She frowned. “What a horrible thing to say.”
“What?”
“That sounded like the door closing. Slamming.”
Her gaze was boring through him. He transferred his attention to the glass of Coke and sipped it, offhandedly saying, “How did you find me?”
“Papa Satariano…Now don’t be mad at him—I know you made him promise not to tell anybody where you were. But I wore him down, Michael—took months to do it…Why haven’t you gone home to visit? Even once? It’s not that far.”
How could he explain how vast the distance was?
“I write once a week,” he said.
“To them. Not to me. Some things never change—it’s like you’re still at war.”
Now she’d stumbled onto it.
He took one of her gloved hands. “I’m involved in something that I…I don’t want to have touch any of the people I care about.”
She swallowed; her frown had worry in it. “You mean, because of these…gangsters you’re in with.”
He frowned. “Papa S. told you that?”
“Eventually…He says you want to get in solid with them, so that someday you can have a restaurant or a nightclub. He says these people control businesses like that—show business, too. Is that true?”
“True enough.”
She put her other hand on top of the one holding hers; she squeezed. Her eyes were urgent. “What if I said I didn’t care?”
“What?”
“What if I said I didn’t care that you were in with gangsters? You think I didn’t see you put that gun away? When was I ever stupid?”
“…Never.”
“Why do you think I’m looking at schools around Chicago? I have an offer at DeKalb Township.”
“I would imagine you get…a lot of offers.”
He wasn’t talking about teaching jobs.
Her chin crinkled as she drew her hand away from his. “I do. I always have had. I can still snap my fingers and get any man on campus.”
“Why don’t you?”
“Because I love you, you selfish son of a bitch.”
Their food came. They picked at it in silence.
Finally she said, “Not enough, huh?”
“What isn’t?”
“Selling my soul to be with you. In books, that’s all it usually takes.”
Michael waved a waiter over to remove their plates. No dessert. Check, please.
Then he leaned toward her and said, “Do you remember, a long time ago, when I told you I had a brother who died?”
“Yes…of course. But I respected your privacy and—”
“I was adopted, Patsy Ann.”
“…I didn’t know.”
“We didn’t advertise it. If I tell you something, you can’t repeat it to anybody, not even Papa S., ’cause even he doesn’t know.”
Eyes tight with interest and concern, she bent forward. “Know what?”
“That my brother was killed. That my mother was killed. That my father was killed.”
Her eyes froze as she repeated the word, as if it were foreign: “Killed.”
“Murdered,” he said, offering a synonym the lit major might be familiar with. “By gangsters. My real father was one of them, and he tried to keep us separate from what he did. But it…spilled over. And my mother was killed, and my brother, and when my father went after the ones responsible, he was killed, too.”
Her eyes were huge and shimmering. “Oh, Michael…oh my God, Michael.”
He shrugged. “So now I’m in that life. Following in my father’s footsteps. But I’m not going to make the mistake he did. I’m not going to risk those I care for.”
“Why, Michael?”
“Isn’t it self-evident?”
She shook her head, blonde locks bouncing, frustrated with him. “No. No, why are you…following in footsteps like those?”
“That I can’t go into. I promise you the reasons were good ones. But things…they’ve gotten a little out of control.”
She reached across and took his hand again in both of hers. Her grip was surprisingly strong; so was her gaze. “Walk away from it, Mike. With me.”
How could he tell her he was thinking of doing that very thing with another lovely blonde…only, one who was—like him—damaged goods? He couldn’t risk such a life with a good person like Patsy Ann. Even if she would sell her soul for him.
Which was a nice gesture, but still he said, “No. You need to move on. I’ve gone down my own road, and you don’t want to even consider taking that turn.”
He paid the bill, grabbed her by the hand, and walked her out to the sidewalk. “Where’s your car?”
“On the street, near the Seneca.”
“Let’s go.”
Almost pulling her along, he escorted her to that same Buick in whose backseat they’d made love by a cornfield under fireworks in the starry sky, eons ago, last year.
