Road to Purgatory

by Max Allan Collins

  “I like her,” Michael said honestly, though he’d only exchanged a handful of words with the pleasant, severely handsome woman, who did seem to dote on Nitti.

  “But now…I wonder about her. She makes phone calls. Hangs up quick when she sees me comin’…No, no, she doesn’t have anyone else, that’s not it. But I start to wonder. Is my own wife in their camp? Did she marry me to keep an eye on me? Did Ricca and them put her up to it? ’Cause they thought I was slipping? After Anna died?”

  “I’m sure your wife loves you. You’re just—”

  “Imagining it?” He grinned like a skull. “So, Michael, am I going mad, like Al? Only without the dose?” Nitti laughed bitterly. “So much I’ve built up. So many mistakes, from the old days, I put behind us. If Ricca gets in, it’s a return to the old ways, but minus the tradition, the honor. Just the violence. The killing.”

  “What should we do, Mr. Nitti?”

  Nitti again patted Michael’s leg. “I’m not sure, son. If we had a few years, you’d be ready, to step in. But it’s too soon. Too damn soon. And if the feds do nail us…all us big boys go to prison for a long time.”

  “Could that happen?”

  “Looking at ten years, lawyers say. We can buy paroles in maybe three, four, five. If the feds do put us away, pray Ricca goes along for the ride. Accardo, he’s next in line, after the eight or nine of us facin’ this Hollywood thing. He’d take over, in the… what’s it called? Interim.”

  “Mr. Accardo wasn’t involved with Hollywood?”

  “No. Oh, in a minor way—he hit a guy named Tommy Maloy, at the outset. Projectionist union guy. But other than that, nothing. There’ll be no indictment for him.”

  “You approve of Mr. Accardo.”

  “He’s better than Ricca, and imagine where we’d be with Giancana in the top chair! If I’m in stir, get next to Accardo, Michael.”

  Michael’s eyes tensed. “You really think it’ll come to that?”

  “I think so, I do think so…But get this—Ricca’s saying I should take the rap. That the Hollywood business was all my doing.”

  “That’s not true—is it?”

  Nitti gestured dismissively. “I was the prime mover, but we were all in it. Biggest mistake was using a couple of lying untrustworthy bastards like Bioff and Browne as our reps; that’s why I sent Nicky Dean out to look over their shoulders.”

  “And Dean hasn’t talked, like the other two.”

  “No. Thing is, Ricca knows damn well I can’t shoulder the blame. It’s a fuckin’ conspiracy case! Of course, Ricca already knows that—blaming me is just part of him tryin’ to undermine me with the boys.”

  Michael locked his gaze with his chief’s. “You want him dead, Mr. Nitti, he’s dead.”

  Nitti looked at Michael with infinite fondness; patted his cheek like a favored child. “You’re a sweet boy, Michael. Sweet boy…We’ll talk tomorrow. I’ll sleep on it. You, too.”

  Then Nitti slipped out of the vehicle and headed up the sidewalk to his cozy home and his beloved son and a wife he no longer trusted.

  That evening Michael and Estelle had cocktails in a rear booth of the Seneca’s Bow ’n’ Arrow Room, where authentic Indian murals and a mirrored ceiling lent the cocktail lounge an atmosphere of spaciousness and warmth.

  But about now the world seemed a cold one to Michael, and closing in. He found the irony of his situation bitterly unamusing—in attempting to take revenge upon a villain whom the fates had transformed into an impotent moron, Michael had managed only to set the stage for the downfall of the one man in the Outfit he truly respected.

  Her hair styled short and dyed a reddish blonde, Estelle wore a business-like cream-color suit. She’d been spending time at the dress shop she co-owned, though Michael knew her primary business remained brothel-less madam. At Nitti’s behest, she’d developed a little black book of customers and call girls, and from her apartment made referrals.

  Michael neither approved nor disapproved; such business had been part of Estelle’s life long before they’d met. As a gangster’s bodyguard, he was not inclined to judge.

  Like Frank Nitti, Estelle had been hit hard by the intervening months; beautiful though she still was, she appeared at once haggard and puffy.

  “Michael,” she said, in the midst of her third martini, “I think maybe I need to move in with you.”

