“Yeah...”
“Well, Toni was Eddie O’Hare’s secretary... before he got hit? She’s been a good friend to me, a lotta years, and she’s strong and smart and so I married her.”
“I like her,” Michael said honestly, though he’d only exchanged a handful of words with the pleasant, severely handsome woman, who did seem to dote on Nitti.
“But now... I wonder about her. She makes phone calls. Hangs up quick when she sees me comin’... No, no, she doesn’t have anyone else, that’s not it. But I start to wonder. Is my own wife in their camp? Did she marry me to keep an eye on me? Did Ricca and them put her up to it? ’Cause they thought I was slipping? After Anna died?”
“I’m sure your wife loves you. You’re just—”
“Imagining it?” He grinned like a skull. “So, Michael, am I going mad, like Al? Only without the dose?” Nitti laughed bitterly. “So much I’ve built up. So many mistakes, from the old days, I put behind us. If Ricca gets in, it’s a return to the old ways, but minus the tradition, the honor. Just the violence. The killing.”
“What should we do, Mr. Nitti?”
Nitti again patted Michael’s leg. “I’m not sure, son. If we had a few years, you’d be ready, to step in. But it’s too soon. Too damn soon. And if the feds do nail us... all us big boys go to prison for a long time.”
“Could that happen?”
“Looking at ten years, lawyers say. We can buy paroles in maybe three, four, five. If the feds do put us away, pray Ricca goes along for the ride. Accardo, he’s next in line, after the eight or nine of us facin’ this Hollywood thing. He’d take over, in the... what’s it called? Interim.”
“Mr. Accardo wasn’t involved with Hollywood?”
“No. Oh, in a minor way — he hit a guy named Tommy Maloy, at the outset. Projectionist union guy. But other than that, nothing. There’ll be no indictment for him.”
“You approve of Mr. Accardo.”
“He’s better than Ricca, and imagine where we’d be with Giancana in the top chair! If I’m in stir, get next to Accardo, Michael.”
Michael’s eyes tensed. “You really think it’ll come to that?”
“I think so, I do think so... But get this — Ricca’s saying I should take the rap. That the Hollywood business was all my doing.”
“That’s not true — is it?”
Nitti gestured dismissively. “I was the prime mover, but we were all in it. Biggest mistake was using a couple of lying untrustworthy bastards like Bioff and Browne as our reps; that’s why I sent Nicky Dean out to look over their shoulders.”
“And Dean hasn’t talked, like the other two.”
“No. Thing is, Ricca knows damn well I can’t shoulder the blame. It’s a fuckin’ conspiracy case! Of course, Ricca already knows that — blaming me is just part of him tryin’ to undermine me with the boys.”
Michael locked his gaze with his chief’s. “You want him dead, Mr. Nitti, he’s dead.”
Nitti looked at Michael with infinite fondness; patted his cheek like a favored child. “You’re a sweet boy, Michael. Sweet boy... We’ll talk tomorrow. I’ll sleep on it. You, too.”
Then Nitti slipped out of the vehicle and headed up the sidewalk to his cozy home and his beloved son and a wife he no longer trusted.
That evening Michael and Estelle had cocktails in a rear booth of the Seneca’s Bow ’n’ Arrow Room, where authentic Indian murals and a mirrored ceiling lent the cocktail lounge an atmosphere of spaciousness and warmth.
But about now the world seemed a cold one to Michael, and closing in. He found the irony of his situation bitterly unamusing — in attempting to take revenge upon a villain whom the fates had transformed into an impotent moron, Michael had managed only to set the stage for the downfall of the one man in the Outfit he truly respected.
Her hair styled short and dyed a reddish blonde, Estelle wore a business-like cream-color suit. She’d been spending time at the dress shop she co-owned, though Michael knew her primary business remained brothel-less madam. At Nitti’s behest, she’d developed a little black book of customers and call girls, and from her apartment made referrals.
Michael neither approved nor disapproved; such business had been part of Estelle’s life long before they’d met. As a gangster’s bodyguard, he was not inclined to judge.
Like Frank Nitti, Estelle had been hit hard by the intervening months; beautiful though she still was, she appeared at once haggard and puffy.
“Michael,” she said, in the midst of her third martini, “I think maybe I need to move in with you.”
“Well, that’s swell, baby.”
“I don’t mean to impose,” she said, shaking her head, “or push you into anything—”
“I’ve asked you to do it, half a dozen times, and you’ve said no — half a dozen times. Please do. Pack your bag.”
She played with a swizzle stick in the now empty martini glass. “I won’t lie to you, Mike. It’s not about us.”
“Well... usually, when a gal moves in with a fella, it is about them. Us.”
She swallowed; glanced around anxiously. The cocktail lounge did a good business, but their booth was private enough. Paranoia, it seemed, was going around like flu.
“Michael,” she said, leaning halfway across the table, “I’m afraid. I’m really afraid.”
This was hardly stop-the-presses stuff; she’d been frightened for months.
“So move in with me,” he said, touching her face, “and feel more secure.”
“I just don’t think it’s fair to you if... I don’t admit that to you. Admit that I’m moving in because I think you can protect me. Admit that here in the hotel I don’t figure anybody’d dare... you know... It’s sort of their home turf, right?”
“Now I’m not following you.”
She shook her head, arcs of hair swinging like twin scythes. “Oh, Michael... how can you be you, and still be so naive? These indictments are about to come down. Everybody knows that. And the feds are pressing Nicky. Pressing hard.”
Feeling a twinge of jealousy, Michael said, “You’re in touch with the guy? I thought that was over.”
“It is over. But we’re in touch, yeah. Through lawyers... Michael, there’s a rumor on the street.”
“What rumor?”
Her lower lip trembled, her eyes brimmed. “That I’m going to be made an example. That something... bad’ll happen to me, to send Nicky a message.”
He reached across and held her ice-cold hand. “I won’t let that happen, baby. You move in with me. Right away.”
She nodded, and nodded some more. “Thank you, Michael. Thank you.”
In his penthouse, Michael and Estelle made love with an urgent intensity driven by unspoken-of emotions that left them both spent; nonetheless, he fell prey to the insomnia again, which had never before been the case on nights when she’d stayed with him.
He slipped from her slumbering grasp and out of bed and, in his boxers, stepped into slippers, tossed a dressing robe around himself, and walked out into the living room. He slid open the glass door and went out onto the balcony. The night was crisp but not cold. Leaning against the rail, he studied the skyline, its luminescent geometry again reminding him of a Hollywood backdrop.
“What are you doing out here?” Estelle said from behind him. “You wanna freeze to death, silly?”
He half-turned to see her at the door, just inside — shivering in her chemise, breasts perked by the chill.