She was angry now, and the question of whether to grant her a good-bye kiss—which might betray how difficult this was for him—became a moot point. In a nonpatriotic squeal of rubber, she was gone.
Out of his life for good this time?
For her sake, he hoped so.
Driving the navy 1940 Ford sedan he frequently ushered Nitti around in, Michael headed toward Estelle’s on West Addison. Because Estelle shared the place with her partner in the dress shop, Michael had seldom stayed over there, though he did have a key. Her apartment house was a large one in a battery of such buildings in a quiet, upper-middle-class neighborhood in the shadows of nearby lakeshore skyscrapers.
Today, however, West Addison was not quiet, the sidewalks on either side lined with gawkers, from proper-looking business men to women in curlers and housecoats. A small fire engine was barring passage, though clearly the handful of black-slickered firefighters—moving with no urgency whatsoever—were wrapping things up, literally and figuratively.
Michael parked by a hydrant—they didn’t seem to need the thing anymore—and walked quickly down to the fire truck, approaching the helmeted men.
“What’s happened?” he asked.
The firefighter, a young one, said, “You got here in a hurry.”
Immediately Michael understood that, thanks in part to his trenchcoat, he’d been mistaken for plainclothes police.
Manufacturing a half-smile, Michael said, “Hell, the station’s only two blocks away. Buddies are right behind me. What do we have?”
The firefighter gestured with a heavily gloved finger. “Third-floor flat…”
Estelle’s flat was on the third floor!
“…fire was contained to just the dining room, and we’ve got it out; ready for you guys to take over. One victim, and that’s why we called you.”
“Go on.”
Slickered shoulders shrugged and the helmet nodded toward the apartment building. “See for yourself. I may be new on the job, but that’s no fire fatality. That’s a goddamn murder.”
Hiding his alarm, Michael nodded thanks, and went quickly in. The building had multiple entrances, stairs leading up to landings where apartments faced each other across the stairwell. The acrid smell of smoke filled his nostrils as he took the stairs three at a time.
The door to her apartment was open, the smoke stench issuing its nasty invitation…
He braced himself and went in. The living room was in disarray, though the firemen could have caused that. He moved on through into the dining room, and there she was.
Bracing himself had not been enough. It couldn’t have been.
A chair had been positioned centrally; she lay nearby. The two adjacent walls were black and dripping wet, from the firefighter’s successful effort to stem the blaze. Much of the carpet was also black, a broken whiskey bottle on the floor apparently having fed the flames. The acrid stench was almost overpowering.
Wearing only a red silk robe, she lay on the plush scorched carpet, on her back, in a Christ-on-the-cross sprawl. The robe was charred from the waist dow
n and her legs were burnt so badly that from the knees down, the limbs were cinders.
Michael knelt near the upper half of her, as if praying that this battered, burnt corpse was not the woman he’d shared his bed with the night before. But he knew such prayers were useless, because this clearly was not the roommate, rather Estelle herself—the welts and bruises and cuts could not disguise the fact, nor the ragged slash through one eye nor the punctures on her cheeks; not her bloodied broken nose nor the smashed pulp of once-lovely lips. Not the frightwig hair, clumps yanked or cut from her scalp. Not even the ear-to-ear slash on her throat, which was not what had killed her, too superficial, merely part of the torture that had preceded her murder.
Her head tilted to one side, eyes blankly open. Her hands were puffy with burns—had her torturers tossed the whiskey on her, set it aflame, and allowed her to try to put it out with her palms?
Forever till we’re dead, her voice whispered in his memory.
Somehow he got to his feet. He staggered into the next room, the kitchen, where he found signs of struggle even a one-eyed man couldn’t miss: a broken drinking glass on the floor; bloodsmeared cabinets; scarlet spattering the sink. On the floor, a bloodstained breadknife, a bloody rolling pin, and the blood-tipped ice pick that no doubt had made the punctures on those pretty cheeks. Also, a bloody blackjack, as if the kitchen hadn’t given up enough impromptu weapons.
