Макс Коллинз - Road to Paradise

And Giancana removed his dark glasses, and small beady shark’s eyes locked unblinkingly on Michael.

“...I can still get it up.”

Michael raised an eyebrow. “Good for you.”

Giancana tossed the glasses on Michael’s desk; they clunked and slid a little. “First time I really got a good look at you was, hell, when was it, ’42? When you came over to the Bella Napoli, to talk to the Waiter.”

The Bella Napoli was a restaurant in River Forest, a Chicago suburb; but the “waiter” in question didn’t serve food: Giancana was referring to Paul “the Waiter” Ricca.

“I miss him,” Michael said, referring to the recent death of his godfather.

“Great loss. Great man. Personally? I always thought it was tragic, you know — prison time depriving him of the chair that was rightfully his. Joe Batters, all due respect, a good man himself, never was no Paul Ricca.”

“Joe Batters” was a Tony Accardo nickname that dated back to Capone’s day.

“I owe a lot to Paul,” Michael said.

“Yeah... yeah... don’t we all. Hate I couldn’t make it back for the funeral, but hell — the feds musta been on that one like flies on dog shit.”

To this touching sentiment, Michael replied, “They were.”

“That time, back at the Bella Napoli? I was impressed with you.”

“Were you?”

“I was. Really, truly.” The little man shifted in his chair; he was “little” literally, but he had a presence, even a charisma, that filled the office. “You stood up to Mad Sam. You didn’t cut him no slack.”

“Did he deserve any?”

Giancana’s laugh was curt. “Hell no! He was a psycho then, and he’s a psycho now. You know them glasses he wears?”

“Sure.”

“There’s no prescription in ’em. He has perfect eyesight. But sometimes he takes ’em off and rubs his eyes and then he sneaks peeks at people, thinking he’s catching ’em off — guard. Like we all think just ’cause he wears glasses, he’s blind as a bat or something!”

Michael managed a smile. “Really?”

Giancana sat forward, his small eyes huge. “Did you know he’s a satanist ?”

“A satanist.”

“A full-blown fuckin’ no-shit satanist! He told me the people he’s hit. Blood sacrifices to the devil! I saw him rolling around on the floor one time, havin’ some kinda damn fit, foamin’ at the mouth, screamin’, ‘Show me some mercy, Satan, I’m your servant, Satan, command me!’... kinda shit.”

Michael sipped his Coke, put the bottle back on the cocktail-napkin coaster. “Well, that’s fascinating I’m sure, Sam.”

“‘The devil made me do it!’” Giancana said, in possibly the worst Flip Wilson impression of all time. He pawed the air. “Hell! The stories I could tell...”

“You’ve convinced me. Mad Sam is nuts.”

Giancana leaned so close, he almost climbed onto the desk. “He’s more than nuts, Mike. He’s dangerous.”

“Doesn’t that go without saying?”

“I don’t just mean ‘dangerous’ he might stick an ice pick in your ball sack. I mean ‘dangerous’ this business with Grimaldi, this trial — you know how Sam behaves in court!”

“Likes to defend himself.”

“Talk about a fuckin’ fool for a client. Layin’ on a stretcher in his pajamas, yellin’ through a bullhorn. Tellin’ the judge he’s worse than fuckin’ Stalin!”

“So what?”

“So an unpredictable prick like Sam, knowin’ the things he knows about all of us? Can you wrap your brain around the risk ? And if they grant him immunity...”

“What does this have to do with me?”

Giancana leaned back; he was framed against a peaceful background of blue sky and green forest and purple mountain in the picture window behind him. “Sam’s the problem. You’re the solution.”

Michael drew breath in through his nostrils.

“We need somebody to take care of this,” Giancana said, and gesturing with open hands again, “who’s not one of the, you know, usual suspects. You can walk right up to Sam, he wouldn’t think nothing of it; and the cops? Even the feds? You been a saint so long, who the fuck’s gonna—”

“No.”

Giancana’s eyes tightened; his frown reflected confusion more than displeasure. It was as if the word Michael had uttered had been in Swahili.

“You’ve got a pretty cushy job here, Mike,” Giancana said slowly. “You really wanna throw that away?”

“Fire me if you want. I have half a dozen standing offers from legit bosses in Vegas.”

Nostrils flared. “Le- git bosses...?”

“All due respect, Sam,” Michael said, raising a pacifying palm, “that part of my life is behind me.”

To a bystander, Giancana’s smile might have looked pleasant. “Mike... ‘no’ ain’t an option.”

“Is this coming from Accardo?”

The oval face flushed. But the voice remained calm: “It’s coming from me, Mike. It’s coming from this-ain’t-a-fucking-topic-of-conversation. We ain’t breaking up into fuckin’ discussion groups.”

Nodding, Michael rocked back in his chair. “You’re right. Nothing to discuss. I won’t do this for you, Sam. Or for Tony or anybody.”

Giancana’s eyes were moving side to side, frantically; and yet he managed to glare at Michael, nonetheless.

Michael was saying, “You don’t just waltz into my office, thirty years later, and say suddenly I’m a torpedo again.”

Giancana stood.

And pointed a finger.

The finger did not tremble, but his voice did, just a little. “I’ll tell you , thirty years ago. Thirty years ago you took an oath. Thirty years ago—”

Michael shook his head. “I don’t care about guns and daggers and burned pictures or any of your Sicilian Boy Scout rituals. I was a fucking kid. Now I’m a grown man with a family and a reputation, and I’ve made you people a lot of money over the years.”

“ You people! You people!”

“Go out the way you came, Sam, and get off this property — you’re still in the Black Book, and I have investors to protect. Go and find some goombah to do your bidding. I run a business for the Outfit. It starts and ends there.”

Giancana’s face was tomato red. “You’re a man with a family is right , Mike—”

Michael stood. He looked Giancana squarely in the eyes. His voice delivered words that were hard and cold and even — no inflection at all.

“Understand this, Momo. I may have put killing for you people behind me... but self-defense I’m fine with. Touch my family, even look at them, and you’ll wish you were dealing with Mad Sam, not a ‘saint’... capeesh?”

Giancana drew in a deep breath.

The little gangster plucked his sunglasses from the desk, put them on, and moved to the fireplace, where he worked a hidden lever on the mantel. The left stony pillar swung out, revealing a dark passage.

“Capeesh,” Giancana said quietly, and stepped into the blackness.

The stone door closed behind him, making a scraping sound, like fingernails on a chalkboard.

Michael winced, but that sound had nothing to do with it.

Two days ago, Patricia Ann Satariano had celebrated her forty-seventh birthday. Like her husband, she looked young for her age, though (unlike her husband) some minor plastic surgery had aided the effect.

Pat smoked, and that had put vertical lines above her upper lip, and she’d had her eyes done, too (she didn’t know any mother of two who could reach her age without showing years around the eyes). As for the smoking, the health concerns hadn’t been publicized when she began, and the habit had helped her with various tensions over the years.