Road to Paradise

One Week Earlier

One

On the morning of the day his life went to hell, Michael Satariano felt fine.

At fifty, a slender five feet ten, with a face that had remained boyish, his dark-brown Beatle-banged hair only lightly touched with gray at the temples, Michael appeared easily ten years younger, and the guess most people made was, “Thirty-five?” Only the deep vertical groove that concentration and worry had carved between his eyebrows gave any hint that life had ever been a burden.

He wore a gray sharkskin suit and a darker gray tie and a very light gray shirt; he did not go in for either the cheesy pastels or Day-Glo colors that so many middle-aged men were affecting in a sad attempt to seem hip. His major concession to fashion was a little sideburn action — that was about it.

And unlike many (most) Outfit guys, Michael had no penchant for jewelry — today he wore pearl cufflinks, gold wedding band on his left hand, and single-carat emerald with gold setting on his right. The latter, a present from his wife, Pat, was as ostentatious as he got.

His health was perfect, aided and abetted by nonsmoking and light alcohol consumption. His eyesight was fine — in the one eye that war had left him, anyway — and he did not even need glasses for reading, which remained the closest thing to a vice he had. If pulp fiction were pasta, Michael would have been as fat as his food-and-beverage man here at Cal-Neva — give him the company of Louis L’Amour, Mickey Spillane, or Ray Bradbury, and he was content.

Neither could gambling be counted among the sins of the man whose official position at the resort/casino was entertainment director. Nor did he have a reputation for womanizing — he had been married since 1943 to Patricia Ann, the woman he always introduced as his “childhood sweetheart” — and though working in environs littered with attractive young women (from waitresses to showgirls, actresses to songbirds), he rarely felt tempted and had not given in. It was said (not entirely accurately) that he’d never missed a Sunday mass since his marriage.

For this reason he had acquired a mocking nickname — the Saint.

Saint Satariano, the wise guys called him, particularly the Chicago crowd. Not that his churchgoing ways were the only thing behind the moniker: for three decades now he had served as the Outfit’s respectable front man in various endeavors, the Italian boy who had been the first Congressional Medal of Honor winner of World War II, the combat soldier whose fame rivaled that of Audie Murphy.

“Saint” had not been his first nickname.

During his months on Bataan in the Philippines, when he was barely out of high school, Michael had earned from the Filipino Scouts a deadly sobriquet: un Demonio Angelico. He had killed literally scores of Japanese in those vicious early days of the war, and had lost his left eye saving Major General Jonathan Wainwright from a strafing Zero. The latter event had been prominent in his Medal of Honor citation, but so had an afternoon battle in which he’d taken out an even fifty of the enemy.

General MacArthur himself had helped smuggle the wounded soldier off Bataan, to give stateside morale a boost with the war’s first American GI hero. But Michael had not lasted long on the PR podium and rubber-chicken circuit — he kept asking his audiences to remember his fellow “boys” who had been abandoned by Uncle Sam back on that bloody island.

And so the adopted son of Pasquale and Sophia Satariano was sent back to Chicago a proud son of Italy (few knew that the boy was really Irish), and had been embraced by Al Capone’s successor himself, the dapper and intelligent Frank Nitti, as a good example of just how patriotic a dago could be, Mussolini go fuck himself.

What Nitti had not realized was that Michael was fighting another war, a separate war, a personal war.

The young man’s real father had been blessed (or perhaps damned) with his own colorful nickname: the Angel of Death. Michael Satariano was in long-ago reality Michael O’Sullivan, Jr., son of the infamous enforcer who had railed against the Looney gang of the Tri-Cities and their powerful allies, the Capone mob of Chicago...

...that same Angel of Death whose face had appeared on True Detective magazine covers, and in several movies that had romanticized Mike O’Sullivan, Sr., into a kind of Robin Hood who had traveled the Midwest stealing mob money from banks and giving it to poor farmers and other Depression unfortunates.

The story went that Mike O’Sullivan had been the top lieutenant of Rock Island’s Irish godfather, John Looney, but that (back in ’31) O’Sullivan and Looney’s homicidal off spring Connor had vied for the old man’s chair, which led to an attempt on O’Sullivan’s life, that succeeded only in taking out the Angel’s wife, Annie, and younger son, Peter.

This tale was true as far as it went, but the power-play aspect was guesswork by second- and third-rate journalists. Michael Satariano knew why and how the Looney feud had really begun: he himself, at the tender age of eleven, had stowed away on one of his father’s “missions” (as he and Peter used to romantically put it, daydreaming that Papa and his gun were doing the bidding of President Hoover).

Instead the boy had stumbled onto a mob killing, witnessing Connor Looney murdering an unarmed man, followed by his own father machine-gunning a clutch of the murdered man’s understandably riled compatriots.

So it was that Connor had schemed to wipe out the O’Sullivan family, only to fail miserably, as was Connor’s wont.

The two surviving O’Sullivans — Michaels senior and junior — had become outlaws, moving by car from one small Midwestern town to another, striking out at the Capone Outfit by hitting banks where the gang hid its loot, to pressure the Chicago Boys into giving Connor over to the Angel’s righteous vengeance. This went on for six long dangerous months — young Michael himself had killed several times in defense of himself and his father — until finally Capone and his top man, Frank Nitti, handed Connor Looney on a platter to Michael O’Sullivan.

When Connor finally lay dead in the gutter of a Rock Island street, O’Sullivan struck a peace with the Chicago Outfit; but Capone and Nitti betrayed that pact, dispatching an assassin who indeed cut down O’Sullivan Senior — an assassin Michael himself had then killed... despite the pulp-magazine-and-Hollywood sugarcoating of a child unable to pull the trigger, only to have his dying father bail him out with a bullet.

Eliot Ness — the famous Untouchable, to whom Michael O’Sullivan, Sr., had turned over evidence on Old Man Looney, consigning him to stir — had placed Michael O’Sullivan, Jr., in that orphanage in Downer’s Grove. And his new parents, the Satarianos, had never known of his real beginnings, raising him in idyllic smalltown DeKalb, outside of Chicago.

In 1942, when he went to work for the Outfit, Michael Satariano’s pedigree had seemed as perfect as his Medal of Honor heroics. In those early days, to put himself in solid, he had committed acts for Frank Nitti not unlike those his father had done for John Looney; but his plans for settling scores had gone awry, when the architect of his father’s murder, Al Capone, revealed himself to be a drooling VD-ravaged near-vegetable, beyond any revenge, save for what God might eventually have in store.

And then an unexpected friendship had grown between Michael Satariano and Frank Nitti, that dignified, intelligent CEO of organized crime. As an Outfit soldier who’d killed in the line of duty, Michael had taken the blood oath of omertà, and now found himself a member of Chicago’s La Cosa Nostra family, whether he liked it or not.

The saving grace had been that damned Medal of Honor, and the fact that Michael Satariano had not a single arrest on his record. Oh, he’d been brought in for questioning a few times, and was known to have associated with certain notorious types; but for a Sicilian “made man” to look so respectable was a not-so-small miracle in the world of the Outfit.

His new godfather had been Paul Ricca, and the white-haired, slender ganglord — the only man in the mob who knew that Satariano was in reality O’Sullivan — had over the years treated him almost like a son, or perhaps grandson. Ricca had protected Michael, and used him wisely and well, in key management positions at Outfit-owned entertainment venues.

Michael had started by booking acts at the Chez Paree, the closest thing to a Vegas showroom in the Windy City, and the Chez also boasted a huge casino, running wide-open with police protection. In the early ’60s, when Mr. Kelly’s, the Happy Medium, and the Playboy Club heralded a hipper Second City scene, the Chez finally folded, and Michael was dispatched to Vegas, where more traditional show biz still held sway.

As “entertainment director” of the Sands, he met all the big stars, and became friendly with that charming manic depressive Frank Sinatra, and the other Clan members like Sammy Davis and Dino (the term “Rat Pack” was one Sinatra despised). Michael did more than just run the showroom and the lounges, however — he learned the casino business, and rose to second-in-command. Soon the Outfit honchos had big things in mind for Michael.

Then, just as the ’60s got into gear, Michael’s guardian godfathers, Ricca and Accardo, retired, allowing that crazy whack job Sam “Mooney” Giancana to take the top chair. Even on the periphery, however, the two respected elders held a fair share of power, keeping various fingers in assorted pies, and reining Mooney in.

Still, Michael knew his long period of protection had ended.

Giancana, the unpredictable hoodlum who’d been chauffeur and snarling bodyguard to both the former bosses, had come to power via reckless violence and sheer moneymaking ability — Mooney had, for example, taken over (bloodily) the Negro numbers racket, a great earner for the mob to this day. The level-headed, dignified Frank Nitti must have been spinning in his grave, what with that psycho punk from the Patch’s old 42 gang holding the Capone throne.

On the other hand, Giancana had always been friendly if patronizing to Michael, for example when he gave Michael the entertainment director position at the Villa Venice, an elaborate nightclub in the northwestern Chicago boonies. For two months, top talent came in, in particular the Clan of Sinatra, Dino, and Sammy Davis... none of whom were paid a cent, doing the gig as a favor to Giancana (presumably as a repayment for helping Sinatra’s pal Jack Kennedy get to the White House). After the show, guests were taken two blocks by shuttle for fleecing at a Quonset hut with a plush casino interior. Then Giancana — aware that FBI eyes were on him — shuttered the facility, pocketing three mil.

Soon, mysteriously, the handsomely insured Villa Venice facility burned down.

Again, Michael had had nothing to do with the casino end, his role that of a glorified handshaker, not unlike the indignity former heavyweight champ Joe Louis suffered in Vegas, where a casino employed him as a greeter. The Medal of Honor winner with the boyish countenance rated big with the Chicago columnists, guys like Irv Kupcinet and Herb Lyon, and if the Outfit could have been said to have a golden boy in the ’60s and early ’70s, Michael Satariano was it.

And Giancana himself was pleased enough with Michael to offer him a real job, specifically that big promotion he’d been groomed for by Ricca and Accardo: in 1964, Michael Satariano became entertainment director (and in reality top boss) here at the Cal-Neva Lodge and Casino at Lake Tahoe.

Pronounced Kal-Neeva, the resort dated back to the ’20s, a rustic fishing/gaming retreat built on the California/Nevada state line, which bisected Lake Tahoe south to north, running up the hilly, rocky shoreline and through the hotel’s central building (and fireplace and outdoor kidney-shaped swimming pool). Six of its acres were on the California side, eight on the Nevada. Before gambling in Nevada was legalized in 1931, the casino’s gaming tables were on wheels, to be rolled across the dark line on the wooden floor to California, should Nevada coppers show, and vice versa. In the years since, food, drink, and guests had stayed in California, with the casino all the way over in Nevada... across that painted line.

Eight thousand feet above sea level, ringed by the peaks of the High Sierras, accessed by one long winding narrow mountain road, the Cal-Neva — a.k.a. the Castle in the Sky — perched high over the northern tip of the lake, ideally positioned to take in Tahoe’s deep, clear azure sunshine-dappled waters, against the surrounding forest’s plush dark green. The sprawling lodge itself was a sort of barnwood wigwam castle, with a commanding A-frame stone porch. In addition to a motel-like row of cabins, small wooden bungalows, and a few larger chalets on stilts clustered on the slope below the lodge, between granite outcroppings, the pine bluff dropping sharply to Crystal Bay.

The Cal-Neva, like so many Nevada casinos, was owned by a syndicate of investors, which often involved silent partners, including over the years various bootleggers and gangsters (Joe Kennedy, for instance), and thus it was that this magnificently situated rustic resort came to be “owned” largely by a certain Italian American singer. That the singer’s half-share of Cal-Neva represented Chicago investments in general — and Sam Giancana in particular — was a fairly open secret.

But Sinatra and Giancana had been arrogant, even for them, and a series of misadventures culminated in disaster.

A cocktail waitress Sinatra had dallied with was the wife of a local sheriff, who got tough with Frank, and when said sheriff was run off the road and killed a few weeks later, the Nevada Gaming Commission arched an eyebrow. They would soon run out of eyebrows, as a statewide prostitution ring began operating from the front desk, a guest was murdered on the resort’s doorstep, and Sam Giancana himself cavorted openly, even beating up one of the customers.

The latter infraction drew more heat than murders and hookers. Whenever the singing McGuire Sisters played Sinatra’s acoustically perfect, seven-hundred-seat Celebrity Showroom, Giancana would shack up with his favorite sister (Phyllis); he would also play golf and dine with Sinatra, even though both knew Mooney was under FBI surveillance.

Giancana was, after all, prominent in the Gaming Commission’s “List of Excluded Persons” — colloquially, its Black Book — at the top of the list of criminals forbidden even to set foot on a Nevada casino floor. (That half the joint was in California became Giancana’s excuse.) When the commission had the temerity to point this out, Sinatra got so indignant and abusive, he had to surrender his license, and sell out.

Everybody, including the FBI, assumed that when Sinatra left Cal-Neva, so did Giancana; after all, the place closed down upon the Voice’s departure, and stayed that way for some months. But the truth was, Giancana still held a considerable interest, and although former Outfit rep Skinny D’Amato had exited when Sinatra did, the Congressional Medal of Honor winner from Chicago had stepped in, to continue looking after Giancana’s silent partnership.

Though it had been almost ten years since Sinatra’s fall from grace, the singer’s presence was still felt at Cal-Neva — the Vegas-like showroom he’d built, the secret system of tunnels and passageways that connected the lodge with select chalets, even the orange, beige, and brown color scheme within the lodge. This was not a bad thing for business, and pictures of the famous crooner remained on display in both the Indian Lounge and (as it was now known) the Sinatra Celebrity Showroom.

After parking his pearl-gray Corvette in an almost empty lot on this pleasantly cool April morning, Michael walked across the gravel and then through pine and rock to the edge of the bluff.

To him, this job, in this location, was about as close to paradise as he could hope to find, in the life he’d chosen. Las Vegas was just a neon stain on the desert, a loud metal-and-plastic purgatory; but Tahoe was a heaven of clear sweet mountain air, the vast royal-blue lake sparkling with sunshine set against snowcapped peaks. Birds flashed colorfully as they darted between giant pines, while the stripes of speedboats on the water made abstract patterns, and a seaplane tilted a nonspecific salute against a sky almost as blue as the lake.

Back in ’64, Michael and his family had relocated to Crystal Bay (on the California side), whose year-round population was just over seven thousand which took some adjusting for the Satarianos, who had lived in Chicago (or that is, Oak Park) forever. Also, since Cal-Neva was seasonal, open Memorial Day through Labor Day, Michael would periodically help out back at the Sands and at Miami’s Fountainbleu, covering vacation time for other casino execs. This had taken him away from his family for several months a year, which he had not relished.

He’d been pushing for years to open Cal-Neva year-round; the Lake Tahoe area was rife with winter sports, and only January, February, and March — when admittedly the snowfall could be severe, up to thirty feet — were problematic. Tahoe often had warm weather from May to December, and the fall months were the nicest. As of several years ago he’d been allowed to expand his season from May first to the Thanksgiving weekend — but that still left Cal-Neva dark for four months.

They would be opening in less than two weeks, and the maintenance people were inside sprucing up the place. In fact, when he entered the A-frame lobby, the sound of vacuum cleaners echoed through the building’s high, open-beam ceilings, as did the clip-clop of his footsteps on the stone floor.

He took a quick walk-through, glancing around, checking the status of the cleaning job, the resort’s knotty-pine ambience second nature to him, the eyes of mounted bear and deer and moose heads staring at him as he passed through chambers whose walls were studded with granite boulders.

