Michael said nothing. How could he protest, when he thought back on the core regulars at the restaurant: farmers who brought their families in once a week, and who spoke and joked warmly with Pasquale, like old friends…
“Prohibition was the plague that created the Capones and the Looneys,” Ness said. “And the Volstead Act taught honest people like Papa S. that breaking a stupid law like that might be a crime, but certainly no sin.”
“Maybe in the ’20s,” Michael allowed, again shaking his head in doubt. “I’m sure he has no contact with them, anymore.”
“Does Papa S. buy his produce and supplies in Chicago? The mob controls olive oil, fruits and produce, and tomato paste… just like they do gambling, dope, and prostitution.”
Silence filled the room, interrupted only by the whirring of the window fan.
“Now keep in mind,” Ness said, lifting a warning finger, “you may be asked by these people, even ordered to do things, that you can’t do. Break a law undercover, you’ve still broken a law.”
“I thought this was war.”
“There are wars, and there are wars. If you think you’ve gotten in over your head, for God’s sake swim to shore.”
“And if somebody like Frank Nitti tells me to commit a crime for him…?”
“You must…somehow…manage not to do it, without tipping your hand. That’s the hardest part of your assignment. You must seem to be one of them, without becoming one of them…Do you understand?”
Finally Michael said, “Am I being ordered to do this?”
“I told you—strictly volunteer. You’ll remain on active duty, and receive your pittance of a paycheck from Uncle Sam.”
“Who will know?”
“I will. So will Lieutenant William Drury—your police contact. And should both Drury and myself be eliminated by the Capone crowd, I’ll have left a sealed envelope with Governor Green, explaining everything.”
“Can he be trusted? You said those legislators were mob shills…”
Ness grinned. “Dwight Green prosecuted Scarface…I can show you the courthouse, downstairs. He helped me send Al Capone to Alcatraz.”
Just as you, Mr. Ness, Michael O’Sullivan, Jr., thought, will help me send Al Capone to hell…
Ness had been right.
Something had awakened in Michael in the jungles of Bataan. That war was lost to him—Captain Wermuth and General Wainwright, right now they were either dead or imprisoned by the Japanese, and out of Michael’s reach—nothing he could do for them.
But this old war, the Capone war, could still be waged… and won. After all these years, after all this time, the death of his father could be avenged. It might start in Chicago, but it would end in Miami, with Al Capone in Michael O’Sullivan, Jr.’s, gunsights.
Or his hands.
His father had put the squeeze on Capone; Michael would squeeze another way.
Michael stood and extended his hand to Ness, who rose, and again they shook, rather ceremoniously.
“Thank you, Michael.”
“Glad to help,” said the son of the Angel of Death.
Michael spoke to Papa Satariano after hours that evening, the help gone home, Mama finished in the kitchen and upstairs, Papa having tallied the till and locked up.
Pasquale’s Spaghetti House was larger than a hole in the wall…just. But while the distressed red-brick interior was narrow, the building went back as far as the alley, with a high decorative tin ceiling, which they’d painted out black a few years ago—Papa S.’s idea of remodeling.
Wooden booths with red cushions lined either wall, a scattering of round tables with red-and-white-checkered cloths between. High on the walls perched framed oil paintings, stripe-shirt gondoliers, and commedia dell’arte clowns, acquired by Papa S. at Little Italy street fairs.
The glassed-in area between the dining room and kitchen proper was where Papa and a handful of trusted employees—including Michael, ever since junior high—would toss pizza dough, and feed a hungry oven. The term “pizza” hadn’t caught on in the sticks, and on the menu Papa S. called his exotic specialty “tomato pie.” Some Chicago pizza parlors made a thick crust in a deep dish, but Papa S. provided a thin, crispy variety… and lots of entertainment for those lucky enough to have a seat near that window.
Mama S. did most of the other cooking, and she made the salads, but sauces were another of Papa S.’s bailiwicks. Between them, the smells of homemade-style Italian cooking permeated the place with a distinctive aroma the customers cherished; Michael, living upstairs, had formed his own opinion…though after a year in the Philippines, Michael now inhaled the familiar scents with something approaching delight.
