Free Las Vegas Noir by Jarret Keene Page B

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 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 with regard to an important contract and ended up “retiring” to Las Vegas, finding God … and 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.
    He 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 ’70s, 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 McCarran at 7 p.m., a little over three hours away. 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. He 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. Sal Cupertine could have been Sergeant Cupertine. A real fucking mensch.
    David checked his watch. It was nearly 5 o’clock. He took one last look around his home, thought about what he was giving up: the comfort of a predictable life, of money, of protection. Thought about what Bennie would look like when he saw David in a cop’s uniform, thought about what Bennie would look like with a hole in the middle of his fat fucking face courtesy of Vincent Castiglione’s service Glock.