The rustic hunting-lodge atmosphere of the facility, from the hanging Native American blankets and art to the Indian Lounge with its massive stone fireplace, had always pleased him. The space-age architecture of Las Vegas was cold, Sin City a windowless world with no clocks and endless noise. At Cal-Neva, even the casino room had gaping windows onto the green of pines and the purple of mountains and the blue of lake and sky, and you always knew whether it was day or night.

At Cal-Neva you could do more than just lose your shirt — you could sit by the warmth of a forty-foot granite fireplace, you could sip cocktails and listen to Frank Sinatra, Jr., in the Indian Lounge (couldn’t afford Senior anymore, not that he’d ever set foot here again), you could laugh yourself silly at Martin and Rossi (“Hello dere!”) in the Celebrity Showroom, you could swim in pool or lake, ski on snow or water, fish for salmon or trout or mackinaw, or ride horseback on mountain trails.

And you could still lose your shirt.

Michael prided himself on providing his patrons with a memorable getaway, giving them more for the money they left behind. But he had no illusions about the nature of this beast — a casino was the ideal business, wasn’t it? A business where the customer was anxious to trade you his money for nothing more than a dream and a drink.

Michael did not lay back, as some managers did; he personally kept track of the count from drop boxes at the gambling tables. He would prowl the casino, a presence who might pop up at any moment. In Vegas he’d learned from the best how to spot every scam, every weakness — from a dealer who lifted his hole card too high (Michael would stroll by and casually whisper, “Nice lookin’ ace of spades”) — to crapshooters palming loaded dice (he especially watched the little old ladies). From contrived diversions — asking a dealer for a cigarette, conveniently spilled drinks — to dealers with “sub” pockets sewn in their clothes to slide in chips on the sly.

On the other hand, while he was paid to keep the professional cheats and the crooked staffers from stealing, part of Michael’s job was to look the other way where Chicago’s larceny was concerned. Though Tahoe was preferable to Vegas — that city of endless kickbacks — the ultimate kickback remained.

A casino could be skimmed any number of ways, but the time-honored one was in the count room. Once a month a little man from Chicago would collect a suitcase from the count-room safe, and never the IRS the wiser. Michael’s role in this was merely to look the other way, but it made him no less a thief, did it?

As a mob-connected casino manager, he accepted this as a standard business practice, however bad a taste might linger, whatever possible criminal consequence could one day rise up out of his comfortable life and threaten everything he and his family enjoyed.

He had not intended to go down this road.

His father had gone down a similar path, and had hoped his son would not follow. But circumstances had led Michael into the Outfit life, and so the Outfit life was his.

Still, he’d been luckier than many. Than most. His godfather, Paul Ricca, had warned him long ago that going down the more legitimate mob avenues would not preclude him from certain duties.

“You can be in a passive part of our business,” the dignified gray-haired patriarch had said, so many years ago, “and still be called upon. With your talents — this will happen. This... will... happen.”

For the sake of protecting Michael’s ability to serve as a squeaky-clean front man, however, the war hero had been largely protected from the violent side of things.

Now the Outfit, as he had known it — as his father had known it — was entering its twilight years. Capone and Nitti were long gone; the mob’s corpulent treasurer, Guzik, had (not surprisingly) died eating, and even the Outfit’s fixer and diplomat, Murray “the Hump” Humphries, had succumbed to a heart attack. Gone, too, for that matter, was gangbuster Eliot Ness — dead at his kitchen table, passed out beside a bottle of whiskey over the galley proofs of The Untouchables, the autobiography that made him a posthumous household word.

For many years Ricca and Accardo had ruled quietly from the sidelines, reining in Mooney Giancana’s more impulsive tendencies while letting Mooney take the heat. Some considered Giancana a mere straw man, shoved forward by Ricca and Accardo into a prominence they abhorred. Finally, after such ill-advised endeavors as flaunting his presence at Cal-Neva and suing the FBI for harassment, Giancana had been removed from leadership and banished to Mexico, where he’d flourished for some years now, running casinos and gambling boats.

A few months ago, a fatal heart attack had taken Paul Ricca out, and the Capone era seemed finally truly over. Michael had a certain fondness for Ricca, the dignified ganglord who’d protected the Medal of Honor winner for so many years. But Michael had never felt about Ricca in the way he had Frank Nitti; for Nitti there had been a sense of sadness, even a tear or two. The death of Ricca brought only relief, as the last living link to his O’Sullivan past disappeared.

Michael didn’t even really know who was in charge these days — Accardo, certainly, alternating between Chicago and Palm Springs, oversaw things. (Michael had worked directly under Accardo for a few years, and their relationship remained friendly and mutually respectful.) Back in Chicago, day-to-day operations were supposedly in the hands of Joey Aiuppa, who with his underboss, Jackie Cerone, was a throwback to Giancana’s 42 gang roughneck style. But their influence was mostly on the streets of Chicago, where they terrorized bookies and juice men who welshed on the street tax.

And Michael had even heard disturbing rumblings that Giancana was contemplating a return stateside, to resume his throne.

As for the children of the Capone-era crew, they had largely pleased their parents by going into legitimate pursuits — stockbrokers, Realtors, attorneys, small-business owners. And so many of the Outfit businesses these days were legit — hotels, restaurants, car dealerships, real estate tracts...

In Vegas, the Outfit had sold out to Howard Hughes, Wall Street, and the corporations — Sheraton, MGM, and Hilton — though there would always be a place in gaming for experienced guys like Michael. Somebody “connected” like Michael, however, even somebody with as spotless a record as his, usually could only manage a work permit; a gaming license required the kind of rigorous background check — net worth, stock holdings, loans, bank accounts — that would have made the Singing Nun nervous.

That was why, officially, Michael remained entertainment director at Cal-Neva, and made only thirty grand per annum. Of course his bonuses took him up to over one hundred grand, but what the Gaming Control Board didn’t know wouldn’t hurt it.

He would soon be in a position to take an early retirement — fifty-five, he and Pat had agreed to — and all of this would be behind him. He had enjoyed managing the Cal-Neva, was considered a good, tough but fair, nice if somewhat remote, boss; he had restored the resort’s reputation and made it a consistent earner. And he had ducked, for decades, the bullet of being asked by the Outfit to do something... unpleasant.

Satisfied his cleaning staff was on top of things, Michael entered his office, which did not reflect the rustic nature of the rest of the facility.

This was an executive’s inner sanctum — dark woodwork, a large neat mahogany desk with matching wooden file cabinets — whose windows provided a striking view of the lake. The fireplace did retain the rough boulder-like look of the lodge, and above the fireplace — other than a few framed family portraits on the desk — was the only personal touch in the room.

Over the mantel a World War II — vintage Garand rifle rested on two prongs, underneath it a small, simply framed document bearing a watercolor American flag and calligraphic lettering: “To Michael P. Satariano, Corporal United States Army, for saving my life in a strafing attack by a Japanese Zero fight on Bataan March 10, 1942,” signed “General Jonathan M. Wainwright.”

Once a month Michael cleaned the weapon and polished its stock. Other than his father’s .45 — stowed away in a safe-deposit box, with various cash — it was the only gun he owned.

He settled into his swivel chair — black leather, comfortably padded — and flipped open a file of receipts, picking up where he’d left off yesterday. He worked on this, and then typed some correspondence — he had no secretary, and used an Olympia on a stand beside the desk — and after a little over an hour, he took a break to wander out into the lodge and find himself a soft drink.

He stopped for a few minutes to chat with two members of the Mexican cleaning staff in the Indian Lounge, and compliment them on their work — they were waxing the dance floor — then walked into the cocktail lounge, with its colorful stained-glass dome of Austrian crystal. He ducked behind the circular bar and got himself a bottle of Coca-Cola from the small refrigerator tucked beneath. No ice, but the Coke sweated with cold. He did not take a glass with him, just using a bottle opener and helping himself to a Cal-Neva cocktail napkin.

When he returned to his office, he almost dropped the Coke, because seated in the visitor’s chair across from Michael’s desk was Sam “Mooney” Giancana.

“Nothing for me, thanks,” Giancana said.

The diminutive, deeply tanned gangster — looking like a golfer in his straw orange-banded fedora, avocado sport jacket, burnt-orange Polo shirt, and lime slacks — leaned back casually, arms folded, legs crossed, ankle on a knee; his shoes were light-brown tasseled loafers, and he wore no socks.

“Make yourself at home,” Michael said, and he and his Coke went behind the desk.

“In a way, this still is my home.” Giancana’s face was an oval with a lumpy nose and a sideways slash of a smile stuck on haphazardly; his eyes lurked behind gray-lensed sunglasses.

“Well, you do still know your way around,” Michael said, with a nod toward the fireplace.

Giancana smiled. “I checked myself into Chalet Fifty. For old times’ sake. Hope you don’t mind.”

What this meant was, Giancana had entered the chalet and used the underground passage to come up through the secret doorway that was built into one side of the stone fireplace.

Seated now, Michael said, carefully, “Is this your place? I’ve never been sure how you and the Boys were splitting things up, after you left.”

Giancana shrugged. “Accardo gets his piece of my Mexican interests. I still get my piece of Chicago’s interests. Nothing’s changed — ’cept that hothead Aiuppa is sitting where I should.”

Michael managed not to smile; the idea of Giancana considering someone a hothead was... amusing.

On the other hand, Michael had never really seen Giancana lose his temper. He’d watched the little gangster stab a fork into a guy’s hand once, and slap an occasional underling, but always with a cool calculation that was in its way far more frightening.

“I didn’t know you were back in the country,” Michael said.

“No one does.”

“Not even the feds?”

“I’m not wanted for anything. I left the States of my own free will.” He shrugged with one shoulder. “But I don’t need to advertise, neither. That’s why I slipped over the border, like a goddamn wetback. And I’ll slip back over the same way. The family?”

It took a beat for Michael to figure out what Giancana meant.

Then he said, “My family’s fine, thanks — Pat’s busy with her pet projects and charities. Anna’s in high school now. And Mike’s over in Vietnam — should be home soon.”

Giancana nodded. “Finally the fuck winding down. Them kids’ll all be back ’fore you know it — that’s good. You must be proud of the boy.”

“I am. But mostly I’ll be glad to have him home safe, again... And your girls?”

“Grown up. Two married, one divorced. That’s about par.” Giancana made a disparaging click in one cheek. “No values, these days.”

Michael leaned on an elbow. “Sam — surely you didn’t come all this way just to make small talk.”

Giancana shrugged with both shoulders this time, then put his hands on his knees. “Seeing you’s a big part of it, Saint.”

“Really.”

“Oh yeah. See, I’ve let you sit on the sidelines, all these years, ’cause it’s been useful to our thing, having a guy like you, all wrapped up in the flag, fronting for us.”

The back of Michael’s neck was tingling.

“But, Mike — I ain’t never forgot who you are, what you are. You’re still the guy that shot Frank Abatte in Cal City that time. You’re still the guy that single-handed took out that hit team on Al down in Palm Beach. And you’re still the guy that nailed those two disloyal prick bodyguards that turned on Frank.”

Michael leaned back; he twitched a smile. “Actually, Sam, I’m not.”

“Not?”

“That’s not who I am anymore.”

Giancana offered up yet another shrug, gestured with open hands; for Michael’s taste, the man was working way too hard to seem casual.

“Who’s to say any of us is who we was when we was kids? Used to be, I could hump three, four broads in a night... Maybe them days is behind me, but, Mike...”

And Giancana removed his dark glasses, and small beady shark’s eyes locked unblinkingly on Michael.

“...I can still get it up.”

Michael raised an eyebrow. “Good for you.”

Giancana tossed the glasses on Michael’s desk; they clunked and slid a little. “First time I really got a good look at you was, hell, when was it, ’42? When you came over to the Bella Napoli, to talk to the Waiter.”

The Bella Napoli was a restaurant in River Forest, a Chicago suburb; but the “waiter” in question didn’t serve food: Giancana was referring to Paul “the Waiter” Ricca.

“I miss him,” Michael said, referring to the recent death of his godfather.

“Great loss. Great man. Personally? I always thought it was tragic, you know — prison time depriving him of the chair that was rightfully his. Joe Batters, all due respect, a good man himself, never was no Paul Ricca.”

“Joe Batters” was a Tony Accardo nickname that dated back to Capone’s day.

“I owe a lot to Paul,” Michael said.

“Yeah... yeah... don’t we all. Hate I couldn’t make it back for the funeral, but hell — the feds musta been on that one like flies on dog shit.”

To this touching sentiment, Michael replied, “They were.”

“That time, back at the Bella Napoli? I was impressed with you.”

“Were you?”

“I was. Really, truly.” The little man shifted in his chair; he was “little” literally, but he had a presence, even a charisma, that filled the office. “You stood up to Mad Sam. You didn’t cut him no slack.”

“Did he deserve any?”

Giancana’s laugh was curt. “Hell no! He was a psycho then, and he’s a psycho now. You know them glasses he wears?”

“Sure.”

“There’s no prescription in ’em. He has perfect eyesight. But sometimes he takes ’em off and rubs his eyes and then he sneaks peeks at people, thinking he’s catching ’em off — guard. Like we all think just ’cause he wears glasses, he’s blind as a bat or something!”

Michael managed a smile. “Really?”

Giancana sat forward, his small eyes huge. “Did you know he’s a satanist?”

“A satanist.”

“A full-blown fuckin’ no-shit satanist! He told me the people he’s hit. Blood sacrifices to the devil! I saw him rolling around on the floor one time, havin’ some kinda damn fit, foamin’ at the mouth, screamin’, ‘Show me some mercy, Satan, I’m your servant, Satan, command me!’... kinda shit.”

Michael sipped his Coke, put the bottle back on the cocktail-napkin coaster. “Well, that’s fascinating I’m sure, Sam.”

“‘The devil made me do it!’” Giancana said, in possibly the worst Flip Wilson impression of all time. He pawed the air. “Hell! The stories I could tell...”

“You’ve convinced me. Mad Sam is nuts.”

Giancana leaned so close, he almost climbed onto the desk. “He’s more than nuts, Mike. He’s dangerous.”

“Doesn’t that go without saying?”

“I don’t just mean ‘dangerous’ he might stick an ice pick in your ball sack. I mean ‘dangerous’ this business with Grimaldi, this trial — you know how Sam behaves in court!”

“Likes to defend himself.”

“Talk about a fuckin’ fool for a client. Layin’ on a stretcher in his pajamas, yellin’ through a bullhorn. Tellin’ the judge he’s worse than fuckin’ Stalin!”

“So what?”

“So an unpredictable prick like Sam, knowin’ the things he knows about all of us? Can you wrap your brain around the risk? And if they grant him immunity...”

“What does this have to do with me?”

Giancana leaned back; he was framed against a peaceful background of blue sky and green forest and purple mountain in the picture window behind him. “Sam’s the problem. You’re the solution.”

Michael drew breath in through his nostrils.

“We need somebody to take care of this,” Giancana said, and gesturing with open hands again, “who’s not one of the, you know, usual suspects. You can walk right up to Sam, he wouldn’t think nothing of it; and the cops? Even the feds? You been a saint so long, who the fuck’s gonna—”

“No.”

Giancana’s eyes tightened; his frown reflected confusion more than displeasure. It was as if the word Michael had uttered had been in Swahili.

“You’ve got a pretty cushy job here, Mike,” Giancana said slowly. “You really wanna throw that away?”

“Fire me if you want. I have half a dozen standing offers from legit bosses in Vegas.”

Nostrils flared. “Le-git bosses...?”

“All due respect, Sam,” Michael said, raising a pacifying palm, “that part of my life is behind me.”

To a bystander, Giancana’s smile might have looked pleasant. “Mike... ‘no’ ain’t an option.”

“Is this coming from Accardo?”

The oval face flushed. But the voice remained calm: “It’s coming from me, Mike. It’s coming from this-ain’t-a-fucking-topic-of-conversation. We ain’t breaking up into fuckin’ discussion groups.”