  “Well, that’s swell, baby.”

  “I don’t mean to impose,” she said, shaking her head, “or push you into anything—”

  “I’ve asked you to do it, half a dozen times, and you’ve said no—half a dozen times. Please do. Pack your bag.”

  She played with a swizzle stick in the now empty martini glass. “I won’t lie to you, Mike. It’s not about us.”

  “Well…usually, when a gal moves in with a fella, it is about them. Us.”

  She swallowed; glanced around anxiously. The cocktail lounge did a good business, but their booth was private enough. Paranoia, it seemed, was going around like flu.

  “Michael,” she said, leaning halfway across the table, “I’m afraid. I’m really afraid.”

  This was hardly stop-the-presses stuff; she’d been frightened for months.

  “So move in with me,” he said, touching her face, “and feel more secure.”

  “I just don’t think it’s fair to you if…I don’t admit that to you. Admit that I’m moving in because I think you can protect me. Admit that here in the hotel I don’t figure anybody’d dare…you know…It’s sort of their home turf, right?”

  “Now I’m not following you.”

  She shook her head, arcs of hair swinging like twin scythes. “Oh, Michael…how can you be you, and still be so naive? These indictments are about to come down. Everybody knows that. And the feds are pressing Nicky. Pressing hard.”

  Feeling a twinge of jealousy, Michael said, “You’re in touch with the guy? I thought that was over.”

  “It is over. But we’re in touch, yeah. Through lawyers… Michael, there’s a rumor on the street.”

  “What rumor?”

  Her lower lip trembled, her eyes brimmed. “That I’m going to be made an example. That something…bad’ll happen to me, to send Nicky a message.”

  He reached across and held her ice-cold hand. “I won’t let that happen, baby. You move in with me. Right away.”

  She nodded, and nodded some more. “Thank you, Michael. Thank you.”

  In his penthouse, Michael and Estelle made love with an urgent intensity driven by unspoken-of emotions that left them both spent; nonetheless, he fell prey to the insomnia again, which had never before been the case on nights when she’d stayed with him.

  He slipped from her slumbering grasp and out of bed and, in his boxers, stepped into slippers, tossed a dressing robe around himself, and walked out into the living room. He slid open the glass door and went out onto the balcony. The night was crisp but not cold. Leaning against the rail, he studied the skyline, its luminescent geometry again reminding him of a Hollywood backdrop.

  “What are you doing out here?” Estelle said from behind him. “You wanna freeze to death, silly?”

  He half-turned to see her at the door, just inside—shivering in her chemise, breasts perked by the chill.

  “It’s not that cold. Throw something around yourself, and join me.”

  Soon, a yellow-and-red blanket wrapped around her Indian-style, she was snuggling against him, looking out at the cityscape. “It just doesn’t look real, does it?”

  Taking it all in, he nodded. “Like something you’d see out a window in a Fred and Ginger musical.”

  But her eyes had shifted from the skyscrapers to Michael. “You like the movies, don’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Always reading books, too. Don’t you like real life?”

  “No.”

  “Maybe you’d like it if…you could start over.”

  He turned to her with a curious frown.

  She was gazing up at him with a
n oddly tentative expression. “If you could run off with me…would you?”

  “Well…sure.”

  “I’m not kidding, Michael.”

  He thought for a moment. “I don’t think I am, either.”

  “What if I told you…that I have some money.”

  “I’m sure you do.”

  A tiny crinkly smile appeared on the doll-like face. “No. I mean…a lot of money.”

  “How much is a lot?”

  “Oh—a quarter of a million dollars, a lot.”

  His eyebrows climbed. “You’re not serious…?”

  She hugged the blanket to herself, and her eyes drifted across the view. “You mean you haven’t heard the rumors? How I salted away a couple million from the movie scams, for Nicky and me to make a new life, when he gets out?”

  “…Maybe I have.”

  “Well, like most rumors…it’s exaggerated. There may be as much as a million missing, from union treasuries, but most of it went to those two goons, Bioff and Browne.”

  “But some went to you? And your friend Nicky?”

  Now her eyes returned to him. “…Suppose it had. Would you come?”