On the maple table where he’d on several occasions shared breakfast with Estelle sat the unlikely meal of a flatiron, also bloodsmeared, obviously utilized as a battering instrument. Blood splatter dotted the table, chair, and floor underneath. A glass ashtray with a number of smashed cigarette butts signaled the time the process had taken, and one had lipstick on it. Estelle did not smoke. Had not.
On the stove, milk was simmering. On the counter nearby, three cups with powdered cocoa in the bottom. He recalled what she’d said on the phone: some old friends had dropped by. She had turned her back to these friends—who had been with her when she’d called Michael—and they had done this to her…
In his mind his own voice, speaking to Patsy Ann, over the cozy lunch they’d had while Estelle was being tortured to death, said, I’m not going to risk those I care for.
Feeling weak-kneed, he wanted to sit; hot in the trench coat, he wanted to strip it off and fling it somewhere. But he dared do neither—evidence was scattered from one end of the five-room apartment to the other, and he didn’t want to disturb any of it, on the off-chance an honest Chicago cop caught the case.
As if that had been his cue, Lieutenant William Drury—the most famous honest cop in town, despite that camel’s hair topcoat—appeared at the mouth of the kitchen.
“What the hell are you doing here?” Drury asked.
Michael began to scream and rushed the cop, who backed into the room where Estelle lay. Throwing a punch that almost connected, Michael met a punch of Drury’s that did.
Then he was on the scorched carpet, sprawled next to Estelle’s vacant-eyed corpse, her ghastly white/purple/black/red face turned questioningly his way.
Hands jerked him to his feet, but Michael pulled away, shoving past Drury and fleeing to the kitchen where he flung himself over the blood-spattered sink and lost the meal he’d shared, not long ago, with his other best girl.
And when the cuffs were snapped on, he had, mercifully, already passed out.
FIVE
Michael woke in a small isolation cell. Sun filtered in through a high barred window; he judged it morning—maybe ten. He knew where he was: Town Hall Station, only two blocks from Estelle’s apartment.
He had slept deep and long and dreamed a delirium of faces and events floating but never congealing into even the incoherent, surrealistic narrative of a nightmare—more a review of Michael O’Sullivan, Jr.’s, life as Michael Satariano…faces and places from Bataan, Captain Wermuth, General Wainwright, the clearing full of Japs, the Zero dipping down over that jungle roadway…scraps of memory from DeKalb, Papa and Mama S., school friends, bits and pieces of that last Fourth of July…a drooling Al Capone, bodyguards with guns streaming at Michael, that guy Abatte from Calumet City standing on the sidelines, grinning at him only with a hole in his head, Frank Nitti patting Michael’s shoulder, spouting reassuring gibberish…Estelle whispering words of love in bed on top of him at the Colony, transforming into a terrible scorched and beaten and dead Patsy Ann, grinding on him and murmuring her love through battered, cut lips…
He jerked upright.
Shook his head, dispelling the images; swung his legs around, to sit on the edge of the cot in the small cement chamber, which had an open toilet bowl and nothing else. He was in his T-shirt and pants, his belt gone; he was shoeless, though he’d been left his socks. His wristwatch was missing, but checking the time would be meaningless, as he was unsure what day it was.
He had that same drugged, sluggish feeling as when he’d woken in the cell-like bedroom at the Capone mansion. But he knew where he was and why he felt that way—he had a blurred but undeniable memory of attacking uniformed cops in this cell, when his cuffs were removed. He’d assaulted them for no particular reason, other than his grief-driven rage needed somewhere to go.
And another memory—of a doctor with a gladstone bag entering and sedating him—was not blurred at all, as distinct as the needle that had plunged into his arm. The only surprise was waking up in this isolation cell, and not in an infirmary, though considering he’d attacked both Drury and those other cops, maybe the bars made sense.
Clarity and a peculiar calm came to him quickly. He had been adrift of late, purposeless; but his reason for living had returned, as did the deadly stoic surface he’d inherited from his father. And at the core of his being glowed something red hot.
