As they scrambled out, slipping on the watery edges, Tony said, “Go to a bedroom and get on the floor—stay low.…Phil, escort them, then watch the front.”
Phil, a stocky, curly-headed kid, nodded and—gun in hand—herded the girls inside through the glass patio doors, saying, “Ladies, ladies, don’t trip over yourselves, gonna be fine.…”
Another gunshot rang in the night, and another.
Then a terrible silence.
Four of his men dead, Tony figured—the single shots followed by no victory cry from either of his boys, well, that told the tale. Whoever this was was inside the gate, now.…
Nothing left but Phil indoors, and Jimmy T. out there with them.
“Goddamnit, Tony!” Horshak said, waving his hands like a minstrel singer. “We have to do something!”
Tony whirled and thumped the lawyer’s yellow sport shirt with a thick finger, right on the little alligator. “You just stay close, Sid. Got it?”
Skinny Jimmy T. was hopping around like a demented jack rabbit, revolver in hand, looking behind him and to every side, throwing long shadows on the floodlit patio.
“Jimmy,” Tony called softly, “trouble will either come around the house, left or right, or through it, out these patio doors—or if it’s more than one guy, both; maybe all three. So get yourself some cover, watch the kitchen, and I got the rest.”
Jimmy T. nodded, and upended a glass table and used it for cover. Yeah, Tony thought, real brains these kids—hide behind glass.
A wooden picnic table near his barbecue pit, close to the wall, Tony turned over, then yanked the attorney back behind it, giving himself a view of the house where the intruder or intruders could come around either side. He also had a decent angle on the patio doors; the pool was off to the left, shimmering with reflected light, and to the right Jimmy crouched like a praying mantis behind his glass-and-steel table. Patio doors off the kitchen were between those two points.
“We need to get in the house,” the lawyer advised hurriedly. “We should call the cops, or—”
“Shut up, Sid.”
“This isn’t my thing, Tony! It’s not my thing!”
Tony slapped the lawyer. “Shut the fuck up.”
The floodlights went out; darkness descended like sudden night.
As his eyes adjusted, Tony thanked God for having the good sense to invent moonlight; then his nostrils twitched at a familiar odor—cowering beside him behind the overturned picnic table, the lawyer had pissed himself.
A sliding patio door opened quickly, and someone came lurching out.
Jimmy T. fired once, twice, three times, and pudgy, curly-haired Phil—shot to shit—stumbled sideways and fell into the pool, making a modest splash; Phil floated face down, blood trails streaming on the water’s moonlight-glimmering surface.
“Fuck!” Jimmy T. said, all knees and elbows hunkering behind the glass table again, not seeing a crouching figure—which Tony could barely make out—deeper inside the kitchen, aiming a rifle.
Tony called out, “Jim—”
But it was too little, too late.
Three sharp cracks, close enough to the pool to cause some pinging echoes, shattered the glass table, and Jimmy T. fell back, table glass shards raining on him, with a shot in the forehead and two chest wounds, any one of which could have killed him.
From the kitchen came a voice, “We need to talk, Mr. Accardo!”
Tony, hunkered down behind the picnic table with the wild-eyed attorney, frowned in thought. “…Michael?”
“Yes, it’s Michael Satariano, Mr. Accardo. I don’t have an appointment. Can you work me in?”
The lawyer whispered, “Is he crazy?”
“Unfortunately,” Tony said, “no.…That rifle can shoot right through this table, Sid. Fucker can kill us anytime he likes.”
Satariano called out, “You have your attorney with you, Mr. Accardo. That’s good. I’d like Mr. Horshak to sit in on our meeting.”
Tony began to rise, and the lawyer clutched the gangster’s terrycloth sleeve and sputtered, “Are you crazy? You want him to shoot you, too?”
“I told you, Sid,” Tony said, jerking his sleeve from Horshak’s grasp, “we’re dead anytime he chooses.”
Satariano called out again, “Come out from behind the table, set it upright, and we’ll sit! And talk!”
Tony yelled, “You want me to throw my gun out, Michael?”
“I don’t really care, Mr. Accardo. Fuck with me and you’re as dead as your men.”
