Read Online Las Vegas Noir by Jarret Keene - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Jarret Keene
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yesterday: You think I’m soft? I could shove that attaché case up your ass, Bennie. And now. Now. When would things ever be tenable if they weren’t now? Life, David realized, had reached a terminal point. Years ago, Rabbi Kales explained to David that when the end of days came, the Jews would be resurrected into a perfect state and the whole of the world would take on the status of Israel, and the Jews, he told him, would live in peace there. What about me? David had asked then, and Rabbi Kales just shook his head and said that he’d likely just rot in the ground, right beside him probably, in light of the experience they were embroiled in. He laughed when he said it, but David was pretty sure he meant it. Well, fuck that, David thought now. It was time to get tenable.
David purchased a small bindle of sweet-smelling incense from a hippie-looking girl with a barbell through her tongue. He’d seen this girl before—maybe fifty times, actually, since he was pretty sure she’d been there every single time he’d visited the farmer’s market—but had never bothered to really notice her apart from the fact that she always stood there placidly, selling fucking incense. What kind of life was that? Selling smell. She smiled sweetly at him and David wondered how much kids today knew about the fucking world, about how things really were , how it wasn’t all just iPods and MySpace and throwing gang signs on the Internet, that there was something permanent about the decisions being made around them. Ramifications. Spiritual and physical. If kids wanted to know what it meant to be tough, they’d take a look at the Torah, see how the Jews rolled, see how revenge and power were really exerted. David liked thinking about the Jews as Chosen People, liked thinking that maybe, after all these years, he’d been chosen too. You wander the desert for forty years—or just fifteen—you begin to change your perspective on things, begin to appreciate what you had before you got lost, begin to see signs, warnings, omens. Not everything is so obvious. Not everything has to be digitized to be real. Sometimes, man, you have to look inside of things.
“Let me ask you a question,” David said to the girl with the pierced tongue. “Do you know me?”
“Am I supposed to?”
When he was young, he liked a girl with a little sass, but now it just annoyed him. “You see me here every week.”
She shrugged. “If you say so.”
“What do you think I do for a living?”
“Is this some sort of market research bullshit?”
Rabbi David Cohen—who for thirty-five years had been a guy named Sal Cupetine, who used to like to hurt people just for the hell of it, who killed three cops and really didn’t think about that at all, never even really considered it, not even after they did an episode of Cold Case about it that he caught one night as he was drifting off to sleep after a long wedding at Temple Beth Israel—leaned across the small table and stared into the girl’s face. “I look like a market researcher to you?”
“Everyone in Vegas is so tough,” she said, and now she was laughing at him, tears filling up her eyes, and he could tell that she wasn’t a girl at all, was closer to thirty, had pinched lines at the corner of her right eye, smelled like baby powder and cigarettes and dried sweat. “I’ll say you sell cell phones at the Meadows Mall. Am I close?”
Thursdays were always busy for David. The children at the Barer Academy—the elementary school on the temple’s campus—visited the main synagogue 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
David purchased a small bindle of sweet-smelling incense from a hippie-looking girl with a barbell through her tongue. He’d seen this girl before—maybe fifty times, actually, since he was pretty sure she’d been there every single time he’d visited the farmer’s market—but had never bothered to really notice her apart from the fact that she always stood there placidly, selling fucking incense. What kind of life was that? Selling smell. She smiled sweetly at him and David wondered how much kids today knew about the fucking world, about how things really were , how it wasn’t all just iPods and MySpace and throwing gang signs on the Internet, that there was something permanent about the decisions being made around them. Ramifications. Spiritual and physical. If kids wanted to know what it meant to be tough, they’d take a look at the Torah, see how the Jews rolled, see how revenge and power were really exerted. David liked thinking about the Jews as Chosen People, liked thinking that maybe, after all these years, he’d been chosen too. You wander the desert for forty years—or just fifteen—you begin to change your perspective on things, begin to appreciate what you had before you got lost, begin to see signs, warnings, omens. Not everything is so obvious. Not everything has to be digitized to be real. Sometimes, man, you have to look inside of things.
“Let me ask you a question,” David said to the girl with the pierced tongue. “Do you know me?”
“Am I supposed to?”
When he was young, he liked a girl with a little sass, but now it just annoyed him. “You see me here every week.”
She shrugged. “If you say so.”
“What do you think I do for a living?”
“Is this some sort of market research bullshit?”
Rabbi David Cohen—who for thirty-five years had been a guy named Sal Cupetine, who used to like to hurt people just for the hell of it, who killed three cops and really didn’t think about that at all, never even really considered it, not even after they did an episode of Cold Case about it that he caught one night as he was drifting off to sleep after a long wedding at Temple Beth Israel—leaned across the small table and stared into the girl’s face. “I look like a market researcher to you?”
“Everyone in Vegas is so tough,” she said, and now she was laughing at him, tears filling up her eyes, and he could tell that she wasn’t a girl at all, was closer to thirty, had pinched lines at the corner of her right eye, smelled like baby powder and cigarettes and dried sweat. “I’ll say you sell cell phones at the Meadows Mall. Am I close?”
Thursdays were always busy for David. The children at the Barer Academy—the elementary school on the temple’s campus—visited the main synagogue 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
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