“I think you’re worried that you’ll have to,” Peaches said, ignoring the second question, “or else you wouldn’t put cameras in your own home.”
“I don’t live here,” Ronnie said. “But your auntie? In Green Bay? I say the word, she’s living underneath floorboards here by the end of the day. Your cousin right next to her. But personally? I’m not worried about anything.” He took another sip. “You done measuring your dick in front of me, son?”
All right.
Everybody knows everybody.
That was fast.
“I’m not trying to insult you, Mr. Cupertine,” Peaches said. “You’re getting the wrong impression.” He walked over to the wet bar, looked up at the camera mounted above it. State of the art for about 1985. These fucking people. All their operations were antiquated. “If you’ve got someone on the other side of this camera? You answer to them. That’s just a fact, Mr. Cupertine. I’m just pointing out a logistical concern you should have. Problem happens? You’re down here, they’re up there. You’re dead already, yeah? What’s the big deal if they witness the crime but can’t stop it?”
“Who’s to say you’d make it out alive?”
“Nobody,” Peaches said. “I wouldn’t expect to. But also? I don’t give a fuck what you do to my auntie. I don’t give a fuck what you do to my cousin, either. Kill them both right now. You and me, we still have business.” He went over to the sofa, lifted up one of the cushions. There was a pull-out bed inside. Man. If it was up to Peaches, he’d fill this basement with cement, all the way to the roof. Science left these people behind. “I see things differently, Mr. Cupertine, and that can work to your advantage.”
“Why don’t you open that briefcase,” Ronnie said.
Peaches came back to the pool table, popped open the case, set it on the green felt. He had fifty thousand in used twenties, so it was going to take a minute to unpack. “Case in point, Mr. Cupertine? I know you’re not gonna go kill my auntie, because that’s not how the Family operates. You don’t kill families. So before you stand here and threaten me with it, you gotta do it sometimes to make it plausible. Not farm that shit out, either. Actually send a couple fucking Italians out there to kill an old lady.” He started to put the cash down, one stack at a time, fifty in total. “This place you got here? Don’t get me wrong. It’s peaceful. But this carpet contains the DNA of every person who has stepped foot in here. Same with that sofa and that recliner. The grout in your wood paneling is rubber, which means any bit of hair or skin floating around in the dust is stuck in it. Blood, spit, snot, same deal. You could set fire to this place, cops could probably still dig hair and fiber out of the walls.” He ran a hand across the top of the pool table. “This felt is a problem, too. You may as well cover it with mugshots.” He put the last of the cash down and then took out two padded mailers that were on the bottom of the case.
Ronnie took a sip from his drink. “Aren’t you a smart motherfucker,” he said after a while.
“I’m trying to be,” Peaches said.
“What is it you’re interested in?”
“You need partners,” Peaches said. “Your best guys are in prison, or they’re missing, or they’re dead. Gangster 2-6, they’re going to run out the door soon as the Cartels make them a decent offer, particularly now that they know you dumped one of theirs in a garbage pit trying to deke out the feds. I respect the game, but those Mexicans? They don’t give a fuck about you. They just want your product. The Cartels can get them all the weed and coke they want and they don’t need to go through you.”
“They don’t have access to heroin,” Ronnie said. “Not like I do.”
“Not yet,” Peaches said. “You get that good stuff, I agree. Afghanistan and shit. It’s nice. But people, they don’t need the good stuff. They just want the stuff. So they’ll take the dirt the Mexicans are making and the Cartels will sell double the amount while you’re cranking out that artisanal brand. You’re gonna price yourself out in two, three years, by my estimation.”
“I don’t worry about the Cartels,” Ronnie said.
“You should,” Peaches said, “because they don’t worry about you.”
Ronnie put down his drink. “No?”
“You got submarines and missile launchers? Because they do.”
Ronnie thought for a moment. “Go on,” he said. There was the congressman.
“Mexican gangs keep coming in and burning our crops, snitching us out, it’s getting tiresome, but I don’t have the capital to fight them. Or the relationships. So, before they turn on you, I was hoping you might assist us in getting ourselves a foothold.”
“What’s in it for me?”
“I help you modernize a bit, keep you out of the newspapers, clean up some dirty dishes you still got sitting on the counter,” Peaches said. “And we’re opening a casino up north. We could use your expertise on a few things.”
“The Family is out of the casino business.”
“Not by choice, right? Everything being equal, you’d rather still own Las Vegas, right?”
“No,” he said, after a while. He picked his drink back up, tossed it back. “I wouldn’t be happy paying workmen’s comp insurance for a thousand employees. I don’t need that.”
“You wouldn’t be doing that with us,” Peaches said. “And Howard Hughes won’t be showing up to buy you out. We’re looking at a capital infusion and then you can name your involvement. Because Mr. Cupertine, I’m looking around? And I don’t see your next foray.”
“I don’t need a next one,” he said.
“And yet,” Peaches said, “you can’t stop your soldiers from knocking over liquor stores.”
Ronnie smiled then. “I’m almost entirely legal now.”
“Which only means you’re still a crook,” Peaches said. “War is coming. Isn’t gonna be guys in suits shooting each other on the streets. It’s gonna be some sixteen-year-old in a lowered Honda Civic shooting an AK out his window at you and your kids while you’re walking into Wrigley. You want to survive? You gotta move rural. That’s the next wave. That’s where the money’s going. And you want to beat the Cartels, you get out of that junk bullshit and get into pills. Oxy. Klonopin. Ambien. No one gets shot picking up a prescription from CVS. And tribes, we’ve got our clinics, our own doctors, our old folks’ homes, our own health insurance. There’s a lot of us, yeah? And we’ve got our own land and our own cops. What we don’t have is someone like you. The boss of bosses.”
Ronnie said, “Why haven’t I met you before?”
“I don’t get invited to social functions.”
“I bet,” Ronnie said. “Where you from?”
“You don’t know?”
“I want it on tape,” Ronnie said. Wasn’t he a smart motherfucker.
“Wisconsin,” Peaches said. “Been down here a few years. Did a couple years in West Texas, living with some cousins. Did a spot in Joliet.”
“How long?”
“A year.”
“On what?”
“Assault with a deadly weapon.” He’d put a guy’s head through a television.
“A year is fast.”
“I know how to behave,” Peaches said. “Plus, it happened on reservation land.”
Ronnie flipped through a stack of twenties. “How you know all this about fibers and DNA? You watch CSI or something?”