Road to Purgatory

Nitti raised his hands, just to waist level, more a reasoning gesture than one of surrender. “You... you should know, then, that what I did was business. You heard me just now! How much I respected your father.”

“I can understand that, Mr. Nitti. You can respect a man you have to kill.”

Eyes narrow, Nitti was shaking his head as pieces slipped into place. “All of that... in Miami... your doing. Ricca wasn’t behind it.”

“Wasn’t Ricca at all. When I saw Capone, fishing in his pool, I couldn’t squeeze the trigger. Would’ve been like shooting a little kid.”

The smile returned, bitter now. “But you can shoot me, right, Michael?”

“I think so.”

“You aren’t sure?”

Michael let out a tiny humorless laugh. “It surprises me, but... the rage. I can’t summon the rage. All I feel is... disappointment.”

And in a flash he recalled when he’d last felt like this: it was when he witnessed his father shooting those men in that ware house, when he knew his brave war-hero father had not been on missions, but was just a gangster, a thug, a killer...

Nitti put his hands down. “It would be... foolish to say I’ll try to make it up to you. But Michael, I’ve come to look at you as a son...”

“Don’t say that.”

Nitti’s eyes tightened; he wasn’t exactly pleading. “You could be my successor. You have the guts and the mind and the heart to take this Outfit where it needs to go! And leave all the illegitimate shit in the past where it belongs. Listen to me, son...”

“Don’t call me that!”

Nitti nodded. “I understand... I understand. But I know... no matter what you say, I know there’s a bond between us.”

“Stop it.”

Slowly Nitti shook his head. “You don’t want to do this. You’ve already lost your father, the rest of your family. If you do this thing, you’ll burn in hell, and you won’t even have to die to get there.”

“Satariano!”

Without taking the gun off Nitti, Michael whirled to one side, and he saw the two bodyguards, Rat and Pocky, heading toward them, guns in hand, down the sidewalk.

Michael swung the .45 toward them, when Rat called out: “We know you’re with Ricca, Mike!” Toothpick tumbling from his lips, Rat added, “Get down, the fuck down!”

Nitti, eyes and nostrils flaring, shoved Michael, knocking him to the cement, and ran pell-mell across the street toward the row of trees and bushes, topcoat flapping. Gunshots rang in the afternoon air, hollow little sounds, like the firing of a starting pistol before a race.

Which was apropos, because the shots had missed Nitti and he was slipping between the trees, stepping over bushes, crawling through the gaping hole in the fence. The ganglord had the revolver in hand now, and paused to turn and throw one sharp shot their way.

The bullet flew well over Michael’s head: he lay on the sidewalk, 45 in hand, and Nitti’s shot seemed intended for the two approaching on-the-run bodyguards-turned-hitmen.

Rat paused to help haul Michael to his feet. “You want in on this, come along!”

And then Michael was standing on the corner, watching Rat and Pocky pick their way between trees and brush and through that hole in the fence.

Things were happening fast, and reflection was not an option; but somehow he knew, no matter what Frank Nitti had done ten years ago, that he could not allow that man to be brought down by these traitors.

As he ran across the street, cutting between the trees, bursting through the fence, 45 in hand, Michael was unsure whether he was acting so that he could kill Nitti himself, or to protect this man, about whom his feelings were decidedly mixed...

...but he fell in behind Rat and Pocky, who were up ahead about fifteen yards, wading through waist-high grass, the way slowed by clumps of shrub brush and wild skinny trees that leaned like modern dancers in the gentle wind.

As if chasing through mud they went, Michael at the rear, the bodyguards up ahead, the pair throwing rounds at the fleeing Nitti out in front, their shots cracking the air, sounding firecracker-small under the big gray sky.

Nitti only paused one more time, to toss a wild shot back at his pursuers, and then the man was slicing through the dead undergrowth toward the train tracks, where the grass and brush had been cut back to accommodate passage. Michael knew at once what Nitti was up to: the dark buildings of that sanitarium loomed, and the tracks went right by there, meaning the fugitive could find refuge among a wealth of witnesses; taking this road also allowed the little gangster to run faster, the topcoat flying behind him like a cape.