Just enough time had gone by to make Michael hope he’d never hear a country fiddle player again when a door to one side of the bar opened. Framed there was a toad-like man in a rumpled light blue gabardine and a dark blue porkpie hat about the same color as his five o’clock shadow.
Michael glanced at Campagna, raising his eyebrows in a silent question that Campagna answered with a curt nod: this was Abatte’s man Neglia, all right.
Campagna headed over but Michael put a hand on the older man’s shoulder.
His whisper barely audible over the country-and-western racket, Michael said gently, “Let me lead the way, Louie.”
Louie paused, and bestowed another curt nod: Nitti had indeed meant for Michael to handle this.
Unbuttoning his suitcoat, Michael stepped out front. At the doorway, Neglia held up a thick hand, traffic-cop fashion. The thug’s round head rested on a mammoth double chin atop a neckless frame; but Neglia was more massive than fat, the shoulders and arms powerful-looking.
“I don’t know you,” the toad-like toady said thickly.
“I don’t know you,” Michael said.
“But I know him,” Neglia said, with a gesture toward Campagna.
“Now that we’ve established who you know and who you don’t know,” Michael said, “let’s see Mr. Abatte.”
“You don’t have an appointment.”
“He’s not a goddamn dentist. Stand aside.”
Neglia scowled. “You don’t talk to me that way.”
“I’m talking for Frank Nitti. Stand aside.”
Campagna, behind Michael, said, “What are you, Neglia? The bridge troll? Get the fuck outa the way.”
Neglia’s sigh came out his nose and mouth simultaneously in a foul wave of garlic. Michael’s eyes damn near teared up. Then the toad turned and led them into a short hallway, Campagna shutting the door behind them. At another door, Neglia knocked shave-and-a-haircut.
“Nitti’s guys!” Neglia called.
“Okay!” a deep voice responded.
Neglia opened the door, went in first, allowed Michael and Campagna to step inside, then closed it behind them. The room was medium-size and probably looked bigger than it was, usually, since the only furnishings were an old scarred-up desk with chair, with a chair opposite, the wall behind decorated with framed stripper photos, hanging crooked; but the office was in fact crowded.
Frank Abatte—a small, weasel-faced man with thinning black Valentino hair and wide-set dark blue eyes—was seated behind the desk; as advertised, he wore a tuxedo. A hooded-eyed hood, skinny in a sharp gray pinstripe and pearl-gray fedora, stood just behind his boss, at right; this was obviously Vitale.
Along the left wall stood three more individuals—a dumpy cigar-chewing guy in an apron, a tall blond fortyish man in a black vest and slacks, and a heavyset woman about fifty in a new polka-dot dress as crisp-looking as she wasn’t.
Neglia, grinning to himself, trundled over behind his boss. So both Abatte’s muscle boys were at his side, bookending him, now.
Abatte grinned, too; he looked like a ventriloquist’s dummy come to life, specifically Charlie McCarthy in that tux, without the monocle, of course. The desk was bare but for a telephone.
“You Chicago boys stop by at an opportune time,” Abatte said, his voice rich and deep, a big sound for a little man. “We were just havin’ a little meeting of concerned Cal City citizens.”
“Sorta like the Chamber of Commerce,” Campagna said.
Abatte folded his hands like a priest about to counsel a couple contemplating marriage. “My fellow owners share with me an interest in keeping our Cal City business happy and thriving and free of interference from the outside.”
“You work for Mr. Nitti,” Campagna snapped. “Don’t ever forget that, Frankie!”
Abatte’s disdain was palpable. “Mr. Nitti’s a partner, a silent partner, with all of us. He’ll get his share. But I don’t work for anybody but Frank Abatte, get it?”
Michael sat down across from Abatte, crossing his legs, ankle on a knee. Campagna not taking the chair of honor seemed to puzzle the tuxedo-sporting gangster.
“You’re a little young, aren’t you?” he asked Michael.
Campagna, positioning himself by the door, said, “His name’s Michael Satariano. He’s new.”
