Road to Purgatory
- Автор: Коллинз Макс Аллан
- Серия: Perdition Saga #2
- Год: 2004
- Язык: английский
- Год: William Morrow
- ISBN: 978-0-06-054027-2
- Жанр: Боевики
Электронная книга - «Road to Purgatory». Краткое содержание книги:
Michael did not point out to the younger Capone that supervising twenty-one armed guards on a notorious gang-lord’s estate may not have been the most respectable job around.
Before long, Mimi Capone, a little drunk, driving a sporty ’37 Dusenberg convertible, dropped Michael off, loaning his guest a spare key. By eleven o’clock, Michael Satariano — with the run of the place — was alone in the mansion, but for two guards and Al Capone.
Of course, there was a matter of four or five guards outside, and an unspecified number of off-duty guards who might be in their quarters in the cabana and gatehouse.
In the kitchen he got himself a Coke — the fragrance of corned beef and cabbage lingered — and went up the main stairs to the landing off of which were the bedrooms. He stood for a moment, staring at the door to the Capone suite.
Then he went to his own room, with its double bed and nondescript contemporary furnishings fortunately free from Louis XIV touches. He changed from the white suit and Florsheims into a green army-issue T-shirt, black trousers, and black crepe-soled bluchers; then he lay on the bed, atop the spread with only the bedstand lamp on.
He sipped his Coke.
Stared at the ceiling.
The shift change was at eleven thirty. Had he gotten home earlier, he’d have taken advantage of the tiredness of the current shift of guards; but now he had to wait until the new group had come on and the others were long gone. He could hear, faintly, a radio playing big band music, and wondered if it was Capone listening or his two watchdogs.
She had reminded him of his mother.
Mae Capone’s Irish good looks and her cheery manner and her maternal fuss had, inevitably, reminded him of his mama, and there wasn’t a damned thing to be done about it. Much as he tried to banish the thought, it kept floating back. The image of a smile that was at once Mae’s and his mother’s lingered, goddamnit.
So what if she was a nice woman? And had a nice son who was doing his bit for the war effort? Who cared that Mimi Capone was a decent, harmless guy, and that their life down here was a placid routine of isolated luxury? Capone remained Capone — the man who had betrayed Michael O’Sullivan, Sr., and dispatched a contract killer to cut him down. The same Capone who had aligned himself with the Looneys after the murders of Michael’s mother and brother, and who, to this day, conspired with Frank Nitti to rule the kingdom of Chicago crime...
Mae Capone and her son Sonny and their loving husband/father, despite all Al Capone’s sins, had enjoyed years together, as a family. They had had birthdays and Easters and Thanksgivings and Christmases... Even with Capone in prison for a time, they’d been alive and had each other.
His hands tensed into fists; untensed. Tensed again.
He stared at the ceiling, not wanting to hurt Mae Capone, but knowing that a few kind words and a plate of corned beef and cabbage were not enough to dissuade Michael O’Sullivan, Jr., from doing what he had come here to do...
A little after two a.m., just below the Capone suite, a guard in a yellow sport shirt banded by a brown shoulder holster bent to light up a cigarette with a Zippo lighter. It didn’t spark to flame on the first try and his thumb was poised for a second, when the barrel of a .45 slammed across the back of his skull and dropped him to the grass.
Using black electrical tape, Michael bound the guard’s wrists behind him and the man’s ankles, too, and dragged the unconscious figure over to nearby bushes, tucking him out of sight before another guard could wander by to notice. Michael confiscated the man’s .38 Police Special and stuck it in his waistband, next to the spare pawn-shop .45.
Michael slipped his father’s .45 back into its shoulder holster worn over the green T-shirt; then — using the technique he’d partly demonstrated to Mimi, earlier — climbed from window sill to awning frame and hoisted himself up and over the balcony rail.
The sky was clear and starry with a full moon; ivory washed Michael and everything else on the balcony, which was not much: a comfortable-looking deck chair and a little table. The view here was onto the spacious backyard dotted with palms and other foliage, and the substantial swimming pool, the dock beyond; moonlight dappled off shimmering water, both the pool and the bay. No guards in sight.
Curtained French doors led from balcony to bedroom. Automatic in his right hand, Michael tried the handle with his left, gently...
Unlocked.
He pushed the door open and entered the dark room, leaving the door ajar, letting moonlight in. The room was as spare as an Alcatraz celclass="underline" two twin beds, one at left, the other right; nothing on the walls, not even a Maxfield Parrish; no nightstands; a chest of drawers; a lounge chair facing the balcony, with a small table next to it.
No radio. No books, or magazines, or newspapers.
Also, no Capone.
One bed, covers rumpled, did indicate a recent slumberer. At his left, Michael saw a closed door with an edge of light at the bottom. Gun in hand, he crossed to that door, tried the knob, went in fast.
Nothing.
Bathroom — shower stall with door closed; oversize toilet; double sink. Many, many pill bottles. Electric razor. Towels on racks and more stacked on a clothes hamper.
Michael opened the shower door and aimed his .45 in at an empty, oversize stall. When he shut it again, ever so gently, metal nonetheless nudged metal and made a sound, and when he moved back into the dark bedroom, a guard in the usual sport-shirt and shoulder holster burst in, a small dark frowning figure, throwing a wedge of light into the bedroom, and pointing a .38 at the intruder.
Michael shot the guard, in the head, and red splashed the door and smeared into modern art as the man slid down, the guard’s gunshot hitting a stucco wall, making a terrible metallic reverberation; and then another guard was in the doorway and he was firing at Michael, who hit the deck and fired up at the shooter, catching him in the head as well, though the angle sent the spatter up even as the man dropped down, piling on top of his crony, doggy-style.
From the open doors onto the balcony, yelling from below — none of it discernible as words, but the gist easily understood — discouraged Michael from exiting the way he’d come, and he figured his best bet was the rental car out front, so he jumped over the two bodies stacked in the doorway, and as he did, caught dripping blood from the ceiling onto the side of his face. He didn’t bother wiping it off because it would only make his hands sticky.
He was heading briskly down the stairway when the front door opened and three more of them rushed in, eyes wild, guns in hand, and this time the words were easy to make out: “There’s the bastard! Get him!” “Shoot that fucker!”
In a flash he realized a tactical error: if he’d made his move before shift change, these men would recognize him and he might have talked his way out; but for now he was just a guy in a green T-shirt on the stairs with a pistol in his hand. And blood on his face...
He withdrew the other .45 and hopped onto the banister and went straddle-sliding down, shooting all the way, a regular two-gun kid, and the men streaming through the doorway fired up at him, but he was a moving target and they were slowed down by his gunfire, which was turning them from men into bodies, tripping over each other as they died.
When Michael got to the bottom of the stairs, four dead men were sprawled there, one or two of them propping the door open, and he could see the Packard out there, just waiting...