A guard came checking on him, and Michael convinced the man sufficiently he was no longer a threat. Lunch was brought to Michael, and the information that a day had passed came casually.
Eventually he was ushered to the same windowless, sound proofed interrogation booth as before. Three chairs waited at the small scarred table, and he took one. Before long Lieutenant Drury came in, in shirtsleeves and a vest, tie loosened, his creased pants looking crisp, even if the detective did not.
Drury took one of the remaining chairs. He sat and stared at Michael, who got tired of it quickly and transferred his attention to the wall. For an eternity this went on—a full minute, at least—and then a third party joined them.
Eliot Ness sat across from Michael. The G-man’s suit was rumpled, but not as rumpled as the G-man. Ness looked terrible—older, puffy, eyes circled; the smell of liquor was on him. His physical deterioration reminded Michael of somebody, vaguely…and then it came to him: Frank Nitti.
Drury said, “Are you going to take another swing at me?”
Michael said nothing.
Ness said, “Your fingerprints are all over the Carey woman’s apartment.”
Michael said nothing.
Drury said, “We don’t think you killed her. From what we understand, you two were an item.”
Michael said nothing.
Ness said, “Why do you think she was tortured?”
Michael said nothing.
Drury said, “It’s no surprise the Outfit had her killed. You know what happened yesterday? It was on the radio.”
Michael said nothing.
Ness said, “Grand Jury returned indictments in the Hollywood shakedown. Against Frank ‘the Enforcer’ Nitti, Paul ‘the Waiter’ Ricca, Louis ‘Little New York’ Campagna, Rosselli, Gioe, D’Andrea…all of ’em, short of Accardo.”
Michael said nothing.
Drury said, “Killing Estelle sends a message to Nicky Dean.”
Michael said nothing.
Ness said, “Maybe putting Estelle through hell was part of the message.”
Michael said nothing.
Drury said, “Or maybe they were after something—money, maybe?”
Michael said nothing.
Ne
ss said, “There’s over a million missing from the stage hand union retirement fund.”
Michael said nothing.
Drury said, “But that might be bullshit. Was there ever really any money? Could the killers have found it in that apartment?”
Michael said nothing.
Ness said, “We say killers, Michael, because it seems to be a man and a woman. Lipstick on a cigarette. People she trusted. ‘Friends.’ She was fixing ’em cocoa when they started in on her.”
Michael said nothing.
Drury said, “Anybody could have sent them. Nitti or Ricca or any one of the other seven indicted. Or the whole damn bunch. You’re the little mouse in the corner, Michael. What did you hear?”
Michael said nothing.
Ness leaned forward, desperation in his eyes. “Help us. Tell us what you know. That’s why we did this in the first place, Michael—remember? That’s why you did this. To help me get these bastards.”
Michael said nothing.
Drury said, “If we can add murder to extortion, the Outfit is finished; this whole hierarchy will go away for a long, long time, and all the bribe money in the world won’t spring ’em loose.”
Michael said nothing.
Ness said, “It’s not too late for you, Michael. With that medal of yours, I can get you a job with my department. Or with Treasury; Christ, even Hoover wouldn’t turn you away. Michael, the Mafia doesn’t kill FBI agents!”
Michael said nothing.
Drury slammed a hand on the table. “What is this, that fucking omertà? You’re a made man, now—on their side? The side of those who tortured and killed that poor girl?”
Michael said nothing.
Ness said, “You have to choose, Mike. Are you part of the problem, or part of the solution? You become one of us, openly, and you’ll be protected.”
Michael said nothing.
Drury said, “It’s your best option, kid. What if we leaked the truth? That you went into Nitti’s organization, undercover, for Eliot Ness? How long would they let you live?”
Michael said nothing.
Ness looked at Drury and shook his head. Drury, lowering his gaze, sighed heavily. The G-man got up slowly, took one last mournful lingering look at Michael, and went out. Drury, his expression disgusted, was halfway out the door when Michael finally spoke.
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