Макс Коллинз - Road to Purgatory

His voice casual, friendly, Nitti asked, “What’s your take on what Louie said?”

Feeling in over his head, Michael said frankly, “Mr. Nitti — I’m really not qualified to have an opinion.”

Nitti smiled; he patted Michael’s knee. “You wouldn’t be my number two if that was true. You know, Louie’s a good man, and smart, but he’s no genius. And he’s no leader.”

“I like Louie,” Michael said, pointlessly.

“I know you do, son. But some soldiers ain’t cut out to be generals. Now Ricca could be a general, all right; but he’s a ruthless son of a bitch, and the soldiers he surrounds himself with are kill-happy Young Turks. He’ll put us into narcotics, he’ll start the whores up after the war, he’ll squeeze the unions like a buncha pimples.”

Michael said nothing.

“Which puts me in a bad place. Because the terrible things this cocksucker is capable of forces me to consider doing the same kind of terrible things... Michael, are you with Louie?”

“I’m with you , Mr. Nitti.”

He patted the air with a palm. “I know. I know. But should we take Ricca out? You’re the one man I know who wouldn’t be afraid of the likes of Mad Sam and Mooney.”

Michael thought about it. “Maybe it’s like the war. Maybe when you got evil men like Hitler and Mussolini and Tojo, you got no choice.”

Nitti sighed. “And I shouldn’t sit around on my ass waitin’ for Pearl Harbor to happen.”

“No. You shouldn’t.”

Nitti looked older than his years — he wasn’t even sixty; he seemed small, as if he’d shrunk. “How I wish you weren’t so god-damned young. How I wish you were ready ... because, Michael, I don’t know if I have the strength, anymore.”

“Of course you do, Mr. Nitti.”

He shook his head. “I’m not even sure Louie hasn’t already talked to Ricca. That’s what that was about, you know, this afternoon — our little conversation.”

“I don’t follow...”

“It was about Louie warning me that if I didn’t go with him, he would go with Ricca... Michael... my boy. You’ve been a ray of light in this darkness.”

Michael didn’t know what to say.

“I’ve tried to hold on, since Anna’s death. You know, I had everything for a while, Michael — a family I loved, a prosperous business. And then when I lost my wife, it all crashed down. Nature of what we do, I had to try not to show it. But I had needs. Not... not what you might think. A woman is more than the physical; it’s support, friendship, loyalty. I thought Toni was the answer.”

Nitti meant his second wife.

“She seems like a great woman,” he went on. “She’s good with my kid — such a wonderful kid I have. See, I knew Toni before. I adored my Anna, she was everything to me; but I’m a man, and when I was younger, I had those other kinda needs. Toni’s been around our business for years — secretarial stuff. You heard of Eddie O’Hare?”

“Yeah...”

“Well, Toni was Eddie O’Hare’s secretary... before he got hit? She’s been a good friend to me, a lotta years, and she’s strong and smart and so I married her.”

“I like her,” Michael said honestly, though he’d only exchanged a handful of words with the pleasant, severely handsome woman, who did seem to dote on Nitti.

“But now... I wonder about her. She makes phone calls. Hangs up quick when she sees me comin’... No, no, she doesn’t have anyone else, that’s not it. But I start to wonder. Is my own wife in their camp? Did she marry me to keep an eye on me? Did Ricca and them put her up to it? ’Cause they thought I was slipping? After Anna died?”

“I’m sure your wife loves you. You’re just—”

“Imagining it?” He grinned like a skull. “So, Michael, am I going mad, like Al? Only without the dose?” Nitti laughed bitterly. “So much I’ve built up. So many mistakes, from the old days, I put behind us. If Ricca gets in, it’s a return to the old ways, but minus the tradition, the honor. Just the violence. The killing.”

“What should we do, Mr. Nitti?”

Nitti again patted Michael’s leg. “I’m not sure, son. If we had a few years, you’d be ready, to step in. But it’s too soon. Too damn soon. And if the feds do nail us... all us big boys go to prison for a long time.”

“Could that happen?”

“Looking at ten years, lawyers say. We can buy paroles in maybe three, four, five. If the feds do put us away, pray Ricca goes along for the ride. Accardo, he’s next in line, after the eight or nine of us facin’ this Hollywood thing. He’d take over, in the... what’s it called? Interim.”

“Mr. Accardo wasn’t involved with Hollywood?”

“No. Oh, in a minor way — he hit a guy named Tommy Maloy, at the outset. Projectionist union guy. But other than that, nothing. There’ll be no indictment for him.”

“You approve of Mr. Accardo.”

“He’s better than Ricca, and imagine where we’d be with Giancana in the top chair! If I’m in stir, get next to Accardo, Michael.”

Michael’s eyes tensed. “You really think it’ll come to that?”

“I think so, I do think so... But get this — Ricca’s saying I should take the rap. That the Hollywood business was all my doing.”

“That’s not true — is it?”

Nitti gestured dismissively. “I was the prime mover, but we were all in it. Biggest mistake was using a couple of lying untrustworthy bastards like Bioff and Browne as our reps; that’s why I sent Nicky Dean out to look over their shoulders.”

“And Dean hasn’t talked, like the other two.”

“No. Thing is, Ricca knows damn well I can’t shoulder the blame. It’s a fuckin’ conspiracy case! Of course, Ricca already knows that — blaming me is just part of him tryin’ to undermine me with the boys.”

Michael locked his gaze with his chief’s. “You want him dead, Mr. Nitti, he’s dead.”

Nitti looked at Michael with infinite fondness; patted his cheek like a favored child. “You’re a sweet boy, Michael. Sweet boy... We’ll talk tomorrow. I’ll sleep on it. You, too.”

Then Nitti slipped out of the vehicle and headed up the sidewalk to his cozy home and his beloved son and a wife he no longer trusted.

That evening Michael and Estelle had cocktails in a rear booth of the Seneca’s Bow ’n’ Arrow Room, where authentic Indian murals and a mirrored ceiling lent the cocktail lounge an atmosphere of spaciousness and warmth.

But about now the world seemed a cold one to Michael, and closing in. He found the irony of his situation bitterly unamusing — in attempting to take revenge upon a villain whom the fates had transformed into an impotent moron, Michael had managed only to set the stage for the downfall of the one man in the Outfit he truly respected.

Her hair styled short and dyed a reddish blonde, Estelle wore a business-like cream-color suit. She’d been spending time at the dress shop she co-owned, though Michael knew her primary business remained brothel-less madam. At Nitti’s behest, she’d developed a little black book of customers and call girls, and from her apartment made referrals.

Michael neither approved nor disapproved; such business had been part of Estelle’s life long before they’d met. As a gangster’s bodyguard, he was not inclined to judge.

Like Frank Nitti, Estelle had been hit hard by the intervening months; beautiful though she still was, she appeared at once haggard and puffy.

“Michael,” she said, in the midst of her third martini, “I think maybe I need to move in with you.”

“Well, that’s swell, baby.”

“I don’t mean to impose,” she said, shaking her head, “or push you into anything—”

“I’ve asked you to do it, half a dozen times, and you’ve said no — half a dozen times. Please do. Pack your bag.”