In a courtyard illuminated only by the moon and the green-and-red of motel neon, Michael left the Garand rifle in the trunk of the Lincoln, but took the .45 Colt automatic with him, as he slipped inside Room 12, the cabin farthest from the highway.
He did not hit the light switch — Anna was sleeping in one of the twin beds — but the bathroom light had been left on, the door ajar. A small air conditioner chugged, making no more noise than a Volkswagen with a faulty muffler; but the girl — under the sheets in her pink nightshirt, lost in a deep sedative-aided slumber — was past noticing or caring.
In addition to throwing the bolt and the latch, Michael wedged the back of a chair under the knob. On the nightstand between the twin beds he set the .45 next to the .38 Smith & Wesson already there, and picked up an envelope propped against the lamp.
The letter, labeled anna, he tucked away — for now — in his Samsonite.
In the bathroom he pissed and brushed his teeth and lifted a few handfuls of water to his face. Back at his bed, he slipped out of his crepe-sole shoes, but left on the rest of his clothing — long-sleeve T-shirt and black jeans and black socks — then lay on top of the covers, staring at the ceiling, hands locked behind his head, elbows winged out.
He would take a chance on Accardo.
The man some called Big Tuna, others called Joe Batters, was the last of the Capone crowd — the surviving Outfit leader with any sense of Old World decency. Michael, in his brief mid-’40s tour of duty as Accardo’s lieutenant, had never really bonded with the ganglord — not as he had with Nitti and Ricca, anyway — but he had nonetheless witnessed a boss who must have been like the old turn-of-the-century Mafia dons, fair and never hasty to act, approachable, willing to help a “family” member.
Accardo truly viewed the Outfit as an extended family, and those backyard barbecues he used to throw every summer indicated his good heart, even though it eventually got the real-life Godfather into trouble, attracting more unwanted guests than invited ones — the press hanging around taking pictures of the attendees, and the FBI showing up with their own clicking cameras.
Still, while Michael could risk his own life, trusting Accardo, he would take extra precautions where Anna was concerned. Right now the motherless girl was a wreck — a newlywed who’d lost her husband on the honeymoon — and she had wept and slept in the backseat on the way from Tahoe to Palm Springs. At the Solona Court, she’d willingly taken the sedatives to help her sleep deeper, and he had not told her he was going out.
What he had done was leave her that sealed envelope with a letter in it. On the back, he had penned in his small cramped precise handwriting:
Anna—
If you wake up and I am not here, do not worry. I will be back soon.
If for some reason I am not back by morning, open this envelope. Please do not open this otherwise.
And the letter inside said,
Dear Anna,
Take the briefcase from my bag. You will find half a million dollars inside, it is yours. Do not go to the police. Do not go to the FBI. Drive to DeKalb and go to your Aunt Betty’s.
If you have not heard from me in a week, you must assume the worst, and start your life over.
You are not known in DeKalb but Betty and Ralph are, and that is good. You will be able to go to a bank and get a checking account. Do so. Put ten thousand dollars in. Put the rest of the money in a safety deposit box and do NOT tell anyone about it, not even your aunt.
Replenish the checking account from the safety deposit box as need be. When you are older and have an education, you may wish to invest the balance of the money.
I cannot really tell you what to do, sweetheart. Not any more. If I am gone, I lose every right to influence you. But just the same I ask you to stay in DeKalb and attend Northern, where your mother went. The arts program is not bad, you will get the lead in every play they put on, I bet. I would very much like you to honor my request that you spend your college years in DeKalb where your aunt and uncle can provide moral support. I do not expect you to live with them and in fact think that would be a mistake, because they are much more conservative than we have ever been and would drive you nuts.
Get an apartment or maybe pledge a sorority. Sorry. Trying to live your kid’s life for them is a hard habit to break, even though it never really worked in the first place.
The things I have done should not come back to haunt you. I cannot think of any reason why anyone from my world would look for you or cause you harm. But you should be careful about the money. And you should use your married name.
You are Anna Grace now. It is a good name for you. Your mom and I have always been proud of you and your talent. I hope some day you will forgive me for not stopping your brother from going to Vietnam, you were right, I was wrong.
Please know that your mother loved you more than life itself. I love you more than life itself.
Be strong. Take care.
The letter, written for tonight, would also serve later, when he went after Giancana. He’d designed it that way.
He’d called his wife’s sister before heading to Accardo’s estate at Indian Wells Country Club. Anna was already asleep, but he had used a telephone booth outside the restaurant next door, not wanting to risk waking the girl.
“Betty? It’s Michael.”
“Michael! Is something wrong?”
The response was appropriate: two months ago, Pat had made a supervised phone call, through the WITSEC switchboard, to inform her sister of their situation, to tell Betty that the family had been relocated by the Witness Protection Program, but not giving her their location or new names. He and Pat had the right and ability to make other such WITSEC-routed calls to Betty, their only close living relative, but hadn’t chosen to.
Betty’s husband, Ralph, was a nice guy but a born-again preacher of some kind, spun off from the Baptists, who were just not Holy Roller enough. Pat and Betty had rarely talked in recent years, because their conversations always deteriorated into political arguments. Nonetheless, the O’Hara sisters had grown up together and had been close for decades, until wild girl Betty suddenly got saved, after her second divorce, and grew a stick up her ass.
Carefully, he said, “You haven’t heard anything?”
“Haven’t heard what? Michael, what is this about?”
She sounded irritated, which was typical, but also frightened.
“Betty, I have bad news.”
“...Oh no. What is it? Should I sit down, Mike? I should be sitting down, shouldn’t I?... It’s Patsy Ann, isn’t it? Is she sick?”
“We lost her, Betty.”
Silence.
“Do you understand, Betty?”
The voice returned, with a tremor in it. “What... Mike, what happened?”
“She was killed, Betty. Our house was attacked by the people I’m supposed to testify against, and they killed her.”
“Oh my God... Oh dear Jesus.” She wasn’t swearing; but she wasn’t exactly praying, either. “Anna! What about Anna?”
He told his wife’s sister in almost no detail that Pat had been murdered in her sleep. That neither he nor Anna had been harmed, but that his daughter and he were on the road, and in danger.