Road to Paradise

by Max Allan Collins

  BOOK

  THREE

  SAINTS’ REST

  TEN

  Tony Accardo did not fool around.

  Not in any sense of the phrase—as a businessman he was no-nonsense and fair, avoiding violence when possible but (if need be) sanctioning the worst, lesson-setting brutality. As a father he was aces—generous and loving, while not an easy mark; he’d made it clear to his two boys and two girls that his way was nothing they wanted to pursue, that the best that could be said for their papa’s profession was it had paved the road to a better life for the kids of a six-grade dropout son of an immigrant shoemaker.

  And as a husband with never-ending opportunities, Tony had never once—not in almost forty years of marriage—cheated on his wife. When he married Clarice in 1934, she had been the best-looking blondie on the chorus line; and when he looked at her now, he looked past the extra pounds (who was he to talk?) and saw his same slender sweetheart.

  Just because she’d been a show-biz honey didn’t mean Clarice had ever been a bimbo. She had a sharp mind and took college classes, educating herself, traveling the world to increase her knowledge, sometimes dragging Tony along. Her handling of the children was caring but disciplined, minus any favoritism; and when the Accardos hosted a party—Tony loved such gatherings—she was the most gracious hostess in Chicago.

  Clarice was back home in Chicago, that is River Forest, in their ranch house on Ashland, the smaller (sixteen-room) digs he built when his Tudor mansion on Franklin caught too much media heat—God he missed his “Palace,” with the basement bowling alley and all that room for his antiques, and its vast backyard where he could throw wingdings like his annual Fourth of July bash.

  But guys he trusted, including Murray Humphries, Paul Ricca, and his attorney Sidney Horshak (smartest man in the world) had preached to him of going more low-key—and Tony listened; like Frank Nitti, he knew that attracting attention was a bad thing. So—when federal heat and publicity made it necessary to send Giancana packing to Mexico, and Tony came off the bench to take the top chair again—King Accardo, back in the limelight, bit the bullet and sold his Palace.

  Clarice didn’t mind; she loved the new house as much as the mansion—“It’s homey, Tony, it’s cozy, and we’re getting older”—and she adored the California digs, too, a low-slung, stone-and-wood-and-glass modern ranch number looking over a fairway of Indian Wells Country Club, twenty miles outside of Palm Springs. This second home was nicely secluded, no neighbors half a mile in any direction, except for the country club. His wife spent lots of time out here with him, but this was a business trip.

  So the quartet of cuties scurrying around his swimming pool on this sultry Sunday night in June—two blondes, a brunette, and a redhead in bikinis that combined wouldn’t make up a single respectable swimsuit—were nothing more than eye candy to Tony, and perks for the boys.

  Phil and Vic and Jimmy T. and Rocco, in swimsuits and open Hawaiian shirts to show off curly hair and gold necklaces, were playing poker at a dollar-bill-littered table, the shoulder-holstered tools of their trade slung over the arms of their beach chairs; though the sun had long since set, floodlights kept the pool and surrounding patio bright as noon.

  This was two-thirds of his security force; two other men—Uzis on shoulder straps—were beyond the seven-foot tan-brick wall, taking turns, one staying at the front gate, the other walking the outer perimeter. They wore white sport shirts and khaki shorts, which amused Accardo; he’d said to one of them, Dave, “Kinda takes the edge off the Uzi, don’t it, looking like a tennis pro?”

  “Ah, Mr. Accardo, you’re a riot,” Dave had said, and snorted a laugh, and waved it off.

  Dave was a Chicago boy like all Tony’s bodyguards, and your average eggplant was smarter. That was the trouble with security staff: you couldn’t waste your best people in a job like that; but, shit, man, you were putting your goddamn life in their hands!

  Not that Tony was worried. In all his years in the Outfit, from bootlegger to bodyguard, from capo to top dog, he’d never had anybody hit him at home. Oh, there was that burglar crew who invaded the River Forest place, when he and Clarice were out here having their housewarming party; but that had been strictly money, and anyway all those guys were dead now, castrated, throats slit, all seven of them.

  The girls were giggly and cute—starlets Sidney, with his endless Hollywood connections, had rounded up—and seemed to like each other more than the boys they were here to entertain. Tony didn’t mind watching their boobies bounce—the redhead was something, a regular Jane Russell—and he liked the way their firm curvy butts didn’t quite fit inside the bikini bottoms.

