“I understand.”
Once again he leaned forward; he raised a forefinger — the shadow of smudged blood remained. “And speak to no one about Al’s mental condition. No one.”
“No one.”
Nitti leaned back and gestured with open palms. “Now... as for your duties, you’re officially my number-one bodyguard. My top lieutenant. We’re gonna get you a penthouse suite at the Seneca, and you’re gonna live like a king. Someday you’ll settle down and be a socks-and-slippers man like me, with a wife and kids and house in the suburbs; but for now, enjoy yourself. Be a man about town... just be available when I need ya. How’s a thousand a week sound?”
“Like... a lot of money.”
“Michael, I’ve been looking for a sharp, brave kid like you for a long time. Welcome to the family.”
Nitti extended his hand across the table and they shook.
A platter of spaghetti and meatballs came, proving to be almost as good as Papa’s. They spoke not at all of business after that, and Michael enjoyed Nitti’s good-humored company, as they talked about sports (boxing mostly) and movies (Nitti loved Cagney) and Italian food (his late wife Anna’s veal scallopini alla Marsala had been to die for, and Michael encouraged his boss to travel to DeKalb for Mama Satariano’s version thereof).
Michael felt strangely exhilarated, which was probably mostly his surprise at still being alive. For reasons he could not comprehend, he felt proud that Frank Nitti had thought enough of him to make him a “made” man in the Outfit. What would his father, his real father, have felt for his son, Michael wondered — pride? Shame?
On the way to the limo, Campagna fell in alongside Michael. Man-of-the-people Nitti was walking up ahead, chatting with the other two hoodlums.
“Congratulations, kid,” Campagna said, a grin splitting the lumpy face. “You’re in.”
“Better than being out,” Michael said, grinning, too.
“Kid, the only way you go out of this family,” Campagna said, with a shoulder pat, “is feet first.”
Then they drove back to the Capone mansion, where the first person to approach Michael was a tearfully happy Mae Capone, who embraced him and thanked him again and again for the wonderful thing he had done for her husband.
Two
At the bar in the glitzy Colony Club, Michael sat and sipped his Coca-Cola and enjoyed the music.
Estelle Carey leaned against the piano as she sang — perching on a stool was out of the question, in the formfitting periwinkle gown, with its high neck, mostly bared arms, and bodice with tiny glittering stars. Golden hair piled high, glamour-girl Estelle worked her intimate audience of couples, but Michael knew she was singing straight to him.
Right now, her husky second soprano was wrapping itself around “I Didn’t Know What Time It Was.”
Cigarette smoke draped the bar, which was packed; so was the “aristocrat of restaurants,” as the adjacent dining room advertised itself. Michael hadn’t been upstairs to the casino yet, but this was a Saturday night and, judging by the ground floor, the Colony Club was hopping. Frank Nitti’s new number-one lieutenant was wearing a very sharp dark blue white-pinstriped number, a tailored job disguising the .45 in the shoulder sling; but the majority of the Colony Club patrons were in evening dress (and presumably unarmed).
He’d been back from Miami for barely two weeks, but a lot had happened. He’d moved into the promised penthouse at the Seneca; his relationship with Frank Nitti grew ever closer; and every night he’d slept with Estelle, either upstairs or at his Seneca digs — her own apartment was off-limits, as she roomed with a woman who ran a classy dress shop in which Estelle was partnered.
Now that the publicity over his Medal of Honor had receded, so had his celebrity; rarely did anyone recognize Michael, to ask for an autograph or embarrass him with praise, and he relished this new anonymity.
His state of mind was numb, but not unpleasantly so. He was surprised to be alive, and right now did not feel inclined to swim against the tide. If this was limbo, it wasn’t bad — Michael Satariano was, after all, a twenty-two-year-old making a thousand dollars a week, in an easy job, living in a posh penthouse, with a gorgeous nightclub singer for a girlfriend.
Maybe he had died back in Miami; maybe Capone’s people had shot him full of holes and this was heaven, or possibly a coma he hadn’t come out of, and if so, what was the hurry?
With “I’ll Never Smile Again,” Estelle’s set was over — on the weekends, her performances were timed so that while she was on, the orchestra was off, and vice versa. She drifted over to Michael, appearing through the cigarette fog like a materializing dream; she proved her reality by slipping her hand into his and led him into the chrome-and-glass dining room where a table in back waited.
Don Orlando and his orchestra played rhumbas, the dance floor fairly packed, while Michael ate a rare tenderloin (the modest serving the only sign of wartime shortages) and Estelle a small shrimp salad (anything larger would have shown, in that gown). Afterward they danced — slow romantic tunes, no rhumbas for Michael — in preparation for retiring to the specific third-floor bedroom (the “Rhapsody in Blue” suite) of which Estelle seemed to have sole use.
Michael hoped he was the only other man sharing it with her, now; but he had not yet pressed the point.
In the dim light of Rush Street neons tinted blue by the semi-sheer curtains, the two made love, with the combination of tenderness and urgency that always seemed to characterize the act for them. As usual, she preferred to start on top, her long golden hair undone now, and bouncing off her creamy shoulders, her eyes half-lidded in pleasure, her breasts pert hard-tipped handfuls. Christ, she was lovely...
Soon she lay naked next to him, a loose sheet halfheartedly covering the couple, his arm round her, her face against his chest, which was largely hairless (“You’re just a boy, you’re just a child,” she would tease); for a while she kissed his chest lazily, and then she slept, snoring very gently against his flesh, almost a purr.
He felt an enormous affection for this willowy creature with her doll-like features, a girl/woman who had learned to use the softness of her charms in so many hard ways. In a wave of sentimentality, which he mistook for deep emotion, Michael wished he could whisk her away from the Chicago of gambling, whoring, and other commercial sins.
She looked so innocent, slumbering against him. So untroubled. So blissfully at rest. But earlier in the week she’d seemed distracted, and on edge.
In this same bed, she had sat up, arms folded over her bare breasts, her brow furrowed. “I may need you to talk to Frank for me. Mr. Nitti, I mean.”
Propped on his elbow, he stared at her. “Why, baby? Problem?”
“You see that business in the papers, about those actresses who got burnt?”
“Anita Louise, you mean? And somebody else famous, right?”
“Yeah — Constance Bennett. They’re in town promoting a new picture.”
The robbery of several thousand in jewels from a hotel room of the two visiting Hollywood beauties had made headlines. Seemed like a hard way to hawk a movie.
“Well, they were here when it happened,” she said with a humorless smirk, pointing a finger downstairs. “Word is the cops think the heist was planned at the Colony.”
“Like somebody kept the girls busy at the club, giving somebody else time to nick the gems at the hotel?”
“Right. But what would we have to do with it?”