Nodding, Michael rocked back in his chair. “You’re right. Nothing to discuss. I won’t do this for you, Sam. Or for Tony or anybody.”

Giancana’s eyes were moving side to side, frantically; and yet he managed to glare at Michael, nonetheless.

Michael was saying, “You don’t just waltz into my office, thirty years later, and say suddenly I’m a torpedo again.”

Giancana stood.

And pointed a finger.

The finger did not tremble, but his voice did, just a little. “I’ll tell you, thirty years ago. Thirty years ago you took an oath. Thirty years ago—”

Michael shook his head. “I don’t care about guns and daggers and burned pictures or any of your Sicilian Boy Scout rituals. I was a fucking kid. Now I’m a grown man with a family and a reputation, and I’ve made you people a lot of money over the years.”

“You people! You people!”

“Go out the way you came, Sam, and get off this property — you’re still in the Black Book, and I have investors to protect. Go and find some goombah to do your bidding. I run a business for the Outfit. It starts and ends there.”

Giancana’s face was tomato red. “You’re a man with a family is right, Mike—”

Michael stood. He looked Giancana squarely in the eyes. His voice delivered words that were hard and cold and even — no inflection at all.

“Understand this, Momo. I may have put killing for you people behind me... but self-defense I’m fine with. Touch my family, even look at them, and you’ll wish you were dealing with Mad Sam, not a ‘saint’... capeesh?”

Giancana drew in a deep breath.

The little gangster plucked his sunglasses from the desk, put them on, and moved to the fireplace, where he worked a hidden lever on the mantel. The left stony pillar swung out, revealing a dark passage.

“Capeesh,” Giancana said quietly, and stepped into the blackness.

The stone door closed behind him, making a scraping sound, like fingernails on a chalkboard.

Michael winced, but that sound had nothing to do with it.

Two

Two days ago, Patricia Ann Satariano had celebrated her forty-seventh birthday. Like her husband, she looked young for her age, though (unlike her husband) some minor plastic surgery had aided the effect.

Pat smoked, and that had put vertical lines above her upper lip, and she’d had her eyes done, too (she didn’t know any mother of two who could reach her age without showing years around the eyes). As for the smoking, the health concerns hadn’t been publicized when she began, and the habit had helped her with various tensions over the years.

So she’d had all of that erased, and a little breast lift, too, two years ago (she had met forty-five with the terror some women experience at fifty), and Pat Satariano remained a reasonable, very recognizable adult version of the astonishingly beautiful Patsy Ann O’Hara, who had been a high school homecoming queen in DeKalb, Illinois, back in 1938.

Right now, mowing their lawn on this crisp spring day in her white tube top and blue short-shorts and white sneakers, she was still wolf-whistle-worthy, a slender, long-legged, shapely blue-eyed blonde with shagged hair brushing her shoulders, Carly Simon — style. She’d always kept trim, exercising decades before fitness was “in”; her grooming remained impeccable, and she stayed as fashionable as possible, considering the nearest “big” city was Reno, an hour away. (If it weren’t for the I. Magnin shop at Cal-Neva, she would have gone mad in Crystal Bay.)

She and Michael had been high school sweethearts, and she’d gone to college right there in DeKalb, at Northern, while initially Michael worked for his folks, Mama and Papa Satariano, at their spaghetti house. Then her beau had been among the first to enlist — even before Pearl Harbor — and was likewise among the first to return.

He’d come back from Bataan with a glass left eye and the war’s first Congressional Medal of Honor.

She knew of the torturous history behind Michael using that heroic distinction to go to work for Frank Nitti; she was aware of his misguided and dangerous attempt to take revenge for the murders of his mother, brother, and father. She knew, too, the convoluted circumstances that had led to his remaining among those people.

All these years.

And yet, despite the underlying tensions of who her husband’s employers were, their life had been almost placid. Michael’s job paid very well, they had a lovely home (a rambling ranch-style in the Country Club subdivision), and their children had grown up here in the small affluent community of Crystal Bay (California), under the bluest sky God had ever whipped up in His celestial kitchen.

For the first ten years or so, the couple had stayed in the Chicago area, Patsy Ann teaching (high school literature) and Michael working for... those people. The Satarianos had settled in Oak Park, and she taught at nearby working-class Berwyn; and the first few years — when Michael was assisting Mr. Accardo, mostly out of the Morrison Hotel in the Loop — had been tense. Pat wasn’t sure what Michael had done for Mr. Accardo in those days, and never asked.

But after that, Michael strictly worked in legitimate areas for his employers, usually a restaurant or nightclub. Occasionally the Satarianos spent time in Vegas, sometimes as long as several months — vacations, really — and almost always over Christmas, when he’d be filling in at the Sands.

The plan had been for Pat to work for a while, and then they’d start their family. They began seriously trying in the late forties, and for a while it looked like she might be teaching school forever; but Mike, Jr., came along in 1951, and Anna in 1956. Good Catholics though they were, the Satarianos nonetheless decided to hold it at two.

Somehow they’d managed to create little replicas of themselves — young Mike was a quiet, serious boy who loved to read, not an A student but a good one, who excelled at sports, football and baseball, as had his dad. Anna was dark-haired and dark-eyed but otherwise the image of her mom; and like her mom, Anna was popular and a cheerleader and an honor student, obsessed with movies, theater, and pop music.

No one ever had better kids.

And moving to Crystal Bay had only been beneficial — even in the suburbs, Chicago had a dark side. Mike — their son was always “Mike,” and his father “Michael,” to differentiate them around the house — had been old enough, at twelve, to find the uprooting traumatic; but the boy got over it, particularly when the girls ooohed and aaahed over his dark hair and dark eyes. Anna was only in the first grade, so that had been less of a problem.

With no Catholic church in either Crystal Bay or its Nevada neighbor Incline Village, the Satarianos joined St. Theresa’s in South Lake Tahoe — though only thirty miles, the journey in this mountainous, twisty territory took easily forty-five minutes. Both kids had complained, every single Sunday, from grade school through high school, about this imposition on their time; but the parents insisted, and Pat had been fairly active in the church, now that she was no longer teaching.

Pat couldn’t really say Michael had been a warm father, not in the effusive sense — he showered both kids with gifts, and always had time for them, but he was quiet and sparing with praise. Somehow their daughter had always been closer to her father, and their son to his mother.

A funny split between father and son occurred during grade school, when Mike — ever the sports nut — started obsessively following college and national teams, his room a collage of posters and pennants. Though he’d been a high school star athlete himself, the boy’s father had no interest in either collegiate or professional sports — to him, they were only games that fueled gambling, and represented a sort of busman’s holiday.

Michael would say to Pat, “That shit’s just the point spread.”

So it had been Pat who sat and watched TV with her son, and followed the teams, football and baseball, while Michael accompanied Anna to the movies they both loved, and theater, and he always made sure the whole family got ringside seats in Vegas and at the Cal-Neva for Sinatra and Darin and Judy Garland and Elvis... plus backstage handshakes and autographs.

Because of his line of work, Michael was in a position to put Anna in contact with her dreams, and just last year he had ushered her around Hollywood, introducing her to top actors and actresses and directors and producers, getting the full tour of various Hollywood studios, going on set during the making of (wouldn’t you know it) The Godfather. Acting and singing were Anna’s big ambitions, and her father clearly intended to pave the way.

Pat appreciated both her daughter’s talent, and her husband’s interest in helping their gifted girl, but Mom was afraid their little A student might skip college and go right into show business, which was — let’s face it — just a bunch of low-life carnival people (however talented) doing the bidding of garment merchants and gangsters. This particular argument was one of the few recurring ones in a predominantly happy, mutually supportive marriage.

“You’re a closet bigot,” Michael would say.

“I am not!” These were always fighting words to liberal Pat.

“You say ‘carny people,’ but you mean ‘wops’ and ‘kikes.’”

“I do not!”

“Never forget the world thinks I’m one of those wops... who happens to have provided a pretty goddamn good life for us, I might add.”

“Do you think I don’t know that?”

“And what makes you think ‘micks’ are any better than the other European riffraff! We all washed up on the Ellis Island shore, didn’t we?”

This was an argument that always ended with Pat retreating to a brooding silence, which was unusual, because the pattern on just about every other topic was the reverse. Michael seldom got as verbal as he did when this particular button got pushed.

And she understood: deep down, he felt guilty about the life he led; but, as he’d pointed out, the result for his family had been overwhelmingly positive. And he was, after all, a legitimate businessman, despite certain ties...

Now, it should never be said that Michael treated Anna as his “favorite.” He backed his son’s interests, too — however disinterested Michael might be in professional sports, the father had always been a keen follower of his son’s local endeavors in the athletic arena. Even with his demanding, often punishing schedule, Michael had rarely missed a Little League, junior high, or high school game — even the intramurals at St. Theresa’s.

And high school had found mother and daughter forging a tighter bond — the worries and pressures of the various high school musicals Anna had gone out for called for a maternal touch, since Michael didn’t deal with emotions that well, his own or anybody else’s. Plus, there had been “boy” issues, which (until lately) they had discussed like two girls at a slumber party.

And, then, along came Vietnam...

Pat and her son had had a major falling out over the Great American Misadventure. Pat — a lifelong Democrat — stayed active with local, state, and even national politics, and during the late ’60s actively protested the war. (Michael, also a Democrat, always seemed to agree with her, but never participated in marches and sit-ins — though he did not discourage her.)

She so hated the war, she’d even been conned into voting for Nixon! — fucking Nixon! — in 1968, because the Democrats had imploded at their convention, and Bobby Kennedy had been murdered, and Tricky Dick at least had a secret “plan,” right? Who could have predicted that plan was the secret bombing of Cambodia!

Back in ’70, when young Mike — a graduating senior who had several football scholarship offers — drew a three-digit number in the draft lottery... meaning he would likely not be called... Pat had been ecstatic. And her husband had taken her into his arms and squeezed her tight, and whispered, “Thank God. Thank God.”

But then Mike sat his folks down in the living room, one terrible Saturday morning, and explained that he was enlisting in the army.

“Dad served his country,” Mike said, “and I want to do the same.”

“Are you serious?” Pat said, almost hysterical. “Why would you risk your life in that senseless, immoral war?”

She obviously was well-aware that her son — like so many children — had opposite politics to her own; that he had been president of Incline Village High’s Young Republicans Club had not been her proudest moment as a parent. For several years now, Mike had pooh-poohed his mother’s “hippie anti-war ravings” in that soft-spoken wry way of his.

When the boy was feeling especially mean, he might even say, “Aging hippie...”

But this?

“I think you know that I don’t see the war that way,” Mike said, in a calm measured manner so like his father. “Presidents of both parties thought it was a good idea. And the spread of communism has to be stopped... I want to serve. Like Dad.”

She turned to her husband, who looked pale and shell-shocked himself; he and the boy were dressed for golf, in pastels that suddenly struck Pat as blood-drained. “Tell him, Michael! Tell him this is a bad idea! Explain that you fought in a good war!”

“No such thing,” Michael said, quietly.

“Michael! Hitler and the Holocaust, for God’s sake! Pearl goddamn Harbor! But this, this, this, this war... it’s not about anything! Not... about... any-thing!”

“It’s Mike’s decision,” his father said.

“Just about boys dying!”

“I want you to be proud of me, Mom. Like Dad is proud of me.”

She almost snarled at her son. “He isn’t proud of you!”

“Actually, I am,” Michael said.

She had begun to cry, then, but did not allow either of them to comfort her. Michael was telling Mike that his mother was right, that this war was not the same as World War Two, and he would still be proud of Mike if his son would just take his chances in the lottery like any other good all-American boy, and in the meantime there was that scholarship to Fresno...

But it was too little too late, and that night she had told Michael that she would never forgive him, and she made her husband sleep in his study for a week. Then she forgave him, because they were after all best friends, and still lovers, and she could not face this horror without him...

The terrible thing, the worst thing, was she could never work up even false enthusiasm for her son, for this decision he’d made that was so important to him. Even when she kissed him goodbye at the bus station in Reno, she had sensed resentment in him — in his expression, even in the words “I love you, Mom,” though she treasured them no less.

When Michael had been on Bataan, in the early days of the Second World War, Pat had written to him daily, and he never wrote her back once. That had been part of his attempt to distance himself from her — he’d broken up with her, or pretended to, before he left — but she later learned he had read and treasured every page.

Over these last almost three years, she had written her son every week, and she had received only half a dozen very sporadic letters in return. Part of it, she knew, was that Mike just didn’t like to write — English and literature, her specialty, had been her son’s worst subjects. Words came hard to him, self-expression a chore, and the handful of letters the parents had received were chatty, strained things that spent all their time assuring her he was doing fine, and in no danger.

That was one small solace — his job was some kind of company clerk, and he had seen no combat.

I’m perfectly safe, Mom. His handwriting was small and cramped and very neat, and looked no different than it had in junior high, her little boy. Please don’t worry a pretty hair on your head.

Now, with this horrible stupid goddamn fucking immoral goddamn fucking war all but over, Pat allowed herself — finally — to experience hope. Allowed herself to believe that the danger was over, that Nixon suffering all that Watergate heat was leading to the administration finally getting something done about the South Asia mess, and Kissinger had reached a peace agreement in Paris...

Hell, by the end of last year, just months ago, almost all the boys were home! Only twenty-five thousand remained — why did one of them have to be her son?

Michael had soothed her saying, “He has to follow orders, dear — he says in his letters, when his three-year stint is up, he’s going to college. What more can we ask?”

Then, a couple of months ago, finally, finally, finally a cease-fire agreement had been signed, and all of the boys were scheduled to be home by the end of this month. She would feel better if they’d had a letter lately from Mike, explaining his situation exactly, letting them know when they could expect him. Knowing her son, he’d probably just show up at the house one of these days, and grin the half-smile he inherited from his father, and say, “Still mad at me, Mom?”

She took a break from her mowing.

She left her mower in the middle of the backyard — the lawn was big, and Michael would gladly have hired someone to do it, but she considered the task part of her exercise-and-fresh-air regimen — and walked around the empty pool (they’d fill it in a month) to go in the glass doors into the kitchen. The interior of the house she redecorated (and sometimes remodeled) about once a decade. Michael humored her in this department, and their home had gone from Country House to Mediterranean to the latest: International.

And of course her husband saw to it that she got nothing but the best — in the living room, Le Corbusier and Mies van der Rohe furniture, their geometric coolness warmed up by an antique throw rug and a tufted wine-leather Chesterfield couch and two armchairs. The whole house was a study in yellow and white, set off by geometric paintings in green and black and red and white. This tranquil setting Pat adored, though Michael (she knew) found it sterile.

Only two rooms had been spared her modernistic touch: Michael’s study, and their bedroom; the former was a bookcase-walled shrine to her husband’s reading habits — to call his tastes middle-brow would be generous — and the latter a simple ivory-walled chamber with an antique oak four-poster they’d splurged on the first year of their marriage, which had somehow managed to sentimentally weather all of Pat’s decorating styles over the years.

At the round kitchen table in the modern white-and-yellow kitchen with its travertine surfaces and floors, she had an iced tea and (you’ve come a long way, baby) shook a cigarette from her pack of Virginia Slims and lighted up with a Bic.

She had quit the vile habit many times over the years, but with a husband who worked for those employers of his, and a son in Vietnam, she felt she had every reason to risk her own life any way she chose.

Still, she had promised Michael that when Mike came home from Nam, safe and sound, she would indeed quit. Finally. Once and for all.

“Gonna hold you to that,” he’d said, shaking a finger, but smiling the half-smile she loved so much.

With the war over and her son safe now, Pat was in a position to indulge herself in concern over her daughter.

