“Edgar’s kids’ve been watching the place,” Accardo’s rough baritone had informed him, meaning the FBI had an ongoing surveillance of Giancana’s residence. “Kind of trading off with the neighborhood kids.”
Indicating the Chicago PD’s organized crime unit was also keeping an eye on the house. Though using a supposedly “secure” line, the ganglord was speaking somewhat elliptically, so Michael followed suit.
“Hmmm,” Michael said. “Well, I might make some noise.”
“When you thinking?”
“Tonight.”
“Any special time?”
“Around Johnny Carson.”
“…Okay. You been to the guy’s house before?”
Meaning Giancana.
“Couple times,” Michael said. “Wasn’t exactly on a recon, though.”
“A garage back there, on the alley. You’ll see some garbage cans. People throw the damnedest things away these days. Perfectly good items.”
“Yeah, it’s a real waste.”
“Backyard’s fenced in—I hear there’s been trouble with the lock on the gate in the fence, lately.”
“Too bad. Risky with all the vandalism.”
“Sure is. Garden back there, head of the house likes to putter, but never at night. Sometimes he forgets and leaves the house open in back.”
“Isn’t that the door we spoke about?”
The steel door with the Joe-sent-me peephole. Joe Batters, in this case.
“Yeah,” Accardo said. “That door.”
“Okay. Will he have any friends over?”
Bodyguards or security staff?
“No. I have on good authority, a couple guys who usually keep him company won’t be around. They work hard. Deserve a night off.”
“What about his housekeeper and his wife?”
That was the DiPersios, Giancana’s longtime seventy-something caretaker and his housekeeper wife, who were live-in.
“Their apartment’s upstairs, on the second floor. They go to bed early.”
“Probably early risers, too, then,” Michael said. “Do they set the alarm, d’you suppose?”
Giancana was known to have an electric-eye burglar alarm.
“Not tonight,” Accardo said darkly. “…Anything else I can help you with, son?”
“No, sir. Thank you.”
But now as Michael strolled down the tree-lined street toward the alley beside the bungalow, he noted with surprise no suspicious cars. Several vehicles were parked along nearby curbs, but not the unimaginative standard-issue black sedans both the feds and Chicago PD were noted for—in fact, right across from 1147 South Wenonah were a red Mustang convertible and a white Pontiac Trans Am with a blue racing stripe.
No surveillance here, not at this moment—of course, the feds and cops liked to eat, and everybody had to piss now and then.
In the alley he found the garbage cans, three of them, nestled next to the yellow-brick garage. The first lid he lifted revealed a .22 target pistol perched cherry-on-the-sundae atop a fat filled garbage bag.
With a black-leather-gloved hand, Michael lifted the target pistol out—a High Standard Duromatic whose four-inch barrel had been tooled down to receive a six-inch homemade noise suppressor, a threaded tube drilled diagonally with countless holes. Fairly standard Outfit whack weapon, these days—a .22, not unlike the ones the two DeStefano hitters brought to the Cal-Neva, before Michael killed them. He checked the clip—full. The ammo looked fine.
If Accardo’s people had left him a sabotaged gun, he still had his .45 in a shoulder holster. But with the chance of cops or feds returning, within easy hearing range of gunfire, this silenced .22 would do the trick nicely. He stuck the somewhat bulky weapon in the waistband of his slacks, leaving his sport coat unbuttoned.
As promised, the gate in the stockade-type fence was unlocked. Michael opened and closed it with little sound, entering a backyard with no security lights, though the moon gave an ivory glow to this immaculately tended little world of putting green, clipped hedges, and colorful flower beds. A circular stone patio hugged the house, but Michael’s crepe soles made no sound as he crossed to descend the cement steps to the steel door, which stood slightly ajar. A pleasant, spicy cooking odor wafted out.
That was not surprising. Michael had been at the Giancana home several times, and had been in the elaborately “finished” basement, with the spacious paneled den where the little gangster loved to spend his private time, and sometimes hold court. What lay beyond the steel door was a fully equipped modern kitchen.