  He grinned a little. “I thought I just did.”

  “Not just tonight, stupe. Every night. Forever till we’re dead.”

  Trying to make it real, he managed, “Wouldn’t they… chase us?”

  “They wouldn’t know where to look. Do you know how well you can live on that much money in Mexico? Or certain South American countries? Very good.”

  “We’d just leave. Disappear.”

  “That’s right. You should be contemplating taking a powder, anyway.”

  “Why?”

  “Your angel, your sponsor, Frank Nitti?…Hell, he’s mine, too…He’s on his last legs, Michael. He’s on the way out. And where will that leave his fair-haired boy?”

  “Don’t count Frank Nitti out just yet.”

  She sneered and huddled within the blanket. “Fuck Frank Nitti. And fuck Nicky Dean.”

  “Estelle…”

  “Matter of fact,” she said, but in a different voice, “fuck me,” and she dragged him and the blanket back inside and pulled him down on the floor, on top of her, and they did it again, slowly but with that same urgency, the balcony door open, the coolness of the night licking at the heat they made.

  “Move me in here tomorrow,” she said, afterward, clutching his bare back desperately. “And we’ll plan it.”

  “Okay,” he said.

  In his ear she said, “Not a word to a soul about the money! Not a word. To a soul.”

  “Okay.”

  He carried her like a new bride over the bedroom threshold and deposited her gently on the covers. Soon she was snuggling up under his arm, her face against his hairless chest. Both were quickly asleep, legs tangled.

  But he dreamed of Bataan, of that jungle clearing, only this time he was blasting away with his tommy gun at faceless Ricca thugs.

  Who, unlike the Japs, refused to fall.

  FOUR

  The next morning Campagna phoned Michael saying Mr. Nitti was feeling sick and staying home—though he’d remain on call, this effectively gave Michael the day off.

  Estelle, as was her habit, had slipped out in the early morning hours. Alone in the penthouse, showered and shaved but in T-shirt and boxers, Michael dialed his console radio to the latest popular tunes; he did not turn up it loud, just providing himself with a little low-key company by way of outfits like Benny Goodman and Harry James and singers like Peggy Lee and that new kid, Sinatra. He fixed himself breakfast—scrambled eggs, toast, orange juice—and then, at the same table, spent close to an hour cleaning and fussing over the .45 Colt automatic that had belonged to Michael O’Sullivan, Sr.

  The gun was just about the only possession of his late father’s that Michael owned; just that, and a few family photos he and his father carried with them, long ago, on the road to Perdition (and these were in his room at home, that is, DeKalb). He treated the weapon with near reverence, rubbing it lightly with an oil-saturated rag, then drying it with another rag, a fresh one. The bore he purified with a cleaner-saturated patch followed by a dry patch. With a stiff bristly brush he dusted out all the crevices.

  When he was finished, he clicked a fresh magazine in and slipped the .45 into the oil-rubbed shoulder holster, currently draped over a kitchenette chair.

  Then he returned to the book he was reading, a reprint edition of For Whom the Bell Tolls, which he was enjoying, though he was pretty sure it wasn’t going to end well for the hero. Propped up with two pillows, he was just starting the last chapter when the bedstand phone rang.

  “Hi, hero,” Estelle said.

  “Hey, I have the day off. Are you home? I can come over any time and move you out.”

  “I was calling to try to head you off, in case you got ambitious, Mr. Moving Man. Some old friends dropped by—we’ll be visiting for a while. Can you make it around two?”

  It was just after eleven, now.

  “Sure. See you then.”

  “Michael, I appreciate this. I’m gonna feel a lot better, rooming with you.”

  “I’m sorta looking forward to havin’ you in my bed, myself.”

  “Naughty boy,” she chuckled.

  They hung up, and he folded the book open on the bedstand, figuring to go down to the Seneca coffee shop for a bite. He had stepped into a pair of tan slacks and was just shrugging into a brown sportcoat—having taken the time to sling on the shoulder holster, considering the tensions of late—when somebody knocked at the door.

  Withdrawing the .45, Michael strode over and checked the peephole: it was a woman, a blonde (not Estelle, obviously), good-looking it would seem, but through this fish-eye view, who could say?