  No law against looking.

  Tony himself was in a knee-length terrycloth robe—once the sun went down, it got cool, not that these kids noticed—and leaning back in a lounge-style deck chair, watching through big heavy-framed bifocals the size of goddamn safety glasses (Clarice picked them out—said they were “in style”). He was as dark as these sun-crazy starlets, but it came natural, and daytime he usually sat under an umbrella, avoiding the rays. Mostly he sat out here in the evening. Like tonight.

  A broad-shouldered five ten, two hundred pounds, Anthony Accardo—“retired” boss of the Chicago Outfit—still had at sixty-eight the physical bearing of a street thug; his hairline had receded some, the hair mostly white now, the oval face grooved with years of responsibility, the nose a bulbous lump, with small dark eyes that had seen too much.

  Smoking a sizable Cuban cigar, sipping a Scotch rocks, Tony was talking with Sidney about the Giancana problem.

  Sidney sat in a beach chair, angled to make eye contact with his client. The slender, well-tanned, gray-haired attorney wore a yellow short-sleeve golfing shirt, dark green slacks, and moccasins with yellow socks, and looked younger than his sixty-one years. His features were unremarkable, small eyes crowding a long nose and a slash of mouth; nothing about him was distinctive except his intelligence and bearing.

  Between them was a small round glass-topped table for their ashtrays and drinks; Horshak had a martini, but he’d hardly touched it.

  “This terrible thing at the Cal-Neva,” Horshak was saying, in between drags on a filter-king cigarette, “it’s an embarrassment, a public-relations disaster. We have Walter Cronkite talking about us, Tony—it needs to stop.”

  “I don’t know much more than you do, Sid,” Tony admitted with a shrug. “Two of Mooney’s crew get made dead in the Cal parking lot, and take some poor kid with ’em who didn’t have shit to do with anything.”

  A small smile twitched the lipless line of the lawyer’s mouth. “That last, Tony, is not precisely true. Do you know who that kid is? Or rather, was?”

  “No. Just some local twerp, not tied to us at—”

  “This is Cal-Neva, Tony—everything is tied to us.” Horshak sat forward. “My people did some discreet checking—the young man was dating a young lady…by the name of Anna Satariano.”

  “Satar…” Tony sat up, swung around, and sat on the edge of the lounge chair to better face the attorney. “Michael Satariano’s daughter?”

  “That’s right, Tony.” Horshak blew smoke out his nostrils like a suntanned dragon. “And judging by descriptions of the shooter in the Lincoln? The individual the Giancana assassins were apparently trying to take down could well be Satariano. In fact, I’d say it must have been Satariano.”

  Tony was shaking his head, dumbfounded. “The girl at the scene…who climbed in the car and got away with the shooter.… That was the Satariano girl? But the Satarianos, they fuckin’ moved!”

  “That’s one way to put it,” Horshak said drily.

  “What would they be doin’ back in Tahoe, for Christ’s sake? They’re in WITSEC someplace-the-fuck!”

  The attorney offered a tiny eyebrow shrug. “Apparently the girl came back home…for prom.”

  “Shit.” Tony let out a huge sigh; he sucked on the cigar, blew smoke, shook his head. “What the hell is that crazy Gia
ncana up to?”

  “Trying to hit Michael Satariano, obviously—Michael Satariano, who came out of federal protection to go after his daughter. And as I say, I think we can reasonably extrapolate that the child ran off from the new life enforced upon her by WITSEC, to come home for prom.”

  Tony frowned. “What’re you sayin’, Sid? That Mooney had people sittin’ in Tahoe all these months, watchin’, in case Satariano got homesick and turned the hell back up? That’s crazy! What the fuck is going on here?”

  The attorney drew thoughtfully on the cigarette, then said, “I would say Giancana is trying to protect himself. Michael Satariano witnessed many things over the years.”

  “Michael knows plenty about me, too,” Tony said gruffly. “He was my guy for a couple years, during and just after the war. Top notch, too.”

  Horshak agreed, nodding. “And with his war hero status, he’s been very useful to us over the years.”

  “Fuckin’ A.”