“As a show of good faith, I’m gonna toss it out! Mr. Horshak isn’t armed, but we’ll both stand with our hands up—agreeable, Mike?”
“Cool with me.”
The attorney was crying. “I’m not, I’m not, I’m not.…”
“Get your shit together, you gutless prick,” Tony snarled. “Stand up and stick your hands in the air, like a fuckin’ stagecoach robbery, or I’ll shoot you myself.”
Horshak swallowed. Nodded. Stood, with hands high.
Tony rose—his knees hurt him a little; he was in decent shape, but no spring chicken after all—and tossed the .38 onto the grass (it did not discharge) and raised his hands.
Michael Satariano stood, his silhouette in the kitchen clearly visible. Then he moved through the open doorway onto the patio—he wore black trousers, a black long-sleeve T-shirt, and a rifle slung on a strap over his shoulder, a .45 in his hand, trained on them.
Satariano walked over to Jimmy T.’s skeletal corpse behind and partially under the shot-up glass table, glanced at the body and its redundant death wounds, and didn’t bother to stop. His long shadow in the moonlight reached the gangster and lawyer well before he did.
“Gentlemen,” Satariano said, “put that table on its feet, and let’s have a talk.”
The two men did their guest’s bidding.
Satariano sat, putting the brick wall behind him, Tony—seated directly across from the intruder—and the attorney both with their backs to the house. The moonlight left Satariano mostly in shadow and washed Tony and Horshak in pale white. Of course, Horshak had already turned pale white.…
“Obviously,” Satariano said, putting his hand with the .45 in it casually on the picnic-table top, “I’m not going to bother those girls.”
“They may call the police,” Tony said helpfully. “There’s a phone in there.”
“No, I cut the phone lines before I dropped by.”
Staying out of the conversation, the lawyer just sat with his hands folded prayerfully and trembled no worse than if a fit were coming on.
Tony asked, “You…you used that old rifle on Dave and Lou?”
“If that’s their names,” Satariano said with a nod. “I was in a tamarisk tree on the golf course ’cross the way. I was a sniper during the war, or didn’t you know that, Mr. Accardo?”
Tony’s eyes tightened. “And you killed all of my men. Six men—just so we could have a meeting?”
“So we could have it on my terms, yes.”
Satariano, though a man in his early fifties, had a bland babyish face that Tony found unsettling.
The intruder was saying, “I don’t relish killing, Mr. Accardo, but those men were soldiers. I killed fifty enemy soldiers one afternoon, in the Philippines. I’m prepared to do what I have to do tonight, or any night.”
“But you’re not here to kill me.”
A cold tiny smile formed in Satariano’s otherwise blank face. “That’s right. I just needed to make a point.”
“A point. Six men dead.”
Satariano shrugged. “It’s something I learned from my father.”
Tony barked a laugh. “Your father! Your old man tossed pizza pie in DeKalb, Illinois.”
“No,” Satariano said matter-of-factly. “That’s where you’re wrong, Mr. Accardo. I was adopted. My real father was named Michael O’Sullivan.”
Tony’s eyes tightened. “What was that?”
“My real name, Mr. Accardo, is Michael O’Sullivan, Jr.�
��
“…Angel of Death Michael O’Sullivan?”
“Was my father, yes.”
Tony Accardo had not truly been scared in many years, hardly ever in his life, in fact—he was a man of strength who usually held the upper hand. But he remembered a day in 1931 at the Lexington Hotel when he had been a young punk bodyguard and one of a handful of Capone soldiers to survive an assault by the Angel of Death—something like twenty-five men had died, scattered on several floors, in elevators, on stairways, in the lobby.
“And all these years,” Tony said, “nobody knew…?”
“Paul Ricca did,” Satariano said.
“Paul was my best friend. He would’ve told me.”
Satariano shook his head. “I don’t think so. He and I were close—closer frankly than you and I ever got. Mr. Ricca used me to remove Frank Nitti.”
Finally the lawyer spoke. “Frank Nitti committed suicide!”
Turning to Horshak, Satariano flashed a smile as awful as it was brief. “That’s the story, isn’t it?” Then he returned his gaze to Tony. “But Frank Nitti also betrayed my father. The O’Sullivans have a sort of family trait, you see—we settle scores.”
