Макс Коллинз - Road to Purgatory

Finally she said, “Not enough, huh?”

“What isn’t?”

“Selling my soul to be with you. In books, that’s all it usually takes.”

Michael waved a waiter over to remove their plates. No dessert. Check, please.

Then he leaned toward her and said, “Do you remember, a long time ago, when I told you I had a brother who died?”

“Yes... of course. But I respected your privacy and—”

“I was adopted, Patsy Ann.”

“...I didn’t know.”

“We didn’t advertise it. If I tell you something, you can’t repeat it to anybody, not even Papa S., ’cause even he doesn’t know.”

Eyes tight with interest and concern, she bent forward. “Know what?”

“That my brother was killed. That my mother was killed. That my father was killed.”

Her eyes froze as she repeated the word, as if it were foreign: “Killed.”

“Murdered,” he said, offering a synonym the lit major might be familiar with. “By gangsters. My real father was one of them, and he tried to keep us separate from what he did. But it... spilled over. And my mother was killed, and my brother, and when my father went after the ones responsible, he was killed, too.”

Her eyes were huge and shimmering. “Oh, Michael... oh my God, Michael.”

He shrugged. “So now I’m in that life. Following in my father’s footsteps. But I’m not going to make the mistake he did. I’m not going to risk those I care for.”

“ Why , Michael?”

“Isn’t it self-evident?”

She shook her head, blonde locks bouncing, frustrated with him. “No. No, why are you... following in footsteps like those ?”

“That I can’t go into. I promise you the reasons were good ones. But things... they’ve gotten a little out of control.”

She reached across and took his hand again in both of hers. Her grip was surprisingly strong; so was her gaze. “Walk away from it, Mike. With me.”

How could he tell her he was thinking of doing that very thing with another lovely blonde... only, one who was — like him — damaged goods? He couldn’t risk such a life with a good person like Patsy Ann. Even if she would sell her soul for him.

Which was a nice gesture, but still he said, “No. You need to move on. I’ve gone down my own road, and you don’t want to even consider taking that turn.”

He paid the bill, grabbed her by the hand, and walked her out to the sidewalk. “Where’s your car?”

“On the street, near the Seneca.”

“Let’s go.”

Almost pulling her along, he escorted her to that same Buick in whose backseat they’d made love by a cornfield under fireworks in the starry sky, eons ago, last year.

She was angry now, and the question of whether to grant her a good-bye kiss — which might betray how difficult this was for him — became a moot point. In a nonpatriotic squeal of rubber, she was gone.

Out of his life for good this time?

For her sake, he hoped so.

Driving the navy 1940 Ford sedan he frequently ushered Nitti around in, Michael headed toward Estelle’s on West Addison. Because Estelle shared the place with her partner in the dress shop, Michael had seldom stayed over there, though he did have a key. Her apartment house was a large one in a battery of such buildings in a quiet, upper-middle-class neighborhood in the shadows of nearby lakeshore skyscrapers.

Today, however, West Addison was not quiet, the sidewalks on either side lined with gawkers, from proper-looking business men to women in curlers and housecoats. A small fire engine was barring passage, though clearly the handful of black-slickered firefighters — moving with no urgency whatsoever — were wrapping things up, literally and figuratively.

Michael parked by a hydrant — they didn’t seem to need the thing anymore — and walked quickly down to the fire truck, approaching the helmeted men.

“What’s happened?” he asked.

The firefighter, a young one, said, “You got here in a hurry.”

Immediately Michael understood that, thanks in part to his trenchcoat, he’d been mistaken for plainclothes police.

Manufacturing a half-smile, Michael said, “Hell, the station’s only two blocks away. Buddies are right behind me. What do we have?”

The firefighter gestured with a heavily gloved finger. “Third-floor flat...”

Estelle’s flat was on the third floor!

“...fire was contained to just the dining room, and we’ve got it out; ready for you guys to take over. One victim, and that’s why we called you.”

“Go on.”

Slickered shoulders shrugged and the helmet nodded toward the apartment building. “See for yourself. I may be new on the job, but that’s no fire fatality. That’s a goddamn murder.”

Hiding his alarm, Michael nodded thanks, and went quickly in. The building had multiple entrances, stairs leading up to landings where apartments faced each other across the stairwell. The acrid smell of smoke filled his nostrils as he took the stairs three at a time.

The door to her apartment was open, the smoke stench issuing its nasty invitation...

He braced himself and went in. The living room was in disarray, though the firemen could have caused that. He moved on through into the dining room, and there she was.

Bracing himself had not been enough. It couldn’t have been.

A chair had been positioned centrally; she lay nearby. The two adjacent walls were black and dripping wet, from the firefighter’s successful effort to stem the blaze. Much of the carpet was also black, a broken whiskey bottle on the floor apparently having fed the flames. The acrid stench was almost overpowering.

Wearing only a red silk robe, she lay on the plush scorched carpet, on her back, in a Christ-on-the-cross sprawl. The robe was charred from the waist down and her legs were burnt so badly that from the knees down, the limbs were cinders.

Michael knelt near the upper half of her, as if praying that this battered, burnt corpse was not the woman he’d shared his bed with the night before. But he knew such prayers were useless, because this clearly was not the roommate, rather Estelle herself — the welts and bruises and cuts could not disguise the fact, nor the ragged slash through one eye nor the punctures on her cheeks; not her bloodied broken nose nor the smashed pulp of once-lovely lips. Not the frightwig hair, clumps yanked or cut from her scalp. Not even the ear-to-ear slash on her throat, which was not what had killed her, too superficial, merely part of the torture that had preceded her murder.

Her head tilted to one side, eyes blankly open. Her hands were puffy with burns — had her torturers tossed the whiskey on her, set it aflame, and allowed her to try to put it out with her palms?

Forever till we’re dead , her voice whispered in his memory.

Somehow he got to his feet. He staggered into the next room, the kitchen, where he found signs of struggle even a one-eyed man couldn’t miss: a broken drinking glass on the floor; bloodsmeared cabinets; scarlet spattering the sink. On the floor, a bloodstained breadknife, a bloody rolling pin, and the blood-tipped ice pick that no doubt had made the punctures on those pretty cheeks. Also, a bloody blackjack, as if the kitchen hadn’t given up enough impromptu weapons.

On the maple table where he’d on several occasions shared breakfast with Estelle sat the unlikely meal of a flatiron, also bloodsmeared, obviously utilized as a battering instrument. Blood splatter dotted the table, chair, and floor underneath. A glass ashtray with a number of smashed cigarette butts signaled the time the process had taken, and one had lipstick on it. Estelle did not smoke. Had not.

On the stove, milk was simmering. On the counter nearby, three cups with powdered cocoa in the bottom. He recalled what she’d said on the phone: some old friends had dropped by . She had turned her back to these friends — who had been with her when she’d called Michael — and they had done this to her...