With no real sense of hypocrisy — though the teenage life her daughter was living was a slightly updated version of her own — Pat wished her daughter, a senior at Incline Village High, would not obsess over such unimportant things as getting the lead in the chorus’s spring musical (she always did), being chosen prom queen (the girl had already been homecoming queen), and maintaining her four-point average (Patsy Ann O’Hara had been valedictorian of her class, and so what?). Even worse, Pat was certain Anna was getting serious with her boyfriend, Gary Grace.

Sighing smoke, the mother knew she was being a hypocrite. She and Michael had become intimate — all right, started screwing in the backseat of the O’Hara family Buick — back in high school. But that had been prom night, and they’d become engaged, and eventually married, and...

Pat had not meant to find the birth control pills (actually, she’d been looking for her daughter’s diary); but there they were. How had the child managed it, without parental consent? Or could a girl these days get the pill when she was just seventeen, like Anna?

Well, things had changed, the Sexual Revolution and all that, but that didn’t make Pat feel any the more comfortable about her high school daughter fucking the Boy Most Likely to Succeed (which he certainly had). And she didn’t dare tell Michael, who adored the girl, because he might explode. She knew the world thought Michael was one cool customer, but she had seen him lose his temper, and it wasn’t pretty.

For almost a week, Pat had been struggling with this — how to confront Anna? Better still, how to talk to her while taking the “confrontation” aspect out of the equation; but when Anna learned her mother had been snooping in her bedroom, how could it be anything but confrontational?

By the time Pat had finished mowing the backyard and started on the front, she had held the conversation with her daughter thirteen times — baker’s dozen. It would always start out as a rational, reasonable speech, a kind, understanding motherly discourse, until she was screaming at her daughter in her mind, and her daughter was screaming back...

What was it Anna was saying these days?

Yow.

Yow indeed...

She was leaning on the Lawn Boy when the Chevelle rolled up at the curb. The car was dark green, nondescript, and did not immediately come to mind as anything anyone she knew drove.

Tentatively, she started down the long, gently sloping lawn, to cautiously greet her unknown caller...

...who stepped from the car to reveal his crisp green Class-A uniform with cap shadowing his face, a slender young soldier about five ten.

Her heart leaped with joy — just as she’d predicted, her son had surprised them, showing up unannounced. Wasn’t that like him! She was within five feet of him when she realized it wasn’t Mike at all, but another young soldier, whose face was serious even for a military man.

And she stumbled to a stop, her brain making the connections quickly, because any mother of a boy in service knew that when a soldier came around who was not her child, the only possible news was...

Patricia Ann Satariano said, “Oh God, oh my God,” and tripped and fell to the freshly cut grass, and — mercifully — passed out.

When she woke in their darkened bedroom, her mouth was thick with sleep and sedation; somehow she’d gotten into her nightclothes, and she pushed up unsteadily on her elbow.

Michael was sitting on the edge of the bed. The room was dark. The world, outside the windows of the bedroom, was dark. Suddenly it wasn’t afternoon anymore.

Then she shook her head and said, “Oh, Michael... I just had the worst dream... the most terrible dream...”

He clicked on the nightstand lamp, to a subdued setting that nonetheless washed the room in more light than either of them might desire.

“Not a dream,” Michael said.

But she already knew that, just looking at him. He was in a white shirt, from work, collar open, no tie, the sleeves rolled up, and his face was pale, his hair askew, and his eyes red.

“Our son... our son can’t be dead,” she said. “Oh, Michael, tell me he’s not dead!”

“We don’t know, Pat. We don’t know.” He moved next to her and put his arm around her; they half-sat, supported by the headboard of the four-poster. “There is hope. Some hope.”

“Some...?”

Michael sighed, swallowed, nodded. “Mike has been declared missing in action.”

And hope did spring within her, desperation-tinged. “So... he could be alive?”

“He could. But we have to be honest with ourselves. The odds... Well, we have to be honest with ourselves.”

She didn’t want to talk there, and he got her her blue silk robe, and walked her to the kitchen, where he had coffee waiting, and served her up. As they sat — where a lifetime ago she’d had a smoke and contemplated problems about her daughter that seemed so small now — she had several long drinks of coffee, as if hoping the hot liquid might rejuvenate her.

Then she said, “Anna? Does she know?”

He shook his head. “She’s still at Sound of Music rehearsal. I’ll tell her. I’ll handle it.”

She touched his hand. “How is this possible? Michael, the war is over... All the boys are coming home.”

He sighed again. “Not all... Not right now, anyway.”

“What did they tell you?”

The young soldier had been a staff sergeant from the Reno recruiting office — where in fact Mike had enlisted — and he had carried the unconscious Pat Satariano into the house. Down the street, her friend Trudy had been out in her yard, watering some flowers, and saw Pat collapse and ran over and helped. And had called Michael over at Cal-Neva.

“Mike is officially listed MIA,” Michael said. “We’ve been left a document that details what happened, anyway what’s known.”

“But Michael... the war is over... How...?”

“This happened in January.”

“And we’re being told now?”

Michael shrugged and sighed. “Apparently some kind of negotiations were under way, to try to determine if Mike and some other boys had been taken prisoner. To ascertain, at least, that they were alive... or...”

“No,” she said bitterly. “I’ll tell you what this is about — god-damnit! This is something secret, isn’t it? And they didn’t want it getting out! Because of the cease-fire and...”

Her anger choked off the words.

Michael said, “Do you want me to tell you about it? Or do you want to read what the staff sergeant left us...?”

She swallowed thickly; she felt numb. She shook her head. “Tell me, Michael. Just tell me.”

“Well, putting it simply, Mike’s position was attacked by communist forces — troops and tanks, they were invaded, literally. This was in a place called Tanh Canh Base Camp, Kontum Province... South Vietnam. He was in a water tower observation post and got the warning out, saved a lot of lives. Right away they started what are called E & E operations — evacuate and evade — and a group of perhaps fifty men tried to get away from hundreds.”

“Is this... this where Mike was company clerk?”

Michael hesitated. Then he said, “Darling... that’s something Mike told you, to put your mind at ease. He’s been in combat more or less since he got there.”

“Oh God. Oh Jesus. And you knew?”

“I knew. Be mad if you like, but he made me promise not to tell you.”

She felt her chin quiver, but willpower — and the sedative — allowed her to maintain her composure long enough to hear the rest of it.

“Go on,” she said. “Go on.”

“Helicopters came in to rescue these boys, and Mike was among those staving off the onslaught of enemy troops. I guess he had a... a machine gun, and was just facing them as they came.”

“Mike and... and how many other boys?”

“At the end it was just Mike. They were coming down a hill, the enemy, and he... he was going up. That’s what he was doing when the last helicopter left.”

“They... they left him there? Just left—”

“They had to get away while they could, and...”

“And no one thought he had a chance?”

Michael nodded gravely.

“Did he have a chance?”

Michael’s eyes tightened. “Yes. With a machine gun? He had a chance, all right. He was using a Thompson.”

“A what?”

“It wasn’t government issue. These kids use whatever they can get their hands on — it was a tommy gun.”

“What... like in the old gangster pictures?”

“Yes.”

“Where would he get such a thing?”

Michael said nothing.

Over the years, another of the rare things they had fought about was Michael’s weird insistence that his two children learn how to handle firearms. Since Michael was not a hunter, Pat always thought this was ridiculous. Stupid. Barbaric. And yet, since grade school, both Mike and Anna had been members of the Crystal Bay Gun Club, with their father — a bonding exercise the mother had never condoned.

She glared at him. “You? You? You sent that weapon to him?”

“If he’s alive,” Michael said, “that’s the reason. You can kill a lot of people with a machine gun.”

She let out what was only technically a laugh. “Well, I guess you would know.”

“Baby...”

She got up and poured herself more coffee; she was filled with rage and disgust and grief, but it was all just bubbling, like the coffeepot.

“If he’s alive,” she said, sitting, “where is he?”

“A camp somewhere.”

“A camp somewhere. You make it sound like where we used to send him and Anna in the summer. Prison camp, you mean.”

“Prison camp... He’d be a POW. But with the war over, the Cong won’t be as rough on those kids. We’ll make deals; we’ll negotiate.”

“We?”

“The government.”

“What, fucking Nixon?”

“Patsy Ann — don’t make this something political.”

“Isn’t it? Isn’t politics killing our kids? Haven’t these bastards killed Mike?”

He shook his head. “We don’t know that. We can hope.”

“You hope. I think I’ll settle for despair. It’s easier.”

“Something the sergeant said...” Michael’s voice was strange, strained.

“What?” She looked carefully at her husband. “What?”

“I’m not sure I should tell you.”

“What, Michael?”

“They say he’s being put up for the Congressional Medal of Honor.”

She didn’t say it. She didn’t have to. Just like his father...

“If he gets it, Mike’ll be the last Medal of Honor winner of the Vietnam War.” Michael laughed. “How about that? Like father like son?”

And Michael collapsed onto the table, weeping, tears streaming over the yellow-and-white daisy design.

She scooched her chair over near him, and patted his back, and soothed him. They would take turns, over the coming days, weeks, and months, knowing that if they both succumbed at the same time, they could not bear it.

Three

A week passed in a blur of tears, recriminations from Pat, apologies from Michael, anger from Anna, and constant phone calls from well-meaning friends, relatives, and business associates who put Michael (he protected his wife from these) through the painful procedure of filling them in about Mike and his MIA status.

Pat was doing better, now — she was on Valium, and she clung to a quiet, almost religious belief that Mike was after all only missing, and would be back in the family’s bosom when all the POWs were returned in the aftermath of “that terrible war.” She never used the word “Vietnam,” or for that matter “war,” without preceding it with “that terrible.” She had no anger in her voice — perhaps that was the Valium — reflecting an acceptance of the difficulty of life, but despite this seeming fatalism, nowhere in her was there room for the possibility that Mike might be dead.

Michael, however, knew that the odds for their son’s survival were poor. He wondered — deep in sleepless nights, particularly — whether it was wrong of him to withhold from his wife the complete truth. He had thought that the eventual news (if it ever came) that Mike had been killed would be better handled by Pat after she had at least adjusted to the MIA status. That the process of letting go of her son would be better if a gradual one...

Now she was so deep in denial, caught up in (what was probably) the illusion, even the delusion, that Mike would certainly return to them (“any day now”), that her husband wondered if he might have done her more harm than good.

Perhaps only harm...

That first afternoon — when the young staff sergeant had come around, Pat passing out, Michael rushing home to her side — their physician (and country club friend) Dr. Keenan, who was home just a block away, had hurried over to give Pat a sedative.

And Michael had ushered the young staff sergeant into the living room, where the boy had stood in stiff respect and — with the faintest tremor in his voice — delivered to the father the dreadful news.

“Mr. Satariano, as a representative of the president of the United States and the United States Army, it is my duty to inform you that your son, Lieutenant Michael P. Satariano, Jr., was declared missing in action after a military action on January 7, 1973, in the Republic of South Vietnam in the defense of the United States of America.”

Michael could see the discomfort in the young soldier’s face, much as the boy tried to hide it, and as squared away as he was in his crisp uniform, the sergeant was just a boy, a kid... like Mike. Even looked a bit like him, even the baby face... though Mike’s eyes were dark, and the staff sergeant had disquietingly beautiful green ones.

Michael had prepared himself for this moment, although — like his wife — he had thought the war was over, and their son would soon be coming home to them, alive, well, in one piece, and not in a body bag.

Still, he immediately banished his emotions to the background of his consciousness — he had experience controlling his feelings, and his priorities were his wife, his daughter, and finding out as much as he could about Mike’s status.

“Did you serve in Vietnam, Sergeant?” Michael asked.

“Yes, sir.”

“Please... please sit down.”

The young sergeant said thank you, took off his cap, and sat on the edge of a chair, a geometric painting behind him making him the bull’s-eye of a yellow-and-white target.

Michael sat across from the soldier on the couch; he, too, sat on the edge. “How long have you been doing this duty? Making casualty notification calls?”

“This is my first week, sir. My first call.”

“Your primary duty is as a recruiter?”

“Yes, sir.”

“...Hard assignment.”

“Yes, sir. Mr. Satariano, your wife... She mistook me for your son.”

“Hell.”

“You’ve been expecting him?”

Michael nodded.

“I’m so sorry, sir. You will be receiving a telegram, with the official notification.”

Michael almost smiled. “This seems fairly official.”

“Understood, sir.”

“Do you have more information you can share?”

A curt nod. “I have a document I’m going to leave, which details the military action.”

“Have you gone over it yourself?”

“I have, sir.”

“Give it to me in your own words.”

The boy did.

Michael said, “Do you know why this took so long? This was months ago — we’re supposed to be notified in a matter of hours.”

“With a death, sir, you would be. And, in fact, your son has been designated ‘Missing in Action’ only since yesterday.”

“Yesterday? Do you know why?”

The boy’s eyes tightened and widened, simultaneously. “Sir, I...”

“What is it?”

“The document—”

Michael sat forward so far he all but fell off the couch. “What do you know? What did you hear?”

“Sir, please...”

Michael stood. He looked down at the boy. “I was in the Pacific War, son. You don’t have to pull any punches. I was on Bataan.”

“I know. You won the Medal of Honor. I’m... Frankly, I’m in awe of you, sir. And after you served so honorably, to have to...”

“Lose my son? Why, if Mike has been declared MIA, do I sense you consider him a KIA?”

The boy’s chin jutted. “I can tell you this — you and Lieutenant Satariano may be the first father and son both to have won the Medal of Honor. His heroism is being considered in that light.”

“You heard that?”

“I did.”

“What else did you hear?”

“I’m really not at liberty to—”

“If my son were sitting where you are, Sergeant, and your father in my place? Mike would tell your dad what he wanted to know.”

The boy gave up a tiny smile — suddenly human — and said, “You’re some interrogator, Mr. Satariano.”

“I’m a sergeant, like you, son. Spill.”

The soldier had heard his CO talking on the phone to someone in Washington. The reason for the delay in classifying Michael Satariano, Jr., “Missing in Action” had to do with conflicting eyewitness accounts. An investigation and a hearing had finally resulted in Mike’s current designation.

“Apparently at least one of the men on that Huey,” the sergeant said, “claimed to have seen Lieutenant Satariano raising a handgun to... I’m sorry, sir... to his own temple as the enemy were about to swarm over him.”

Michael, pacing as he listened, stopped. “Saw this from the Huey? The departing helicopter?”

“Yes, sir.”

Michael returned to the couch, and sat, leaning back, shaking his head. “I don’t believe that, Sergeant.”

“Apparently the army’s official decision was to disregard that testimony, as well, sir. The night was dark, the helicopter was stirring up dust—”

“No. I mean, Mike’s a good Catholic boy. He would not commit suicide.”

“Oh.” The boy swallowed and sat forward. “That’s another thing, Mr. Satariano. We’re supposed to bring a minister along on these calls, but I couldn’t round up a priest in Reno, to make the trip. And there aren’t any in Crystal Bay, and I do apologize for—”

“Was there any reason, other than saving himself from captivity or torture, that my son might have taken his life?”

“I don’t understand, sir.”

“I mean, did he have any strategic knowledge — mission orders, current troop numbers, deployment information — that would have endangered his men, should it be tortured out of him?”

The soldier swallowed. “I only heard half of the conversation, Mr. Satariano. It was a phone call, remember, and—”

“Did Mike have any such info?”

Another swallow, and the boy nodded, glumly.

And Michael’s certainty that his son would never commit the sin of suicide had slipped away from him; he could well understand this sacrifice — and the hope that judgment on the other side would be tempered by mercy and understanding — coming naturally to his son.

The soldier stood, and though his hat remained in hand, he was rigidly at attention. “Sir, I hope I have not overstepped, sharing this information with you. The document I’m leaving with you contains the pertinent information, and represents the army’s, the government’s, position on your son’s status.”

Michael rose, said, “Thank you for your candor,” and ushered the boy out the front door.

