Road to Paradise

by Max Allan Collins

  They had documents.

  They were real.

  Pat and Anna were in a better mood working at memorizing their new backgrounds than they’d been watching TV, a hotel-room existence which had in particular begun to bore Anna, whose every other sentence was a report of what would be going on back home (“Prom committee is meeting now—right now!”). That, and “I can’t believe that The Waltons is the best thing on!”

  Michael was not told who he’d first be testifying against, and in what trial, just that it would be at least six months before he had to take the stand, though thereafter he’d likely be involved in at least one trial a year for the foreseeable future. Just having a foreseeable future seemed a good start to Michael.

  He would testify as neither Michael Satariano nor Michael Smith, rather as “Mr. X.”

  Suddenly I’m starring in a Saturday afternoon serial, he thought.

  That the government had been able to make Michael the manager of a restaurant that Uncle Sam owned (due to an IRS takeover) made it particularly easy for their witness to miss work. He had no monthly stipend from WITSEC because the restaurant salary (forty thousand dollars a year) outstripped it.

  The meetings with Shore in Phoenix would be occasional, perhaps once a month, never longer than a single afternoon. Shore had to fly in from DC for these, and Michael was only one of dozens, perhaps hundreds, in WITSEC the associate director was dealing with.

  “We’re going to let you hang on to that .45 auto of yours,” Shore advised Michael, on the first of these Phoenix confabs.

  “It’s sort of a family heirloom,” Michael said, unaware they knew he’d kept it. Did they know about the half-million, too?

  “I can understand you wanting some protection at hand,” Shore was saying, “but no other guns, Mike. Don’t make your new home a fortress or an arsenal. If you have a problem, if you have any suspicion that you’ve been made, let us handle it.”

  “Harry, all due respect—you don’t even have an office in Tucson.”

  “No, but I can send a marshal, straightaway. One thing they have plenty of in Arizona, Mike, is marshals. You’ll have a ‘panic number’ to call.”

  “Let’s say I call it. What happens then?”

  Shore shrugged. “Marshals will swoop down, and you and your family will be whisked away to safety again.”

  “What…to start over? New names and…?”

  Shore’s nod was somber. “Yes, Michael. You may have to relocate several times. We hope that won’t be the case, and we haven’t broached the subject with your family.…But it may happen.”

  “Christ.”

  “But know this: we’ve never lost a witness or a family member in WITSEC. Never.” The awful smile formed. “We wouldn’t be in business long if we did.”

  Michael was shaking his head, a sick feeling in his belly. “I’d feel better if you were using FBI, not these damn marshals.”

  Marshal Don Hughes was not in the room with them; he was in the bedroom next door, but did not sit in on the conversations between Shore and Michael.

  The WITSEC director’s face dropped in disappointment; he almost looked wounded. “Michael, they’re good people!”

  “Harry—you and I both know that these marshals are the bottom of the Justice Department barrel. Just because you’re sending us to Arizona, don’t go thinking this is my first time at the rodeo.”

  “Our marshals have—”

  “No standards for employment—they’re former city cops or sheriff department deputies with enough political clout to land themselves a federal plum.…Am I lying, Harry? Or exaggerating?”

  Shore’s normal shit-eating grin was nowhere to be seen. “No. No, Michael, you’re not. But I handpick these men, from what’s available.”

  “From what’s available.”

  “I go over their records, thoroughly. We have the best of—”

  “A bad crop? Harry, just know this: if you can’t protect my family, I will.”

  Shore leaned forward. “I can protect them, Michael. I can protect you and them.”

  “Okay, then.” He smiled just a little and locked eyes with the fed. “I’ll do my end of the deal. You better do yours.”

  Breathing deep, Shore reared back. “You know, Michael… with all we’re doing for you? I don’t think threats are called for.”

  “With all I’m doing for you, Harry? I do.”

  So only a little over two weeks after their midnight exodus from Crystal Bay, the Michael Smith family walked into a living room set up remarkably like their previous one had been. Even the layout of the house was similar, right down to a patio off the kitchen with a pool.

