,” Peaches said.
Lonzo downed the rest of his coffee, slid off his stool. “You in it now for real.”
Two patrol cars followed behind Lonzo’s red Escalade all the way until he parked in front of a house on West Junior Terrace, a street lined with old growth Buckthorn and two- and three-story homes, a few blocks from Montrose Beach. Peaches was familiar with the properties here, at least on paper. They’d been in the Cupertine family for decades. Three houses on one side of the street, two on the other, another down the block. Sometimes there were families living in them. Sometimes there were girlfriends. Sometimes they were just empty. They weren’t safe houses, not in this neighborhood, where the average home price was getting close to a million five. They weren’t places where people were getting done dirty, either, since every house on the block had security cameras and their own private security patrols, Peaches not really sure who the neighbors thought was gonna walk up on them here . . . though, fact was, there were two bad guys parked on the street right now.
Peaches started to get out, but Lonzo said, “Hold up.”
One of the cruisers double-parked down the block, on the corner of North Clarendon. Peaches looked over his shoulder, saw the other cruiser parked on the corner of Hazel, boxing the block in.
“You always roll with cops?” Peaches asked.
“Only on Family business,” he said. “Hard to get used to it at first, but fuck it. It is what it is.” Lonzo pointed at the house in front of them. “Go on in. Ronnie’s guys are a little much, but he’s cool. Like talking to a congressman. Friendly but about that business.”
“You talk to a lot of congressmen?”
“You’d be surprised,” Lonzo said. Peaches retrieved his briefcase from the backseat. It was filled with cash. The cost of doing business with Ronnie Cupertine was you had to pay for his time. Lonzo had already looked inside it, felt around, made sure Peaches wasn’t trying to smuggle in a hand grenade. Though he did have a little something extra for Ronnie Cupertine under all the cash. “Last thing,” Lonzo said. “You come out and I’m gone for some reason? That’s bad news. Those cops? They’re here to protect the boss. Not you.”
“I get it,” Peaches said, knowing it wouldn’t always be like that.
After he frisked him, a beefy guy calling himself Donte, wearing a Kevlar vest under his suit, guided Peaches downstairs into a finished basement, which connected to another finished basement through a long, narrow hallway. Okay, Peaches thought. I’m next door. But then they went through two more corridors, these ones crooked, Peaches’s sense of direction getting fucked up after about two minutes of winding around. Peaches thought he was across the street now, or maybe right back where he started. They ended up in another corridor that fed into yet another basement, and this one looked like a fairly decent rumpus room from the 1970s: shag carpet, wood paneling, a leather recliner, L-shaped sofa, dartboard, wet bar. Ronnie Cupertine shooting pool by himself.
“You can leave us alone,” Ronnie said to Donte, though Peaches didn’t think they were alone, since he saw that there were cameras mounted on all four walls. This guy was more paranoid than Nixon. “You play?” Ronnie asked once his guy left.
“No,” Peaches said.
“No one does anymore,” he said. He lined up his shot—the six in the corner—and hit it, missed wide to the left, though he did manage to sink his cue ball. “Shit.” Ronnie stood up straight, cracked his neck. “Problem with no one wanting to play with me is it’s easier for me to cheat.” He walked to the other side of the table, dug out his cue ball, and rolled the six into a pocket, too. He set his stick across the table. “So, who the fuck are you?”
“I’m here representing the Native Mob,” Peaches said, which Ronnie knew. Peaches figured he had to peacock a bit, put on his show, be about that business after he figured out a few things. Ronnie wasn’t the boss of bosses, but he ran Chicago, and for that alone, Peaches had admiration for him. He’d been at the tip of the spear since 1972, though one Cupertine or another ran the game since forever. Peaches had been hearing about Ronnie Cupertine his entire life. Plus the commercials for this car lots ran on every TV and radio.
“I always wanted to ask,” Ronnie said, “do you call yourselves the Native Mob? Or someone else call you that?”
“We chose it,” Peaches said, though he didn’t actually know if that was true.
“The Family,” Ronnie said. “The Outfit. Not a lot of nuance there, but enough to hide behind on a tape. Anyone can be a family or working for an outfit. It’s just funny to me, how you guys start calling yourself the Mob, spray-painting it on billboards, screaming it before you shoot somebody. Seems a tad obvious, no?”
“No more obvious than a man in a suit wearing Kevlar,” Peaches said.
“Maybe so,” Ronnie said. He walked over to the bar, poured himself a scotch. “You drink?”
“Not when I’m working,” Peaches said. He didn’t ever drink. He liked to take some pills. An Oxy every now and then. Made shit smoothed out. A little weed. Coke to fit in, if need be.
“Who’s that guy keeps getting arrested?” Ronnie said. “In Michigan? Indian with an Irish name? Collins?”
The Native Mob wasn’t run like the Family, with one guy at the top. Instead, it had a council, decisions made democratically, things like drug profits getting split up evenly. When casinos and bingo rooms were involved, however, it got more complex; no one wanted to share anything. Richard Collins was part of the tribe opening casinos in Michigan, from Acme to Williamsburg. Doing it right. Spas and condos. High end. Problem was that he was also moving weight out of Canada. Landed a private plane filled with cocaine on reservation land. Now Michigan was dead, Native Mob telling everyone to stick to their places, don’t come up there, let shit cool down. Peaches had other plans.
“He’s not involved in this,” Peaches said.
“You guys need better lawyers,” Ronnie said. “Been getting fucked by the government for a long time now.”
“I’ll mention that to my boss.”
“Your boss know you’re here?”
“Your boss know I’m here?” Peaches said. He pointed at the cameras. “Or is that the feds on the other side?”
“That’s funny,” Ronnie said. Not that he laughed. “You