At the moment, however, delight was not his state of mind. As he sat with Papa S., explaining what he wanted, what he needed, the old man’s obvious discomfort was second only to his own.
“These words,” Papa S. said, eyes tight behind wire-frame glasses. His face was round, his mustache white and well trimmed. “I hear them. They’re comin’ out your mouth, son—but they can’t be you.”
“They’re me, Papa.”
“‘Papa’ is it?” The old man snorted a laugh. “You do want this.” Now began the elaborate gestures, the singsong sarcasm. “Usually, it’s ‘sir,’ or ‘Papa S.’—you always let me know that you know I’m not really your blood papa.”
“I never meant—”
Papa raised a palm. “It’s okay. You weren’t no foundling on our doorstep. We took you in as a grown young man. They told us you had a troubled past. We didn’t care. We loved you. We looked at you, and we loved you.”
Michael knew why. The Satarianos lost a son, ten years of age, to scarlet fever the year before they’d adopted him; pictures of the boy held more than a vague resemblance to Michael. Funny—he’d almost died of scarlet fever himself; but his father had nursed him to health, on the road.
When he’d found the photo album, with the pictures of the lost Antonio, Michael felt strange—as if he’d been chosen by the Satarianos for wrong reasons. He felt like a brown-and-white-spotted puppy picked to replace a dead brown-and-white-spotted dog.
Papa S. was saying, “But when you wanted somethin’, car keys, night off, advance pay, oh, then I was Papa, all right.”
The words were gruff, and even the tone; but the eyes behind the glasses remained kind. Papa S. couldn’t fool Michael. The man was a soft touch. Always had been. Particularly when his adoptive son called him Papa…
Michael leaned forward. “You dealt with these people over the years, didn’t you?”
Papa S. reared back. “Who says I did?”
“Oh, come on, Papa. You were the middleman between the Outfit and the farmers, right?”
“Gossip you’re believing now? What if I tell you I never had nothing to do with those kind of people.”
“Tell me, then.”
Papa S. said nothing. “I’m gonna get some coffee…You wanna pop or something?”
“Coke.”
Papa got up and lumbered off; he had bad corns, and there was more side-to-side motion than forward movement.
Soon Papa S. was handing a frosty bottle of Coke to Michael; then the old man sat and spooned three spoonfuls of sugar into his coffee.
“Times was different, then,” Papa said softly, stirring, stirring. “Twenty, thirty years ago, we were like coloreds. We had no say, nobody to go to. We turn to the Unione Siciliano, because why? Because there was no place else. Colosimo and Torrio, they were the government to us.”
The same could have been said about the Irish in the Tri-Cities and the Looney mob, Michael knew. Funny—both his fathers had turned to the mob for the only fair shake available to them in America at that time. Only, Pasquale Satariano dealt in produce, and Michael O’Sullivan, Sr., had dispensed muscle.
“Why you wanna work for them, son?”
Michael shrugged, swigged the Coke. “They run a lot of restaurants and clubs. If I get in solid with them, maybe I can manage or own somethin
g of my own, someday.”
Papa S. gestured around them elaborately. “This’ll be your own, someday!”
“Not sure I want to stay in a small town, Papa. Big world out there.”
Black eyebrows rose. “You don’t think this world, this small-town world, is better than a buncha Japs shooting at your skinny behind?”
“You know as well as I do, a kid with a last name like mine needs connections in the big city. You’ve got them. All I ask is you share them with me.”
“Dangerous people to run with.”
Michael grinned. “Not as dangerous as a buncha Japs.”
A small smile curled under the mustache. “Throw my own words back at me. You’ve changed. Used to be, you were respectful.”
“I still am. I still appreciate everything you and Mama S. have done for me.”
“Mama S.,” the old man said, grunting it, making a sour laugh out of the words. “All she’s done for you is right. This would break her heart, she knew you were with the Mafiosi.”
“Don’t tell her, then.”
Papa S. just stared at him. Then he sipped the coffee. “We could say you’re doing war work in the city. Missions for the army. It’s…what do you say, confidential.”
“Yeah. That should do.”
“Top secret.”
