Michael’s gaze moved back to Hughes, whose brow was beaded with sweat, though the sanctuary was cool. “Don, maybe I’m wrong about you.”
“I’m telling you, Satariano, you are wrong!”
“It’s O’Sullivan. Just answer one question. If you work out of DC, why were you in Tucson the night my wife was murdered? Why were you at the airport, waiting for me?”
The nine-millimeter Browning was in Hughes’s hand — snatched off his belt holster — in less than a second.
“Don’t bother, Don,” Michael said. “You’re already covered.”
And Michael nodded behind and up, to the balcony where Anna pointed the Garand rifle right at the marshal.
“You may remember from the night you helped us move, Don,” Michael said, “all those first-place ribbons from the Tahoe Gun Club...?”
The girl held the gun with confidence, sighting down the barrel.
“And if you’re thinking,” Michael said, “she’s just a kid... well, you’re right. A kid whose mother you killed. And the Grace boy? Her prom date? They got married in Vegas, the night before your Outfit trash murdered him.”
Nostrils flaring, cords standing out in his neck, Hughes jumped to his feet, grabbed Shore with his free hand, and thrust the plump, shorter fed in front of him as a shield, nine mil’s nose in Shore’s neck. The marshal’s eyes were moving very fast. Michael could almost read the man’s thoughts: if everyone died here but him, he could find a story, he could find a story the world would buy...
Michael said evenly, “Don, just put the gun down. I’m sure your buddy Harry, here, will have a nice warm spot in WITSEC for you... because I’d rather you lived... really, truly. I’d rather you testified and brought down the faceless ‘company’ assholes whose lackey you are. The people really responsible for Pat’s death, cold-blooded CIA renegades in bed with gangsters, self-serving traitors who need to be exposed.”
“You don’t know the kind of people you’re dealing with,” Hughes said, with hollow laughter; he was trembling, the nine mil’s snout stuffed deep in the fleshy folds of the other fed’s neck. “Petty little dago dog shit like you, what do you know?... Those boys are the big leagues, and you’re outa yours, you stupid son of a bitch...”
“Anna!” Michael said. “I warned you, honey, it might come to this. Sweetheart — got to be a head shot. You can do it. It’ll shut off his motor skills like a light switch.”
“Okay, Daddy,” she called down, and it echoed.
Past a terrified Shore, Hughes looked up with a little fear but mostly arrogance at the teenage girl pointing the rifle at him from the higher of two rear balconies. “You really think I believe—”
The shot sounded like a thunderclap.
Director Shore’s eyes and mouth were open wide, as just behind the human shield, Marshal Don Hughes froze for a particle of a moment, just long enough for Michael to see the blankness in the eyes in a skull cracked like an egg by the bullet that had pierced it between, and just above, the sky-blue eyes.
Then Hughes dropped out of sight between pews, hitting the floor noisily, like a bag of doorknobs, punctuated by his nine mil clunking to the wooden floor, leaving a stunned Shore just standing there, saved in church.
Michael got to his feet. “You’re going to have to deal with the reverend, Harry — Anna and I will be in touch.”
Shore’s eyes pleaded as he reached out and said, “Michael!”
The director was getting a crash course in the violent realities behind the abstraction of his program.
“You’ll be fine, Harry. But I can’t be here when the cops come. You’ve cleaned up crime scenes before. Cheer up — didn’t we repair your security breach?”
And Michael slipped out of the sanctuary, where the sunlight was fading, creating an indoor dusk. An ashen Anna was coming down the stairs in a tank top and jeans with the rifle in her hands, clearly shaken.
“I killed him, Daddy,” she said.
He took the Garand from her, and wrapped it in his sport coat (they’d brought the rifle in, field-stripped in a gym bag, and he’d assembled it for her in the balcony).
“Only because you had to, sweetheart. Only because you had to.”
Not revenge, he thought. Justice.
Weapon tucked under one arm, he slipped the other around her, and they moved quickly down the long corridor.
Her face was white. “I... I feel weird.”
“Can you hold it in?”
She nodded.
“Good girl,” he said, and they were to the car, parked right along the Temple on Kenilworth, before she puked.
Fourteen
In their suite at the Oak Arms, Michael and Anna sat at the small ’50s-era Formica table in the kitchenette and, over a Coke and a Tab, talked. The night was sultry, humid with rain that desperately wanted to happen, the window open, two layers of drapes fluttering — the bedroom had an air conditioner, which was on and chugging mightily, but its efforts never made their way into the tiny living room/kitchenette.
“You’re going to be okay,” he told her gently.
She sat slumped, staring at the gray speckles of the tabletop. “I know I am. But I feel... guilty...”
“That’s to be expected.”
“...About not feeling guilty.” She looked up at him. “I could hear everything in that church, Daddy. I heard what you said to them about that... that Giancana...”
“I had to lie, sugar. We need Director Shore and what he can do for us through WITSEC. My only other option is to go back to work for the Outfit.”
Her brow tightened. “They’d take you back?”
He nodded. “I did a big favor for Tony Accardo, removing Mooney Giancana. And Accardo knows we were victims in this thing, from the start. He’s like Frank Nitti — best man in a bad world.” He shook his head. “But, honey, that’s not what I want for us.”
“You did kill that man, though — Giancana. You shot him over and over, the papers say. Was that... to make it look like some... Mafia thing?”
He could have lied to her; but instead he said, “No. I used that to convince Shore I hadn’t done it, but no, baby. I was over the edge — way over, thinking of what they did to Mom. It was pure rage. Normally, I’m... cool. That’s how it is in war. But not last night, not killing that creature. The expression — seeing red? I saw it. Nothing but red. Blood red.”
Her eyes were on him, now. She nodded and sipped the glass of Tab on ice (he was drinking from a can), and stared at the gray table flecks again. “I killed him as much as you did.”
“No.”
“Wouldn’t the law think so?”
“Yes.”
“I don’t care. I’m glad he’s dead. I don’t think I could have done what you did, but... maybe I could. But I was... like you said? Cool, cold. In the church? I just aimed at that marshal, that fucking bastard, and...” She covered her face; her eyes were shut. She was not crying.
He reached for her left hand, took it, squeezed it, then held it. “That was not murder, sweetheart. I saw that animal’s eyes — he was about to kill me, and Director Shore, and if the reverend of that church had come running in, followed by a class of Sunday school kids, Hughes would’ve shot them, too. Feeling a lot less than you’re feeling.”
“So what I did... it was like, self-defense?”
“Survival.”
“Anyway, I’m glad he’s dead, too. Gary died because of that fucker. Mom, too. I could do it again.”
He squeezed her hand. “But you won’t. Honey, my father did not want me to go down his road. He wanted more than anything in this world that I would not turn out like him — but I did.”