Road to Paradise

by Max Allan Collins

  “Only it wasn’t me,” Shore said quietly, and his eyes were on Hughes, blazing.

  “I don’t know whether Marshal Hughes was acting out of patriotism,” Michael said, “helping out the government’s intel boys, or if an investigation into his finances will reveal recent windfalls. Of course, knowing the CIA, we might be talking Swiss accounts. Even so, an upswing in Don’s lifestyle might be apparent if—”

  Hughes leaned toward Shore and said, words tumbling, “Come on, Harry, you can’t believe this fractured fairy tale, come on, man! How long have we worked together?”

  Michael said to Shore, “Harry, we can wrap this up, quick… with a simple question about Don, here—where does Marshal Hughes work out of?”

  “You know the answer to that, Michael,” Shore said. “Washington, DC. We both do.”

  Michael’s gaze moved back to Hughes, whose brow was beaded with sweat, though the sanctuary was cool. “Don, maybe I’m wrong about you.”

  “I’m telling you, Satariano, you are wrong!”

  “It’s O’Sullivan. Just answer one question. If you work out of DC, why were you in Tucson the night my wife was murdered? Why were you at the airport, waiting for me?”

  The nine-millimeter Browning was in Hughes’s hand—snatched off his belt holster—in less than a second.

  “Don’t bother, Don,” Michael said. “You’re already covered.”

  And Michael nodded behind and up, to the balcony where Anna pointed the Garand rifle right at the marshal.

  “You may remember from the night you helped us move, Don,” Michael said, “all those first-place ribbons from the Tahoe Gun Club…?”

  The girl held the gun with confidence, sighting down the barrel.

  “And if you’re thinking,” Michael said, “she’s just a kid…well, you’re right. A kid whose mother you killed. And the Grace boy? Her prom date? They got married in Vegas, the night before your Outfit trash murdered him.”

  Nostrils flaring, cords standing out in his neck, Hughes jumped to his feet, grabbed Shore with his free hand, and thrust the plump, shorter fed in front of him as a shield, nine mil’s nose in Shore’s neck. The marshal’s eyes were moving very fast. Michael could almost read the man’s thoughts: if everyone died here but him, he could find a story, he could find a story the world would buy.…

  Michael said evenly, “Don, just put the gun down. I’m sure your buddy Harry, here, will have a nice warm spot in WITSEC for you…because I’d rather you lived…really, truly. I’d rather you testified and brought down the faceless ‘company’ assholes whose lackey you are. The people really responsible for Pat’s death, cold-blooded CIA renegades in bed with gangsters, self-serving traitors who need to be exposed.”

  “You don’t know the kind of people you’re dealing with,” Hughes said, with hollow laughter; he was trembling, the nine mil’s snout stuffed deep in the fleshy folds of the other fed’s neck. “Petty little dago dog shit like you, what do you know?…Those boys are the big leagues, and you’re outa yours, you stupid son of a bitch.…”

  “Anna!” Michael said. “I warned you, honey, it might come to this. Sweetheart—got to be a head shot. You can do it. It’ll shut off his motor skills like a light switch.”

  “Okay, Daddy,” she called down, and it echoed.

  Past a terrified Shore, Hughes looked up with a little fear but mostly arrogance at the teenage girl pointing the rifle at him from the higher of two rear balconies. “You really think I believe—”

  The shot sounded like a thunderclap.

  Director Shore’s eyes and mouth were open wide, as just behind the human shield, Marshal Don Hughes froze for a particle of a moment, just long enough for Michael to see the blankness in the eyes in a skull cracked like an egg by the bullet that had pierced it between, and just above, the sky-blue eyes.

  Then Hughes dropped out of sight between pews, hitting the floor noisily, like a bag of doorknobs, punctuated by his nine mil clunking to the wooden floor, leaving a stunned Shore just standing there, saved in church.

  Michael got to his feet. “You’re going to have to deal with the reverend, Harry—Anna and I will be in touch.”

  Shore’s eyes pleaded as he reached out and said, “Michael!”

  The director was getting a crash course in the violent realities behind the abstraction of his program.