With his limited peripheral vision, Michael could not see if the name registered on the group at left. Neglia certainly didn’t recognize it; but Vitale’s sleepy eyes wakened, a bit. And Abatte’s upper lip curled in contempt.
“The war hero,” Abatte said, as if tasting the words and not finding them flavorful. He gestured, a sarcastic master of ceremonies. “Ladies and gentlemen…we have a special guest. We’re privileged to be in the presence of Chicago’s own Congressional Medal of Honor winner.”
Michael glanced at the trio—the guy in the apron, the man in the vest, the gal in the polka-dot dress; they were exchanging wide-eyed looks.
“Mighta known,” Abatte said. “Nitti’s sure as hell been wrappin’ himself in the flag lately. Shoulda figured he’d recruit the Sicilian Sergeant York…Did he just enlist you for this one mission, kid? What, is seeing you supposed to shame me into doin’ the ‘right thing’?”
Stepping forward, Campagna said, “Mr. Nitti does not want wide-open whorehouses and jackrolling and cheating our boys in the armed forces—that’ll bring heat down on all our heads. Capeesh?”
Through clenched teeth Abatte said, “This street was built on brothels. And the heat is Nitti’s job—it’s what we pay him for.”
Campagna turned toward the trio of owners. “These war years will be a boom time for Cal City. Don’t botch it. Mr. Nitti appeals to your patriotism, and your common sense. Federal heat is—”
Abatte slammed his hand on the desk, and everybody but Abatte himself…and Michael…jumped a little; the phone made a stunted ringing sound.
“You city boys…you can run and hide, if you want.” Abatte’s eyes showed white all around. “This is a wide-open town here, a good time to be had by all. And we intend to keep it that way. Press us on this, and Nitti won’t even get his goddamn pound of flesh.”
Michael cleared his throat.
Abatte, who seemed to have forgotten about the young man’s presence, looked at Michael with a disdainful expression. “You want something, sonny boy?”
Michael said, “Just the answer to a question.”
“Ask me and we’ll see if it’s worth answering.”
Michael uncrossed his legs. Quietly he said, “Who do you work for, again?”
Again Abatte slammed a hand onto the desk; the Cal City big shot’s other hand, however, had dropped from view, where the man might access a drawer holding a gun and a knife…
Spittle flew: “I work for me, myself, and I! Frank Abatte! And no one else.”
Michael slipped a hand inside his suitcoat.
Both Vitale and Neglia lurched forward, and Abatte straightened; but Michael raised his other hand, gently, and said, “Please, gentlemen. I just need to get something out to make a point.”
The bodyguards settled back, Abatte relaxed, and Michael withdrew the .45 automatic.
Every eye in the room widened, except Michael’s.
Pointing the gun from the hip at Abatte, Michael asked, “Who do you work for?”
Abatte’s upper lip curled in contempt. “I…work…for… Frank…Abatte.”
Michael shot him in the head.
Time stopped for Abatte, paralyzed him momentarily, his eyes wide, the red hole in his forehead like a third startled eye; then he flopped forward on the desk, hands asprawl, revealing a splash of gore on the wall, between framed askew photos, and a gaping hole in the back of his head.
Still seated, Michael shot Vitale, who was clawing for his gun under his own suitcoat, in the throat; this Michael did because he anticipated that the gurgling, gargling, blood-frothing horror that would ensue would distract and discourage the others.
He had saved Neglia
for last, because he knew Vitale was the more competent of the two; but the toad had a .38 in hand and his teeth clenched, a fraction of a second away from shooting, when Michael fired, another head shot, which knocked the porkpie hat off and splattered blood and brains and bone onto a stripper’s picture, straightening it.
Behind Michael, Campagna was training a gun on the owners, who were standing with their hands up and their jaws down.
Without getting up, Michael swiveled calmly in the chair to the trio of owners, who stood against the wall as if they’d like to disappear behind it. He spoke to the man in the apron.
“And who do you work for?”
“Frank Nitti!”
“Who do you work for?”
“Frank Nitti.”
“Who do you work for, ma’am?”
“Frank Nitti.”
“Any questions about the new prostitution policy?”
“No.”
“No.”
“No.”