  Still, you never knew, so he opened the door carefully with his left hand, snugging his right-gun-in-hand behind him.

  For half a moment he didn’t recognize her, though she hadn’t really changed much if at all. He just didn’t expect to see Patsy Ann O’Hara of DeKalb on the doorstep of Michael Satariano of Chicago.

  She looked so business-like, so much…older. She had on a brown tweed Prince Albert reefer-style topcoat, with a wide collar and vaguely military rows of buttons. Purse under her arm, she wore a white scarf bunched at the throat and white gloves and a little side-tilted brown hat with a feather.

  “Hey, soldier,” she said, clearly a little apprehensive. “Wouldn’t care to buy a girl some lunch, would you?”

  He’d almost forgotten how lovely she was—the big blue eyes with the long lashes, the pert nose, the full lips with that phony perfect beauty mark that happened to be real.

  “Patsy Ann,” he said, and warmth flooded through him, and he embraced her, and she embraced him.

  Still in his arms, she drew away a little and gazed up at him, clearly wanting to be kissed.

  He released her, moved off and made a joke of it, saying, “Hey—I’m not takin’ a girl out for lunch with her makeup mussed…Want to see the digs?”

  “Sure,” she said, forcing a smile.

  He stepped inside, gun still behind him, and gestured for her to enter; when her back was to him, he slipped the weapon in its shoulder holster. Then he showed her around, and she seemed suitably impressed, though something behind her pleasant expression seemed stiff, even disapproving.

  The day was crisp but sunny—he wore a gabardine trenchcoat—as he took his former best girl on his arm, walking the little area that was so much a part of his world. Rush was an around-the-clock street, and had surprisingly little of the tawdry look such areas often did by day, neon glow replaced by an aura of the avantgarde. Nightclubs and many restaurants were closed, but other businesses flourished in the sun: art dealers, bookshops, florists with blooming wares overflowing onto the sidewalk, chic dress shops, and, of course, saloons—even in daylight, this was still Chicago.

  As they walked arm-in-arm, further linked by their tan-and-brown clothing, they said nothing. If
an underlying awkwardness had accompanied those first minutes, a wordless comfort had already replaced it. They enjoyed each other’s company and were resisting bringing themselves up–to–date, and spoiling everything.

  In a roundabout way, they ended up at Little Normandy, a restaurant not so little and which did not keep the implied promise of French food. The old mansion across from the Water Tower was an elegant graystone with a delightful interior-broad open staircase, grand fireplaces, and leaded glass windows, with murals, wood carvings, and ceramic plaques designed by a modern artist who lived upstairs. The bold dramatic artwork struck Michael as cartoony, while (had she been asked) college senior Patsy Ann would have termed it “art moderne with influences ranging from cave drawings to Japanese prints” (but no one asked).

  The place was crowded as usual, but the pretty hostess/manager, Celia, recognized Michael and provided a cozy booth in the Black Sheep Bar. Patsy Ann ordered onion soup (a rare French item at the Normandy), and Michael chose hamburger steak with Roquefort sauce, a house specialty.

  He had his usual Coca-Cola, and she drank a 7UP while they waited for their lunch. Finally he asked, “What brings you to the big city?”

  She leaned forward a little, gloved hands folded on the table cloth. “Well, you know I graduate in June. So I’m interviewing for teaching positions. There’s an opening at a high school in Evanston, and that interview’s at two thirty, and then I have another at Downers Grove, for an elementary. That’s at four thirty.”

  “Could be a little tight,” he said. “Opposite sides of the world.”

  Nodding, she said, “I know, but these interviews only last about fifteen minutes. It’s mostly your grades and letters of recommendation and…Michael, thank you for not being angry with me.”

  “Why would I be?”

  She shrugged, leaned back; she looked awfully sweet in that feathered hat; the dress beneath the topcoat had proven to be a smart brown corduroy suit.

  “You didn’t want to be crowded,” she was saying. “You made that clear…but you have to admit…” And now she leaned forward again, and gave him a bold little smile. “…you did leave the door open.”

  “…Patsy Ann, you know you’ll always have a special place in my heart.”