Макс Коллинз - Road to Paradise

Tony asked, “You... you used that old rifle on Dave and Lou?”

“If that’s their names,” Satariano said with a nod. “I was in a tamarisk tree on the golf course ’cross the way. I was a sniper during the war, or didn’t you know that, Mr. Accardo?”

Tony’s eyes tightened. “And you killed all of my men. Six men — just so we could have a meeting?”

“So we could have it on my terms, yes.”

Satariano, though a man in his early fifties, had a bland babyish face that Tony found unsettling.

The intruder was saying, “I don’t relish killing, Mr. Accardo, but those men were soldiers. I killed fifty enemy soldiers one afternoon, in the Philippines. I’m prepared to do what I have to do tonight, or any night.”

“But you’re not here to kill me.”

A cold tiny smile formed in Satariano’s otherwise blank face. “That’s right. I just needed to make a point.”

“A point. Six men dead.”

Satariano shrugged. “It’s something I learned from my father.”

Tony barked a laugh. “Your father! Your old man tossed pizza pie in DeKalb, Illinois.”

“No,” Satariano said matter-of-factly. “That’s where you’re wrong, Mr. Accardo. I was adopted. My real father was named Michael O’Sullivan.”

Tony’s eyes tightened. “What was that?”

“My real name, Mr. Accardo, is Michael O’Sullivan, Jr.”

“... Angel of Death Michael O’Sullivan?”

“Was my father, yes.”

Tony Accardo had not truly been scared in many years, hardly ever in his life, in fact — he was a man of strength who usually held the upper hand. But he remembered a day in 1931 at the Lexington Hotel when he had been a young punk bodyguard and one of a handful of Capone soldiers to survive an assault by the Angel of Death — something like twenty-five men had died, scattered on several floors, in elevators, on stairways, in the lobby .

“And all these years,” Tony said, “nobody knew...?”

“Paul Ricca did,” Satariano said.

“Paul was my best friend. He would’ve told me.”

Satariano shook his head. “I don’t think so. He and I were close — closer frankly than you and I ever got. Mr. Ricca used me to remove Frank Nitti.”

Finally the lawyer spoke. “Frank Nitti committed suicide!”

Turning to Horshak, Satariano flashed a smile as awful as it was brief. “That’s the story, isn’t it?” Then he returned his gaze to Tony. “But Frank Nitti also betrayed my father. The O’Sullivans have a sort of family trait, you see — we settle scores .”

All of it rushed through Accardo’s brain: the loyal Looney family enforcer whose wife and youngest son were viciously murdered by Connor Looney, and when Old Man John Looney stood by his son, the Outfit had backed them up — putting business ahead of loyalty. And the Angel of Death and his son, who’d been all of eleven or twelve, traveled the countryside, robbing banks of mob deposits and leaving a trail of dead Outfit guys behind them like bloody breadcrumbs .

That was who was sitting across from him: the killer’s kid who had grown up into some kind of psycho Audie Murphy war hero. For decades Michael Satariano had been a front man, a nonviolent liaison with the straight world, because of his Medal of Honor celebrity; but Mooney Fucking Giancana had to go and wake up the Michael O’Sullivan, Jr., slumbering inside that soft-spoken casino manager...

Great. Fucking great.

“Why tell me this?” Tony asked. “I can better understand you just shooting me — I don’t deny letting Giancana sic Mad Sam’s crew on you.”

Satariano’s shrug was barely perceptible. “Giancana lied to you. You thought I’d taken Mad Sam out.”

“But you didn’t.”

“No. Listen, I swam in these waters for a lotta years of my own free will; I understand the kind of barracudas I’m liable to run into. Something bad happens to me, such is the life I chose. However... if somebody touches a hair on my daughter, Anna’s, head, I’ll stuff the guy’s cock and balls in his mouth and then kill him.”

“Fair enough,” Tony said with a knowing nod. Then he turned to the lawyer, who seemed about to throw up, and said, “Don’t. You smell rank enough already, Sid.”

“And let me explain something else,” Satariano said. “Something... related.”

“Please,” Tony said.

“Mr. Accardo, no matter what happens — even if you personally sanction the killing of my entire family, including Anna, who is all I have left in this life — I still would not harm your family. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

Tony said, “I think I do.”

“You and me, Mr. Accardo, we’re bad men. We’re killers. But we are not monsters.” Satariano shook his head, his mouth twitching in something that was not exactly a smile. “Do you even know? ”

“Know what, Michael?”

“Know that Giancana sent three men into my house — the one in Arizona, where the feds put us to be safe? Sent them in dressed like Charlie Manson and they murdered my wife. They butchered my wife, Mr. Accardo.”

Tony swallowed slowly. “I... Michael, I didn’t know. I’m sorry, Michael... truly sorry. The feds must’ve put a lid on it, and Giancana sure as hell didn’t come to me for the okay.” The gangster leaned forward. “You have to know I wouldn’t sanction that .”

“That’s why you’re not dead, Mr. Accardo.” Satariano leaned forward, too, turning the snout of the .45 toward the ganglord. “But you do understand that I could have killed you? And that I may be one man, but I won’t be easy for your people to kill; I’m my father’s son, and if they try and fail, I won’t have any trouble repeating tonight’s little lesson... with the slight difference that you’ll be among the dead in the sum total.”

Tony lifted his palms up, as if in provisional surrender. “I do understand. But I’m not sure I understand why you wanted to talk to me.”

Satariano sighed. “Mr. Accardo, I owe the government nothing. They promised me safety for my family and they did not deliver. So all they have from me is a couple of weeks of interviews. Nothing they can use in court. I’m not saying what I told them won’t help them; but I am saying... I am pledging you, giving my word as a man... as a made man... that I will not testify for those people.”

“I’m glad to hear that, Michael.”

“Do you believe me?”

“Yeah. Yeah, I do.”

“Good... I’m going to kill Sam Giancana. Do you have a problem with that?”

Tony smiled. “None at all. Help yourself. We owe you that one.”

Satariano studied the gangster, then said, “I have an idea I might be helping you, taking Mooney out.”

Tony shrugged. “I won’t lie to you. You would be doing us a favor, yes.”

A nod. Then: “When this is over, Mr. Accardo, I intend to disappear.”

“Good idea.”

“I don’t need money. I’m just going to take my daughter and drop off the edge of the earth.”

“Which is what I would do, your shoes.”

Satariano leaned forward again. “Mr. Accardo, you’ll be pressured to do something about me. You may feel, as Al Capone felt, as Frank Nitti felt about my father, that letting me live would cause you to lose face.”

“Let me worry about that, Michael.”

“No, I prefer to do my own worrying.”

Tony thought for a moment. “You’ll settle for my word, son?”

“I will, sir.”

“Then you got it.”

Satariano sucked in a breath, cocked his head. “Anything you can do, clear a path for me, with Giancana would be helpful. Starting with... where is the bastard?”

Tony chuckled. “Right at the first place you’d look: that crummy house of his in Oak Park.”