Макс Коллинз - Road to Paradise

Still, enough anxiety made it through to inspire her to guide the Ford Country Squire — canary yellow with wood-grain side panels — in record time to the First National Bank of Crystal Bay, less than five minutes. An advantage of living in such a small town was the ability to get anywhere fast, particularly in off-season, and she actually beat Michael.

Shortly before noon, Pat Satariano — an apparently calm, remarkably attractive middle-aged blonde in an avocado pants suit and matching clogs — selected a seat in a small waiting area between the loan officers and a circular central teller’s area, over which wooden ceiling spokes emanated like sun rays. For a bank, the surroundings were warm — cherry-wood paneling, cream-color tile floor, wood-patterned desktops, tweedy-paneled cubicles, and the orange Naugahyde cushions of the waiting area’s chrome furniture. At shortly before noon, the lobby not quite crowded, Pat sat — leaning on her darker green handbag — and reflected.

In the station wagon, she had been consumed by making good time and chanting in her mind a mantra whose hysteria was reflected only in the words themselves: oh-shit-oh-shit-oh-shit-oh-shit ...

When she had married Michael, over thirty years ago, she had known that this day might come — that despite the more or less legitimate line of work her husband had been in, the men he worked for remained criminals. And not just criminals — dangerous men.

Killers.

“We have to be ready,” he would say — fairly often, in the early years, perhaps once a year this past decade or so. “If it ever became known that I was born Michael O’Sullivan, life could change for us. Or if I somehow wound up on the wrong side of a power play, we might have to run.”

This was as close to a speech as Michael ever made, and the wording varied little over the years. She had long since stopped asking him what exactly they would do — had not in several decades asked him to define how they might “run” — because Michael’s answer would be a mere shrug.

She had come to think of this as just some residual paranoia on Michael’s part — he had after all lost his parents and his brother, Peter, to the violence of that world. Americans sought security, and yet no such thing existed: accidents could happen, illnesses might come, jobs could be lost, and death waited for everyone. So Pat, long before her medication, had learned to shrug off Michael’s concerns much as he had her queries.

Now, however, the answers to those questions would come. In minutes, perhaps moments, she’d know just how their life would change, and learn the reality behind the words “we might have to run.”

And for the first time since she had begun taking the little yellow pills, she felt the urge for a smoke. She dug out her pack of Virginia Slims and fired one up. On the table before her, in the bank waiting area, were various magazines, and on top was Better Homes and Gardens ; also in the array of periodicals were Ladies’ Home Journal and Life .

And it occurred to her, as she drew the smoke into her lungs, that right now she had none of that: no home, no life. No garden, either — just an empty swimming pool.

Michael, in a gray suit and darker gray tie, entered with a large black briefcase in his left hand, his dark raincoat over his right arm; quickly he spotted her, motioned for her to join him.

She stubbed out her cigarette and did.

Within three minutes, they had signed the safe-deposit slip with the required signature (Michael’s) and followed the young female clerk into the vault, where the large box was unlocked, using both the clerk’s master key and the one Pat had brought from home.

The clerk, a brunette in her twenties with too much green eye shadow and a green-and-yellow floral pop-art-pattern dress, said to them, “You can stay here in the vault, if you’re just putting in or taking something out...”

“We’d like to use one of the cubicles, please,” Michael said.

“Certainly.”

“If I recall, one of them has a jack for a phone.”

“Actually, two have that capability, yes, sir. Shall I bring you a phone?”

“Please.”

Michael had to kneel to get at the unlocked box, which he slid out from its niche, using the raincoat-draped arm to cradle and carry it out of the vault, Pat right behind.

Soon, with the door to the cubicle shut, Michael set the briefcase on the table, then — still cradling the deposit box under his arm — dropped the raincoat on an extra chair, revealing a strange-looking gun in his hand, a skinny automatic with an aluminum tube on the barrel. He placed the gun on top of the raincoat, then rested the metal box on the table, next to the telephone the clerk had set there. He sat on one side and Pat on the other, as if about to partake of a meal.

Pat had never seen the contents of the box. She knew their vital papers were kept in a wall safe at home, and had no idea why Michael had felt the need to maintain a safe-deposit box for all these years. Sometimes she had complained about the annual expense, and Michael had merely said, “Please pay it,” and she had.

Now, as Michael lifted the lid, she suddenly understood, drawing in a sharp breath...

...as she beheld the tightly packed stacks of banded bills — twenties and fifties and hundreds.

On top of the money, like a bizarre garnish on a green salad, rested a .45 automatic, which she recognized as the weapon Michael had brought home from the war.

Her eyes large with the green of the money — and the gun — she noted that the bands on the bills were not new, in fact were browned with age, though the bills themselves had a crisp, unused look. This box seemed to have been filled for some time.

She said, “How muuu...?”

He said, “Much? Half a million and change. Not a fortune, but plenty to start over somewhere. It’s cheaper in a lot of countries than here.”

“What? Where...?”

“Not sure. Haven’t thought that through yet. Mexico. South America. Even Canada’s a possibility. That might be easier for Anna.”

Her brain struggled to process all of this; the medication was not helping. “ Really start over. Really truly start over...”

“Yes.”

“Anna...” And then, despite the medication, the words came out in a rush: “She’s a senior, Michael, she has prom coming up, and graduation... She’s Maria in—”

He reached across the table, past the metal box of money, and touched her hand. “I killed two men today, Pat.”

“...What?”

“Two men who were sent to kill me.”

Again, she struggled to process the information, shaking her head, slowly. “I don’t understand. Why, after all this time...? What have you done to them that...?”

“It’s what I didn’t do.”

Briefly, he explained that Sam Giancana had come to him, just over a week ago, demanding that Michael perform an assassination.

“By refusing,” he said, “by turning my back on the Outfit, I’ve put us in this position. Pat, I’m sorry.”

She was shaking her head again, but quickly now. “No, no, don’t say that. I wouldn’t have wanted you to — you’re not one of those... those people , anymore.”

“But I have to be, now. I have to protect us.”

Her brain whirled; her eyes could focus on nothing, the green forgotten. “How, Michael? How...?”

His hand was still on hers. He squeezed. “We may have lost Mike — but we won’t lose Anna.”

Her forehead tightened; and she tightened her grip on his. “No, no, we can’t lose Anna! We can’t ...”

“We agree. She’s the priority.”

“Anna. Anna. Yes. Yes.”

“Pat, if Mike comes back...”