Макс Коллинз - Road to Paradise

Jackie’s pop eyes popped some more as he tried to stand, only to collide with a clunk up inside the dryer’s spaceman-like plastic helmet, which went well with his fallen .22 and its ray gun — like metal-tubing silencer.

Grabbing him by the front of the zipped-up leather jacket, Michael jerked Jackie higher, smacking his head hard against the interior of the plastic dome.

The man was barely conscious when he flopped back down into the chair, and his eyes fluttered, then popped again, as the snout of the silenced .22 in Michael’s hand jammed itself uncomfortably in Jackie’s throat, under an active Adam’s apple.

“Who else, Jackie?”

Jackie’s voice was high-pitched and whiny. “Just me! And Tommy!”

So many of these Outfit guys were just overgrown immature kids — Tommy and Jackie, Jesus. What kind of names were those for a guy in his fifties and another in his forties?

“No, Jackie,” Michael said through tight teeth, “just you — Tommy’s dead.”

“Fuck. Ah, fuck. Fuck me .”

“Yeah. Fuck you. What’s this about? Who sent you?”

Jackie swallowed. “Come on, Saint! You know what it’s about!”

Michael reached his left hand over and plucked one of the remaining hair spray cans from the tray-like table; he shook the cap off and then — never removing the snout of the silenced gun from the man’s neck — sprayed the stuff into Jackie’s eyes, like he was trying to kill cockroaches.

“ Shit! Fuck! Hell! ... That shit burns !”

“What’s this about? Who sent you?”

“We sent ourselves! You fuckin’ killed Mad Sam!”

That stopped Michael.

Cold.

“I what?” he asked.

“You killed Sam, Saturday! Blew his fuckin’ arm off and splattered his ass! You don’t think his crew’s gonna do something about it?”

So — Giancana had arranged to have Mad Sam killed by someone else, but got even with Michael by laying the hit on his doorstep.

“I didn’t kill your boss.”

“Fuck you didn’t! Fuck you didn’t!”

Was there any way to cleanse this? Could he dump Tommy’s body, and send Jackie packing with the straight story?

“It’s a frame, Jackie. Giancana came to me for the hit, but I turned him down.”

“Yeah, right! You was seen! You was fuckin’ seen !”

Fuck a damn duck — Giancana had made the frame fit tight.

“Did Accardo approve this?”

“Shit yes!”

Not what Michael wanted to hear; not what Michael wanted to hear...

He removed the gun from the man’s neck.

“Give me your car keys, Jackie.”

Jackie sat up in the chair, brushing himself off though nothing was there, just trying to regain his dignity and his manhood. He had, after all, pissed himself. When he dug the keys from his jeans, though, and dropped them in Michael’s open left palm, no moisture made the trip.

“What are you driving, Jackie? Where is it?”

“What do you want with my car?”

“What, Jackie? Where, Jackie?”

“It’s a dark green Mustang. Around the side of this place.” He pointed.

“Thank you, Jackie.”

“You can kill me, Satariano,” Jackie said, sticking his chin out, eyes popping, “but it won’t do you a goddamn bit of good!”

“It might,” Michael said, and stuck the snout of the weapon in Jackie’s left eye and squeezed the trigger.

The silencer was aided and abetted by the eyeball, and the squish was louder than the report, death so immediate, nothing registered in the right eye as blood and brain and bone splattered the back of the beauty-shop chair, some of it splashing up inside the plastic dome.

Fortunately the chair wasn’t fastened to the floor, and Michael shoved it across the tile floor, Jackie riding along limply in it, and pushed it through the door into the passageway. The blood-spattered hair dryer, on its separate stand, he wheeled through there, too. For the time being he left the door open, as he found a small rag with which he rubbed his prints off anywhere, anything, he might have touched.

This was for the sake of the police. Though his prints might be expected to be found all sorts of places at the resort, the beauty shop wasn’t one of them.

The notion of using Jackie’s car to get rid of both bodies had occurred to him, but he knew such an exercise would be futile. The Cal-Neva was dead to him now; he couldn’t even return up through that passageway into his office and leave with his own car. He would be seen, and possibly the place would be under surveillance — Outfit guys or even the FBI.

He retrieved his rifle, shut the tunnel door on the corpse, and went to the phone at the stand by the door where the cash register and appointment book resided. Impossibly beautiful women with impossibly beautiful manes smiled fetchingly at him from framed color photos hanging here and there, but empty chairs with hovering hair dryers stared accusingly.

“Satariano residence,” his wife’s voice said.

“Pat,” he said, gently, “is everything all right?”

“I’m fine. I know you’re worried about me, Michael, but—”

“Take the station wagon and meet me at the bank. Inside the bank — bring the safe-deposit key.”

“I’m not even dressed...”

“Get dressed. Don’t talk to anyone. Anyone comes to the door before you have a chance to leave, don’t open it. Car’s in the garage?”

“Yes,” she said, alarm in her voice. “What is it, Michael?”

“What we’ve talked about. What we hoped would never come. Just use the garage door opener and drive straight out.”

“Oh my God... after all these years ...?”

“It may blow over. See you soon.”

They said ’bye and hung up.

Perhaps he should not have been so frank over the phone. Perhaps the Outfit had the line tapped; but he didn’t think so. This was the doing of that evil troll, Giancana, who was operating out of Mexico, for Christ’s sake. And Mad Sam was freshly dead, so today’s assault was all they’d likely had time to mount, so far.

And it would be assumed he’d be out of shape, so long out of harness, the hit would go down like ducks in a barrel; hell, the backup might feel comfortable enough to just sit in a chair and look at magazine babes in their scanties...

If he’d had more time, perhaps Michael could have savored a certain irony that this shop — where women now tried so hard to achieve beauty — had once played host to Frank Sinatra and Sam Giancana, tossing back cocktails and dallying with women so beautiful trying wasn’t necessary. But the former Cal-Neva boss had more important things on his mind.

Rifle in one hand, 22 automatic in the other, looking in every direction including up, Michael Satariano stepped out of number 50 into cold late-morning sunshine.

But it was Michael O’Sullivan, Jr., who got into Jackie’s car and took off in a scattering of gravel.

Patricia Satariano took her daily dosage as religiously as Communion, the little yellow pill her host. Dulled as she was by the Valium, she nonetheless felt the panic boiling in her belly, in response to Michael’s phone call.

The odd thing was, the medication did not allow that terror to spill over — she had a strange distance from it, just as (over the past week) she had developed an almost serene acceptance of her son’s MIA status.

The calming effect of the drug, and the sure and certain hope (as the Bible said) that Mike would return to them one day soon, had given her a state of mind that seemed to her peaceful (and to others lethargic). Thanks to Mother’s little helper, she’d heard the alarm bell Michael sounded, but at a safe remove.