“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.