“Good,” Michael said.
He rose and went to the door, opened it, looked out at the hallway, letting in some country swing; the fiddle sounded better to him now—it had a folksy quality he found soothing. No sign that anybody had heard anything over the natural din of the Ozark.
Returning his attention to the owners, he said, “By the weekend, these wide-open whorehouses are past history.”
Eager nods, all around.
“By the way—any of you see anything tonight? I hear it gets rough around here, sometimes.”
But none of them had heard or seen a thing.
“It’s early,” Michael said, with a shrug. “Might be some excitement, yet.”
The guy in the vest had pissed himself; that was a good sign.
“Why don’t you get back to your places of business, then,” Michael said pleasantly, nodding toward the door.
They scrambled out—thanking Michael as they went.
He was smiling about that when Campagna said, “That’s three eyewitnesses you let go, there, Mike.”
“You think any of them’s a problem?”
Campagna, who’d been frowning in thought, began to laugh. “No. No, I don’t. Joe Batters does the collecting around these-here-parts, and he’ll back your play…Kid, you’re a caution.”
Michael reholstered the .45. “Just so Mr. Nitti doesn’t think I stirred up the heat.”
Campagna was going to the phone; one of Abatte’s dead hands seemed to be reaching for it.
“Hell no,” Campagna said, lifting the receiver. “Just let me call the Cal City police chief.”
“Why him?”
“Jesus, kid,” Campagna said and shrugged. “Somebody’s gotta dump these stiffs!”
FIVE
The Colony Club, at 744 North Rush, had two devout neighbors: the Methodist Publishing House, next door, and (a block south) Quigley Preparatory Seminary, where young boys prepared for the priesthood. The Colony, however, catered to sinners seeking not salvation but a damned good time.
And the ultra-ritzy club’s pretty hostess, Estelle Carey—a willowy green-eyed golden blonde who looked ten years younger than her thirty-one years—saw to it that the patrons got whatever kind of good time they might desire.
At the moment that meant Estelle singing. Perched on a stool in a slit-up-one-side dark blue gown, bodice covered in sequins, in a corner of the bar next to a baby grand, her accompanist Roy tickling the keyboards lovingly, Estelle kept couples at tables nearby enthralled with her small, sweet, smoky voice. Her favorites were Dinah Shore and Ella Fitzgerald, and she sounded a little like both, which was intentional, aided by doing a lot of their hit tunes.
Estelle was a star attraction at the Colony; though various big bands that played in the spacious dining room were national names, locally the name Estelle Carey meant something—something naughty, perhaps, but something.
She’d started out life part of the crowd, with a last name—Smith—to prove it. Daddy Smith died when Estelle was a toddler, and much of her childhood had been spent in an orphanage; she’d left high school early on for waitressing. But her beer-budget background had somehow spawned champagne tastes, and her salary and tips from a Logan Square restaurant had been supplemented by sharing more than just a smile and a wink with male customers.
Estelle had always liked men—liked the power her good looks gave her over these powerful creatures, enjoyed the physical act of lovemaking in a way many girls at least claimed not to. From a junior high teacher she’d seduced at thirteen to every boss she’d ever had, Estelle had improved her life by generously sharing her considerable charms.
Still, she did not in the least consider herself a harlot—she had never made love for money in her life.
On the other hand, she’d never gone to bed with a man without the next morning receiving money to help out her sick mom, or make up a rent shortfall, real or imagined. Now and then, over the years, a steadier boyfriend might lavish gifts upon her, from fur coats to rent-free apartments. This was to be expected.
Waitressing at Rickett’s on North Clark Street had been Estelle’s breakthrough into a better life. Not that Rickett’s was posh; heck, it was just your typical white-tile restaurant. But it was open all night and attracted show people and the artsy crowd from Tower Town…and even Outfit guys like Nicky Dean.
With his mop of well-oiled black hair, Nicky was like some smooth George Raft–type movie gangster had walked down off the screen and into her life. Tall, dark, roughly handsome, Nicky looked like a million in a dinner jacket; he had style and charm and clout with the Outfit…also a wife, a little chorus cutie he’d married maybe ten years ago, but Mrs. Dean was sickly, and Nicky treated Estelle better than a husband treated a wife.