One hand on the butt of the .22 target pistol in his belt, Michael pushed the door open—it creaked just a little, but the voice of Frank Sinatra covered for him: “Softly, As I Leave You” was playing, not loud, just background music, a nearby radio or distant hi-fi. Michael recognized the album—it was one of the four-tracks he’d tossed in Walker Lake.
He stepped inside to air-conditioned coolness, shutting the door behind him, as the pleasant cooking smell tweaked his nostrils. The counters and appliances were white, the paneling and cupboards a blond oak, the overhead lighting fluorescent. At the stove a swarthy, skinny little man—bald but for a friar’s fringe of gray—in a blue-and-white-checked untucked sport shirt, baggy brown slacks, and slippers with socks was tending two pans, frying sausage in olive oil in one and boiling up spinach and ceci beans in the other.
Both Mama and Papa Satariano had been magicians in the kitchen, so Michael knew exactly what the basement chef was up to—the sausage would be removed, and the spinach (or was that escarole?) and beans would eventually be transferred to the other pan to sauté in the sausage grease, with pinches of garlic no doubt, while the sausage would be added back in, for a killer of an Old Country snack.
The man at the frying pan sensed the presence of another, and before turning, said, “Butch—is that you? Forget something?”
“No,” Michael said, and withdrew the .22.
Sam Giancana—deep melancholy grooves in his stubble-bearded face, his nose a lumpy knob, his eyes at sad slants, an effect echoed by white bushy eyebrows—looked at the gun first. Then up at Michael.
“So it’s a Saint they send.” Giancana laughed hollowly. He nodded toward the sizzling pans. “You want some of this?”
“Step away from the stove, Momo. I don’t want grease in my face.”
Giancana—looking a decade older than just a few months ago, when he’d slipped into Michael’s Cal-Neva office and started all this—shrugged and did as he was told. He even held his hands away from himself, a little, and up. “Those need to cook awhile, anyway. You want some wine? Beer? Wait…Coca fucking Cola, right? You’re the Saint, after all.”
“No thanks. Nothing for me.”
Giancana sighed, nodded, offered a chagrined grin. “Guess we kinda underestimated each other, didn’t we, Mike?”
“I guess.”
Giancana’s head tilted to one side. “Why didn’t you shoot me, standing at the stove? Wanted to see my face, first?”
“Frankly, Momo, your face doesn’t do jack shit for me.”
The little gangster frowned, more confused than angry. “Then why ain’t you shot t my ass? Ain’t that why Joe Batters sent you around?” He sneered. “Funny! I ask you to knock off that head job Mad Sam, and you go all righteous on me. But Accardo you play torpedo for, no problem.…I told you, Mike, told you you’re the same bad-ass today who shot Frank Abatte back in—”
“Shut up.”
Giancana sneered. “Then shoot, Saint.” Shrugged.
“Didn’t I always say, ‘Live by the sword, die by the sword’? So my string ran out, finally. It was a good ride. I fucked men over and fucked women silly—who could ask for more?”
Michael’s finger began to tighten on the trigger.
Giancana braced himself.…
…but the diminutive don had said it before: Why wasn’t Michael shooting?
“Or maybe,” Giancana said, smiling just a little, the sideways slitted
eyes narrowing even further, deep creases in the forehead signaling thought, “maybe you know that when you kill me, certain questions go unanswered—maybe forever. Questions like—how did I know you were in Arizona? Tucson? In Paradise the fuck Estates?”
Michael’s eyes tightened. “How did you know, Momo?”
A smile blossomed on the stubbly, wrinkled face; he looked very small, chest sunken, even frail. Of course, the man was in his late sixties, and recovering from gallbladder surgery.
Mooney’s voice was soothing now, almost charming. “Saint, why don’t we talk.…”
The gangster gestured past the adjacent dining area through the open doorway into the den, where the large, rectangular dark oak table and ten high-backed chairs had been home to many an inner-circle Outfit meeting, back when Giancana was boss.
Michael knew he should just shoot this son of a bitch; but Giancana was right: when Mooney died, information would die with him.
“You first, Momo.”