The sun had gone down, and the subdivision’s blue-tinged streetlamps were glowing against a dark night — no moon, the stars doing their best against misty cloud cover.

Michael walked the young man to his car. At the curb, he put a hand on the boy’s shoulder. “Rough duty.”

The boy had tears in his eyes, and a nervous smile flashed. “Yes, sir. No fun being the angel of... Sorry, sir.”

“What were you going to say?”

“Nothing, sir.”

Michael fixed his eyes with the soldier’s. “Sergeant, have I come unglued over what you’ve told me?”

“No, sir!”

“Do I strike you as an hysterical ninny?”

“Certainly not.”

“Then tell me — what were you going to say?”

A long swallow later, he said, “That it’s... no fun being the angel of death. That’s what they call it, around the recruiting offices, where we get stuck with the job... angels of death, showing up at the doors of the families of soldiers.”

“I see.”

The boy, possibly responding to a perceived coldness in Michael, blurted, “I didn’t mean ‘stuck’ with the job, just that, well, it’s...”

Again Michael placed a hand on the young man’s shoulder; he squeezed. “I asked you to be frank, and you were. Thank you.”

They shook hands, and the soldier drove off.

How could this kid know that the phrase “angel of death” had an odd resonance for Michael? That this had been what his father, the enforcer for the Looney mob, had been called back in the ’20s and early ’30s, due to the mournful cast of his expression when he dispatched his victims? Violent death, and an angelic acceptance of it, was part of Michael’s heritage.

And his son’s.

Michael had decided not to share with his wife or daughter what the young staff sergeant told him about the military’s own indecision over Mike’s “Missing in Action” versus “Killed in Action” designation; and the weight of that had its consequence. He had been strong for Pat and for Anna, and — other than that once, with his wife — did not break down in front of them; he professed a belief in Mike returning to the fold one day, and for the first five days, he’d dealt with the burden in his own way.

He would try to go to sleep, knowing it would not happen; then he would wait for Pat to drop off into her mildly drugged slumber, and repair to his study to read a western or mystery novel, nothing overtly violent — mostly Max Brand or Agatha Christie. If he couldn’t get engrossed, he would remove his sixteen-millimeter projector from the closet, and set it up, and the little silver screen as well, and go to the shelves to select canisters of film from his collection.

He had about thirty movies — Stagecoach, various Laurel and Hardy features, Hitchcock’s Lady on a Train, a couple of the really good Abbott and Costellos, Swing Time with Fred and Ginger — the kind of movies he’d seen and loved as a kid. He had never cared for Roy Rogers or Gene Autry; singing cowboys didn’t make it for him, but he had several old westerns with Buck Jones and Tom Mix he could watch again and again.

By three in the morning or so, he’d have read a paperback or watched a film to the point of tiredness, and would then take a steaming bath, and lie back and think about his son and weep for perhaps fifteen minutes... then finally return to bed and fall to sleep rapidly.

For the last two days, he had followed this same procedure successfully, but the crying had finally stopped. He felt he was getting hold of himself.

Anna, however, could not seem to come out of her funk. And she was mad at him. For the first time in years — first time ever, really — his daughter was clinging to her mother, helping her out in every way possible, cooking meals on her own, even assisting with the dishes (well, putting them into the dishwasher, anyway) and offering to do the laundry (though her mother never took her up on it).

For the first two days, following the news about Mike, Anna had done all her crying, all her hugging, her consoling with her mother. She had barely spoken a word to her father, and avoided eye contact, even to the point of looking away with a jerk.

Finally, last night, he had knocked at her bedroom door, behind which her stereo blared Carole King’s Tapestry, an album that had been his daughter’s favorite for some time, but which Anna had never previously listened to at such Led Zeppelin decibels.

“Yes?” she called noncommittally.

He cracked the door — with a teenage daughter he had long since learned not to barge in — and spoke: “Okay I come in?”

“Yeah.”

Carole King, who Michael liked also, was singing “It’s Too Late,” but the volume made him cringe.

“You mind turning that down a little?” he asked.

Sitting Indian-style on the daisy-patterned bedspread, Anna — in a pink top with puka-shell necklace and blue bell-bottoms and no shoes, toenails pink also — was leafing through Rolling Stone. The furniture was white and modular, and the pale-yellow walls were largely obscured by posters of recording artists (Janis Joplin), musical plays (Hair), and favorite movies (Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid); unlike most girls her age, Anna’s posters were framed, as they tended to be autographed.

Anna had her mother’s apple cheeks and heart-shaped face, but her eyes were big and dark brown, and her hair — which was straight and went endlessly down her back — was an even darker shade, a rich auburn. She wore a blue-and-yellow beaded headband. She often affected heavy eye shadow, but right now she didn’t have a trace of makeup, not even lipstick — and yet was stunning.

He pulled a white chair away from a small desk area recessed within a white unit of closets and cupboards decorated with signed eight-by-tens from their Hollywood trip, and sat near her bedside.

“No homework?” he asked, hands folded in his lap.

She flipped a page of the newspaper-like magazine, not looking at him. “Done.”

“Expected you to be poring over your script.”

She was Maria in The Sound of Music.

“Know it,” she said, flipping a page.

“Is it my imagination?”

No eye contact. “Is what your imagination?”

“The deep freeze treatment I’m getting from you.”

She shrugged.

“I want you to know I do appreciate what you’ve done for your mother... the support. You’ve always meant a lot to her, but right now—”

She gave him a long, slow, cold look. “You don’t make it as Ward Cleaver, okay, Dad?”

“You’d prefer Archie Bunker?”

She almost smiled, but caught herself, and looked down at a picture of a hippie-ish Jane Fonda at a peace rally. “I’d prefer privacy.”

He leaned forward, hands clasped. “What is this about, Annie?”

She shot a glare at him — eye contact, at least. “Please don’t call me that. It’s a kid name. I am not a kid.”

“Anna. What have I done?”

She gave him another sharp look, dark eyes accusing. Suddenly he realized tears were shimmering there. “Don’t you know?”

“No, sweetheart. I don’t.”

Her lip curled. “You did this. You encouraged him.”

Now he got it.

“You blame me,” he said, “for Mike?”

“He worshiped you. All you would have had to say was, don’t go. Tell him you’d rather see him in Canada than Vietnam. But he had to prove himself to you, walk in your footsteps. The big hero.”

“I never encouraged him. I asked him not to do it.”

Nostrils flared. “Don’t give me that shit! Once you said you were proud of him for it...” She shrugged contemptuously, farted with her lips. “...all she wrote.”

He moved from the chair to sit on the edge of the bed. “Sweetheart... it was his decision.”

Her eyes flashed. “Do you believe in that war?”

“...No.”

“That’s right. You and Mom both spoke out against it. And everything Mom said has come true — look at those fucking Pentagon Papers!”

“Please don’t...”

“What, my language off ends you?” She leaned forward grinning sarcastically. “Do I smoke pot? Am I a smelly hippie? A flower child banging every boy at school?”

“Don’t...”

“I have friends who snort coke, Daddy! And I’m so good, I’m so sweet, I’m such a straight little shit... I’m even playing fucking Maria in Sound of Music!”

Then her anger curdled into something else, her chin crinkling, and she began to cry.

She held her arms out to him, helplessly, and he took her in his embrace and patted her like the baby she was to him.

She wept for a good minute.

Then she drew away, snuffling, and her father handed her a Kleenex from the box on her nightstand, and she took it, saying, “Oh, Daddy, is Mike ever coming home?”

He couldn’t lie to her. “I don’t know... I don’t know, sweetheart. That’s why you have to stay strong for your mother.”

She nodded, blew her nose, reached for another tissue, and dried her face. “...I’m sorry, Daddy. I’m sorry.”

“I understand. I really do.”

“I guess I... I had to take it out on somebody.”

He smiled a little, shrugged. “And I was handy.”

She smiled a little, too; but it didn’t last long — rage returned: “It’s not fair. The war is over — it’s fucking over!”

He shook his head. “It’s never going to be over for us. Especially your mother. So stay close to her. Next year... when you’re off at college? You’ll need to come home more often than you’d probably like.”

“If Mike is... if he’s not ever coming home, if he’s... if he got killed — will we know?”

“Maybe.”

“But... maybe not? Maybe we just have to hang in limbo, forever?”

“I wish I knew the answer, Annie... sorry. Anna.”

She threw herself at him and hugged him. Tight. “You call me that all you want, Daddy. You call me that all you want.”

When he left her room, she was studying her Sound of Music script, and Carole King was softly singing “You Need a Friend.” All was right with their father-daughter world again... or as right as a world could be without her brother in it.

This was Monday, his first day back at Cal-Neva — he had virtually not set foot out of his house since that staff sergeant arrived with the news — and now Michael sat at his desk staring out the picture window at the green pines and sparkling lake and brilliant blue sky, which hadn’t changed at all, despite the Satarianos having their universe upended.

Tomorrow was May first, and the casino resort would be open for business, so many of his staff were here, not just maintenance but kitchen and bartending and... well, everybody. Word had gotten around about Mike, and one by one they’d stopped to speak respectfully to their boss. Many of them knew Mike, and these comments were particularly appreciated if painful.

One disappointment was the last-minute cancellation of Bobby Darin, who was having health problems, it seemed; but Keely Smith had been available to take the singer’s place in the Sinatra Celebrity Showroom, and she had a long history with Cal-Neva.

The beautiful Smith had even dated Sam Giancana, after her divorce from Louis Prima, though she’d never been an item like Phyllis McGuire. This reminder of Giancana was an unsettling one, however: Michael’s confrontation with Momo had taken place just minutes before he’d been called home to deal with the crisis of the notification about Mike being MIA.

He had not forgotten or ignored the Giancana situation — he had even taken certain precautions here and at home, including picking up two handguns belonging to his son and daughter at the gun club shooting range, and bringing the weapons to the house.

Not that he really expected any retaliation from Giancana: Sam was out of power, if possibly contemplating a return to it, and any overt attempt to muscle Michael — who was responsible only to Tony Accardo himself, now that Paul Ricca was gone — could have severe ramifications for the man they called Mooney.

But here, in the context of work, away from the tragedy of recent days, Michael wondered if he’d been negligent about contacting Accardo. He had once worked for the so-called Big Tuna, and although direct meetings between them over the past several decades had been infrequent, Michael felt certain a mutual respect remained.

If Giancana was contemplating the killing of Mad Sam, Accardo should probably be told. But Michael was so far out of the Outfit loop these days, he didn’t really know where to turn — all his contacts were with the late Ricca’s people. Accardo was mostly living at his ritzy Palm Springs — area estate, these days...

And Michael barely knew the current Chicago boss, Aiuppa. But was there any reason to think Giancana was up to anything more than just trying to silence that crazy fuck DeStefano, before the madman spilled to the feds?

This Michael was pondering when he heard the sound of stone grating on stone.

He glanced to his right, toward the fireplace, and saw the left stony pillar moving — just a little, as if being tested...

Quickly he was out from behind the desk and, moving silently on crepe soles, went to the fireplace and reached up and plucked the Garand rifle from its perch over the mantel, above the citation from General Wainwright.

His back to the stone of the other fireplace pillar, Michael stood poised like a soldier on a patriotic postage stamp...

Then the pillar swung out, the grinding of stone on stone making a soft unearthly scream, and a heavyset gray-haired black-mustached man in a black raincoat sprang out like a guest at a surprise party, and aimed a .22 automatic with a silver cylindrical silencer at the empty desk.

As his visitor burst in, Michael lunged and, as if wielding a bayonet, thrust the Garand rifle’s nose deep into the man’s stomach, burying it there.

The would-be assassin, surprised, did manage to swing the .22 toward Michael, who squeezed the trigger on the rifle; loading it had been one of those precautions he had taken after Giancana came calling.

Fabric and fat served as Michael’s own homemade silencer as the bullet bore into the belly, and the sound of the shot was no louder than the .22 clunking onto the floor, unfired.

Then Michael swung the rifle stock up and, with a swift short hammering with the butt of the weapon, smashed the man’s nose, jamming bone into brain, killing him quickly, so that no cry would emanate from his guest to bring others in from beyond the office — whether Cal-Neva staff, or an accomplice through the secret passage.

Michael grabbed the man by the arm and — before the literal deadweight could fall to the floor and mess up the carpet with blood and shit (the smell told Michael evacuation had occurred) — dragged him into the passageway, and let him lie there, his stomach leeching blood onto cement to pool.

Then Michael returned to his office just long enough to pick the silenced .22 automatic up off the floor, and paused to see if anyone had heard anything and come checking — it was midafternoon, and some of the staff was already gone.

Nothing.

He stepped back into the passageway. His guest had moved through darkness, but Michael found the wall switch just beyond the fireplace, turning on the sporadic caged yellow ceiling lights, and pulled the rope handle on the pillar, shutting himself within the hidden corridor with his dead visitor.

Rifle in his left and .22 in his right, Michael made his way through the hidden hallway. At first the walls were pine and the floor cement, as he traveled through the recesses of the Cal-Neva Lodge itself; shortly the route became a kind of tunnel with cement-brick walls, indoor-outdoor carpeting, the yellowish overhead bulbs providing what struck Michael as a coal-mine effect. A fairly steep descent followed the slope of the hill.

Sinatra had put this underground tunnel in connecting the office with Mooney Giancana’s favorite cabin (number 50) as well as various other passageways, including one that led from the star dressing room of the Celebrity Showroom to Sinatra’s favorite cabin (number 52).

As for Michael’s late guest, the Cal-Neva manager had at once recognized the guy as a longtime lieutenant of Mad Sam DeStefano’s, Tommy Aiello, who’d had a spot in the Outfit since the ’40s, despite being the cousin of an old Capone enemy. The fifty-something hood had probably iced a dozen victims for Mad Sam, sitting in on countless torture sessions under the ice-pick maestro.

Michael knew how these hit teams (whether Outfit or freelance) operated — almost always in twos, the designated hitter and a backup who also served as driver. He fully expected the second man to be waiting either inside cabin 50 — which was now the resort’s on-site beauty shop, no staff present, day before the lodge opened — or parked somewhere nearby.

At the end of the tunnel, the passageway straightened out, walls becoming pine again, and led to a nondescript white door, the kind that waits atop many a front stoop.

Padding up quietly, Michael propped his rifle soundlessly against the wall, and — the silenced .22 automatic in hand — leaned against the door as he carefully, slowly turned the knob, opening it just a crack, the weapon poised to fire.

A competent second man would have been primed for his comrade’s return; if something went wrong, anyone or anything might come bursting through that door — so a good man would either be facing the entry, or outside, behind the wheel of his car, motor running.

But the cracked door, through which the nastily pungent chemical beauty-shop odors immediately made Michael’s nostrils twitch, revealed something else entirely: another member of Mad Sam’s crew, Jackie Buccieri, not ready for anything, except maybe a manicure.

Jackie’s late brother, Fifi, had been Mad Sam’s right-hand man and hitter of choice, so valuable a player that nepotism granted a third-rate goofus like Jackie a slot on the crew, too.

Right now, Jackie — a skinny, pop-eyed, black-haired, mustached forty-some-year-old in a brown leather jacket, Levi’s, and Italian loafers — was sitting in one of the beauty-shop chairs. He was slouched, to avoid the dryer cone, and his grin was as yellow as the passageway as he lip-smackingly took in various scantily dressed fashion models in Vogue, thumbing through the magazine, chuckling to himself, as if it were a catalogue from which he could select any item. The twin of the noise-suppressed .22 automatic rested next to him on a small table, amid hair spray canisters, scissors, and more magazines.

Michael came through the door quickly, and was on top of Jackie in an instant, sweeping his free arm across the table and knocking the gun and scissors and some of the cans and magazines clatteringly onto the floor.

