Макс Коллинз - Road to Paradise

A sharp crack provided an exclamation point to the lawyer’s statement.

Narrow-eyed Accardo sat forward; wide-eyed Horshak reared back. The bodyguards dropped their playing cards and rose, turning toward the noise.

Another crack followed, one second after the first, and Accardo — already on his feet, a revolver from the pocket of his terrycloth robe now in his right fist — said, “Vic, Rocco, that’s the gate — check it out. Vic boy, go left; Rocco go around right.”

The two bodyguards had already snatched their guns from the shoulder holsters dangling off the beach chairs. Now the hoods in swimming trunks and Aloha shirts ran in opposite directions, out of the floodlights, and into relative darkness — a few security spots kept the entire grounds illuminated within reason — and around the side of the house, toward the gate.

The girls were all in the pool, terrified and treading water; eyes and mouths wide open, they were reacting to Tony’s words, not the cracks, which they’d heard but did not recognize as gunfire.

Taking a step toward the pool, Tony waved his revolver and said, “Out of the pool, girls.”

As they scrambled out, slipping on the watery edges, Tony said, “Go to a bedroom and get on the floor — stay low... Phil, escort them, then watch the front.”

Phil, a stocky, curly-headed kid, nodded and — gun in hand — herded the girls inside through the glass patio doors, saying, “Ladies, ladies, don’t trip over yourselves, gonna be fine...”

Another gunshot rang in the night, and another.

Then a terrible silence.

Four of his men dead, Tony figured — the single shots followed by no victory cry from either of his boys, well, that told the tale. Whoever this was was inside the gate, now...

Nothing left but Phil indoors, and Jimmy T. out there with them.

“Goddamnit, Tony!” Horshak said, waving his hands like a minstrel singer. “We have to do something!”

Tony whirled and thumped the lawyer’s yellow sport shirt with a thick finger, right on the little alligator. “You just stay close, Sid. Got it?”

Skinny Jimmy T. was hopping around like a demented jack rabbit, revolver in hand, looking behind him and to every side, throwing long shadows on the floodlit patio.

“Jimmy,” Tony called softly, “trouble will either come around the house, left or right, or through it, out these patio doors — or if it’s more than one guy, both; maybe all three. So get yourself some cover, watch the kitchen, and I got the rest.”

Jimmy T. nodded, and upended a glass table and used it for cover. Yeah , Tony thought, real brains these kids — hide behind glass .

A wooden picnic table near his barbecue pit, close to the wall, Tony turned over, then yanked the attorney back behind it, giving himself a view of the house where the intruder or intruders could come around either side. He also had a decent angle on the patio doors; the pool was off to the left, shimmering with reflected light, and to the right Jimmy crouched like a praying mantis behind his glass-and-steel table. Patio doors off the kitchen were between those two points.

“We need to get in the house,” the lawyer advised hurriedly. “We should call the cops, or—”

“Shut up, Sid.”

“This isn’t my thing, Tony! It’s not my thing!”

Tony slapped the lawyer. “Shut the fuck up.”

The floodlights went out; darkness descended like sudden night.

As his eyes adjusted, Tony thanked God for having the good sense to invent moonlight; then his nostrils twitched at a familiar odor — cowering beside him behind the overturned picnic table, the lawyer had pissed himself.

A sliding patio door opened quickly, and someone came lurching out.

Jimmy T. fired once, twice, three times, and pudgy, curly-haired Phil — shot to shit — stumbled sideways and fell into the pool, making a modest splash; Phil floated face down, blood trails streaming on the water’s moonlight-glimmering surface.

“Fuck!” Jimmy T. said, all knees and elbows hunkering behind the glass table again, not seeing a crouching figure — which Tony could barely make out — deeper inside the kitchen, aiming a rifle.

Tony called out, “Jim—”

But it was too little, too late.

Three sharp cracks, close enough to the pool to cause some pinging echoes, shattered the glass table, and Jimmy T. fell back, table glass shards raining on him, with a shot in the forehead and two chest wounds, any one of which could have killed him.

From the kitchen came a voice, “We need to talk, Mr. Accardo!”

Tony, hunkered down behind the picnic table with the wild-eyed attorney, frowned in thought. “...Michael?”

“Yes, it’s Michael Satariano, Mr. Accardo. I don’t have an appointment. Can you work me in?”

The lawyer whispered, “Is he crazy?”

“Unfortunately,” Tony said, “no... That rifle can shoot right through this table, Sid. Fucker can kill us anytime he likes.”

Satariano called out, “You have your attorney with you, Mr. Accardo. That’s good. I’d like Mr. Horshak to sit in on our meeting.”

Tony began to rise, and the lawyer clutched the gangster’s terrycloth sleeve and sputtered, “Are you crazy? You want him to shoot you , too?”

“I told you, Sid,” Tony said, jerking his sleeve from Horshak’s grasp, “we’re dead anytime he chooses.”

Satariano called out again, “Come out from behind the table, set it upright, and we’ll sit! And talk!”

Tony yelled, “You want me to throw my gun out, Michael?”

“I don’t really care, Mr. Accardo. Fuck with me and you’re as dead as your men.”

“As a show of good faith, I’m gonna toss it out! Mr. Horshak isn’t armed, but we’ll both stand with our hands up — agreeable, Mike?”

“Cool with me.”

The attorney was crying. “I’m not, I’m not, I’m not...”

“Get your shit together, you gutless prick,” Tony snarled. “Stand up and stick your hands in the air, like a fuckin’ stagecoach robbery, or I’ll shoot you myself.”

Horshak swallowed. Nodded. Stood, with hands high.

Tony rose — his knees hurt him a little; he was in decent shape, but no spring chicken after all — and tossed the .38 onto the grass (it did not discharge) and raised his hands.

Michael Satariano stood, his silhouette in the kitchen clearly visible. Then he moved through the open doorway onto the patio — he wore black trousers, a black long-sleeve T-shirt, and a rifle slung on a strap over his shoulder, a .45 in his hand, trained on them.

Satariano walked over to Jimmy T.’s skeletal corpse behind and partially under the shot-up glass table, glanced at the body and its redundant death wounds, and didn’t bother to stop. His long shadow in the moonlight reached the gangster and lawyer well before he did.

“Gentlemen,” Satariano said, “put that table on its feet, and let’s have a talk.”

The two men did their guest’s bidding.

Satariano sat, putting the brick wall behind him, Tony — seated directly across from the intruder — and the attorney both with their backs to the house. The moonlight left Satariano mostly in shadow and washed Tony and Horshak in pale white. Of course, Horshak had already turned pale white...

“Obviously,” Satariano said, putting his hand with the .45 in it casually on the picnic-table top, “I’m not going to bother those girls.”

“They may call the police,” Tony said helpfully. “There’s a phone in there.”

“No, I cut the phone lines before I dropped by.”

Staying out of the conversation, the lawyer just sat with his hands folded prayerfully and trembled no worse than if a fit were coming on.