  Anna had taken time out between bitch sessions to take her father by the arm and, in a little-girl voice, say, “Daddy, it’s weird—it’s so weird. I feel like a ghost, haunting my own house.”

  He slipped his arm around her shoulders. “Annie, it is odd—no getting around that. But maybe it’ll help us, you know…get back in the swing.”

  She said nothing, but hugged him and went off to her room—one of the few moments with Anna in this house that he would treasure.

  Michael knew how hard it was for her—missing the last two months of her senior year, taken away from her friends, her boyfriend, no Sound of Music, no prom that she would have been queen of. For a girl her age, could anything be worse?

  She wouldn’t even be valedictorian of her class. The transcripts from St. Paul that would eventually go to the University of Arizona would have a 3.7, so Anna would have a strong academic record without attracting the attention such an honor would bring. Strangest of all, she wouldn’t really finish high school—it was too late in the year to transfer to anywhere in Tucson, so WITSEC would cook up a diploma for the girl from Minnesota, saying she’d graduated early in anticipation of the Arizona move.

  All of this served to put Anna in limbo, not to mention a deep sulky funk.

  In addition to homesickness for her boyfriend and the life she’d had to run out on, Anna was annoyed that she was a “prisoner in her own home.”

  She had made this clear to Michael when he took her for an afternoon drive in the Lincoln around the university campus, an oasis of learning in a residential section between Speedway and East Sixth. Wearing a yellow tube top and cut-off jeans, her long dark hair in a braided ponytail, Anna would fit in fine with the kids on this endless acreage—she already had a dark Indian tan, and they’d only been here a week.

  As father and daughter wound through immaculately landscaped drives, rambling red-brick buildings nestling among sunshine-dappled trees and shrubs, he extolled the virtues of the school, with its great programs in the arts; she’d have every opportunity here to pursue her music and acting.…

  “I feel like goddamn Gilligan,” Anna said suddenly, slumped against the rider’s side window.

  “Who?”

  “Gilligan! Stranded on his island with the Skipper and a bunch of other idiots?…Daddy, here I am eighteen, and you’re driving me around like I’m a little kid.”

  “Honey, you know I intend to buy you your own car, in the fall, when you start college.…”

  The dark eyes flared. “If I behave myself, you mean!”

  “I didn’t make any conditions.…That’s the auditorium over there—largest in the Southwest. You’ll be on that stage, before you know it.”

  “I’d rather be on the first stage out of this hick town.”

  “Annie.…”

  She cast an outrageously arch expression his way. “And why, pray tell, will I need a car?”

  “Well, Annie…because Tucson sprawls all over the place. You’ll have to be able to get around.”

  “If I was living in one of the dorms, I could get by without a car. But you don’t want me living in a dorm, do you, Daddy? Like any other real college student! You want me at home…under your thumb.”

  He pulled over in front of a three-story red-brick building, the library, leaving the car and its air-conditioning going
. He looked at her hard and yet lovingly, though her gaze flicked from him to this and to that, her half-smirk digging a dimple in one pretty cheek.

  “I’m not trying to smother you, sweetheart. You know this is no game—we’re in danger, all of us. I have to make sure we’re safe.”

  “Will we ever be safe?”

  Not really, he thought, but he said, “I think so. But let’s just… settle in, okay? And make a new life for ourselves?”

  She grunted something that wasn’t exactly a laugh. “What, I’m supposed to make a new life for myself in my bedroom? You make me leave everything behind but you won’t let me replace it with anything!”

  “It’s early, Annie.…Day at a time, okay?”

  “Easy for you—you’ve got a job, a really real new life! I’m just at home with Mom, who these days has about as much interest in life as one of these cactuses or cacti or whatever the fuck!”

  He sighed. “Your mother will adjust.”

  “You really think so? She’s just this, this zombie Donna Reed, anymore.”

  “She’ll adjust. And so will you. You’re already making friends, right?”

  “Yes, and if it wasn’t for Cindy living across the street, I’d be insane by now!”