  “And how do you think his celebrity stands to impact our interests in the public eye now, Tony?”

  Tony thought about that, clearly an avenue his mind had not previously gone down. Finally he said, “Not in a good way?”

  “Not in a good way, no.” The attorney gestured with two open hands. “But Mooney Giancana rarely considers such subtleties—he’s the original loose cannon. All Giancana knows is he would like to have Satariano removed from the equation—which is understandable. After all, we know Giancana is positioning himself to take over again—with Ricca dead, and you retired, Mooney’s a charismatic figure who—”

  “Charisma my ass!” Tony chewed on the cigar as he spoke. “He’s a demented prick with delusions of grandeur and a talent for getting his ugly mug in the media. We shipped his ass to Mexico because of the attention he was attracting, and now he’s back, what, a month? And we got Senate hearings and fuckin’ shoot-outs!”

  “Actually, Tony, Mexico is the key to this.…”

  Accardo and Paul Ricca had sent Mooney away, out of the spotlight in ’66, and allowed him to develop his own interests, internationally—chiefly, cruise ships and casinos. A modest 20 percent tax came back to the Outfit.

  “…A happy arrangement, Mexico—Mooney’s out of your hair, and generating income. What could be better? But good things do not last forever.”

  Both men knew that Giancana’s ties to the corrupt Mexican government had made all of this possible, until last month when a new regime came in and decided to seize all of that money and deport Giancana into the arms of the FBI. No outstanding arrests warrants were waiting, but an avalanche of subpoenas were.

  “So now Mooney’s back,” Tony said, “but he’s broke, and his mind’s on that Senate hearing. Hell, first thing he did was get gallbladder surgery. He’s an old man! Washed up.”

  “Ah,” Horshak said, lighting up a new cigarette, “but remember, Tony—a deposed king always has designs on his ‘rightful’ throne. What other option does Mooney have, but to stage the comeback he was already thirsting for?”

  Tony shook his head, hard. “Can’t allow that. Can’t allow that. Maybe he’d like to retire someplace.”

  Another twitch of a smile turned that slit in Horshak’s face into a mouth. “You tell me—is Sam Giancana the shuffleboard type? Does he walk away from those millions in Mexico, and settle for a pension? This is a man who has enjoyed power…and I do mean enjoyed…for decades.”

  Tony’s eyes narrowed. “They say he looked like a little old man in baggy pants and beard when he turned up at the airport.”

  “He was yanked out of his bed in the middle of the night and kidnapped by Mexican immigration officials. How would any of us look? Besides, Mooney always was a ham.”

  Tony’s brow beetled in thought. “That was an act…what? For the feds who met him at the gate?”

  Horshak waved that away with the hand holding the cigarette, making smoke trails. “I just offer it as a possibility. And meaning no offense, my friend, isn’t this ‘old man’ two years younger than yourself?”

  “I’m not officially running things. Aiuppa is.”

  “‘Officially’ being the operative term.…But even if all we were facing here is Sam Giancana preparing to testify in front of a Senate committee exploring, among other things, the assassination of Jack Kennedy.…Well, Tony? Do I really have to go on?”

  Tony said nothing; he just sat puffing his cigar, his eyes on the girls frolicking in the pool, though he didn’t really see them.

  “Not good,” Tony muttered. “Not good.”

  Horshak drew smoke in, let smoke out. Then he smiled like a patient priest and asked, “How much security do you have here, Tony?”

  Tony, still idly watching the pretty girls swim and splash at each other, said, “What you see is what you get. Half a dozen guys. Why?”

  The attorney nodded, thought, said softly, “You must have personally approved the hit on Michael Satariano. The other hit at Cal-Neva, remember? The one Satariano deflected?”

  His eyes flashed at Horshak. “I sanctioned that because Michael whacked DeStefano! What else could we do—tell Mad Sam’s crew easy-the-fuck-come, easy-the-fuck-go?”

  “I would have advised against it—Satariano was a loyal man, and his Medal of Honor celebrity could have.…Well, that’s beside the point, isn’t it? You didn’t seek my counsel.”

  “That’s right, Sid. When I want your advice, I ask for it.”

  “Which you are now, right?”

  Tony swallowed. “Right.”