Jackie’s pop eyes popped some more as he tried to stand, only to collide with a clunk up inside the dryer’s spaceman-like plastic helmet, which went well with his fallen .22 and its ray gun — like metal-tubing silencer.

Grabbing him by the front of the zipped-up leather jacket, Michael jerked Jackie higher, smacking his head hard against the interior of the plastic dome.

The man was barely conscious when he flopped back down into the chair, and his eyes fluttered, then popped again, as the snout of the silenced .22 in Michael’s hand jammed itself uncomfortably in Jackie’s throat, under an active Adam’s apple.

“Who else, Jackie?”

Jackie’s voice was high-pitched and whiny. “Just me! And Tommy!”

So many of these Outfit guys were just overgrown immature kids — Tommy and Jackie, Jesus. What kind of names were those for a guy in his fifties and another in his forties?

“No, Jackie,” Michael said through tight teeth, “just you — Tommy’s dead.”

“Fuck. Ah, fuck. Fuck me.”

“Yeah. Fuck you. What’s this about? Who sent you?”

Jackie swallowed. “Come on, Saint! You know what it’s about!”

Michael reached his left hand over and plucked one of the remaining hair spray cans from the tray-like table; he shook the cap off and then — never removing the snout of the silenced gun from the man’s neck — sprayed the stuff into Jackie’s eyes, like he was trying to kill cockroaches.

“Shit! Fuck! Hell!... That shit burns!”

“What’s this about? Who sent you?”

“We sent ourselves! You fuckin’ killed Mad Sam!”

That stopped Michael.

Cold.

“I what?” he asked.

“You killed Sam, Saturday! Blew his fuckin’ arm off and splattered his ass! You don’t think his crew’s gonna do something about it?”

So — Giancana had arranged to have Mad Sam killed by someone else, but got even with Michael by laying the hit on his doorstep.

“I didn’t kill your boss.”

“Fuck you didn’t! Fuck you didn’t!”

Was there any way to cleanse this? Could he dump Tommy’s body, and send Jackie packing with the straight story?

“It’s a frame, Jackie. Giancana came to me for the hit, but I turned him down.”

“Yeah, right! You was seen! You was fuckin’ seen!”

Fuck a damn duck — Giancana had made the frame fit tight.

“Did Accardo approve this?”

“Shit yes!”

Not what Michael wanted to hear; not what Michael wanted to hear...

He removed the gun from the man’s neck.

“Give me your car keys, Jackie.”

Jackie sat up in the chair, brushing himself off though nothing was there, just trying to regain his dignity and his manhood. He had, after all, pissed himself. When he dug the keys from his jeans, though, and dropped them in Michael’s open left palm, no moisture made the trip.

“What are you driving, Jackie? Where is it?”

“What do you want with my car?”

“What, Jackie? Where, Jackie?”

“It’s a dark green Mustang. Around the side of this place.” He pointed.

“Thank you, Jackie.”

“You can kill me, Satariano,” Jackie said, sticking his chin out, eyes popping, “but it won’t do you a goddamn bit of good!”

“It might,” Michael said, and stuck the snout of the weapon in Jackie’s left eye and squeezed the trigger.

The silencer was aided and abetted by the eyeball, and the squish was louder than the report, death so immediate, nothing registered in the right eye as blood and brain and bone splattered the back of the beauty-shop chair, some of it splashing up inside the plastic dome.

Fortunately the chair wasn’t fastened to the floor, and Michael shoved it across the tile floor, Jackie riding along limply in it, and pushed it through the door into the passageway. The blood-spattered hair dryer, on its separate stand, he wheeled through there, too. For the time being he left the door open, as he found a small rag with which he rubbed his prints off anywhere, anything, he might have touched.

This was for the sake of the police. Though his prints might be expected to be found all sorts of places at the resort, the beauty shop wasn’t one of them.

The notion of using Jackie’s car to get rid of both bodies had occurred to him, but he knew such an exercise would be futile. The Cal-Neva was dead to him now; he couldn’t even return up through that passageway into his office and leave with his own car. He would be seen, and possibly the place would be under surveillance — Outfit guys or even the FBI.

He retrieved his rifle, shut the tunnel door on the corpse, and went to the phone at the stand by the door where the cash register and appointment book resided. Impossibly beautiful women with impossibly beautiful manes smiled fetchingly at him from framed color photos hanging here and there, but empty chairs with hovering hair dryers stared accusingly.

“Satariano residence,” his wife’s voice said.

“Pat,” he said, gently, “is everything all right?”

“I’m fine. I know you’re worried about me, Michael, but—”

“Take the station wagon and meet me at the bank. Inside the bank — bring the safe-deposit key.”

“I’m not even dressed...”

“Get dressed. Don’t talk to anyone. Anyone comes to the door before you have a chance to leave, don’t open it. Car’s in the garage?”

“Yes,” she said, alarm in her voice. “What is it, Michael?”

“What we’ve talked about. What we hoped would never come. Just use the garage door opener and drive straight out.”

“Oh my God... after all these years...?”

“It may blow over. See you soon.”

They said ’bye and hung up.

Perhaps he should not have been so frank over the phone. Perhaps the Outfit had the line tapped; but he didn’t think so. This was the doing of that evil troll, Giancana, who was operating out of Mexico, for Christ’s sake. And Mad Sam was freshly dead, so today’s assault was all they’d likely had time to mount, so far.

And it would be assumed he’d be out of shape, so long out of harness, the hit would go down like ducks in a barrel; hell, the backup might feel comfortable enough to just sit in a chair and look at magazine babes in their scanties...

If he’d had more time, perhaps Michael could have savored a certain irony that this shop — where women now tried so hard to achieve beauty — had once played host to Frank Sinatra and Sam Giancana, tossing back cocktails and dallying with women so beautiful trying wasn’t necessary. But the former Cal-Neva boss had more important things on his mind.

Rifle in one hand, 22 automatic in the other, looking in every direction including up, Michael Satariano stepped out of number 50 into cold late-morning sunshine.

But it was Michael O’Sullivan, Jr., who got into Jackie’s car and took off in a scattering of gravel.

Four

Patricia Satariano took her daily dosage as religiously as Communion, the little yellow pill her host. Dulled as she was by the Valium, she nonetheless felt the panic boiling in her belly, in response to Michael’s phone call.

The odd thing was, the medication did not allow that terror to spill over — she had a strange distance from it, just as (over the past week) she had developed an almost serene acceptance of her son’s MIA status.

The calming effect of the drug, and the sure and certain hope (as the Bible said) that Mike would return to them one day soon, had given her a state of mind that seemed to her peaceful (and to others lethargic). Thanks to Mother’s little helper, she’d heard the alarm bell Michael sounded, but at a safe remove.

Still, enough anxiety made it through to inspire her to guide the Ford Country Squire — canary yellow with wood-grain side panels — in record time to the First National Bank of Crystal Bay, less than five minutes. An advantage of living in such a small town was the ability to get anywhere fast, particularly in off-season, and she actually beat Michael.

Shortly before noon, Pat Satariano — an apparently calm, remarkably attractive middle-aged blonde in an avocado pants suit and matching clogs — selected a seat in a small waiting area between the loan officers and a circular central teller’s area, over which wooden ceiling spokes emanated like sun rays. For a bank, the surroundings were warm — cherry-wood paneling, cream-color tile floor, wood-patterned desktops, tweedy-paneled cubicles, and the orange Naugahyde cushions of the waiting area’s chrome furniture. At shortly before noon, the lobby not quite crowded, Pat sat — leaning on her darker green handbag — and reflected.

In the station wagon, she had been consumed by making good time and chanting in her mind a mantra whose hysteria was reflected only in the words themselves: oh-shit-oh-shit-oh-shit-oh-shit...

When she had married Michael, over thirty years ago, she had known that this day might come — that despite the more or less legitimate line of work her husband had been in, the men he worked for remained criminals. And not just criminals — dangerous men.

Killers.

“We have to be ready,” he would say — fairly often, in the early years, perhaps once a year this past decade or so. “If it ever became known that I was born Michael O’Sullivan, life could change for us. Or if I somehow wound up on the wrong side of a power play, we might have to run.”

This was as close to a speech as Michael ever made, and the wording varied little over the years. She had long since stopped asking him what exactly they would do — had not in several decades asked him to define how they might “run” — because Michael’s answer would be a mere shrug.

She had come to think of this as just some residual paranoia on Michael’s part — he had after all lost his parents and his brother, Peter, to the violence of that world. Americans sought security, and yet no such thing existed: accidents could happen, illnesses might come, jobs could be lost, and death waited for everyone. So Pat, long before her medication, had learned to shrug off Michael’s concerns much as he had her queries.

Now, however, the answers to those questions would come. In minutes, perhaps moments, she’d know just how their life would change, and learn the reality behind the words “we might have to run.”

And for the first time since she had begun taking the little yellow pills, she felt the urge for a smoke. She dug out her pack of Virginia Slims and fired one up. On the table before her, in the bank waiting area, were various magazines, and on top was Better Homes and Gardens; also in the array of periodicals were Ladies’ Home Journal and Life.

And it occurred to her, as she drew the smoke into her lungs, that right now she had none of that: no home, no life. No garden, either — just an empty swimming pool.

Michael, in a gray suit and darker gray tie, entered with a large black briefcase in his left hand, his dark raincoat over his right arm; quickly he spotted her, motioned for her to join him.

She stubbed out her cigarette and did.

Within three minutes, they had signed the safe-deposit slip with the required signature (Michael’s) and followed the young female clerk into the vault, where the large box was unlocked, using both the clerk’s master key and the one Pat had brought from home.

The clerk, a brunette in her twenties with too much green eye shadow and a green-and-yellow floral pop-art-pattern dress, said to them, “You can stay here in the vault, if you’re just putting in or taking something out...”

“We’d like to use one of the cubicles, please,” Michael said.

“Certainly.”

“If I recall, one of them has a jack for a phone.”

“Actually, two have that capability, yes, sir. Shall I bring you a phone?”

“Please.”

Michael had to kneel to get at the unlocked box, which he slid out from its niche, using the raincoat-draped arm to cradle and carry it out of the vault, Pat right behind.

Soon, with the door to the cubicle shut, Michael set the briefcase on the table, then — still cradling the deposit box under his arm — dropped the raincoat on an extra chair, revealing a strange-looking gun in his hand, a skinny automatic with an aluminum tube on the barrel. He placed the gun on top of the raincoat, then rested the metal box on the table, next to the telephone the clerk had set there. He sat on one side and Pat on the other, as if about to partake of a meal.

Pat had never seen the contents of the box. She knew their vital papers were kept in a wall safe at home, and had no idea why Michael had felt the need to maintain a safe-deposit box for all these years. Sometimes she had complained about the annual expense, and Michael had merely said, “Please pay it,” and she had.

Now, as Michael lifted the lid, she suddenly understood, drawing in a sharp breath...

...as she beheld the tightly packed stacks of banded bills — twenties and fifties and hundreds.

On top of the money, like a bizarre garnish on a green salad, rested a .45 automatic, which she recognized as the weapon Michael had brought home from the war.

Her eyes large with the green of the money — and the gun — she noted that the bands on the bills were not new, in fact were browned with age, though the bills themselves had a crisp, unused look. This box seemed to have been filled for some time.

She said, “How muuu...?”

He said, “Much? Half a million and change. Not a fortune, but plenty to start over somewhere. It’s cheaper in a lot of countries than here.”

“What? Where...?”

“Not sure. Haven’t thought that through yet. Mexico. South America. Even Canada’s a possibility. That might be easier for Anna.”

Her brain struggled to process all of this; the medication was not helping. “Really start over. Really truly start over...”

“Yes.”

“Anna...” And then, despite the medication, the words came out in a rush: “She’s a senior, Michael, she has prom coming up, and graduation... She’s Maria in—”

He reached across the table, past the metal box of money, and touched her hand. “I killed two men today, Pat.”

“...What?”

“Two men who were sent to kill me.”

Again, she struggled to process the information, shaking her head, slowly. “I don’t understand. Why, after all this time...? What have you done to them that...?”

“It’s what I didn’t do.”

Briefly, he explained that Sam Giancana had come to him, just over a week ago, demanding that Michael perform an assassination.

“By refusing,” he said, “by turning my back on the Outfit, I’ve put us in this position. Pat, I’m sorry.”

She was shaking her head again, but quickly now. “No, no, don’t say that. I wouldn’t have wanted you to — you’re not one of those... those people, anymore.”

“But I have to be, now. I have to protect us.”

Her brain whirled; her eyes could focus on nothing, the green forgotten. “How, Michael? How...?”

His hand was still on hers. He squeezed. “We may have lost Mike — but we won’t lose Anna.”

Her forehead tightened; and she tightened her grip on his. “No, no, we can’t lose Anna! We can’t...”

“We agree. She’s the priority.”

“Anna. Anna. Yes. Yes.”

“Pat, if Mike comes back...”

“When Mike comes back...”

“When Mike comes back, we’ll contact him. We’ll bring him into our loving arms again, I promise you that. But for now we have to put Mike aside, and concentrate on keeping Anna safe.”

She began to nod. “How do we start?”

“You start by transferring that money into my briefcase. I have a phone call to make.”

He hauled the briefcase up onto the table, snapped it open — it was empty. She began filling it while her husband plugged the phone into the jack above where the table was flush to the wall, and he made a collect call to a name she didn’t recognize.

Someone answered right away.

“Vinnie, it’s Michael Satariano... Don’t pretend nothing’s wrong... Are you on a secure line?... You have five minutes to call me back. Here’s the number.”

After Michael hung up — Pat still stacking the banded stacks of cash into the briefcase — he removed the weapon from the safe-deposit box. He was checking it over, examining the clip of bullets, testing the mechanisms, making sure everything was working properly, she supposed, and then the phone rang, and she jumped a little.

Michael held up a hand to her, in a calming fashion, almost as if in benediction; then he answered the phone.

“Hello, Vinnie... I called you because you, like me, were Paul’s man. Are you orphaned, too?... Really? Well, good. It’s good you’re in solid with the new bunch, because you can pass this message along to them... First, I didn’t kill Mad Sam... I don’t care who says they saw what, think it through: Would I do a hit for Mooney Giancana?... You’re right, Momo’s a crazy prick, keep in mind he’s also a lying prick. Much as DeStefano needed killing, much as he deserved to suffer for days and days and then die, I didn’t do the honors... I’m glad you believe me. Question is, can you make anybody else believe me?... Here’s the thing: Sam’s boys Tommy and Jackie came around to the Cal-Neva to see me this morning... Right in my goddamned office, is where... Where are they now? In that passage Sinatra built, between the office and Momo’s favorite cabin... Going anywhere? Not unless Christ comes, and resurrects their sorry dead asses.”

Task almost finished. Pat glanced over at her husband; this was a tone of voice she barely recognized, a kind of talking she knew not at all, coming from Michael. His eyes were tight, the right one as hard and cold and unreadable as the glass one. Only the faintest trace of scar remained from the long-ago war wound, a teardrop of flesh at the outer corner of his left eye — Pat had made him get plastic surgery decades ago.

“Vinnie, I’m giving you boys the opportunity to clean up after yourselves... All right then, it’s DeStefano’s crew, but shit runs both up and downhill, in our thing. I’m a made guy, Vinnie, they didn’t do that without approval way up the food chain... I find it hard to believe Joe Batters would sanction that myself, but he must have — do you see Tommy and Jackie doing this under their own steam?... Good. Good, you see my point... Do about it? Whether I ever go back there or not, the Cal-Neva is not well-served by dead goombahs cluttering up the joint. What kind of heat do you think is gonna come down, they’re found?... Probably they were gonna haul my dead ass through the Sinatra tunnel, and stick me in their trunk and dump me, how the fuck should I know?... What do I suggest? I suggest you get one of your Sicilian clean-up crews out here, toot sweet, and get Tommy and Jackie checked out of the Cal-Neva... You’ll find Jackie’s wheels in the parking lot of the Christmas Tree.”

