Surprised that he cared, Michael said defensively, “Swell. What should I tell Frank Nitti, thanks for the summer job? Think I’ll head back to DeKalb and toss pizza?”
Ness’s expression and voice seemed earnest. “Michael... you’ll find the moment. Ease yourself out. It’s not like you’re a made man.”
Michael said nothing.
Ness’s eyes froze.
And when Ness next spoke, his voice was almost a whisper, as if he could barely bring himself to say any of this out loud. “Oh Christ... Then you did kill Abatte, in Calumet City. Self-defense, I know, ‘hypothetical,’ you said, but... Michael, we have to get you out of there.”
“And where would I go? Bataan, maybe?”
Ness was shaking his head, looking for words that weren’t presenting themselves.
“You said it yourself, Mr. Ness. Our relationship is over... Are we done here?”
Michael sat in a wooden chair against a wall in the big waiting-room area on the first floor of the station, with four rough-looking juvies waiting for their parents to come take them home.
Finally, Estelle came down the wide wooden stairs, unaccompanied; in that conservative suit, she again looked almost prim, if shellshocked. Gratefully she took Michael’s arm as he led her into the cool dark of early morning.
Michael walked her down the block to an all-night diner, where he called for a cab. Then he sat in a window booth next to her, waiting for the ride; they both had coffee.
“What did Drury want?” he asked her.
“He’s working with Ness, you know.”
“Yeah, I gathered.”
In the pretty face, her upper lip curled back nastily. “Hundreds of bent cops in this town, you wouldn’t think one honest flatfoot could cause so much trouble.”
She meant Drury. But it applied to Ness as well. And without the cooperation of an honest copper like Drury, the G-man could never have executed a raid like tonight’s.
Michael said, “They’re shuttering the Colony.”
“I know. I know.” She leaned forward, the anxiety in her eyes terrible to behold; she reached out and clutched one of his hands. “Mike, please talk to Mr. Nitti. Tell him this wasn’t my fault. I didn’t know anything about those damn jewel thieves, and—”
“It’ll be fine, baby.”
She shook her head, blonde hair askew. “You don’t understand — the feds, they’re squeezing me. They want to pull me in as a witness on this movie-extortion business.”
“What do you know about it?”
“Not much.”
But she didn’t sound convincing; she had been Nicky Dean’s mistress, after all, and bagman Dean was already doing time in the Hollywood case. Michael had overheard Campagna and Nitti expressing concern the hood might be bargaining for a shorter sentence by singing.
And not in the way Estelle sang at the club, either...
“I’m not going to cooperate, Michael. I told Drury less than nothing. But if the Outfit boys even think I might be spilling... You gotta talk to Frank for me!”
“I will,” he said gently. “I will.”
The cab arrived, and Michael took Estelle to his suite at the Seneca. In bed, he held her all night long, and she shivered as if she were cold or perhaps had the flu. Only it wasn’t cold in the penthouse, and she was a healthy girl.
For now.
Three
For the half year following Michael’s initiation into the Chicago Outfit, the made man’s life proceeded in a nonviolent, routine manner.
At times he felt as if he’d wandered out of reality and onto a Hollywood soundstage. After all, his girlfriend looked like a movie star, screwed him silly on a regular basis, and made upon him no demands whatsoever. His apartment — appointed in a contemporary manner, all browns and greens — had a bedroom, living room, kitchenette, and a balcony view of the city. While he worked long hours, he for the most part sat around, reading magazines and novels, receiving a two-hundred-dollar-a-week check, for accounting purposes, and eight hundred cash, for his own.
He dined out at top restaurants, from Don the Beachcomber’s to Henrici’s, and here at the Seneca Hotel, owned by Outfit investors, his meals, drinks, everything, was (like his suite) comped. A free ride at most nightspots was waiting, too, from the Chez Paree to the Mayfair Room. He wore custom suits from a Michigan Avenue haberdashery attuned to the special needs of the well-armed gentleman about town; and a company car was his on off hours, ration tickets no problem. And like any good American, he bought war bonds.
As he floated through this easy, vaguely exciting life, directionless, empty, yet numbly content, only a few times a day did Michael feel pangs of... not conscience, exactly, more like twinges. Twinges of character.
When he read the papers, morning and evening alike, and certain distinctive words popped out at him — Guadalcanal, North Africa, Stalingrad — something gnawed at his gut. Gratifying as good news from the Solomon Islands might be, he was frustrated by the absence of Philippines coverage. The government continued to keep the lid on tight, particularly about how Uncle Sam had left behind the boys on Bataan... all except Michael Satariano and General MacArthur... to twist in an ill wind from the Far East.
But then he’d turn to the funnies, and force such thoughts out, making room for L’il Abner and Dick Tracy.
At night, between cool sheets in a bed big enough for a family of five, Michael would sometimes face sleeplessness. (“It’s the caffeine in those damn Cokes,” Campagna would say, advising, “You’d sleep like a baby, you drank beer.”) Coca-Cola notwithstanding, he slept better when Estelle lay beside him, breathing, beautiful, human, physical company.
But alone, often when he was just about asleep, faces from the past would drift through his consciousness... his father, patiently teaching him to drive on a country back road; his mother, serving a plate of corned beef and cabbage with a knowing smile (“I told you you’d grow to like it”); his brother’s gleeful laughter when Michael pushed him in the backyard swing; Connor Looney’s sick smile at the last Christmas gathering; grandfatherly John Looney tousling Michael’s hair; his father blasting away with a tommy gun; his mother and brother dead on the floor of their house; his father cut down from behind, by a Capone killer.
And he would go out on the balcony, even when it got cold, even when he had to kick snow aside, and he would stare at the abstract twinkling shapes that were the buildings of the city. And sometimes the edge of that railing seemed to call to him, inviting him to slip over and take the ride of twenty stories down to a bed where he could sleep undisturbed...
As the months went by, Michael did not hear from Eliot Ness. Nor did Lieutenant Drury make any effort to contact him. Perhaps the two men were embarrassed by the meager payoff of their raid on the Colony Club.
Shuttering Rush Street’s most popular nightspot did not make either man any friends, and the embarrassment suffered by captains of industry, politicians, and judges, ignominiously rounded up and shoved in the back of paddy wagons, translated into criticism and lack of support in high places for the gang-busting efforts of both men.
Shortly after the Town Hall interview with Ness, Michael received notification he was back on inactive duty; his little paychecks ceased. He was no longer a soldier in Uncle Sam’s army, rather a lieutenant in Frank Nitti’s.
Within the Outfit, Nitti’s decision to walk away from prostitution was generally accepted as a sound one. With the real houses shut down, Ness stooping to raid the Colony as a “brothel” (a stretch) showed the G-man’s desperation. And, at the same time, the boys still got their share from the girls — strip clubs and arcades were flourishing with serviceman trade — with the high-class hookers working out of hotels and apartments kicking back, as usual.