Vaguely he recalled somebody checking on him; had he been walked to a bathroom, once...?
Now, fully awake for the first time, he sensed that his shoes and socks were off; he felt coolness on his legs and arms and realized he was in his underwear, still on top of the bedspread, though the room — which had no windows, at least that he was aware of (he never left the bed to explore his quarters) — was not so cool as to encourage him to crawl under the covers. This would have been far too ambitious an activity for him to attempt, anyway.
Michael’s back was to the door when it opened.
He looked over his shoulder: a silhouette framed in a shaft of light. A man. Anyway, a person wearing a man’s hat.
“I’m gonna hit the switch, kid,” the voice said. “Be ready for it.”
Illumination flooded the room blindingly, and Michael, still on his side curled up and facing the wall, shut his eyes and covered them with his hands, as if the glass one were still flesh and blood, too.
Michael heard footsteps and then felt a hand on his shoulder.
“You been out for two days. Go on and sit up.”
Opening his eyes tentatively, Michael took a few moments to get used to the brightness, then he rolled over and sat on the edge of the bed. He touched his face, finding the roughness of stubble there.
Hovering over him was Louie Campagna, wearing a black suit and a black tie and a white shirt and a black fedora. Not very Miami festive — more like Chicago funeral.
“You had yourself quite a party the other night,” Louie said flatly. “Made Calumet City look like a cakewalk.”
Michael, in his underwear, felt like a vulnerable child. He could think of nothing to say and the notion of nodding was beyond him.
Campagna held some clothes in his arms, shoes in one hand. He thrust them forward. “Put these on, kid.”
Then Campagna gave Michael some space, waiting over by the open door. Beyond the door Michael could see a landing looking out over the Capone yard; he was in a room in the gatehouse. It was night out there. Two nights ago, was it, that he’d made his misguided assault?
“They gave you a sedative,” Campagna said. “That’s why you got the feebles. Shake it off.”
Michael got into clothes identical to Campagna’s: black suit and tie, white shirt, black socks, black shoes, only no hat. A funeral’s star performer didn’t need one. Also didn’t need to perform.
Campagna gestured to the open door. “After you, kid.”
“Where...?” was all Michael could manage; his tongue was thick, his mouth, his teeth, filmy with drugged sleep.
“Car’s downstairs. Let’s go. Things to do.”
Michael swallowed, nodded. He went out past Campagna, onto the landing, wondering if he should make a break for it — a thought he was capable of forming, but not executing. His limbs felt rubbery, his head and stomach ached.
The cool evening air, though, did feel good; and it was another beautiful southern Florida night, grass glittering with the rays of a still nearly full moon. No bodies around — the clean-up crew had long since done its work. From here the pool and cabana and the dock could all be viewed, as could the endless shimmer of white-touched blue that was the bay.
Michael clomped down the steps, Campagna just behind him. In the graveled drive waited a hearse-like black Lincoln limousine. Two burly-looking swarthy guys in black stood on either side of the vehicle, one next to a rear open door. Both had bulges under their left arms — not tumors, Michael thought, though surely malignancies.
“Michael,” Campagna said, “you’re gonna have to be blindfolded.”
Michael turned. Campagna was holding up a black length of cloth in both hands, as if preparing to strangle somebody.
“Not necessary,” Michael muttered.
“Sorry. Orders.”
Michael did not resist; and when the blackness settled over his eyes, the knot snugging at the back of his neck, he felt almost relieved to be again shut off from the world. A hand on his arm, probably Louie’s, guided him.
“Duck your head,” Louie said, and Michael did, and was gently pushed inside the vehicle.
Someone climbed in beside him — again, probably Campagna. The door shut. He heard the other men get in, in front, and slam their doors. Then they were moving.
He sat quietly, still as a statue; no one said anything. The sounds were of the limo’s engine, other traffic (not heavy), and birds over the bay. His senses were returning to him, and some of his fatalistic lethargy faded and his blood seemed to start to flow again, an urge for survival rekindling.
But blindfolded in the presence of three armed gangsters, Michael had limited options. Still, his hands and ankles weren’t bound. He could rip the blindfold off his eyes, throw a punch into Campagna’s puss, and get to the door and open it and roll out, before either man in the front seat could do a damn thing. The vehicle was not going fast — twenty-five, thirty tops — and unless he pitched himself out into the path of an oncoming car, then he could—
And the limo came to a stop.
The two front doors opened, followed by the sound of shoes crunching on gravel. The back car door to Michael’s left opened, and the man sitting next to him (Campagna?) slid out. A hand settled on Michael’s arm and guided him out of the car, then steered him across a few feet of gravel and in through a door. Faintly, he detected cooking smells; warm in here, but not hot. Comfortable...
...except for the part where he was blindfolded in the company of three Outfit hoods.
He was escorted a few more feet, and Campagna’s voice, next to him, said, “We’re going in a room. You first.”
Michael brushed a doorjamb as he went through. He stopped, then the hand was on his arm again and he was guided across the room. Not much light was leeching in around the edges of the blindfold, so the room apparently was dim. He heard footsteps behind him, indicating the two thugs had followed, and the door closed.
“There’s a chair here,” Campagna said, and positioned Michael.
“Sit down, Michael,” a familiar baritone voice said.
Michael obeyed.
He felt hands at the back of his neck and the blindfold slipped away, filling Michael’s vision with a man seated at a small square white cloth-covered table opposite.
The man was Frank Nitti, also attired in black.
The room was fairly large, but Nitti sat with his back to the wall; of half a dozen overhead light fixtures, only the one directly above the Outfit kingpin was on, creating a spotlight effect. A few framed paintings — landscapes... Sicilian landscapes? — hung here and there around the room, but otherwise it contained nothing but two chairs and the small table that separated Michael from the man who had been his benefactor in the Outfit, the man who had trusted Michael and who Michael had betrayed.
On the table were a .38 and a black-handled dagger with a crooked and obviously sharply honed blade. Next to them was a white piece of paper.
Frank Nitti’s face was pale and grave. “Michael Satariano,” he said. He gestured to the two weapons on the table. “These represent that you live by the gun and the knife, and that you die by the gun and the knife.”
So that was what the white sheet of paper was for: a suicide note! Well, he wouldn’t write it.
They would have to kill him, Michael thought. He would not commit suicide for them; he was still enough of a Catholic for that to repel. Taking your own life meant hell, for sure... as if that mattered now, all the men he’d killed.
But then Nitti flipped over the piece of paper and revealed it to be a color print of the Virgin Mary, a rather florid painting right out of Sunday school.