  “You’ll be fine, Harry. But I can’t be here when the cops come. You’ve cleaned up crime scenes before. Cheer up—didn’t we repair your security breach?”

  And Michael slipped out of the sanctuary, where the sunlight was fading, creating an indoor dusk. An ashen Anna was coming down the stairs in a tank top and jeans with the rifle in her hands, clearly shaken.

  “I killed him, Daddy,” she said.

  He took the Garand from her, and wrapped it in his sport coat (they’d brought the rifle in, field-stripped in a gym bag, and he’d assembled it for her in the balcony).

  “Only because you had to, sweetheart. Only because you had to.”

  Not revenge, he thought. Justice.

  Weapon tucked under one arm, he slipped the other around her, and they moved quickly down the long corridor.

  Her face was white. “I…I feel weird.”

  “Can you hold it in?”

  She nodded.

  “Good girl,” he said, and they were to the car, parked right along the Temple on Kenilworth, before she puked.

  FOURTEEN

  In their suite at the Oak Arms, Michael and Anna sat at the small ’50s-era Formica table in the kitchenette and, over a Coke and a Tab, talked. The night was sultry, humid with rain that desperately wanted to happen, the window open, two layers of drapes fluttering—the bedroom had an air conditioner, which was on and chugging mightily, but its efforts never made their way into the tiny living room/kitchenette.

  “You’re going to be okay,” he told her gently.

  She sat slumped, staring at the gray speckles of the tabletop. “I know I am. But I feel…guilty.…”

  “That’s to be expected.”

  “…About not t feeling guilty.” She looked up at him. “I could hear everything in that church, Daddy. I heard what you said to them about that…that Giancana.…”

  “I had to lie, sugar. We need Director Shore and what he can do for us through WITSEC. My only other option is to go back to work for the Outfit.”

  Her brow tightened. “They’d take you back?”

  He nodded. “I did a big favor for Tony Accardo, removing Mooney Giancana. And Accardo knows we were victims in this thing, from the start. He’s like Frank Nitti—best man in a bad world.” He shook his head. “But, honey, that’s not what I want for us.”

  “You did kill that man, though—Giancana. You shot him over and over, the papers say. Was that…to make it look like some…Mafia thing?”

  He could have lied to her; but instead he said, “No. I used that to convince Shore I hadn’t done it, but no, baby. I was over the edge—way over, thinking of what they did to Mom. It was pure rage. Normally, I’m…cool. That’s how it is in war. But not last night, not killing that creature. The expression—seeing red? I saw it. Nothing but red. Blood red.”

  Her eyes were on him, now. She nodded and sipped the glass of Tab on ice (he was drinking from a can), and stared at the gray table flecks again. “I killed him as much as you did.”

  “No.”

  “Wouldn’t the law think so?”

  “Yes.”

  “I don’t care. I’m glad he’s dead. I don’t think I could have done what you did, but…maybe I could. But I was…like you said? Cool, cold. In the church? I just aimed at that marshal, that fucking bastard, and.…” She covered her face; her eyes were shut. She was not crying.

  He reached for her left hand, took it, squeezed it, then held it. “That was not murder, sweetheart. I saw that animal’s eyes—he was about to kill me, and Director Shore, and if the reverend of that church had come running in, followed by a class of Sunday school kids, Hug
hes would’ve shot them, too. Feeling a lot less than you’re feeling.”

  “So what I did…it was like, self-defense?”

  “Survival.”

  “Anyway, I’m glad he’s dead, too. Gary died because of that fucker. Mom, too. I could do it again.”

  He squeezed her hand. “But you won’t. Honey, my father did not want me to go down his road. He wanted more than anything in this world that I would not turn out like him—but I did.”

  “Because of him?”

  He shrugged. “Well, sure…on some level. But I made the choice. We have to choose where we’re headed, baby, and carefully.”

  She formed a half-smile, fully wry. “It’s not like we have a lot of options.”

  “No.” He smiled, just a little. “But Director Shore will help. You want to go back to school, don’t you? Get back in theater?”

  Her laugh was short yet hollow. “I don’t know. It seems so… abstract now. I feel removed from it, distant, detached.…Have I gone dead inside?”

