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 Giancana 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?”