Макс Коллинз - Road to Paradise

“We lost her, baby,” he said gently, and he began to cry. He covered his face with a hand. “I’m sorry... I’m sorry... I have to be strong for you...”

And his daughter was in his arms, holding him tight, and she was crying, too. “Oh, I’m sorry, Daddy, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry...”

He held her away from him. Shrugged off the emotion. Cold again, he said, “Listen to me — this was not your fault. You didn’t do this to us, to your mom. If anyone did, it was me.”

“Daddy, Daddy...”

“Listen!” And he shook her, just a little. A few eyes were on them now, so he kept his expression neutral and his voice soft. “We don’t have time for recriminations. We don’t have time to take any blame. A very long time ago, I sat where you’re sitting — I thought I’d caused my mother’s death.”

“Gran’ma... Satariano?”

“No — my real mother.” He turned to Gary, who looked like he’d been pole-axed. “Son, I told Anna and Mike that I was adopted, but I lied to them about something. I didn’t tell them that I knew my real parents, that I grew up with my real parents.”

Anna was shaking her head, tears streaming, ruining her makeup. “I can’t... I can’t... I can’t...”

“Baby,” he told her, “my father told me, ‘It’s not your fault — it’s the business I’m in.’ He told me I wasn’t responsible for my mother’s death, and that neither was he.”

But I am responsible for their retribution , the Angel of Death had said, so long ago...

This memory Michael did not share with his daughter.

“Right now,” he said, “we have to survive. We have to leave this place, and we have to go somewhere else, somewhere safe.”

“ Where is safe, Daddy?”

“Anywhere. Anywhere is safer than here... Gary, you shouldn’t come with us. We’ll contact you. You have to trust me, son, you have to believe me.”

The boy was shaking his head. “I love Anna, sir. I can help you. Let me help you.”

“Gary, please.”

“No. I’m coming with you.”

No use arguing with him here. Michael would get Anna out of here, and deal with the Gary problem later.

“I’m sorry to spoil your prom,” Michael said, “but we have to leave this very moment... You two go on out. I’ll meet you in the front lobby.”

Gary nodded and, then, so did Anna.

The hundred or so kids in tuxes and formals were dancing slow again, to “The Morning Aft er,” which sounded even worse when a male sang it.

Michael hugged the wall, kept his head down, hoping no other chaperone would recognize him, among these numerous familiar faces — other parents, and some teachers, too.

In the front lobby, he joined the boy and girl. Behind the check-in desk, an assistant manager of his, a pretty young woman named Brandi, squinted at him; he shook his head at her, and somehow she got the signal. She said nothing, God bless her.

“The car’s close, right out front,” he said to the young couple, standing between them, a hand on each one’s shoulder. “I’m going out first. If there’s no problem, I’ll pull right up to the door... Gary, open the front for Anna, Anna you get in, and Gary climb in back, it’ll be unlocked.”

Gary nodded. “And we’ll book it out of here.”

“We will indeed,” Michael said, and squeezed the hand on the boy’s tux shoulder. “Just look after my little girl.”

Their eyes met.

Gary understood: if Michael didn’t make it, Anna would be his responsibility .

“Be careful, Daddy,” Anna said.

He kissed her on the forehead and went out.

Trotting to the parked Lincoln, he swiftly scanned the lot for anything suspicious. A few casino goers, couples, were heading for their own cars. Some kids from the prom were out front catching a smoke in the cool crisp pleasant breeze.

Behind the wheel of the parked Lincoln, he made sure the seat was clear in back for Gary, moving the suitcases over; he unlocked the doors on their side, and powered down the window on his own side, and Anna’s.

Then he started the car, backed out, and swung around, pulling right in front. Gary came out first, Anna right behind him, and the boy opened the door for her. She climbed in, and Gary’s head came apart as the gunshot, probably a .45 or maybe .357, caught him in the forehead. His eyes didn’t have time to register shock.

Anna screamed, and Gary fell away, a mist of red taking his place, as Michael hit the gas, steering with one hand, yelling, “Close that door, baby!” which somehow, through her screaming, she managed to do, and two little men with big revolvers, Giancana guys who Michael recognized, a stocky kid named Vin and a skinnier one named Lou, came up out from among the parked cars, and were aiming the weapons at the Lincoln when Michael shot Vin and Lou with the .45, bang bang, turning their heads into mush and mist, much as they had Gary’s.

Anna kept screaming, and the Lincoln was screaming, too, careening out of the parking lot and then flying down the curving mountain highway, leaving behind the dead boy and pair of Outfit corpses and Cal-Neva and neon signs until only the pines and the night and the twisty road and the sobbing girl were his companions.

“Oh, Daddy, Daddy,” she said finally, horror and hysteria turning the lovely face grotesque, “we just left him there; we just left him there!”

When he could risk it, he pulled over and took her into his arms, and sobs shook her as he said, “We had to leave him. He was gone, baby; he was gone.”

“Oh, but you don’t understand... you don’t understand...”

“I swear I do, sugar. I swear.”

“But you don’t.” She drew away from him a little, and her eyes and face were drenched with tragedy, her voice a tiny trembling terrible thing, so much older than it had ever been and yet much, much too young.

“That was my husband we left back there, Daddy,” the girl in the white prom dress said, gasping, gulping. “Last night in Vegas... Gary and... we... we... we... got... married ...”

Tony Accardo did not fool around.

Not in any sense of the phrase — as a businessman he was no-nonsense and fair, avoiding violence when possible but (if need be) sanctioning the worst, lesson-setting brutality. As a father he was aces — generous and loving, while not an easy mark; he’d made it clear to his two boys and two girls that his way was nothing they wanted to pursue, that the best that could be said for their papa’s profession was it had paved the road to a better life for the kids of a six-grade dropout son of an immigrant shoemaker.

And as a husband with never-ending opportunities, Tony had never once — not in almost forty years of marriage — cheated on his wife. When he married Clarice in 1934, she had been the best-looking blondie on the chorus line; and when he looked at her now, he looked past the extra pounds (who was he to talk?) and saw his same slender sweetheart.

Just because she’d been a show-biz honey didn’t mean Clarice had ever been a bimbo. She had a sharp mind and took college classes, educating herself, traveling the world to increase her knowledge, sometimes dragging Tony along. Her handling of the children was caring but disciplined, minus any favoritism; and when the Accardos hosted a party — Tony loved such gatherings — she was the most gracious hostess in Chicago.

Clarice was back home in Chicago, that is River Forest, in their ranch house on Ashland, the smaller (sixteen-room) digs he built when his Tudor mansion on Franklin caught too much media heat — God he missed his “Palace,” with the basement bowling alley and all that room for his antiques, and its vast backyard where he could throw wingdings like his annual Fourth of July bash.