  Patting her hand, he said, “No, baby, you’re just protecting yourself.…Hey, it’s over; we’ve woken from the nightmare.”

  Her eyes and forehead were tight. “Are you sure, Daddy?”

  “We’ll always have to be careful in a way most people aren’t. What I’m asking you to do is join up with your life again, your goals, your dreams.”

  Her eyes looked past him, at nothing. “My dreams had Gary in them.”

  “I know. And my dreams had your mother in them. But we have to go on, anyway. I know you don’t want to hear this, but you’re wrong—you will fall in love again.”

  She shook her head, her expression blank. “But I won’t.”

  “You won’t stop loving Gary, even—but you will find someone else.”

  She didn’t argue. Her expression turned quizzical. “What about you, Daddy? Think you’ll find someone else?”

  “…No. No, sweetheart, your mother was the only woman I ever really loved. That’s a road I won’t go down again. I had many wonderful years with her, and with my family, and that part of me is…satisfied.” He shifted in the chair. “And that’s one thing I wanted to talk to you about, darling.…It’s something I’ve been thinking about, a lot, but I’m afraid I’m just being foolish. Or maybe gone crazy.”

  Now she squeezed his hand. “What, Daddy?”

  What the hell. He just said it: “How would you feel about going back to school—together?”

  The immediate response was amusement, but she caught herself, and said, “You want to go to college?”

  He couldn’t look at her. “Well…actually, that’s a string I need pulled for me, but Director Shore has managed bigger miracles. See, I took junior-college night classes, oh, twenty years ago, getting a two-year business degree.”

  She regarded him with one eyebrow arched. “And you want to finish?”

  “No…no. I’m going to ask Shore to turn Michael O’Sullivan, Jr., into a college graduate. So that I can go on to seminary.”

  Her expression froze. “…Seminary.”

  “Yeah.”

  “You want to be a…priest?”

  He shrugged, still couldn’t look at her. “A lot of priests were married, once. Widowers who wanted to take another path.”

  She leaned toward him, smiling gently. “You want to go from bullets to Eucharists? You’re joking, right?…You’re not joking, are you?”

  “No.” Now, finally, he committed his eyes to hers. “I haven’t had some mystical experience, honey; Jesus didn’t come talking to me in the night or anything. But I was raised in the Catholic Church, it’s a tradition that comforts me. And it’s a world where I can make up for…things I’ve done. I can find some kind of redemption, and I can help others.”

  She wasn’t smiling now. “Do you even believe in God?”

  “I do. Your mother didn’t. But I do.”

  Again she smirked. “Well, I sure as hell don’t. Not anymore.”

  “I can’t blame you. But, just the same, I’m asking you to respect my decision.”

  “I don’t know, Daddy.…”

  “Will you try? Will you at least try?”

  She swallowed. Her brow tightened.

  “What I’m hoping is,” he said, trying not to sound desperate, “we can find some college somewhere, some university, where you can study in the arts while I’m taking the seminary. Small apartment, live together. Maybe not a college girl’s dream, but—”

  Her smile was back. “But for the next few years, Father O’Sullivan, the fighting priest, wants to make sure no Mafiosi come out of the closet to kill his baby’s butt. Or his own holy heinie?”

  “…Does it sound so very absurd to you?”

  Nodding, she said, “Frankly, Daddy, yes, it does.”

  “But will you try to accept it?”

  She sighed.

  Thought for a while.

  Finally said, “If you don’t come to your senses, in the days and weeks and months ahead? Sure. I can learn to stop calling you ‘Daddy’ and start calling you ‘Father.’ If I really, really have to.”

  He leaned over and kissed her cheek. “You’ll always be my best girl.”

  “Don’t tell the Virgin Mary.”

  They would leave the next morning. Michael had in mind flying to Hawaii and spending a couple of weeks on the beach, giving Anna some genuine vacation time, really getting away while Director Shore put their house in order. His daughter certainly had no objection to that, and they went across the street for Chinese, then returned to watch a little television. Early on in Johnny Carson, Anna got sleepy, kissed her father’s forehead, padded into the bedroom yawning, leaving the uncomfortable couch all to him.