“Right. Like your sauces.”
They smiled at each other.
But then Papa S.’s expression turned grave, and he shook his head. “You honor your country, your honor your family, then you turn around and—”
“I won’t dishonor you, Papa, or my country. You have to trust me in that.”
The old man leaned forward, his voice soft, pleading. “You don’t need to do this, son. With that medal, you can go through all kinda doors. Even with our last name. You’re the first, the very first, Medal of Honor winner! Do you know the pride that swells in my chest?”
“I do know. And I appreciate that, Papa. But you have to do this for me.”
Papa S. studied Michael, who did not avert the gaze, in fact held it.
Then the old man said, “I’ll do this thing for you.”
“Thank you, Papa.”
“Because I love you. Because your mama loves you. And you…you appreciate us.”
The old man stood, and the light hit his eyes; tears were pearled there. Turning away, moving in that shuffling side-to-side gait, Pasquale Satariano headed toward the rear of the building, to the stairs to their living quarters. Michael thought about going to the old man and putting his arm around him and saying, “I love you, Papa, I really do.”
But he didn’t—he didn’t go to the old man, and he didn’t love him, either.
Respected, admired, appreciated him, yes. Adored, venerated, prized Mama S., yes. Not love.
Since the deaths of his parents and brother over ten years ago, Michael had made it a point not to love anybody; puberty had double-crossed him where Patsy Ann was concerned, but that had been his only slip.
No, Michael O’Sullivan, Jr., had never allowed himself to love the Satarianos.
And it was too late to start now—now that an old hatred had renewed itself to fill him with new purpose.
THREE
At the turn of the century, the ten-story Hotel Lexington at Twenty-second Street and South Michigan had been among Chicago’s most stellar. The imposing hotel—with its turreted corners and bay windows and lofty lobby—had played host to President Grover S. Cleveland when he came to town to open the Columbian Exposition in 1893.
But since 1928, the Lexington had become better known for playing host to Al Capone, who controlled the Century of Progress Exposition in ’33. For many years the Capone organization monopolized the third, fourth, and fifth floors, the latter reserved for women who serviced the mobsters and their guests. A ten-room suite on the fourth had been Capone’s—his living quarters and his offices, supplanted with hidden panels, moving walls, and silent alarms.
After Snorky (as Capone’s intimates referred to him) was sent away by feds like Eliot Ness and Elmer Irey, the Outfit (as they were locally known) scaled itself back, assuming a more low-key posture in the community, their presence at the Lexington lessening considerably. Subtracting Capone’s former living quarters, the suite of offices on the fourth floor was halved, the third and fifth floors long since returned to the hotel for its own devices.
As Frank Nitti walked across the black-and-white mosaic tile floor of the Lexington, a pair of bodyguards fore and aft, he found the grand old hotel looking sadly long in the tooth. The overstuffed furnishings were threadbare, the potted plants neglected; only the mob’s cigar stand, which was also a bookie joint, seemed prosperous.
Nitti much preferred to do business out of his suite at the Bismarck Hotel, conveniently across from city hall and footsteps away from the Capri Restaurant, out of which he also worked; the Lexington had outlived its usefulness (of course, as the gangster knew all too well, some might say the same about Frank Nitti).
At five eight, Nitti was smaller than all four men accompanying him. He wore no hat, his hair well-trimmed, slicked back, parted at the left, touched with gray at the temples; average of build, he did not appear physically imposing, though he took confident strides. In the perfectly tailored gray suit with the dark gray tie, he looked like the smooth business executive he was, albeit one with a roughly handsome face, lower lip flecked with scar tissue, eyes dark and alert. He was not carrying a gun. The bodyguards were.
The impeccable grooming of the small, dapper man still known to many as the Enforcer reflected a former profession: barber. He had cut hair and provided close shaves in his cousin Alphonse Capone’s old neighborhood in Brooklyn, in the early ’20s. Occasionally he had not shaved but cut a throat, and—imported to Chicago by Al as a bomber and assassin—Nitti had earned respect for cold-blooded violence, though his rise in the Outfit was due more to his business brains and organizational skills.