That was a well-known local restaurant.

“No, Vinnie, I’ll call you.”

And he hung up the phone.

He looked at her. “Ready?”

She nodded. All the cash had been transferred.

“My Corvette’s back at the Cal-Neva,” he told her. “I don’t dare retrieve it. Drive to the high school. We need to pick up Anna.”

“It’s the middle of her school day...”

“When we get there, it’s the end of her school day. You up to driving?”

“Yes.”

“Good.” He stood, and so did she. “Pat, be strong for our girl, okay?”

“Okay, darling.”

He smiled a little; he seemed to like hearing her call him that.

“I’m relieved you’re not mad at me.”

“I love you, Michael.”

“I love you, baby. We’re gonna be fine... but the next days, weeks, even months, may be a rough ride.”

He punctuated this news by shoving the .45 automatic into his Sansabelt waistband, where it wouldn’t show under the gray suitcoat.

“Could you carry the briefcase, dear?”

She said she could.

He closed the case and pushed it to her, and she took it.

A few minutes later, after the (now empty) safe-deposit box had been locked pointlessly away, Michael — the raincoat again over his arm, hiding his hand holding the automatic with the silver snout — followed Pat to the station wagon. She noticed that he seemed to be looking everywhere, though she doubted anyone else would have picked up on that.

He asked her to take the wheel, which she did, after depositing the briefcase on the seat between them. The sun was shining, and the small pseudo-rustic downtown — surrounded by mountains, under a perfect blue sky with smoke-signal clouds — seemed to her idyllic to the point of irony.

At Incline Village High, Michael slid over and took the wheel as the car waited at the curb, Pat going in to tell them at the office that a family emergency had come up, and she needed to collect Anna.

When Pat walked her daughter down the endless sidewalk to where Michael waited in the buses only lane, Anna let go a barrage of questions.

The seventeen-year-old — in her denim pants suit with floral iron-ons and bell-bottoms, lugging her books before her in both hands — didn’t mind getting out of school (what teenager would?); but she immediately jumped to a false conclusion.

“It’s Mike, right? Is it good news? If it’s bad news you can tell me, Mom... Mom? What’s going on? What is going on?”

But Pat could only think to say, “It’s all right... it’s all right... Your father will tell you.”

Then Michael was driving them home, and Anna was sitting forward behind them, asking questions that Michael was answering evasively.

“We have no news about Mike,” the girl’s father said. “But we’ve had something serious come up, and we’ll sit and talk about it at home.”

“Did somebody die? Some relative or something? I didn’t know anybody was left!”

Mama and Papa Satariano had both passed away well over ten years ago (Papa first, Mama two weeks later); and Michael had no brothers or sisters. Well, of course Pat was aware of the one brother, who had died a long, long time ago...

“Daddy, I have a right to know what is going on in this family!”

“Yes, you do,” he said.

But that was all he said.

Their daughter was in full pout mode (“Fine!”) by the time Michael pulled into the driveway — slowly; he was looking all around again, less subtly now. A few neighboring homeowners were out in their yards, one filling the air with the army-of-bumble-bees buzz of a Lawn Boy.

Down the block a ways, two men in khaki jumpsuits were also doing yardwork — one trimming bushes, the other seeding. A panel truck, about the same shade of avocado as Pat’s pants suit, sat at the curb; bold white letters proclaimed green thumber’s lawn care with a cartoon thumb as an apostrophe and a Reno-exchange phone number.

Michael, his eyes on the jumpsuited men, said to Pat, “Aren’t Ron and Vicki off somewhere?”

“Yes. Fifteenth anniversary. Hawaii.”

“Do they usually have their yardwork done? I thought they did their own.”

“No, they get help, this time of year.”

“Do you recognize that service?”

“It sounds familiar. From Reno, I think.”

“That who Ron and Vicki regularly use?”

“I don’t really know.”

Michael grunted something noncommittal.

Anna said, “Is this the big news? The Parkers are getting their lawn looked after?”

Michael turned to her. “Do you remember what I talked to you and Mike about?”

Anna’s upper lip curled in a kind of contempt reserved only for parents of teenagers, by teenagers. “Sure, Dad — I remember the time you talked to Mike and me... Little more help, please?”

Michael’s expression had a terrible blankness. “I went over this subject more than once — I think the last time was right before Mike enlisted. About the kind of people I work for. And the problems that could lead to.”

Anna’s smart-ass tone vanished. “Oh, Daddy... Is that what this is...? Is something bad... about the people you... Daddy, don’t scare me.”

“Right now,” he said, “being scared is not such a bad idea.”

And he took the tube-snout silenced automatic out from under the black raincoat — folded between him and Pat in the front seat, on top of the briefcase — knowing Anna, leaning up in the backseat, could see it.

The girl sat back, hard and quick; then she covered her mouth with a pink-nailed hand.

“We’ll put the car in the garage,” he said.

Pat used the remote opener for him, and the Country Squire slid into place, Michael’s eyes everywhere; the door closed behind them. They sat in near darkness for a few moments.

“I’m going to check the house,” he said to Pat.

She nodded.

He looked back at his daughter. “Anna, I’m going to leave this with you...”

And he handed back the silver-snouted weapon.

But Anna was shaking her head, holding her hands up and shaking them. “No way, Daddy — no way.”

He half-crawled over the seat and pressed the gun in her hand and held her eyes with his. “Your mother doesn’t know how to use this. You do.”

“Daddy...”

Somehow Pat’s own protestations could not make the trip from her mind to her mouth. This was why Michael had insisted his two children become familiar with firearms, despite all her objections. And he’d been right, hadn’t he?

Just as now he was right to give the gun not to his wife, but to his seventeen-year-old daughter, who was after all trained to use the goddamned things...

“Nothing’s going to happen,” father was telling daughter. “This is... just in case.”

Anna swallowed; her dark eyes were huge and unblinking. “I’ve never shot at anything but a target, Daddy... You know that.”

With a nod, he said, “If someone tries to harm you or your mother, that’s your target. Do you understand?”

She swallowed again, and nodded; the pistol was in her two slim hands, its grip in her right, silver tube cradled in her left.

Michael turned to Pat. “I need you behind the wheel. If something happens in the house, you don’t think about it — you just get out of here.”

“Michael, I’m waiting for you...”

“No. If you hear gunfire, you get out — now. Drive to the end of the block — Country Club Road? You can still see the house from there. Wait three minutes. If anyone comes out of the house but me, go. Go.”

Mind whirling, shaking her head, Pat asked, “And what then?”

“Head to Reno.”

“Reno!”

“Yes — the church parking lot at St. Theresa’s. Wait there for two hours. If I don’t show, check into a motel somewhere.”

“Where somewhere?”

From the backseat, Anna was saying, “Daddy, please, please, you’re scaring me...”

Michael said, “Good... Pat, any motel anywhere, but drive at least two hundred miles first.”

“How will I know...?”

“Watch the papers, TV. If the news about me is... bad, then you take this briefcase and... Remember, Pat, what we talked about, at the bank. Okay? And you two... you two’ll be fine.”

Pat didn’t think she could cry, not as long as she was on this medication; but now she began to.

He did not comfort her, exactly — he just put his hand on her shoulder and squeezed. “Time for that later. Right now, be strong. For yourself and for Anna... Anna, you be strong, too, for you and your mother. We may have many moments like this — when I walk into that house, it’s probably going to be empty.”

Pat got out a Kleenex from her purse and nodded and dried her eyes and her face.

Anna wasn’t crying. She’d found resolve somewhere, and just nodded once, curtly.

He smiled at them, one at a time — Pat first. “I love my girls.”

“I love you, Michael,” Pat said quietly.

“Daddy, I love you.”

“See you in a minute.”

And Michael, looking every bit the respectable resort manager in his gray suit and tie, got out of the station wagon, moved to the door that connected with the kitchen, and, just like always, stepped inside the Satariano home.

Just like always, except for the .45 automatic in his hand.

Five

Afternoon sun slanted through the glass patio doors as Michael paused, having just stepped from the garage into the yellow-and-white modern kitchen. Sun rays, floating with dust motes, were bright enough to make him squint, lending a surrealistic unreality to the mundane surroundings, the world within the Satariano home that seemed as normal as the loaf of Wonder Bread on the counter.

He toed one slip-on shoe off, then the other, and moved on in his socks, the silence broken only by such innocuous household sounds as refrigerator hum, dishwasher rumble, and various ticking clocks.

First he checked the pantry and laundry, just off the kitchen at his left — nothing. The adjacent door to the basement stairs made him wonder if he should check down there — semifinished, the basement consisted of the laundry room (beneath where he stood), a storage room, and a big open space with a ping-pong table and a small sitting area on an old carpet with a second TV and a ’60s hi-fi. He decided the cellar could wait for last — unlikely any intruders would be down there, unless they’d ducked out of sight upon hearing the station wagon come into the garage.

So he would have to watch his back.

The kitchen fed both a formal dining room, off to the right, and the rec room, straight ahead. He had good clear views of both, though in either case he had to lean in to get a good look — not that there was any place for anybody to hide in that open dining area, with the Bauhaus chairs and marble-top table and ankle-deep white carpeting that had meant only the rarest meal had ever been taken here.

The rec room — with its comfortable bench-style sofa against the wall (behind which no one could hide) facing the wall of shelving he’d built to house the TV and stereo and all his LPs and Pat’s Book of the Month Club selections — was also a mostly open area. The carpet was a shag puce, and on one side was a window on the backyard, sending in more mote-floating sun rays, and on the other a wall of the tin Mexican masks Pat had been collecting, strange faces watching him in blank judgment.

With the .45 in front of him, like a flashlight probing darkness, Michael padded through the living room, Pat’s current modern approach finally pleasing him — not the yellow-and-white geometry of it all, but the lack of hiding places this cold European style provided an intruder. The red-and-green-and-black-and-white abstract paintings screamed at him as he passed, as if warning of what might lie beyond. He tiptoed through the foyer into the hallway that split the horizontal house vertically, side-by-side bedrooms for Anna and Mike, then a bathroom, the master bedroom, another bathroom, and his study.

He began with the bedroom on the far end, Mike’s, which after their son left for the army, Pat had said she intended to keep “just as it was.” But of course first she had cleaned it, so now it was nothing like when Mike lived in it, when you’d have found a floor scattered with LP covers (Hendrix and Joplin) and books (Heinlein and Asimov) and of course dirty clothes, his bed rarely made; for all his young Republican talk, and despite his skill with weapons, Mike had not been a likely candidate for the military life — the posters of Mr. Spock, cavegirl Raquel Welch, and Clint Eastwood from For a Few Dollars More would not be welcome at a barracks, nor could these quarters have stood up under inspection, before Mike’s mother had tidied them up, anyway...

The only place to hide was the closet, but it was empty save for Mike’s clothes and the shelf where the kid had stacked the Playboys his parents weren’t supposed to know he collected.

Anna’s room — which the girl kept tidy without prompting from her mother — was likewise empty of intruders, though the closet provided considerably more clothes for someone to hide behind, and checking without making rustling noises was no small feat.

In the hall again, he listened carefully. No sounds other than the electronic pulse of any modern home; and yet he could swear someone was here. Was he so out of shape that he was prey to paranoia, now? Just because he’d maintained his fighting weight, that didn’t mean his instincts might not’ve gone flabby on him...

He continued on, with the bathroom.

Handgun at the ready, he nudged open the glass door on the shower stall — nobody, not even Janet Leigh, jumped out.

Starting to feel foolish, Michael pressed forward, their bedroom next, the master bedroom.

Which had plenty of places to hide — under the antique four-poster bed, for example; Pat’s walk-in closets; behind the black-and-red oriental dressing screen (a rare holdover from an earlier interior decorating scheme); and their large bathroom connecting from the bedroom, with the double shower stall...

No one.

Nothing.

Nobody.

Finally he came to his study, and opened the door quickly, to find a stocky man in a dark business suit sitting at his desk; the man — bald with black-rimmed glasses that magnified dark eyes — smiled pleasantly, as if Michael had finally showed up for his appointment.

And when Michael thrust the .45 forward, a hand came from behind the door and locked onto his wrist, and twisted.

The .45 popped from Michael’s hand, clunked onto the carpeted floor (not discharging, thankfully); and Michael spun to meet his attacker, an athletic-looking tanned guy with a somber face cut by Apache cheekbones. Even in the heat of the moment, Michael was taken by the strange calmness of the intruder’s sky-blue eyes.

An automatic — nine millimeter? — was in the intruder’s other hand, and he shoved the snout in Michael’s belly and shook his head as if advising a naughty child to reconsider that cookie jar.

Because the man did not immediately fire the weapon, Michael knew this was not a hit — not unless someone had decided to take him and torture him and then kill him, always a possibility in the Outfit life — and acting upon this assumption, kneed the son of a bitch in the balls, at the same time gripping the intruder’s wrist and shoving the snout of the automatic down, to where it was pointing at the floor.

Apparently the pain was enough — Michael’s knee had come up with speed and force — to cause a reflexive loosening of the man’s grip on the weapon, and then Michael had the gun in his own hand... it was a nine mil, a Browning... and in one fluid motion retrieved the .45 from the floor, backing up into a corner between his bookshelf walls and pointing the nine mil in his left hand at the bent-over blue-eyed bastard, and the .45 at the bald-headed prick, who was still just sitting there at the desk smiling a smile made wolfish by prominent eyeteeth.

“Stand up,” Michael said to the irritatingly pleasant man. “Hands up, too. And get away from my goddamn desk... no, other way... closer to the wall. That’s it.”

He waved the nine mil at the other guy, who was bent over, hands on knees, breathing hard, motioned for him to stand nearer to his bald associate.

The blue-eyed guy managed to comply, and even straightened up and put his hands in the air. He was tall, maybe six two, perhaps thirty-five, certainly no older than forty; the other man was pushing fifty, and he still had that disquieting toothy smile going, as if he were the one holding a gun on Michael, the eyes behind the glasses magnified enough to give their bearer a buggy look.

What made this fucker think he held the cards here?

Their threads were off — the-rack, but not cheap. The tall younger one had a dark blue suit and blue paisley tie, and the bald guy wore undertaker black, though his tie was a cheerful shades-of-green striped number. They were conspicuously well-groomed, professional-looking.

“Daaaaamn,” the tall one said, and the reference seemed to be to his bruised balls, as he was hunkered over slightly. His expression was that of a man who’d been forced to stare at the sun.

“You’re not Outfit,” Michael said. “What are you? Federal?”

The bald one beamed and nodded, a professor pleased a backward student had provided a correct answer. “Yes, Mr. Satariano.”

Michael motioned with the .45. “Put your gun on my desk... Take it out slowly, and then hold it by the barrel.”

Now that goddamned smile turned sheepish. “I’d like to accommodate you, Mr. Satariano — but I don’t carry a weapon.”

“Hold open your jacket. Let’s see the lining — pretend you’re Merv Griffin.”

In the manner of that obsequious talk-show host, the bald man complied, saying, “We’re not breaking and entering. We do have a warrant. May I reach inside this pocket and get it for you?”

“Stop smiling,” Michael said, “and you can.”

The fed did his best to contain his happiness and carefully reached into his pocket and withdrew several folded sheets of paper.

“Toss it on the desk,” Michael said. “What’s the charge?”

“No charge — not yet. The document gives us the right to enter your home for a specific purpose. And it’s not to search the premises.”

“I believe that,” Michael granted, moving his gaze from man to man — the tall guy seemed to be recovering. “Or else you’re the tidiest damn cops I ever ran across.”

“We’re here to talk to you,” the bald fed said. “To you and your family.”

