Макс Коллинз - Road to Paradise

“ When Mike comes back...”

“When Mike comes back, we’ll contact him. We’ll bring him into our loving arms again, I promise you that. But for now we have to put Mike aside, and concentrate on keeping Anna safe.”

She began to nod. “How do we start?”

“You start by transferring that money into my briefcase. I have a phone call to make.”

He hauled the briefcase up onto the table, snapped it open — it was empty. She began filling it while her husband plugged the phone into the jack above where the table was flush to the wall, and he made a collect call to a name she didn’t recognize.

Someone answered right away.

“Vinnie, it’s Michael Satariano... Don’t pretend nothing’s wrong... Are you on a secure line?... You have five minutes to call me back. Here’s the number.”

After Michael hung up — Pat still stacking the banded stacks of cash into the briefcase — he removed the weapon from the safe-deposit box. He was checking it over, examining the clip of bullets, testing the mechanisms, making sure everything was working properly, she supposed, and then the phone rang, and she jumped a little.

Michael held up a hand to her, in a calming fashion, almost as if in benediction; then he answered the phone.

“Hello, Vinnie... I called you because you, like me, were Paul’s man. Are you orphaned, too?... Really? Well, good. It’s good you’re in solid with the new bunch, because you can pass this message along to them... First, I didn’t kill Mad Sam... I don’t care who says they saw what, think it through: Would I do a hit for Mooney Giancana?... You’re right, Momo’s a crazy prick, keep in mind he’s also a lying prick. Much as DeStefano needed killing, much as he deserved to suffer for days and days and then die, I didn’t do the honors... I’m glad you believe me. Question is, can you make anybody else believe me?... Here’s the thing: Sam’s boys Tommy and Jackie came around to the Cal-Neva to see me this morning... Right in my goddamned office, is where... Where are they now? In that passage Sinatra built, between the office and Momo’s favorite cabin... Going anywhere? Not unless Christ comes, and resurrects their sorry dead asses.”

Task almost finished. Pat glanced over at her husband; this was a tone of voice she barely recognized, a kind of talking she knew not at all, coming from Michael. His eyes were tight, the right one as hard and cold and unreadable as the glass one. Only the faintest trace of scar remained from the long-ago war wound, a teardrop of flesh at the outer corner of his left eye — Pat had made him get plastic surgery decades ago.

“Vinnie, I’m giving you boys the opportunity to clean up after yourselves... All right then, it’s DeStefano’s crew, but shit runs both up and downhill, in our thing. I’m a made guy, Vinnie, they didn’t do that without approval way up the food chain... I find it hard to believe Joe Batters would sanction that myself, but he must have — do you see Tommy and Jackie doing this under their own steam?... Good. Good, you see my point... Do about it? Whether I ever go back there or not, the Cal-Neva is not well-served by dead goombahs cluttering up the joint. What kind of heat do you think is gonna come down, they’re found?... Probably they were gonna haul my dead ass through the Sinatra tunnel, and stick me in their trunk and dump me, how the fuck should I know?... What do I suggest? I suggest you get one of your Sicilian clean-up crews out here, toot sweet, and get Tommy and Jackie checked out of the Cal-Neva... You’ll find Jackie’s wheels in the parking lot of the Christmas Tree.”

That was a well-known local restaurant.

“No, Vinnie, I’ll call you.”

And he hung up the phone.

He looked at her. “Ready?”

She nodded. All the cash had been transferred.

“My Corvette’s back at the Cal-Neva,” he told her. “I don’t dare retrieve it. Drive to the high school. We need to pick up Anna.”

“It’s the middle of her school day...”

“When we get there, it’s the end of her school day. You up to driving?”

“Yes.”

“Good.” He stood, and so did she. “Pat, be strong for our girl, okay?”

“Okay, darling.”

He smiled a little; he seemed to like hearing her call him that.

“I’m relieved you’re not mad at me.”

“I love you, Michael.”

“I love you, baby. We’re gonna be fine... but the next days, weeks, even months, may be a rough ride.”

He punctuated this news by shoving the .45 automatic into his Sansabelt waistband, where it wouldn’t show under the gray suitcoat.

“Could you carry the briefcase, dear?”

She said she could.

He closed the case and pushed it to her, and she took it.

A few minutes later, after the (now empty) safe-deposit box had been locked pointlessly away, Michael — the raincoat again over his arm, hiding his hand holding the automatic with the silver snout — followed Pat to the station wagon. She noticed that he seemed to be looking everywhere, though she doubted anyone else would have picked up on that.

He asked her to take the wheel, which she did, after depositing the briefcase on the seat between them. The sun was shining, and the small pseudo-rustic downtown — surrounded by mountains, under a perfect blue sky with smoke-signal clouds — seemed to her idyllic to the point of irony.

At Incline Village High, Michael slid over and took the wheel as the car waited at the curb, Pat going in to tell them at the office that a family emergency had come up, and she needed to collect Anna.

When Pat walked her daughter down the endless sidewalk to where Michael waited in the buses only lane, Anna let go a barrage of questions.

The seventeen-year-old — in her denim pants suit with floral iron-ons and bell-bottoms, lugging her books before her in both hands — didn’t mind getting out of school (what teenager would?); but she immediately jumped to a false conclusion.

“It’s Mike, right? Is it good news? If it’s bad news you can tell me, Mom... Mom? What’s going on ? What is going on?”

But Pat could only think to say, “It’s all right... it’s all right... Your father will tell you.”

Then Michael was driving them home, and Anna was sitting forward behind them, asking questions that Michael was answering evasively.

“We have no news about Mike,” the girl’s father said. “But we’ve had something serious come up, and we’ll sit and talk about it at home.”

“Did somebody die? Some relative or something? I didn’t know anybody was left !”

Mama and Papa Satariano had both passed away well over ten years ago (Papa first, Mama two weeks later); and Michael had no brothers or sisters. Well, of course Pat was aware of the one brother, who had died a long, long time ago...

“Daddy, I have a right to know what is going on in this family!”

“Yes, you do,” he said.

But that was all he said.

Their daughter was in full pout mode (“ Fine! ”) by the time Michael pulled into the driveway — slowly; he was looking all around again, less subtly now. A few neighboring homeowners were out in their yards, one filling the air with the army-of-bumble-bees buzz of a Lawn Boy.

Down the block a ways, two men in khaki jumpsuits were also doing yardwork — one trimming bushes, the other seeding. A panel truck, about the same shade of avocado as Pat’s pants suit, sat at the curb; bold white letters proclaimed green thumber’s lawn care with a cartoon thumb as an apostrophe and a Reno-exchange phone number.

Michael, his eyes on the jumpsuited men, said to Pat, “Aren’t Ron and Vicki off somewhere?”

“Yes. Fifteenth anniversary. Hawaii.”