Appointed by Capone as chairman of the board, for the duration of Snorky’s prison term, Nitti had avoided the headline-provoking brutality of his chief; he had ruled calmly and fairly, and no turf wars to speak of had broken out during his tenure. He considered himself a captain of industry, and had replaced bootlegging with unionism.
Yet here he was, still holding court in the infamous Lexington, whose art-moderne aura spoke of the ’20s and ’30s, not the ’40s, not today. But wasn’t that the point? The psychological link to the old days—to Al—that the suite of offices on the fourth floor represented could not be underestimated. And anyway, his Bismarck suite did not include a boardroom.
Half an hour later, Nitti sat at the head of the long well-polished table; several pitchers of iced water were positioned around, and glass ashtrays for the various cigars and cigarettes of Nitti’s five guests, who took up only half of the available seats. The room was air-conditioned and, like so many late associates of the men at this table, well-ventilated.
On the wall behind Nitti were three oil paintings, two of which had been in Al’s office in the old days: George Washington and Abraham Lincoln. The third, over a fireplace whose mantel was decorated by various civic awards for their absent leader’s philanthropy in the Depression, loomed a distinguished three-quarters view of Capone himself—without his trademark Borsalino, his scars hidden from view.
Seated at the long dark-oak table were five of the top Outfit capos in Chicago.
At Nitti’s right hand sat Paul Ricca—pale, thin, white-haired, with high cheekbones, long narrow nose, and slash of a mouth in a placid expression belied by dark dead eyes; he wore a crisp brown suit and a blood-red tie, and smoked a cigarette. Nicknamed “the Waiter,” after a profession he had rarely ever pursued (other than when filling in “occupation” on a form), Ricca had been Capone’s bodyguard and was now Nitti’s underboss.
Ricca was famous for killing two guys in Sicily, going to prison for it, then on the day he got out, killing the eyewitness. Theoretically Nitti’s top aide, the Waiter (the Enforce
r knew all too well) was angling for the top chair.
Next to Ricca sat Charlie Fischetti—stocky, white-haired, handsome, as impeccably attired as Nitti in his own gray suit and a hand-signed Salvador Dalí necktie. Fischetti, one of three brothers in the Outfit, oversaw gambling and nightclubs. Nitti trusted Fischetti, who agreed about the need to move into legitimate concerns, encouraging mob investment on Wall Street and in Texas oil.
At Fischetti’s right was slender, perpetually smirky Murray Humphreys, in charge of labor unions, cleaning plants, and laundries; Humphreys was also a master fixer of politicians. Another spiffy, dashing gangster, Murray the Camel was the Outfit intellectual: he’d graduated high school. The only non-Sicilian at the table…in fact, the only Welshman in the Outfit,… Hump was valued by all, despite his outsider’s inability to become a “made” man.
On the other side of the table, at Nitti’s left, sat Louis “Little New York” Campagna, the Enforcer’s most trusted associate, a short blocky man in an off-the-rack brown suit, with cold dark eyes in a lumpy mashed-potatoes face with perpetual five o’clock shadow. Imported from NYC in ’27 by Al himself, Campagna handled enforcement for Nitti—from those personal bodyguards who’d come up with him in the elevator, to any points that needed making related to any of their business concerns.
Next to Campagna sat Tony Accardo, a roughneck dubbed Joe Batters by Capone for the thug’s abilities with a baseball bat (off the diamond, of course). A big man with an oval face, sad eyes crowding a bulbous nose, Accardo wore a blue suit and lighter blue tie, nothing fancy but nicely respectful, coming from a guy who preferred sportshirts and slacks. In addition to running West Side gambling, Accardo was often called upon by Campagna for heavy stuff.
Despite the long table and the boardroom trappings, this was not a meeting of the “board.” Around ten gangsters had gambling territories (like Accardo’s) and numerous other Outfit associates had varied responsibilities—Capone’s look-alike brother Ralph (“Bottles”) took care of soft drinks and tavern supplies; Eddie Vogel had the slots, cigarette machines, and vending machines; Joe Fusco had liquor distribution (legal, now); and Jake Guzik remained treasurer. Seldom were all these figures gathered at once.
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