Макс Коллинз - Road to Paradise

But guys he trusted, including Murray Humphries, Paul Ricca, and his attorney Sidney Horshak (smartest man in the world) had preached to him of going more low-key — and Tony listened; like Frank Nitti, he knew that attracting attention was a bad thing. So — when federal heat and publicity made it necessary to send Giancana packing to Mexico, and Tony came off the bench to take the top chair again — King Accardo, back in the limelight, bit the bullet and sold his Palace.

Clarice didn’t mind; she loved the new house as much as the mansion — “It’s homey, Tony, it’s cozy, and we’re getting older” — and she adored the California digs, too, a low-slung, stone-and-wood-and-glass modern ranch number looking over a fairway of Indian Wells Country Club, twenty miles outside of Palm Springs. This second home was nicely secluded, no neighbors half a mile in any direction, except for the country club. His wife spent lots of time out here with him, but this was a business trip.

So the quartet of cuties scurrying around his swimming pool on this sultry Sunday night in June — two blondes, a brunette, and a redhead in bikinis that combined wouldn’t make up a single respectable swimsuit — were nothing more than eye candy to Tony, and perks for the boys.

Phil and Vic and Jimmy T. and Rocco, in swimsuits and open Hawaiian shirts to show off curly hair and gold necklaces, were playing poker at a dollar-bill-littered table, the shoulder-holstered tools of their trade slung over the arms of their beach chairs; though the sun had long since set, floodlights kept the pool and surrounding patio bright as noon.

This was two-thirds of his security force; two other men — Uzis on shoulder straps — were beyond the seven-foot tan-brick wall, taking turns, one staying at the front gate, the other walking the outer perimeter. They wore white sport shirts and khaki shorts, which amused Accardo; he’d said to one of them, Dave, “Kinda takes the edge off the Uzi, don’t it, looking like a tennis pro?”

“Ah, Mr. Accardo, you’re a riot,” Dave had said, and snorted a laugh, and waved it off.

Dave was a Chicago boy like all Tony’s bodyguards, and your average eggplant was smarter. That was the trouble with security staff: you couldn’t waste your best people in a job like that; but, shit, man, you were putting your goddamn life in their hands!

Not that Tony was worried. In all his years in the Outfit, from bootlegger to bodyguard, from capo to top dog, he’d never had anybody hit him at home. Oh, there was that burglar crew who invaded the River Forest place, when he and Clarice were out here having their housewarming party; but that had been strictly money, and anyway all those guys were dead now, castrated, throats slit, all seven of them.

The girls were giggly and cute — starlets Sidney, with his endless Hollywood connections, had rounded up — and seemed to like each other more than the boys they were here to entertain. Tony didn’t mind watching their boobies bounce — the redhead was something, a regular Jane Russell — and he liked the way their firm curvy butts didn’t quite fit inside the bikini bottoms.

No law against looking.

Tony himself was in a knee-length terrycloth robe — once the sun went down, it got cool, not that these kids noticed — and leaning back in a lounge-style deck chair, watching through big heavy-framed bifocals the size of goddamn safety glasses (Clarice picked them out — said they were “in style”). He was as dark as these sun-crazy starlets, but it came natural, and daytime he usually sat under an umbrella, avoiding the rays. Mostly he sat out here in the evening. Like tonight.

A broad-shouldered five ten, two hundred pounds, Anthony Accardo — “retired” boss of the Chicago Outfit — still had at sixty-eight the physical bearing of a street thug; his hairline had receded some, the hair mostly white now, the oval face grooved with years of responsibility, the nose a bulbous lump, with small dark eyes that had seen too much.

Smoking a sizable Cuban cigar, sipping a Scotch rocks, Tony was talking with Sidney about the Giancana problem.

Sidney sat in a beach chair, angled to make eye contact with his client. The slender, well-tanned, gray-haired attorney wore a yellow short-sleeve golfing shirt, dark green slacks, and moccasins with yellow socks, and looked younger than his sixty-one years. His features were unremarkable, small eyes crowding a long nose and a slash of mouth; nothing about him was distinctive except his intelligence and bearing.

Between them was a small round glass-topped table for their ashtrays and drinks; Horshak had a martini, but he’d hardly touched it.

“This terrible thing at the Cal-Neva,” Horshak was saying, in between drags on a filter-king cigarette, “it’s an embarrassment, a public-relations disaster. We have Walter Cronkite talking about us, Tony — it needs to stop.”

“I don’t know much more than you do, Sid,” Tony admitted with a shrug. “Two of Mooney’s crew get made dead in the Cal parking lot, and take some poor kid with ’em who didn’t have shit to do with anything.”

A small smile twitched the lipless line of the lawyer’s mouth. “That last, Tony, is not precisely true. Do you know who that kid is? Or rather, was?”

“No. Just some local twerp, not tied to us at—”

“This is Cal-Neva , Tony — everything is tied to us.” Horshak sat forward. “My people did some discreet checking — the young man was dating a young lady ... by the name of Anna Satariano.”

“Satar...” Tony sat up, swung around, and sat on the edge of the lounge chair to better face the attorney. “Michael Satariano’s daughter?”

“That’s right, Tony.” Horshak blew smoke out his nostrils like a suntanned dragon. “And judging by descriptions of the shooter in the Lincoln? The individual the Giancana assassins were apparently trying to take down could well be Satariano. In fact, I’d say it must have been Satariano.”

Tony was shaking his head, dumbfounded. “The girl at the scene... who climbed in the car and got away with the shooter... That was the Satariano girl? But the Satarianos, they fuckin’ moved!”

“That’s one way to put it,” Horshak said drily.

“What would they be doin’ back in Tahoe, for Christ’s sake? They’re in WITSEC someplace-the-fuck!”

The attorney offered a tiny eyebrow shrug. “Apparently the girl came back home... for prom.”

“Shit.” Tony let out a huge sigh; he sucked on the cigar, blew smoke, shook his head. “What the hell is that crazy Giancana up to?”

“Trying to hit Michael Satariano, obviously — Michael Satariano, who came out of federal protection to go after his daughter. And as I say, I think we can reasonably extrapolate that the child ran off from the new life enforced upon her by WITSEC, to come home for prom.”

Tony frowned. “What’re you sayin’, Sid? That Mooney had people sittin’ in Tahoe all these months, watchin’, in case Satariano got homesick and turned the hell back up? That’s crazy! What the fuck is going on here?”

The attorney drew thoughtfully on the cigarette, then said, “I would say Giancana is trying to protect himself. Michael Satariano witnessed many things over the years.”

“Michael knows plenty about me, too,” Tony said gruffly. “He was my guy for a couple years, during and just after the war. Top notch, too.”

Horshak agreed, nodding. “And with his war hero status, he’s been very useful to us over the years.”

“Fuckin’ A.”

“And how do you think his celebrity stands to impact our interests in the public eye now , Tony?”

Tony thought about that, clearly an avenue his mind had not previously gone down. Finally he said, “Not in a good way?”