  He didn’t make it through Carson, either, and stripped to his underwear and pulled out the bed and climbed between the sheets; he was so exhausted, physically, mentally, and emotionally, that even the paper-thin mattress and cruel springs did not keep him from dropping off almost instantly.

  He dreamed of his son. Mike was in full battle gear, but he was sitting at that kitchenette table with them, listening to Anna and Michael conduct a somewhat garbled version of their real conversation. Mike just listened politely, his helmet on the Formica table; then finally he said, “Dad—sis! I’m here. I’m still here—why don’t you talk to me?”

  Then Mike said, “Wake up, you cocksucker,” a harsh whisper, but it wasn’t Mike, and something cold was in his neck.

  The snout of a gun, a revolver’s nose.

  His eyes shot open, and his right hand made a break for the end table where the .45 was, or rather had been, because his fingers found nothing but wood for his nails to scrape, and the voice whispered, “It isn’t there, asshole.”

  The intruder, keeping the gun in Michael’s neck, sat on the edge of the sleeper, making the springs creak and whine, and, still sotto voce, said, “Just be quiet. I don’t want to have to do sleeping beauty, too, in the other room. She don’t deserve what you’re gonna get, you fucking prick.”

  The curtains were back to let air in the open window, so streetlamps bouncing off alley brick sent in enough illumination for Michael to take stock of his guest. This was a young man—probably around his son, Mike’s, age—who Michael did not recognize, though he made him as an Italian kid, from the dark complexion and eyes, the dark curly hair worn shoulder-length, and a Roman nose too big for his young Dino-ish face. The black leather jacket and black jeans fit the profile, too, as did the gold chain around the neck.

  “Then fucking kill me,” Michael whispered, “and go.”

  The kid shook his head; he was grinning and cocky, but it was a front—this boy was nervous, and his dark eyes were glistening. If that .38 nose weren’t buried in his neck, Michael could have easily done something about this.…

  “You don’t get off so fuckin’ easy, old man. It ain’t enough for you to just fucking die.”

  “Sure it is. Squeeze the trigger and run.”

  He shook his head, and drops
of sweat traveled. “No, no, no—you gotta know, you gotta know who did this to your evil ass. Why he…I…did this!”

  The kid was getting tripped up in his own melodrama.

  “Okay, son, I’ll bite—who are you?”

  Teeth were bared in the almost-handsome face like a wolf getting ready for a meal. With exaggerated, stupid deliberation, he said, “You are looking at Sam DeStef-ano.”

  Michael frowned. “The hell…?”

  Kid smacked his chest with a fist made from his free hand. “Antonio DeStefano—Little Sam, they call me. Sam was my uncle. And you fucking killed him, you rat fuck bastard.…”

  “Step away!”

  Goddamnit! Just what Michael feared.…

  The door had swung open without either him or Little Sam seeing, and framed there in a pink-and-blue floral nightshirt that ended at her knees, nipples perking the cotton accusingly, hair an endless dark tangle, stood tight-jawed Anna with the long-barreled .38 in her two clutching, aiming hands—the Smith & Wesson that Michael had plucked from the belt of Inoglia, her mother’s murderer, back in Arizona.

  If the kid had known what the hell he was doing, he would have fired the gun in Michael’s neck, then swung it around and used the shock of the moment to blow the girl away, too.

  But the kid was, well, a kid, inexperienced, afraid, in way too deep here, and reflexively jerked away, scrambling to his feet, lurching from the bed to thrust the gun toward Anna.

  Thank God neither fired!

  The two children weren’t three feet away from each other, now—the weapons aimed at each other’s young faces.

  “Back away, bitch,” Little Sam snapped. “This isn’t your fight!”

  “Not yours, either,” she said coldly.

  Michael eased out of bed and positioned himself alongside them, a referee trying to break up a fight on a basketball court. He was so close to them both he could hear Anna’s slow steady breathing and the boy’s heavy ragged variation; but these kids were facing each other, and to throw himself between them risked a stray bullet finding Anna, even making its way through her father’s body into hers.