In the front lobby, he joined the boy and girl. Behind the check-in desk, an assistant manager of his, a pretty young woman named Brandi, squinted at him; he shook his head at her, and somehow she got the signal. She said nothing, God bless her.
“The car’s close, right out front,” he said to the young couple, standing between them, a hand on each one’s shoulder. “I’m going out first. If there’s no problem, I’ll pull right up to the door... Gary, open the front for Anna, Anna you get in, and Gary climb in back, it’ll be unlocked.”
Gary nodded. “And we’ll book it out of here.”
“We will indeed,” Michael said, and squeezed the hand on the boy’s tux shoulder. “Just look after my little girl.”
Their eyes met.
Gary understood: if Michael didn’t make it, Anna would be his responsibility.
“Be careful, Daddy,” Anna said.
He kissed her on the forehead and went out.
Trotting to the parked Lincoln, he swiftly scanned the lot for anything suspicious. A few casino goers, couples, were heading for their own cars. Some kids from the prom were out front catching a smoke in the cool crisp pleasant breeze.
Behind the wheel of the parked Lincoln, he made sure the seat was clear in back for Gary, moving the suitcases over; he unlocked the doors on their side, and powered down the window on his own side, and Anna’s.
Then he started the car, backed out, and swung around, pulling right in front. Gary came out first, Anna right behind him, and the boy opened the door for her. She climbed in, and Gary’s head came apart as the gunshot, probably a .45 or maybe .357, caught him in the forehead. His eyes didn’t have time to register shock.
Anna screamed, and Gary fell away, a mist of red taking his place, as Michael hit the gas, steering with one hand, yelling, “Close that door, baby!” which somehow, through her screaming, she managed to do, and two little men with big revolvers, Giancana guys who Michael recognized, a stocky kid named Vin and a skinnier one named Lou, came up out from among the parked cars, and were aiming the weapons at the Lincoln when Michael shot Vin and Lou with the .45, bang bang, turning their heads into mush and mist, much as they had Gary’s.
Anna kept screaming, and the Lincoln was screaming, too, careening out of the parking lot and then flying down the curving mountain highway, leaving behind the dead boy and pair of Outfit corpses and Cal-Neva and neon signs until only the pines and the night and the twisty road and the sobbing girl were his companions.
“Oh, Daddy, Daddy,” she said finally, horror and hysteria turning the lovely face grotesque, “we just left him there; we just left him there!”
When he could risk it, he pulled over and took her into his arms, and sobs shook her as he said, “We had to leave him. He was gone, baby; he was gone.”
“Oh, but you don’t understand... you don’t understand...”
“I swear I do, sugar. I swear.”
“But you don’t.” She drew away from him a little, and her eyes and face were drenched with tragedy, her voice a tiny trembling terrible thing, so much older than it had ever been and yet much, much too young.
“That was my husband we left back there, Daddy,” the girl in the white prom dress said, gasping, gulping. “Last night in Vegas... Gary and... we... we... we... got... married...”
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.