Still, some would say Nicky made Estelle earn every expensive stitch of clothing and even “pay” the rent on various fancy flats, by putting her to work. Even now, people said that—look at her in the Colony Club, singing for her supper.
But Estelle Carey had never been lazy. She liked to work, and just as Nicky was no one-woman man, she enjoyed other lovers, just not on an extended basis. Nicky didn’t even mind Estelle entertaining the occasional Outfit guy, because he seemed to take pride in having them taste a dish just once or twice of which he could partake any ol’ time.
What had gotten Estelle into the newspaper gossip columns—and turned her into a local celebrity—was her continuing status as Chicago’s most famous 26 girl. She rarely played the game herself these days—the bar at the Colony had half a dozen stations where gorgeous girls took care of those duties.
Twenty-six was a game played all over Chicagoland in watering holes from the lowliest gin mill to the poshest nightspot. At a table or podium, an attractive, well-built doll would shake dice in a leather cup and roll for drinks with a male customer. Though playing for quarters, the customer—who was often drunk—might manage to lose as much as ten dollars.
What had got Estelle into the papers, though, was taking a Texas oil millionaire for an astonishing ten thousand dollars at the penny-ante game. And the guy loved her for it. Always sought her out when he was in town.
Which was what made Estelle Carey the queen of dice, and provided the basis for what she taught her girls: a man needed to feel that a 26 girl was his friend, even a sort of sweetheart, and that the bar was a home away from home.
The 26 girls at the Colony, handpicked, handtrained by Estelle, knew how to spot compulsive gamblers or otherwise potential high rollers, and (earning a nice bonus for each sucker) steer them to the “private” club upstairs—a full casino where many fortunes were lost and only a handful were made…Nicky’s and Estelle’s, among them.
The club had an art-moderne decor out of an RKO musical—chromium and glass and shiny black surfaces. The casino upstairs was less chic—just a big open space with draped wells and subdued lighting, noisy and smoky, rife with the promise of easy money that almost never delivered, and the promise of easy women, who more frequently did.
That had been Estelle’s idea, and Nicky told her how Capone, Nitti, and others in the Outfit had praised her genius: no one ever figured out a better blow-off for a burnt customer than this. A high roller who’d been stung—often with an off-duty 26 girl on his arm, who’d egged him on at the tables—would be invited up to the third floor, where private suites awaited. After some behind-closed-doors time with a beautiful dame, many a loser walked away from the Colony Club wearing a winner’s smile.
Estelle was good to her girls. On slow nights, she allowed them to take a non–high roller up to a suite for fifty bucks; on a less slow night, the price bumped to a hundred (either way, the house got its cut). If the Colony’s first floor was largely legit, the second-floor casino and third-floor beauty parlor were definitely not; this meant hefty monthly payments to the cops and politicians, and the Outfit was obviously a fifty-fifty partner.
Estelle was perched on her stool, singing “Fools Rush In,” when she noticed that kid again, sitting at the bar, almost looking like a grown-up in a sharp gray suit, pretending not to be watching her as he nursed his Coca-Cola. She hadn’t seen him right away—this was Saturday night, so the place was hopping, the tables filled, a fog of cigarette smoke drifting across the bar.
Michael Satariano. The city’s celebrated Congressional Medal of Honor winner. And she was pretty sure the kid had a crush on her. Which didn’t depress her, not hardly—he was one good-looking boy; the scar near his left eye only gave him character, helping him not seem so goddamn, cradle-robbing young…
Something maternal rose within her, a surprising sensation, all things considered; but part of her wanted to scream at him, Get away from these people! What was a kid who had the world by the tail doing hanging out with Outfit goons? She herself had had no other choice, really; the likes of Nicky Dean had been her best ticket to a better life.
But this kid shook the president’s hand! This kid was famous, not just locally, but all across the nation. Wasn’t a business in the country that wouldn’t give him a job, a good job, a real job, and on a damn platter.
Road to Purgatory Page 9