“My family?” Michael stepped forward, thrust the gun at the bastard. “What the fuck, my family...?”

The smile returned, and he patty-caked the air. “No reason to be concerned; in fact, quite the opposite. My name is Harold Shore — associate director of the OCRS. That’s the—”

“Organized Crime and Racketeering Section,” Michael said, backing up. “Justice Department. Let’s see your credentials.”

Shore nodded, and again gingerly withdrew something from an inside jacket pocket, a small wallet.

“Step forward,” Michael said, still training both guns on the two men, “and hold that up where I can see.”

Shore did so.

The credentials were Justice Department, all right; no badge, but a photo ID — the son of a bitch was even grinning in the picture!

“You can step back now,” Michael said. To the other intruder, he said, “What about you?”

“I’m with him.”

“Really? You didn’t just bump into him, in my study? Name.”

“Don Hughes. Donald.”

“Let’s confirm that, Donald.”

Hughes held up his photo ID — and a badge, this time. But the credentials weren’t what Michael expected.

“Deputy US marshal...” Michael frowned, shifting his gaze to Shore. “Not the first team — not FBI?”

Hughes, putting his credentials away, seemed vaguely hurt.

“The marshals work with me,” Shore said, “on my unit.”

“What unit would that be?”

“Some people call it the Alias Program.” That awful smile again, the prominent eyeteeth conspiring with the buggy eyes to create the opposite effect intended. “We call it WITSEC.”

Michael, his voice almost a whisper, said, “Witness Protection Program,” and lowered the guns. “That’s what this is about?”

“Yes, Mr. Satariano. But I wonder if I might call you Michael? And you call me Harry. All my friends do. Why don’t you put your guns away, and invite your family in the house.”

Michael ignored that, saying, “Those gardeners down the street? They’re yours?”

Shore nodded. “But we wouldn’t stop you, if you left. This is not an arrest. We’re here to talk, that’s all. Give you an option you may not have considered.”

What did they know? Were they aware of the two dead Outfit slobs in that passageway at the Cal-Neva? The call he’d made to Chicago could not yet have resulted in the removal of those stiffs...

“That ‘option,’ as I understand it,” Michael said, “would start with immunity for any crime I might have committed prior to this meeting.”

“Correct,” Shore said. “You can sign those papers today. And we can work out the details later.”

“Don’t get ahead of yourself, Harry.” He turned to the marshal. “Here’s your gun, Don. Button it under your coat.”

Carefully, Hughes did as he’d been told. But the marshal’s eyes met Michael’s, acknowledging this as a gesture of trust.

Then Michael said, “You two know where the living room is?”

They nodded.

“Go sit in there and wait for me. I’m going to bring my girls in the house. I don’t want either one of you saying a word to them. We’re gonna restrict this to guy talk for now, got it?”

Shore gestured with open hands and, of course, smiled. “I would have suggested that very thing.”

Hughes said, “We only want the best for you and your family.”

Michael laughed. “Yeah, well, that’s sweet as fucking hell. I’ll wipe my tears and get back to you.”

He stuck his father’s .45 in his waistband and motioned to them to exit his office, which they did, Michael right behind.

Walking his wife and daughter to the kitchen, Michael suggested that they go ahead and prepare dinner, while he would talk to the two government men in the living room — and he did acknowledge these were federal agents, but that they were not here to make an arrest.

Both Pat and Anna were unnerved, of course, but he had said, “They may be able to help us,” and that seemed to calm them both.

In the kitchen, Pat nodded toward the living room. “Should I make enough for our... guests?”

“No. I’m not ready to break bread with them, just yet.”

“Well, we could at least offer them coffee.”

“No.”

Anna was at his side suddenly. “Daddy — are we in danger?”

“With these men in the house? Not at all.”

In the living room, Michael took the chair where not long ago had sat the young recruiting officer who’d reported on Mike’s MIA status. The two feds were on the couch across from him, Shore sitting forward, fingers intertwined, while Hughes leaned back, arms folded. The bald OCRS director tried so hard to be nice, it came off vaguely sinister, while the marshal was so low-key, you might miss how sharp his spooky blue eyes were, watching you.

“First,” Shore said quietly, “I need to bring you up to date on your situation.”

“Why don’t you do that.”

Eyes big behind the glasses, eyeteeth exposed, flecks of spittle on his lips, Shore said, “Considering your caution this evening, I am guessing that you are aware that your Chicago friends... perhaps I should say former friends... are blaming you for the death of Mad Sam DeStefano.”

“I am aware of that. But I didn’t do it.”

Now Shore’s eyes tightened, and the grin vanished. “We don’t believe you did, either... But there are certain people in law enforcement who don’t agree with us.”

Michael crossed his legs, ankle on knee; his hands gripped the arms of the easy chair. “And what people in law enforcement would that be?”

“Police in Chicago who found a weapon discarded a block from the DeStefano home... a weapon with your fingerprints on it.”

Michael did not bother to hide his surprise. “What the hell...” Then he laughed, once. “Ridiculous.”

Shore said nothing; both he and Hughes seemed to be studying their host.

He did his best to level with them, within reason: “My son and daughter each have a handgun — they participated in gun club competitions — and those are in my wall safe. And I only own two other guns — one’s the .45 you saw earlier. The other is an old war souvenir.”

Shore nodded, and then leaned forward, eyebrows hiked above the dark rims of his glasses. “And, by the way, don’t think your war record hasn’t encouraged your government in giving you this second—”

“Stuff it. What weapon has my fingerprints?”

Shore turned toward Hughes, who spoke for the first time since they’d moved to the living room. “A double-barreled shotgun. A Remington.”

“I’ve never owned a weapon like that.”

Hughes shrugged. “It was stolen from a pawn shop in Reno — your backyard — about two weeks ago.”

Michael grunted. “Somebody went to real trouble, making a fancy frame like this.”

The marshal shook his head. “Maybe not fancy enough — our techs tell us the fingerprints were likely planted... lifted from a drinking glass, say, and placed on the weapon.”

Michael frowned. “That’s an opinion, though — not a fact.”

Shore nodded. “A prosecutor could look at a jury and say, straight-faced, that your prints were found on the murder gun.” He shifted on the couch. “And we understand that you have no alibi — other than your family — for the day of the shooting.”

Michael moved his head, to take Shore in better — his mono-vision could be limiting. “Harry, nobody’s been around from the Chicago police or anywhere else asking me about that...”

“Some checking was done by phone — Cal-Neva employees confirm you were not at work that day... for several days, in fact.”

“There’s a reason for that.”

Shore, who’d mercifully stopped smiling so goddamned much, assumed a somber expression that also tried a little too hard. “We are aware of the sad situation with your son, by the way. He appears to have been a very brave young man. You should be proud.”

The marshal, his expression suddenly grave as well, said, “I lost a nephew over there.”

“Yeah, thanks, but Mike’s listed missing, not killed; so you’re saying, if I don’t cooperate with you, I might be facing a murder charge in Chicago?”

Shore shrugged. “Good possibility. They have two eyewitnesses placing you at the scene.”

Michael already knew this, from talking to Vinnie on the phone; but he said, “Who?”

“Sam’s own brother, Mario, and Anthony Spilotro.”

Again Michael laughed. “Tony the ‘Ant’ and Mario? You mean, the same two guys who were gonna have to stand trial with Mad Sam? Who now don’t have to worry about what that lunatic might spill?”

Shore nodded. “Our theory is that they were involved themselves.”

“You think?” Michael let out a short laugh. “Interesting alibi — do the crime, then say you saw somebody else do it, when you just happened to be in the neighborhood.”

Hughes said, “They said they saw a Corvette like yours, with a ski-masked guy at the wheel that could’ve been you, half a block from the house, driving away fast.”

Shore said, “They didn’t catch the license plate number, though — we figure they’re being just vague enough to cover themselves should you come up with a better alibi.”

Michael grunted another laugh. “Anybody else around there see this mysterious Corvette?”

“No.”

“Imagine that. Did Mario and the Ant find the body?”

“No. The killer shut the garage door after him. Mario and Tony say they went to the front door and knocked, but nobody was home.”

Shaking his head in disbelief, Michael asked, “And those two would make credible witnesses in a murder trial?”

Shore sighed. “Well, it is Chicago...”

“Couldn’t your tech guy testify that the fingerprints were fake?”

“Only if the prosecutor calls him. Look, the fact that the Chicago PD will likely come calling isn’t your only concern.”

Hughes put in, “Isn’t even your main concern.”

Shore continued, “DeStefano’s crew wants blood, and apparently Tony Accardo has sanctioned that action. We understand that Sam Giancana... still in Mexico, for the moment, in his mansion down there... has designs on making a comeback Chicago-way. He’s put half a million of his own money into an open contract for his old friend Mad Sam’s killer.”

“That would be you,” Hughes said, and pointed a finger — Uncle Sam Wants You, Witness-Protection-Program-Style.

“So,” Shore said with a weary shrug, “that means you face not just Mad Sam’s own people... not just contract killers... but any asshole with a gun and the guts.”

Hughes said, “And who are you to these young punks? They don’t know the Congressional Medal of Honor from a Boy Scout merit badge. You’re some over-the-hill casino manager. Easy rubout. Like picking money up in the street for ’em.”

Michael’s question was for Shore. “Your... informants. They’re reliable?”

That awful grin again. “Mr. Satariano... Mike. I’m in the reliable information business. That’s what I do. That’s all I do.”

“And they say Accardo himself goes along with this?”

Shore studied Michael, then said, “You were fairly tight with him, I hear. Not as tight as you were with Frank Nitti...”

Hughes sat forward. “Frank Nitti?” The marshal had an amazed expression as he asked Michael, “You knew Frank Nitti? From TV?”

Drily Michael said, “Don? Despite Walter Winchell, The Untouchables was not a documentary.”

Mild embarrassment colored the marshal’s angular face.

But Michael noted from this exchange that Hughes was not as familiar with the background here as Shore, that the marshal truly was a flunky.

Shore was saying, “According to reliable sources, you and Frank Nitti were like father and son. And a similar relationship grew between you and Paul Ricca... only Ricca’s gone. Your protector is dead. Which begs the question: Are you tight enough with Accardo to risk going to him now, and making your case?”

This thought Michael had been mulling, since driving away from Cal-Neva in the moments following the attempted hit. Hearing it from Shore, however, forced it forward, his other option for help, for sanctuary — if not the feds, Tony Accardo.

Suddenly Michael was eleven years old sitting in a car in front of the Lexington Hotel in Chicago, his father going in to see Frank Nitti, showing good faith by meeting Nitti on the ganglord’s own turf. And in less than half an hour his father emerged having shot his way back out, his face spattered with the blood of Outfit goons — because Frank Nitti had turned him away, putting business before loyalty. Then after the Angel of Death and his kid getaway artist had hit all those mob banks, Nitti made a deal. Nitti gave up Connor Looney, the murderer of Mama and Peter, to Michael’s father, and promised that the war between the O’Sullivans and the Outfit was over...

...Only then Nitti had sent a contract killer to end the life of the Angel of Death.

“I’m not going to talk to Accardo,” Michael said.

“Good.” Shore nodded enthusiastically. “Good, good, good — because, Michael, if we can’t work things out here, now, then... Well, I’ll have to make a phone call. And the courtesy that’s been provided to us, in this matter, by the Chicago Police Department... That will, shall we say, expire.”

“And they’ll come after me,” Michael said.

“Yes. And whether they can try you effectively for the murder of Sam DeStefano or not... You will be back in Chicago, a town where every cheap punk and for that matter expensive hood knows that killing you is worth a small fortune.”

Hughes put in, “Even with inflation, half a million dollars can take you places.”

Funny.

Michael was just thinking that.

Because there was in fact a third option: running. Disappearing. Changing identities without t the federal government’s help...

“What can you offer me?” Michael asked.

Sitting forward, a little too eager, Shore said, “In broad terms, a fresh start — a new name, a new job, a new house every bit as nice as this one. You are in an unusual position, Michael — most of our witnesses are, shall we say, not the most reliable individuals one might hope to meet.”

Half a smile dug a hole in Michael’s left cheek. “I thought that was your business... reliable witnesses?”

“Reliable information. Sometimes the sources are... Well, we have had some difficulty in WITSEC with the criminal types we of necessity must deal with. Individuals who are used to making big money on the streets, who are unemployable in the straight world. We give fresh starts to some very stale individuals, Michael — most of them wind up working as grocery clerks or security guards.”

“Thieves hired as guards. Cute.”

“But you, Michael — you’re smart, you’re honest, you have a remarkable background in business. You’re not some dese-dem-and-doser with a broken nose and cauliflower ears.”

“I do clean up nice.”

Shore’s grin grew to grotesque proportions. “You will clean up very nicely. Usually we work for months to find anything remotely acceptable to our... clients. In your case, we have a situation that’s perfect for you, and us — a restaurant that needs a manager, an establishment that the government wound up owning, thanks to an IRS matter. We also have a lovely home, almost as lovely as this, waiting for you in the same area.”

Michael narrowed his eyes. “You’d provide these lodgings?”

With an expansive shrug, Shore said, “We would arrange for your home, this home, to be sold. Until that time, you’d live in the house we provided, rent free. Then we’d ask that you use the proceeds from the sale of this place to purchase that one.”

“You can’t just hand me a house, huh?”

Shore shook his head, his expression regretful. “No. We can’t pay for testimony. But we have... leeway in seeing to it that you’re able to trade this life for a comparable one.”

“And all I have to do is testify.”

Shore was beaming again. “You see, Michael? You are not like the people we normally deal with. You didn’t say ‘rat out,’ or ‘squeal.’ You said ‘testify.’ You, like us, have no love for these people. You just happened to go down a road that put such people in your life... specifically, in the role of your employers.”

Michael held out open hands. “I don’t have much to give you, Harry. I’ve worked on the legit end.”

The buggy eyes flared. “For over thirty years, in the employ of the Outfit — confidant of Nitti, Ricca, Giancana, and Accardo?... I think you’ll make a most... reliable... witness.”

Michael said nothing.

“I know you’ll want to talk to your family,” Shore said. He looked toward the kitchen, from which the fragrance of spaghetti sauce was wafting, Papa Satariano’s recipe. “Or would you like us to...?”

“No. I’ll handle it.” Michael sat forward, elbows on the arm rests, fingertips touching prayerfully. “Do you have the papers with you? That I can sign today? Tonight?”

That caught Shore off balance; he exchanged looks with Hughes, then said, “Well... yes. But I thought you... Well, yes, I can provide those papers. Certainly I can provide those papers.”

If those two killings today, self-defense or not, came to light in the next few hours, the immunity offer might be withdrawn...

Michael stood. “You get those papers ready. I need to talk to my family.”

Shore stood, and then so did Hughes.

“Would two hours do it?” Shore asked.

“Yes.”

“I’ll be back with the papers.”

Michael pointed to the picture window, where the curtains were drawn. “In the meantime, will you leave your gardeners out there, in that panel truck, and keep an eye on this place?”

“Certainly.”

Michael turned to Hughes. “How did you boys come in?”

The marshal, gesturing, said, “Through the back door off the garage. We’ll use that again.”

“Good.” He turned to Shore. “And, Harry — one other thing...”

“Yes?”

“When does this go down? When do we leave?”

“Oh.” The question seemed to surprise Shore. “Haven’t I made that clear? Right now.”

“Tonight?”

Shore put a fatherly hand on Michael’s shoulder. “This life is over. You’re starting a new one. And the longer you give those little ladies to think about this... the worse off you, and they, will be.”

Michael shook his head. Blew air out.

“Well,” he said, “I’ll be damned.”

“Perhaps not,” Shore said, his smile a restrained one, for him, anyway. “You’ll be on the side of the angels now — see you in two hours. Pack your toothbrush.”