Макс Коллинз - Road to Purgatory

“Duck your head,” Louie said, and Michael did, and was gently pushed inside the vehicle.

Someone climbed in beside him — again, probably Campagna. The door shut. He heard the other men get in, in front, and slam their doors. Then they were moving.

He sat quietly, still as a statue; no one said anything. The sounds were of the limo’s engine, other traffic (not heavy), and birds over the bay. His senses were returning to him, and some of his fatalistic lethargy faded and his blood seemed to start to flow again, an urge for survival rekindling.

But blindfolded in the presence of three armed gangsters, Michael had limited options. Still, his hands and ankles weren’t bound. He could rip the blindfold off his eyes, throw a punch into Campagna’s puss, and get to the door and open it and roll out, before either man in the front seat could do a damn thing. The vehicle was not going fast — twenty-five, thirty tops — and unless he pitched himself out into the path of an oncoming car, then he could—

And the limo came to a stop.

The two front doors opened, followed by the sound of shoes crunching on gravel. The back car door to Michael’s left opened, and the man sitting next to him (Campagna?) slid out. A hand settled on Michael’s arm and guided him out of the car, then steered him across a few feet of gravel and in through a door. Faintly, he detected cooking smells; warm in here, but not hot. Comfortable...

...except for the part where he was blindfolded in the company of three Outfit hoods.

He was escorted a few more feet, and Campagna’s voice, next to him, said, “We’re going in a room. You first.”

Michael brushed a doorjamb as he went through. He stopped, then the hand was on his arm again and he was guided across the room. Not much light was leeching in around the edges of the blindfold, so the room apparently was dim. He heard footsteps behind him, indicating the two thugs had followed, and the door closed.

“There’s a chair here,” Campagna said, and positioned Michael.

“Sit down, Michael,” a familiar baritone voice said.

Michael obeyed.

He felt hands at the back of his neck and the blindfold slipped away, filling Michael’s vision with a man seated at a small square white cloth-covered table opposite.

The man was Frank Nitti, also attired in black.

The room was fairly large, but Nitti sat with his back to the wall; of half a dozen overhead light fixtures, only the one directly above the Outfit kingpin was on, creating a spotlight effect. A few framed paintings — landscapes... Sicilian landscapes? — hung here and there around the room, but otherwise it contained nothing but two chairs and the small table that separated Michael from the man who had been his benefactor in the Outfit, the man who had trusted Michael and who Michael had betrayed.

On the table were a .38 and a black-handled dagger with a crooked and obviously sharply honed blade. Next to them was a white piece of paper.

Frank Nitti’s face was pale and grave. “Michael Satariano,” he said. He gestured to the two weapons on the table. “These represent that you live by the gun and the knife, and that you die by the gun and the knife.”

So that was what the white sheet of paper was for: a suicide note! Well, he wouldn’t write it.

They would have to kill him, Michael thought. He would not commit suicide for them; he was still enough of a Catholic for that to repel. Taking your own life meant hell, for sure... as if that mattered now, all the men he’d killed.

But then Nitti flipped over the piece of paper and revealed it to be a color print of the Virgin Mary, a rather florid painting right out of Sunday school.

Michael frowned, not understanding.

Nitti, solemnly, asked, “Which hand do you shoot with?”

Like a kid in class, Michael raised his right hand.

Nitti nodded, his eyes looking past Michael, and Campagna leaned in, took Michael’s right forefinger and pricked the tip with a needle.

Startled, Michael managed not to rise up out of the chair as Campagna dribbled drops of O’Sullivan blood onto the Virgin Mary, little droplets of red spattering her.

Then Campagna withdrew to his position behind Michael, as Nitti, standing now, lifted by one corner the blood-dotted picture. With his other hand, Nitti deftly used a Zippo lighter, thumbing it to flame, touching the sheet’s opposite corner, and fire ate its way up the Virgin Mary, consuming her, unimpeded by the few beads of Michael’s blood.

Nitti held onto the burning paper until the last minute, then dropped it onto the table, where it curled in ashy remains.

Wondering if he’d gone mad, thinking he was still in that darkened room, having a particularly demented dream, Michael watched as Nitti pricked his forefinger and extended its blood-dripping tip across to Michael...

...who instinctively extended his hand and touched his own pricked fingertip to Nitti’s.

The two fingertips withdrew, and Nitti said, “Blood makes us family. But we will burn like that image if we betray each other. Say yes, Michael.”

“Yes.”

“Repeat what I say. I pledge my honor to be faithful to the Mafia like the Mafia is faithful to me.”

“I... I pledge my honor to be faithful to the Mafia like the Mafia is faithful to me.”

“As this saint and these drops of my blood are burned, so will I give my blood for my new family.”

“As this saint and these drops of my blood are burned, so will I give my blood for my new family.”

Nitti nodded. “You will answer these questions with ‘yes.’ Will you offer reciprocal aid in the case of any need from your new family?”

“Yes.”

“Will you pay absolute obedience to your capo ... to me, Michael.”

“Yes, Mr. Nitti.”

“Do you accept that an offense against one is an offense against all?”

“Yes.”

“Do you understand that you must never reveal names or secrets to anyone outside the family?”

“Yes.”

“Do you accept that this thing of ours comes before all else — blood-family, religion, country?”

“Yes.”

“Good, Michael. Understand that to betray the Outfit means death without trial. I am your capo . Louie is your goombah , your godfather. Is all of that understood?”

“Yes, Mr. Nitti.”

Nitti came from around the table and stood before Michael and said, “Get on your feet, Michael Satariano. You are now a made man.”

Michael rose, and Nitti kissed him on either cheek.

Was this the fabled kiss of death? Michael wondered.

But when Nitti drew away, the ganglord was beaming. And tears glistened.

“Welcome, Michael. Welcome, my son.”

And then Nitti embraced Michael.

Awkwardly, Michael returned the embrace.

The three men in black, standing behind the chair where Michael had sat facing the man he had mistaken for his judge/jury/executioner, began to applaud, Campagna saying, “Hey, Mike, you did it, kid! You did it!”

Then Frank Nitti took Michael by the arm and walked him from what the newest made man in the Chicago Outfit now realized was a banquet room, into the dining room of a traditional red-and-white-tablecloth Italian restaurant, the sort of cozy joint Papa Satariano ran back in DeKalb.

His arm around Michael, Nitti ushered him to a corner table, set up just for two, in a section of the dimly lighted restaurant otherwise closed off. Another table nearby was reserved for Campagna and the two bodyguards; but this table was strictly for the boss and his guest of honor.

As they drank Chianti — beginning with a toast to Michael’s new life, sealed with a clink of glasses — Nitti effusively answered all of Michael’s unasked questions.

“For someone who’s been with us so short a time,” Nitti said, “it’s a rare honor, becomin’ a made man. But the service you done the Outfit... what you did for me, Michael... well, let’s just say this is as close to us giving you a Medal of Honor as we can get.”