Макс Коллинз - Road to Purgatory

Mae Capone and her son Sonny and their loving husband/father, despite all Al Capone’s sins, had enjoyed years together, as a family. They had had birthdays and Easters and Thanksgivings and Christmases... Even with Capone in prison for a time, they’d been alive and had each other.

His hands tensed into fists; untensed. Tensed again.

He stared at the ceiling, not wanting to hurt Mae Capone, but knowing that a few kind words and a plate of corned beef and cabbage were not enough to dissuade Michael O’Sullivan, Jr., from doing what he had come here to do...

A little after two a.m., just below the Capone suite, a guard in a yellow sport shirt banded by a brown shoulder holster bent to light up a cigarette with a Zippo lighter. It didn’t spark to flame on the first try and his thumb was poised for a second, when the barrel of a .45 slammed across the back of his skull and dropped him to the grass.

Using black electrical tape, Michael bound the guard’s wrists behind him and the man’s ankles, too, and dragged the unconscious figure over to nearby bushes, tucking him out of sight before another guard could wander by to notice. Michael confiscated the man’s .38 Police Special and stuck it in his waistband, next to the spare pawn-shop .45.

Michael slipped his father’s .45 back into its shoulder holster worn over the green T-shirt; then — using the technique he’d partly demonstrated to Mimi, earlier — climbed from window sill to awning frame and hoisted himself up and over the balcony rail.

The sky was clear and starry with a full moon; ivory washed Michael and everything else on the balcony, which was not much: a comfortable-looking deck chair and a little table. The view here was onto the spacious backyard dotted with palms and other foliage, and the substantial swimming pool, the dock beyond; moonlight dappled off shimmering water, both the pool and the bay. No guards in sight.

Curtained French doors led from balcony to bedroom. Automatic in his right hand, Michael tried the handle with his left, gently...

Unlocked.

He pushed the door open and entered the dark room, leaving the door ajar, letting moonlight in. The room was as spare as an Alcatraz cell: two twin beds, one at left, the other right; nothing on the walls, not even a Maxfield Parrish; no nightstands; a chest of drawers; a lounge chair facing the balcony, with a small table next to it.

No radio. No books, or magazines, or newspapers.

Also, no Capone.

One bed, covers rumpled, did indicate a recent slumberer. At his left, Michael saw a closed door with an edge of light at the bottom. Gun in hand, he crossed to that door, tried the knob, went in fast.

Nothing.

Bathroom — shower stall with door closed; oversize toilet; double sink. Many, many pill bottles. Electric razor. Towels on racks and more stacked on a clothes hamper.

Michael opened the shower door and aimed his .45 in at an empty, oversize stall. When he shut it again, ever so gently, metal nonetheless nudged metal and made a sound, and when he moved back into the dark bedroom, a guard in the usual sport-shirt and shoulder holster burst in, a small dark frowning figure, throwing a wedge of light into the bedroom, and pointing a .38 at the intruder.

Michael shot the guard, in the head, and red splashed the door and smeared into modern art as the man slid down, the guard’s gunshot hitting a stucco wall, making a terrible metallic reverberation; and then another guard was in the doorway and he was firing at Michael, who hit the deck and fired up at the shooter, catching him in the head as well, though the angle sent the spatter up even as the man dropped down, piling on top of his crony, doggy-style.

From the open doors onto the balcony, yelling from below — none of it discernible as words, but the gist easily understood — discouraged Michael from exiting the way he’d come, and he figured his best bet was the rental car out front, so he jumped over the two bodies stacked in the doorway, and as he did, caught dripping blood from the ceiling onto the side of his face. He didn’t bother wiping it off because it would only make his hands sticky.

He was heading briskly down the stairway when the front door opened and three more of them rushed in, eyes wild, guns in hand, and this time the words were easy to make out: “There’s the bastard! Get him!” “Shoot that fucker!”

In a flash he realized a tactical error: if he’d made his move before shift change, these men would recognize him and he might have talked his way out; but for now he was just a guy in a green T-shirt on the stairs with a pistol in his hand. And blood on his face...

He withdrew the other .45 and hopped onto the banister and went straddle-sliding down, shooting all the way, a regular two-gun kid, and the men streaming through the doorway fired up at him, but he was a moving target and they were slowed down by his gunfire, which was turning them from men into bodies, tripping over each other as they died.

When Michael got to the bottom of the stairs, four dead men were sprawled there, one or two of them propping the door open, and he could see the Packard out there, just waiting...

...but he could also see three more guards in their sport shirts and shoulder holsters running toward him with teeth bared and eyes wide.

He threw a few shots their way, catching one, and headed into and through the kitchen, corned beef and cabbage taunting him, and hurtled across the backyard, tossing away the spare .45, which was empty, and replacing it with the commandeered .38, from that first guard.

Up ahead was the swimming pool, but beyond that the dock, and a speedboat; that seemed his best, perhaps his only bet...

But as he approached the pool, men came streaming down the stairs of the cabana — four men, two of whom were the round-and square-faced cardplaying guards from Capone’s anteroom. They were in their underwear — these were some of the live-in guards — wearing T-shirts and boxer shorts... and handguns.

The cardplayer who hadn’t spoken this afternoon paused halfway down the steps. “ There! Get him!”

Michael took the offensive, running right at them, along the edge of the pool, firing up at them with a gun in either hand, and the round-faced guy, who’d been in the lead, caught a couple slugs in his head, which more or less exploded in a bone-and-blood red-and-white shower, and then tumbled down, flung onto the steps, and the other three stumbled over him, trying to shoot at Michael, who was doing a better job shooting at them.

Soon they were in an awkward pile of death at the bottom of the steps, as if they’d all gone after a fumbled football, the hard way.

Michael wheeled, looking to see if any more of them were coming up behind him, from the house.

Nobody. Not right now, anyway.

And he wheeled back to the pile of guards in their bloody underwear and went over and kicked at them, making sure they were dead; not so long ago, he’d checked the Japs in that clearing much the same way.

Behind him a voice said: “Nail the fucker!”

Two guys were running at him, across the backyard, firing wildly, barely more than shapes in the moonlight. The .38 was empty — he flung it to one side — and flopped onto the grass, withdrawing a spare magazine from his pocket and slamming it into the automatic.

Now they were close enough, and he took them down with head shots; one flopped face-forward onto the grass, dead too quick to be surprised, and the other caught one in the neck and his hands went to his throat and blood squirted through his fingers as he did a sad, short crazy dance before tumbling into the pool sideways, not making much of a splash, then floating there, blood streaming out, diluting itself in the pool water, the red looking black in the moonlight.