Макс Коллинз - Road to Paradise

He kissed her forehead.

“Goodbye, baby,” he said.

In the hallway, he knelt beside Inoglia, who was still screaming in pain, the faux hippie an overgrown fetus now, grabbing first one ruined kneecap, then another, a process he kept repeating, mixing his own blood with what had already been on the dishwashing gloves he wore.

“She was asleep when you killed her?”

“Fuck you, rat! Fuck you!”

Johnny Carson was getting big laughs in the rec room.

“She was asleep?”

“Yes! Yes! Yes!”

“That’s why I’m doing you this favor,” he said, and shot his wife’s assassin through the left temple, the bullet smacking into the wall on the other side, its kiss puckering the plaster.

The shots and the screams — on the heels of Sid Parham’s paranoia about hippies in the neighborhood — would have the police here soon.

Never looking at his dead wife, he returned to the bloody bedroom and transferred the contents of the overnight bag into a larger suitcase, threw in more clothes, and made room for the briefcase with half a million dollars in it, which he retrieved from under the floorboards in the closet of his study.

From the same hiding place he took his Garand rifle — a souvenir the feds didn’t know he’d hung on to — which was field-stripped into barrel, buttstock, and trigger group, also tucked away were four boxes of .30 ammunition, twenty cartridges each. The parts of the rifle and the small white ammo boxes he wrapped up in various articles of clothing within the suitcase.

In the kitchen he grabbed the rest of his wife’s pill bottle, figuring the sedatives would come in handy. In the bathroom he peed, then checked to see if he had any blood on himself or his clothes, and didn’t. Finally he took a .38 long-barreled Smith & Wesson revolver off the corpse of Inoglia, and left this house, and the woman he had loved for over thirty years, behind.

A white-faced Parham was in the window across the way when Michael pulled out in the Lincoln, suitcase in the backseat, and four cop cars siren-screamed past him on US 89 on his way to the airport.

He had a red-eye to catch.

Under vaguely yellow lighting, Michael — in the black Banlon sport shirt and gray slacks with a dark blue windbreaker — parked the Lincoln Continental in the Tucson International lot, and got his suitcase out of the trunk.

Six weeks ago, the ’72 Mark IV had been deeded over to “Michael Smith” by WITSEC associate director Shore — a confiscated, luxury, low-mileage number poised to go on a federal auction block, where it would likely now end up again.

Just in case anyone was watching, Michael made a show of locking the automobile, although he would be walking away from what had once been a nine-thousand-dollar ride.

Michael did not relish entering the airport, and taking his red-eye flight, unarmed; but with the rash of skyjackings the last couple years, airport security had been beefed up. With these new metal detectors, and search of carry-on bags, he dared not tote his .45. The gun was in his Samsonite suitcase, along with his field-stripped Garand rifle, various boxes of ammunition, and a briefcase filled with half a million in cash.

This was a bag he hoped the airline could manage not to lose.

Michael checked it with an attractive blonde in stewardess mufti at the American Airlines counter in the outer terminal, who set it down with another half-dozen bags. Then he headed for the nearby bank of telephone booths — he had a long-distance call to make.

This time not even a dime was required, much less an elaborate handful of change; he closed himself in, sat, and dialed O, asked for the charges to be reversed...

...and gave the operator the “panic button” number.

“Yes?” a male voice answered.

“A Mr. Michael Smith calling,” the operator said, “station to station — will you accept the charges?”

“Yes.”

Michael said, “I need to talk to Associate Director Shore immediately.”

“Where can you be reached?”

Michael read the number off the phone.

“He’ll be with you in five minutes.”

“Make it sooner.”

It was — about three.

“What’s wrong, Michael?”

Anxiety undercut the pleasant business-like surface of the WITSEC director’s tone.

“You haven’t had any reports?”

“No. What’s wrong , man?”

Michael gave Shore a brief dispassionate description of what had gone down at the Smith residence.

“Oh my God,” Shore said, sounding not just shaken but genuinely saddened over Pat’s murder.

After completing the story — the only details he skipped were such private matters as packing guns, money, and sedatives — Michael said, “Don’t ask me where I am. You probably already know.”

“I don’t, but of course it would be easy enough to find out. Let’s agree to work together in this dark hour. You stay put, and—”

“No. I don’t like your level of protection.”

“Michael... I can understand that... Jesus Christ, I can understand that, but nothing like this has ever happened before in the program! I swear to you!”

“Imagine how comforting that is to hear.”

“I... I can’t imagine what you’re going through. How’s... how’s your daughter taking it?”

Unless Shore’s acting rivaled George C. Scott’s, the fed was honestly unaware of the girl’s disappearance, a state Michael was not about to spoil by sharing information.

“Her name is Anna, Harry, and how do you think she’s doing? Her mother was butchered.”

“Michael... I guarantee your safety. Yours and Anna’s.”

“I thought you already had.”

The words came in a fevered rush: “I don’t know what you have in mind, but you can’t make it alone out there. You need us. You... need... us .”

“No. You need me, maybe. This is just a courtesy call, so you can clean up out at Paradise Estates, if you want. And to, you know, say so long and fuck you.”

A sigh breathed through the receiver, then: “Michael, you have to come in from the cold, you just have to...”

“I like the cold. Getting colder.”

Shore tried another tack. “You said these were Giancana’s men? Not DeStefano crew, like before?”

“All Giancana insiders. Hard asses. Formerly.”

Shore’s words continued to leap desperately out of the receiver: “Michael, since last week, Giancana is back in the United States — our intelligence indicates he’s trying to position himself for a return to power. That’s why he’s done this — he thinks you’re a threat to him.”

“He’s right.”

“I meant in court.”

“Don’t worry, Harry — he’ll be judged.”

“Michael, no. What happened at your home was self-defense. Anything you initiate now—”

“Do we know how Accardo feels about this? Would he have sanctioned this hit?”

“...Not likely. Accardo rules from the sidelines, through weaker men he can control. He’s probably telling his people that Giancana’s time is over, but—”

“But what he’s thinking is, Mooney’s too strong.”

“That, and the Big Tuna probably doesn’t like having somebody as high-profile as Mooney Giancana back in the press.”

“Since when is Giancana making headlines?”

A brief pause in the fed’s fast flow of words indicated, perhaps, that Shore had to consider whether or not to share what he said next: “Mooney’ll be a media darling again, within days — he’s set to testify at a committee meeting in Washington next week.”

“ What committee meeting?”

“Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. It’s that old rumor about the CIA working with the mob to assassinate Castro.”