  The attorney sat back; he gestured with a gentle open hand. “For the sake of argument—what if Satariano didn’t ‘whack’ Mad Sam DeStefano? What if Giancana framed him for it?”

  “Why in hell?”

  Horshak shrugged. “Perhaps to get the heat off the real assassins, and put them—and Mad Sam’s crew—securely in his debt. And if you’re Sam Giancana planning a comeback, wouldn’t that make perfect sense? Remove an obstacle—Satariano—and build allies with Mad Sam’s fatherless camp? But, then, you’re much closer to this kind of thing than I am, Tony. What do you hear?”

  Tony shifted on the edge of the lounge chair; the girls giggled and splashed. “Well.…Gotta admit that some are sayin’ Satariano didn’t do DeStefano. Some opinion says it was Spilotro and Mad Sam’s brother—the Ant and Mario.”

  The attorney nodded sagely. “The very two stalwarts who fingered Satariano.”

  “Yeah. Them stalwarts. They neither one wanted to see that crazy sadistic ice-pick-happy lunatic take the witness stand.”

  “And speaking of crazy lunatics taking the witness stand,” Horshak said, with as wide a smile as the cut of a mouth was capable, “how do we feel about Mooney testifying before that Senate committee?”

  Tony grunted. “‘We’ don’t like it.”

  “You don’t anticipate Mooney pulling a Valachi, do you?”

  “No! But he will go after those CIA cocksuckers—Mooney’s made it known that those spy pricks have been letting him twist in the wind. Says those feds shoulda found some way to keep him from bein’ deported, or at least get his millions back for him from them Mexicans. And as feds themselves, they oughta be able to prevent him havin’ to testify to a buncha senators.”

  A slow nod. “And how do we feel about having this CIA dirty linen exposed to public view?”

  Tony threw up his hands. “It’s what those bastards deserve, but I don’t see how Mooney figures he can give the spies up without giving us up, too! We’re too, what’s the word? Interwove with those cocksuckers.”

  “Strange bedfellows indeed.”

  “Yeah, but who’s fuckin’ who? We thought they could help us get Cuba back, and how the hell has that been workin’ out?”

  Both men were well-aware that for almost ten years, Giancana—using his Mexico City mansion as home base—had traveled all around Europe, Latin America, and the Middle East. This put Mooney in a perfect position to facilitate a major cocaine and heroin smuggling ring.…

&n
bsp; …but not for Chicago.

  Tony Accardo was a legendary holdout in the drug business; he had never allowed the Outfit to get involved with junk—providing working stiffs with recreation like whores and gambling was one thing, peddling soul-robbing addiction a whole other.

  But in Mexico, out from under Accardo’s watchful eye, Giancana could make side deals with anybody he pleased. Most likely in those Mexico City years, Mooney got in tight with not only the CIA but other syndicate guys, like Trafficante in New Orleans and Gambino in New York, who did not share the Accardo disdain for drugs.

  “I respect and admire the stand you’ve taken on narcotics over the years,” Horshak said. “But the press isn’t going to make any such distinctions, nor is the general public…that Great Unwashed who elect our leaders. To John Q. American, the ‘mob’ and the CIA will just be bad guys together, and all sorts of structures could come apart…meaning lots of things, and people, could fall down.”

  A sharp crack provided an exclamation point to the lawyer’s statement.

  Narrow-eyed Accardo sat forward; wide-eyed Horshak reared back. The bodyguards dropped their playing cards and rose, turning toward the noise.

  Another crack followed, one second after the first, and Accardo—already on his feet, a revolver from the pocket of his terrycloth robe now in his right fist—said, “Vic, Rocco, that’s the gate—check it out. Vic boy, go left; Rocco go around right.”

  The two bodyguards had already snatched their guns from the shoulder holsters dangling off the beach chairs. Now the hoods in swimming trunks and Aloha shirts ran in opposite directions, out of the floodlights, and into relative darkness—a few security spots kept the entire grounds illuminated within reason—and around the side of the house, toward the gate.

  The girls were all in the pool, terrified and treading water; eyes and mouths wide open, they were reacting to Tony’s words, not the cracks, which they’d heard but did not recognize as gunfire.

  Taking a step toward the pool, Tony waved his revolver and said, “Out of the pool, girls.”