All of it rushed through Accardo’s brain: the loyal Looney family enforcer whose wife and youngest son were viciously murdered by Connor Looney, and when Old Man John Looney stood by his son, the Outfit had backed them up—putting business ahead of loyalty. And the Angel of Death and his son, who’d been all of eleven or twelve, traveled the countryside, robbing banks of mob deposits and leaving a trail of dead Outfit guys behind them like bloody breadcrumbs.
That was who was sitting across from him: the killer’s kid who had grown up into some kind of psycho Audie Murphy war hero. For decades Michael Satariano had been a front man, a nonviolent liaison with the straight world, because of his Medal of Honor celebrity; but Mooney Fucking Giancana had to go and wake up the Michael O’Sullivan, Jr., slumbering inside that soft-spoken casino manager.…
Great. Fucking great.
“Why tell me this?” Tony asked. “I can better understand you just shooting me—I don’t deny letting Giancana sic Mad Sam’s crew on you.”
Satariano’s shrug was barely perceptible. “Giancana lied to you. You thought I’d taken Mad Sam out.”
“But you didn’t.”
“No. Listen, I swam in these waters for a lotta years of my own free will; I understand the kind of barracudas I’m liable to run into. Something bad happens to me, such is the life I chose. However…if somebody touches a hair on my daughter, Anna’s, head, I’ll stuff the guy’s cock and balls in his mouth and then kill him.”
“Fair enough,” Tony said with a knowing nod. Then he turned to the lawyer, who seemed about to throw up, and said, “Don’t. You smell rank enough already, Sid.”
“And let me explain something else,” Satariano said. “Something…related.”
“Please,” Tony said.
“Mr. Accardo, no matter what happens—even if you personally sanction the killing of my entire family, including Anna, who is all I have left in this life—I still would not harm your family. Do you understand what I’m saying?”
Tony said, “I think I do.”
“You and me, Mr. Accardo, we’re bad men. We’re killers. But we are not monsters.” Satariano shook his head, his mouth twitching in something that was not exactly a smile. “Do you even know?”
“Know what, Michael?”
“Know that Giancana sent three men into my house—the one in Arizona, where the feds put us to be safe? Sent them in dressed like Charlie Manson and they murdered my wife. They butchered my wife, Mr. Accardo.”
Tony swallowed slowly. “I…Michael, I didn’t know. I’m sorry, Michael…truly sorry. The feds must’ve put a lid on it, and Giancana sure as hell didn’t come to me for the okay.” The gangster leaned forward. “You have to know I wouldn’t sanction that.”
“That’s why you’re not dead, Mr. Accardo.” Satariano leaned forward, too, turning the snout of the .45 toward the ganglord. “But you do understand that I could have killed you? And that I may be one man, but I won’t be easy for your people to kill; I’m my father’s son, and if they try and fail, I won’t have any trouble repeating tonight’s little lesson…with the slight difference that you’ll be among the dead in the sum total.”
Tony lifted his palms up, as if in provisional surrender. “I do understand. But I’m not sure I understand why you wanted to talk to me.”
Satariano sighed. “Mr. Accardo, I owe the government nothing. They promised me safety for my family and they did not deliver. So all they have from me is a couple of weeks of interviews. Nothing they can use in court. I’m not saying what I told them won’t help them; but I am saying…I am pledging you, giving my word as a man…as a made man…that I will not testify for those people.”
“I’m glad to hear that, Michael.”
“Do you believe me?”
“Yeah. Yeah, I do.”
“Good.…I’m going to kill Sam Giancana. Do you have a problem with that?”
Tony smiled. “None at all. Help yourself. We owe you that one.”
Satariano studied the gangster, then said, “I have an idea I might be helping you, taking Mooney out.”
Tony shrugged. “I won’t lie to you. You would be doing us a favor, yes.”
A nod. Then: “When this is over, Mr. Accardo, I intend to disappear.”
“Good idea.”
“I don’t need money. I’m just going to take my daughter and drop off the edge of the earth.”
“Which is what I would do, your shoes.”
Satariano leaned forward again. “Mr. Accardo, you’ll be pressured to do something about me. You may feel, as Al Capone felt, as Frank Nitti felt about my father, that letting me live would cause you to lose face.”