  “And I haven’t stopped you from going out with Cindy and her friends, right?”

  She swallowed and granted him a look that acknowledged him as a human being. “No. I appreciate that. I do. And it’s fun out here, sort of.”

  “You liked the horseback riding, right? You said that riding trail was really beautiful.…”

  “It was okay. It was fine.”

  “And you and Cindy and those kids went off together, and I didn’t have any trouble with that, I wasn’t a jerk about it or anything, right?”

  “Right.”

  “It’s beautiful out here. You know it is. We can make a new start here, all of us.”

  “I know.”

  “We can go out for golf. You wanna go golfing with your old man?”

  “Sure, Dad.” She seemed worn down by the conversation. “Let’s keep looking. At the campus.”

  “Sure, sweetheart.”

  But Anna was right about her mother; this Michael knew.

  Pat was going through the motions, not much else. Her grooming remained typically immaculate, even if she did look like she’d aged ten years in the last few months. Her uniform had become pale pastel pants suits, the colorful, western-style clothing of Tucson not to her tastes; she looked as pale as her clothes, sitting by the pool sometimes, but in the shade, avoiding the sun.

  She did the cooking and the shopping and even the cleaning, saying she’d prefer not to have any housekeeping help. All of the housewifely stuff she took in stride, and seemed to get lost in.

  When she wasn’t keeping house, she sat and drank orange juice (she promised him it was just orange juice, since alcohol with her medication was not a good idea) and read paperbacks she’d picked up at the supermarket or watched television. She had gotten hooked on several soaps, particularly General Hospital, during the Washington, DC, hotel stay; and she liked some game shows, the ones with celebrities like Hollywood Squares and The $25,000 Pyramid.

  “Did you ever meet Peter Lawford, dear?” she asked him once. “He was on the Pyramid today.”

  “Yeah, a couple of times.”

  “He’s an idiot, isn’t he?”

  “Pretty much.”

  This was what her life had become—TV, housework, cooking, the occasional inane comment. She had made no move to get involved in anything political or with a church. Her political impulse seemed limited to saying, “Fucking Nixon,” whenever the president came on the TV screen; and they had not yet found a church, which was a major shift for the Satariano…the Smith…family.

  “Wouldn’t you like to join somewhere?” he’d asked her one evening, at the supper table, after Anna had gone off to her room to listen to Deep Purple (the rock group, not the song).

  “I don’t think so,” his wife said, drinking her coffee, not looking at him, or anything, really.

  “Several nice possibilities on this side of Tucson. We could even go to one of these funky old mission churches.”

  “No.” She made a slow-motion shrug. “We’re supposed to keep a low profile, right?”

  And that was all she’d say on the subject.

  He hoped Pat would indeed adjust. And he would do his best to help her. He knew she was lying about the orange juice, because the vodka bottle in the cupboard wasn’t draining itself; and he doubted Anna was snitching it. Right now, so early in this new life, he didn’t have the heart, the will, to confront his wife about it.

  But he would. He would. Gently. One of these days. Nights.

  He felt almost guilty about how well he was adjusting himself. He had made harder adjustments before—when he and his father left their house in the middle of the night, several lifetimes ago, they’d had more than just a threat of violence hovering: they’d left behind the corpses of Mama and brother Peter. Going to a great town like Tucson in a beautiful state like Arizona was hardly as hard as living out of a Ford and sleeping in Bonnie-and-Clyde motels and robbing banks, on the road to Perdition.

  He’d been Michael O’Sullivan, Jr., a kid in Rock Island, Illinois. He’d been the Angel of Death’s getaway driver, written up in newspapers all over. He’d been Michael Satariano, a teenager in DeKalb. He’d been Michael Satariano the war hero. He’d been Michael Satariano the mob enforcer. And he’d been Michael Satariano the casino boss.

  Being Michael Smith, the restaurant manager, was no strain.

