This was a bag he hoped the airline could manage not to lose.
Michael checked it with an attractive blonde in stewardess mufti at the American Airlines counter in the outer terminal, who set it down with another half-dozen bags. Then he headed for the nearby bank of telephone booths — he had a long-distance call to make.
This time not even a dime was required, much less an elaborate handful of change; he closed himself in, sat, and dialed O, asked for the charges to be reversed...
...and gave the operator the “panic button” number.
“Yes?” a male voice answered.
“A Mr. Michael Smith calling,” the operator said, “station to station — will you accept the charges?”
“Yes.”
Michael said, “I need to talk to Associate Director Shore immediately.”
“Where can you be reached?”
Michael read the number off the phone.
“He’ll be with you in five minutes.”
“Make it sooner.”
It was — about three.
“What’s wrong, Michael?”
Anxiety undercut the pleasant business-like surface of the WITSEC director’s tone.
“You haven’t had any reports?”
“No. What’s wrong, man?”
Michael gave Shore a brief dispassionate description of what had gone down at the Smith residence.
“Oh my God,” Shore said, sounding not just shaken but genuinely saddened over Pat’s murder.
After completing the story — the only details he skipped were such private matters as packing guns, money, and sedatives — Michael said, “Don’t ask me where I am. You probably already know.”
“I don’t, but of course it would be easy enough to find out. Let’s agree to work together in this dark hour. You stay put, and—”
“No. I don’t like your level of protection.”
“Michael... I can understand that... Jesus Christ, I can understand that, but nothing like this has ever happened before in the program! I swear to you!”
“Imagine how comforting that is to hear.”
“I... I can’t imagine what you’re going through. How’s... how’s your daughter taking it?”
Unless Shore’s acting rivaled George C. Scott’s, the fed was honestly unaware of the girl’s disappearance, a state Michael was not about to spoil by sharing information.
“Her name is Anna, Harry, and how do you think she’s doing? Her mother was butchered.”
“Michael... I guarantee your safety. Yours and Anna’s.”
“I thought you already had.”
The words came in a fevered rush: “I don’t know what you have in mind, but you can’t make it alone out there. You need us. You... need... us.”
“No. You need me, maybe. This is just a courtesy call, so you can clean up out at Paradise Estates, if you want. And to, you know, say so long and fuck you.”
A sigh breathed through the receiver, then: “Michael, you have to come in from the cold, you just have to...”
“I like the cold. Getting colder.”
Shore tried another tack. “You said these were Giancana’s men? Not DeStefano crew, like before?”
“All Giancana insiders. Hard asses. Formerly.”
Shore’s words continued to leap desperately out of the receiver: “Michael, since last week, Giancana is back in the United States — our intelligence indicates he’s trying to position himself for a return to power. That’s why he’s done this — he thinks you’re a threat to him.”
“He’s right.”
“I meant in court.”
“Don’t worry, Harry — he’ll be judged.”
“Michael, no. What happened at your home was self-defense. Anything you initiate now—”
“Do we know how Accardo feels about this? Would he have sanctioned this hit?”
“...Not likely. Accardo rules from the sidelines, through weaker men he can control. He’s probably telling his people that Giancana’s time is over, but—”
“But what he’s thinking is, Mooney’s too strong.”
“That, and the Big Tuna probably doesn’t like having somebody as high-profile as Mooney Giancana back in the press.”
“Since when is Giancana making headlines?”
A brief pause in the fed’s fast flow of words indicated, perhaps, that Shore had to consider whether or not to share what he said next: “Mooney’ll be a media darling again, within days — he’s set to testify at a committee meeting in Washington next week.”
“What committee meeting?”
“Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. It’s that old rumor about the CIA working with the mob to assassinate Castro.”
“Not to mention Jack Kennedy,” Michael said.
Shore ignored that, and blurted, “We have a golden opportunity here, Michael! Giancana is no Mad Sam DeStefano — he’ll be testifying under oath, selling out the CIA, but revealing nothing at all about the Outfit. Omertà runs deep in an old made guy like Giancana.”
“So, Harry, you see my wife’s murder as a golden opportunity?”
“No, no, no... It’s just, Giancana is full of himself, thinks he’s smart and clever; but he will perjure himself in the process... and with you on our side, Michael, with your knowledge, your testimony, we’ll take him down.”
“On perjury.”
“That will just be a start!”
“I’m looking for the finish, Harry,” Michael said, and hung up.
The metal detector was a tunnel four or five feet long, and he had to walk a ramp up inside, and back down. On a trip to Hawaii six months ago, before everything went wrong, he and Pat had talked about how airline travel just wasn’t fun or special anymore; once upon a time, two or three years back, passengers wore suits and dresses, and the food was decent, and the stewardesses were friendly, and anyone with the price of a ticket was a kind of jet setter. Now you had to submit yourself and anything you carried onto the plane to a frisk.
“Like a common criminal!” Pat had said. “All the romance is going out of it.”
His wife and her voice in his mind, Michael walked casually toward his gate and didn’t spot Marshal Don Hughes until nearly too late.
The lanky, Apache-cheeked Hughes, his back to Michael, was at the check-in counter talking to a stewardess, showing her something — a picture of Michael probably. Two other guys in off-the-rack suits and snap-brim hats — who the fuck wore hats anymore, but feds! — were bookending Hughes, and fortunately both men also had their backs partly to Michael.
One marshal began to swing around, probably on the lookout for Michael, who lowered his head and fell in with a few other passengers, and moved on past the gate.
The airport was fairly dead this time of night, and it wasn’t as if a crowd was available to get lost in. But finally he found another small group to walk with and headed back. He watched in the reflection of a closed newsstand’s window to see if Hughes and/or his Joe Fridays were on to him.
Apparently they weren’t, because soon Michael had made it back out into the terminal lobby, his mind clicking through a thousand things, including wondering if Shore had been keeping him on the phone so Marshal Hughes could arrive and nab him.
Then he stopped in his tracks. Oh shit, he thought, sick with visions of his money and his guns catching the plane without him, going to Phoenix to make the connecting flight on their way to Reno...
He went directly to the American Airlines counter, where he sucked in a relieved breath as he saw his Samsonite still waiting amid half a dozen others to be passed through for loading.
“I’ve got a sick kid at home,” he told the woman at the counter. “I have to scrap this flight. Can I get my bag back?”