“Let me worry about that, Michael.”
“No, I prefer to do my own worrying.”
Tony thought for a moment. “You’ll settle for my word, son?”
“I will, sir.”
“Then you got it.”
Satariano sucked in a breath, cocked his head. “Anything you can do, clear a path for me, with Giancana would be helpful. Starting with…where is the bastard?”
Tony chuckled. “Right at the first place you’d look: that crummy house of his in Oak Park.”
Satariano’s eyes tightened. “With the steel door in the basement?”
“Yeah. But maybe that could be unlocked, by accident; Sam goes out to tend his garden and sometimes forgets to lock up proper, when he comes back in.”
A single humorless laugh. “I can see how that could happen, Mr. Accardo.”
Now Tony’s head cocked. “Michael, I could give you a phone number…so we can stay in touch.”
“Why don’t you do that, Mr. Accardo?”
“Want me to write it down?”
“Just tell me.”
Tony did.
Then Tony Accardo stuck his hand out.
And Michael O’Sullivan, Jr., shook it.
Finally the slender figure with the World War II rifle slung over his shoulder, and the World War I automatic in his fist, trotted off the patio, heading around the side of the house, going for the gate.
Next to Tony, the attorney slumped. He was breathing hard, almost sobbing.
“You all right, Sid?”
“Angel…Angel of fucking Death? Who’s gonna show up next? Dillinger’s kid? Bonnie and Clyde’s niece? Fuck me!”
Tony put a hand on the lawyer’s shoulder. “Everything will be fine, Sid. Why don’t you go in the house and change your pants?”
The attorney, embarrassed suddenly, nodded, and almost ran inside, stealing a shuddery glance at the skinny corpse of Jimmy T.
And Tony Accardo, in his terrycloth robe, sat in the dark in the presence of the corpses of two of his men. He found a cigar and a lighter in his robe pocket and lighted up; then he sat and smoked, rocking just a little, eyes narrow, thinking about
the bargain he’d made, and the word he’d given.
ELEVEN
Palm Springs had an unofficial ban on the word “motel”—you could find lodges, inns, villas, manors, and even the occasional “guest ranch.” But the Solona Court on the outskirts of the swanky resort town consisted of a dozen modest cabins whose sole creature comfort was television with rabbit ears. With the exception of the latter, this dreary little mission-style motel with its framed bullfighter litho, pale plaster walls, and featureless furnishings could have been one of a dozen such fleabags where Michael and his father stayed in 1931, on their six-month road trip to Perdition, Kansas.
In a courtyard illuminated only by the moon and the green-and-red of motel neon, Michael left the Garand rifle in the trunk of the Lincoln, but took the .45 Colt automatic with him, as he slipped inside Room 12, the cabin farthest from the highway.
He did not hit the light switch—Anna was sleeping in one of the twin beds—but the bathroom light had been left on, the door ajar. A small air conditioner chugged, making no more noise than a Volkswagen with a faulty muffler; but the girl—under the sheets in her pink nightshirt, lost in a deep sedative-aided slumber—was past noticing or caring.
In addition to throwing the bolt and the latch, Michael wedged the back of a chair under the knob. On the nightstand between the twin beds he set the .45 next to the .38 Smith & Wesson already there, and picked up an envelope propped against the lamp.
The letter, labeled anna, he tucked away—for now—in his Samsonite.
In the bathroom he pissed and brushed his teeth and lifted a few handfuls of water to his face. Back at his bed, he slipped out of his crepe-sole shoes, but left on the rest of his clothing—long-sleeve T-shirt and black jeans and black socks—then lay on top of the covers, staring at the ceiling, hands locked behind his head, elbows winged out.
He would take a chance on Accardo.
The man some called Big Tuna, others called Joe Batters, was the last of the Capone crowd—the surviving Outfit leader with any sense of Old World decency. Michael, in his brief mid-’40s tour of duty as Accardo’s lieutenant, had never really bonded with the ganglord—not as he had with Nitti and Ricca, anyway—but he had nonetheless witnessed a boss who must have been like the old turn-of-the-century Mafia dons, fair and never hasty to act, approachable, willing to help a “family” member.
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