Макс Коллинз - Road to Purgatory

She played with a swizzle stick in the now empty martini glass. “I won’t lie to you, Mike. It’s not about us.”

“Well... usually, when a gal moves in with a fella, it is about them. Us.”

She swallowed; glanced around anxiously. The cocktail lounge did a good business, but their booth was private enough. Paranoia, it seemed, was going around like flu.

“Michael,” she said, leaning halfway across the table, “I’m afraid. I’m really afraid.”

This was hardly stop-the-presses stuff; she’d been frightened for months.

“So move in with me,” he said, touching her face, “and feel more secure.”

“I just don’t think it’s fair to you if... I don’t admit that to you. Admit that I’m moving in because I think you can protect me. Admit that here in the hotel I don’t figure anybody’d dare... you know... It’s sort of their home turf, right?”

“Now I’m not following you.”

She shook her head, arcs of hair swinging like twin scythes. “Oh, Michael... how can you be you, and still be so naive? These indictments are about to come down. Everybody knows that. And the feds are pressing Nicky. Pressing hard .”

Feeling a twinge of jealousy, Michael said, “You’re in touch with the guy? I thought that was over.”

“It is over. But we’re in touch, yeah. Through lawyers... Michael, there’s a rumor on the street.”

“What rumor?”

Her lower lip trembled, her eyes brimmed. “That I’m going to be made an example. That something... bad ’ll happen to me, to send Nicky a message.”

He reached across and held her ice-cold hand. “I won’t let that happen, baby. You move in with me. Right away.”

She nodded, and nodded some more. “Thank you, Michael. Thank you.”

In his penthouse, Michael and Estelle made love with an urgent intensity driven by unspoken-of emotions that left them both spent; nonetheless, he fell prey to the insomnia again, which had never before been the case on nights when she’d stayed with him.

He slipped from her slumbering grasp and out of bed and, in his boxers, stepped into slippers, tossed a dressing robe around himself, and walked out into the living room. He slid open the glass door and went out onto the balcony. The night was crisp but not cold. Leaning against the rail, he studied the skyline, its luminescent geometry again reminding him of a Hollywood backdrop.

“What are you doing out here?” Estelle said from behind him. “You wanna freeze to death, silly?”

He half-turned to see her at the door, just inside — shivering in her chemise, breasts perked by the chill.

“It’s not that cold. Throw something around yourself, and join me.”

Soon, a yellow-and-red blanket wrapped around her Indian-style, she was snuggling against him, looking out at the cityscape. “It just doesn’t look real, does it?”

Taking it all in, he nodded. “Like something you’d see out a window in a Fred and Ginger musical.”

But her eyes had shifted from the skyscrapers to Michael. “You like the movies, don’t you?”

“Yes.”

“Always reading books, too. Don’t you like real life?”

“No.”

“Maybe you’d like it if... you could start over.”

He turned to her with a curious frown.

She was gazing up at him with an oddly tentative expression. “If you could run off with me... would you?”

“Well... sure.”

“I’m not kidding, Michael.”

He thought for a moment. “I don’t think I am, either.”

“What if I told you... that I have some money.”

“I’m sure you do.”

A tiny crinkly smile appeared on the doll-like face. “No. I mean... a lot of money.”

“How much is a lot?”

“Oh — a quarter of a million dollars, a lot.”

His eyebrows climbed. “You’re not serious...?”

She hugged the blanket to herself, and her eyes drifted across the view. “You mean you haven’t heard the rumors? How I salted away a couple million from the movie scams, for Nicky and me to make a new life, when he gets out?”

“...Maybe I have.”

“Well, like most rumors... it’s exaggerated. There may be as much as a million missing, from union treasuries, but most of it went to those two goons, Bioff and Browne.”

“But some went to you? And your friend Nicky?”

Now her eyes returned to him. “...Suppose it had. Would you come?”

He grinned a little. “I thought I just did.”

“Not just tonight, stupe. Every night. Forever till we’re dead.”

Trying to make it real, he managed, “Wouldn’t they... chase us?”

“They wouldn’t know where to look. Do you know how well you can live on that much money in Mexico? Or certain South American countries? Very good.”

“We’d just leave. Disappear.”

“That’s right. You should be contemplating taking a powder, anyway.”

“Why?”

“Your angel, your sponsor, Frank Nitti?... Hell, he’s mine, too... He’s on his last legs, Michael. He’s on the way out. And where will that leave his fair-haired boy?”

“Don’t count Frank Nitti out just yet.”

She sneered and huddled within the blanket. “Fuck Frank Nitti. And fuck Nicky Dean.”

“Estelle...”

“Matter of fact,” she said, but in a different voice, “fuck me,” and she dragged him and the blanket back inside and pulled him down on the floor, on top of her, and they did it again, slowly but with that same urgency, the balcony door open, the coolness of the night licking at the heat they made.

“Move me in here tomorrow,” she said, afterward, clutching his bare back desperately. “And we’ll plan it.”

“Okay,” he said.

In his ear she said, “Not a word to a soul about the money! Not a word. To a soul.”

“Okay.”

He carried her like a new bride over the bedroom threshold and deposited her gently on the covers. Soon she was snuggling up under his arm, her face against his hairless chest. Both were quickly asleep, legs tangled.

But he dreamed of Bataan, of that jungle clearing, only this time he was blasting away with his tommy gun at faceless Ricca thugs .

Who, unlike the Japs, refused to fall.

The next morning Campagna phoned Michael saying Mr. Nitti was feeling sick and staying home — though he’d remain on call, this effectively gave Michael the day off.

Estelle, as was her habit, had slipped out in the early morning hours. Alone in the penthouse, showered and shaved but in T-shirt and boxers, Michael dialed his console radio to the latest popular tunes; he did not turn up it loud, just providing himself with a little low-key company by way of outfits like Benny Goodman and Harry James and singers like Peggy Lee and that new kid, Sinatra. He fixed himself breakfast — scrambled eggs, toast, orange juice — and then, at the same table, spent close to an hour cleaning and fussing over the .45 Colt automatic that had belonged to Michael O’Sullivan, Sr.

The gun was just about the only possession of his late father’s that Michael owned; just that, and a few family photos he and his father carried with them, long ago, on the road to Perdition (and these were in his room at home, that is, DeKalb). He treated the weapon with near reverence, rubbing it lightly with an oil-saturated rag, then drying it with another rag, a fresh one. The bore he purified with a cleaner-saturated patch followed by a dry patch. With a stiff bristly brush he dusted out all the crevices.

When he was finished, he clicked a fresh magazine in and slipped the .45 into the oil-rubbed shoulder holster, currently draped over a kitchenette chair.

Then he returned to the book he was reading, a reprint edition of For Whom the Bell Tolls , which he was enjoying, though he was pretty sure it wasn’t going to end well for the hero. Propped up with two pillows, he was just starting the last chapter when the bedstand phone rang.