Slowly, hands half-raised, Giancana led Michael into a spacious light-oak-paneled room cluttered with armchairs, a sofa, and endless bric-a-brac: porcelain ashtrays, beer steins, sterling silver pieces, glassware and bowls, some filling a Gothic hutch, others decorating tables; oil paintings, lighted from beneath, ran to Sicilian landscapes, and from a low-slung stereo cabinet, Sinatra was singing “Talk to Me, Baby” next to a fully stocked liquor cabinet.
One area of the den was devoted to golf, including a golf-bag wastebasket and a framed golfing clown print. Half the pipes in Chicago were displayed on a rack, and on a Louis XV desk a cigar humidor was initialed G.
But the vast conference table was dominant, and Giancana and Michael sat across from each other at the near end, closer to the scent of sizzling sausage.
Michael of course had checked for hidden weapons, alarm buttons, and patted down the scrawny gangster, who seemed vaguely amused. But the shark’s eyes had a glimmer Michael recognized: fear.
“Let me tell you why you shouldn’t kill me, Saint,” Giancana said, hands flat on the tabletop.
“Why don’t you.”
“You’re a smart man. You recognize power when you see it. You see the possibilities.” Another shrug. “Aiuppa doesn’t have the brains to run an organization like ours, with its national and international interests. And Accardo is an old man who just wants to retire and clip coupons. You know, I spent the afternoon talking with Butch Blasi and Chuckie English. Planning.”
“Don’t they work for Aiuppa now?”
Giancana snorted a laugh. “Aiuppa thinks they do. They go back with me, for…for fuckin’ ever. I got friends in the Outfit, from the old days, who remember what it was like having a real leader. The new turks, they heard of me, they heard the stories, the legend. Whispers about Jack Kennedy and Marilyn and Bobby. And how I fucking killed all three.”
“This is quite an argument you’re making.”
He raised a withered palm. “Just providing a…whaddyacallit, context for all of this. First thing you need to know is, I didn’t authorize what happened at your house. In Arizona.”
“Really.”
“I ain’t gonna tell you I was not in favor of shutting you up, permanent. We both know the kind of things you could yak about on the witness stand.”
“That’s funny, Momo. Lot of people feel the same about you.”
Giancana paused. “I did not tell Inoglia and them guys to do that terrible thing to your family. I would not do that. I got kids, too. I lost a wife who I still love to this day.…Don’t look at me like that. It’s the truth.”
“Who did tell them to do it?”
“Thing is.…” He twitched a nervous smile. “…I don’t know exactly. I only know what went down in your place ’cause…well. You probably heard I picked up, over the years, certain…contacts in government. These contacts are concerned about, you know… what you said. Me testifying.”
“CIA. I heard the rumors. But you don’t remind me at all of James Bond, Momo.”
His slash of mouth tightened. “I am not shitting you, Saint. I was dealing with a voice on the phone. This voice said, don’t give us up to the committee…Senate committee, you know…and we’ll protect you. We’ll give you Michael Satariano.”
“I’m not a fool, Momo.…”
“Hell, I know you aren’t! But think about it, Mike—think! How could I know you headed back to Tahoe, to pick up that prom queen daughter of yours? How could I know that?”
His gloved hand tight on the pistol grip, Michael said, “Anna and her boyfriend kept in touch.”
“How?”
“By phone.”
“Who taps phones, Mike? Do I tap phones? Does the Outfit tap fucking phones? Who the hell does that sound like—the fuckin’ G, and that don’t-the-fuck stand for Giancana, does it?”
The truth of it sizzled inside Michael’s brain like that damn sausage on the stove.
“A leak,” Michael said. “In WITSEC.”
“Has to be,” Giancana said, and pounded the table in emphasis. “Has to be—working with the spooks, one government agency leaning on another.”
“Who?”
He threw his hands up. “Hey, you got me by the balls.” His hands came down and folded, prayerfully, respectfully. “But you come over to my side, Mike, you be my right-hand man…like you were Frank Nitti’s? And when I retire—”
“All this will be mine?” Michael grunted a mirthless laugh. “I’m not into ashtrays and beer steins, Momo.”
Giancana swallowed, sat forward, urgency in his voice. “You take my off er, you ride back to the top with me, Mike, and I promise you, I will play those government cocksuckers like a ten-cent kazoo, and we will find out who ratted you out! We’ll find the WITSEC leak and you will plug the bastard. Personally!”