  And Tucson—its nine square miles stretched over the broad desert valley of five mountain ranges—was a great city, the best place he and his family had ever found to live; the girls would surely come to love it as he already did. He found the stark, arid city strangely soothing, and relished the dry heat, the wide-open sky, the horizon jagged with mountains of ever-shifting shades of red and deep blue.

  The Tahoe area had wrapped itself in a pretend frontier feeling; but at heart it was a great big tourist trap. Tucson, on the other hand—with its wide paved streets, dotted with pepper and orange trees, feather-leafed tamarisk, and even Italian cypress—had a genuine easygoing vibe, informal, unhurried, blue jeans and short skirts year around. In his suits and ties, Michael was a regular dude in this culture, with its Spanish, Mexican, and American Indian roots; cowboy hats and sombreros were common in Old Pueblo, as the longtime residents called the town.

  Other old-timers had another name for Tucson: “Paradise of Devils.” This dated back to outlaw days, when the horse thieves, gunslingers, gamblers, and other “varmints” called Tucson home; the Clanton gang, Wyatt Earp, and Doc Holliday had walked these streets when dusty hard dirt had been underfoot—that is, when they weren’t over in nearby Tombstone (Earp had been a marshal, too).

  Michael related to this, on a deep, secret level—hadn’t he and his father been among the last of the great outlaws? He remembered when an old-timer at Tahoe had told him that Baby Face Nelson and John Dillinger had used the Cal-Neva as a hideout in their heyday; and he’d thought, You mean…in my heyday.…

  The Cal-Neva, of course, was history—as ancient as Baby Face and Dillinger. If Michael no longer had the responsibility of a casino resort and all its wide-ranging problems—and its considerably bigger paycheck—he was nonetheless content with his new command, a restaurant on trendsetting North Campbell Avenue.

  Vincent’s—whose namesake had been an embezzler and tax dodger, hence the current owner being Uncle Sam—was, as the boys back in Chicago would say, a class joint. Floor-to-ceiling windows provided a view of the city lights in a hacienda-style facility, though the cuisine was not Tucson-style Mexican, rather Continental specialties like lamb Wellington and veal Sonoita. The chef—a Russian Jew who called himself Andre—was four-star, and made a salary equal to Michael’s…and worth every penny.

  Michael, like most men of his experience, had expected to walk
in and immediately begin making notes about sweeping changes. Instead, he’d found nothing not to like, and his gaze took in only perfection: fine china with pale-pink linens, fresh flowers, classical music. Everywhere he looked he saw elegance—from the beamed vaulted ceiling with its glittering chandeliers to the stone floor, from the framed western landscapes to a massive fireplace, which saw action only in winter.

  He was a general stepping in to take over an army from a retiring general of great skill. Vincent may have been a crook—with a gambling habit—but he had certainly also been a fine restaurateur. Michael could not have hoped for a better situation. The job took time and expertise, but for all of that was not stressful.

  The staff had been so well-trained by the former owner that the place—overseen by the assistant manager for six months—was running quite well on fumes. The only person having difficulty was that overworked assistant, who was glad to be relieved of some of her duties, anyway.

  The assistant, Julie Wisdom—a lovely divorcée in her early forties—was aptly named but for a troubling tendency to flatter and flirt with her new boss. He found himself attracted to this intelligent brunette, and fought stirrings that weren’t helped by Pat’s somnolent behavior at home.

  Michael had always been a faithful husband, but with the world at work so much more pleasant and fulfilling than the one at home, he was tempted. Already he was falling into justifications and rationalizations.…With what I’ve been through, with the stress I’ve been under, who could blame me?

  But he had not yet acted on these impulses. Perhaps he was still “Saint” Satariano, at heart; or maybe he just still loved his wife, the woman who had taken this dangerous road with him even though he had warned her of his deal with the Chicago devil, the woman who had given birth to Mike and Anna, the pretty prom queen from DeKalb he had fallen in love with so many years ago.…

  On a Thursday evening, two months into their new life, Michael took Pat to Vincent’s for a romantic dinner. In part, this was to send a signal to his flirtatious assistant manager; but he also wanted to encourage Pat to rejoin the world. His world. Their world.