Michael stared at the little shell of the once powerful mob boss, in whom desperation had replaced charisma.
“Inoglia, Nappi, Caruso—they were your men, Momo, before I sent them to hell.”
“Who said they weren’t?”
“You say what happened in Paradise Estates wasn’t your doing. That some faceless voice on the phone, representing the CIA skeletons in your closet, gave me up to you as a favor.…”
“Yeah! What don’t you get, Saint? I let it be known I was unhappy about my ‘company’ pals not protecting me from those fuckin’ Mexicans! I had tens of goddamn millions in the bank down there…and Uncle Sam can’t do anything about it? And now I gotta testify, and make Accardo and every paranoid asshole in the Outfit think I might spill the secrets, like that prick Valachi?”
“They couldn’t get your money for you, and they couldn’t put the brakes on the Senate committee…but they could give me up.”
“Fucking exactly!”
“Fine. Who ‘exactly’ is ‘they’?”
An elaborate shrug. “I met dozens of these spooks over the years, gray assholes in gray suits, and I could give you names, but you think they’re real names? You think I got an address book so I can send you and your vengeance hard-on to the homes of every government spy in Washington? Get real, Saint.”
“Maybe. But you sent those three Outfit goombahs to my house, Momo. And Inoglia murdered my wife. Explain that away—I’m listening.”
“Wait, wait, wait the fuck! I was in the goddamn hospital, in Houston, getting my gallbladder filleted! I gave that…that voice Inoglia’s name and contact crap. Do you think I woulda had them dress up like hippies? If I was gonna kill you, Saint, I’d want the world to know. You’da been an example. Whose fucking interests did it serve havin’ that hit look like Charlie Manson?”
Very softly Michael said, “The Witness Protection Program.”
Giancana was nodding. “Right, Mike, right. If it’s some whacko drugged-out flower people who butchered an innocent family, the government’s not to blame. But an Outfit hit, on a protected witness and his family? They’d be over. Done. WITSEC’d never have another player for their new-name-fresh-start game show.”
Sinatra was singing “The Look of Love.”
Feeling a little numb, Michael asked, “Who killed Mad Sam DeStefano?”
A small shrug, this time. “Just who you think—the Ant and Mario, Mad Sam’s own damn brother. Hey, I don’t deny framing you for that. Shit runs downhill—I gave you a direct order, and you thumbed your nose at me. What did you fucking expect me to do? Who twisted your arm to be part of Our Thing? Did you or did you not go down this road of your own free will?”
“I did,” Michael admitted.
“Well, then. I rest my fucking case.” He stood, scooching his chair back, making a tiny chalk-on-the-blackboard screech. “My offer is sincere. Why don’t you and your daughter just…take a vacation for a while. Mexico went south on me, so to speak, but I still have friends in very nice places—Bahamas, Jamaica—where you and your kid can relax.…Let me get my house in order, recuperate a little from this damn surgery—and I’ll deal with this Senate thing, and in the meantime, Butch and Chuckie and me’ll gather my forces, and if it means taking Aiuppa out, so be it.”
“You mean, just watch from afar,” Michael said, “and you’ll call me in, when the time is right.”
A big grin split Giancana’s grooved, dark face. “Works for me!…I better get back to my sausage and beans. Be a goddamn shame to waste ingredients like them.…My daughter Francine brought ’em over today.”
Sinatra had stopped singing, the album over.
Some cockiness in his step now, Giancana headed through the dining room and back into the kitchen, Michael right behind him, the .22 at his side.
Giancana returned to the two pans and began stirring the sausage. “A little too brown on the one side, but it’s still gonna be nice.…You know, Michael, what our problem is? We’re too much alike, you and I. Pity we got off to such a bad start.”
“It really is,” Michael said, and shot him in the back of the head, the silenced pistol’s report like a cough.
Giancana jerked, then crumpled to the floor, sprawling on his back. Life flickered in the dark shark eyes, and he was still breathing, so Michael stuck the snout of the silenced weapon in the man’s mouth, and the pistol coughed again.
Road to Paradise Page 22
