Road to Paradise

by Max Allan Collins

  They didn’t talk much in the morning, Anna catching naps, the depression breaking through a few times, and she’d cry softly into Kleenex, though neither would comment.

  At a gas-station greasy spoon on the Seligman turnoff, they had delicious cheeseburgers and french fries and Cokes, and Anna offered to take the wheel awhile.

  “Let me help out,” she said. “I’m used to it.”

  She was referring, obliquely, to the driving she’d done when she’d gone with Cindy Parham to meet Gary in Vegas, and then on with Gary to Tahoe.

  “That’d be good,” he said.

  The start of the afternoon took them into a forest preserve, the world green suddenly, pines and firs and oaks and spruce and piñon.

  “What’s the rest of the plan?” Anna asked. Behind the wheel, now.

  “After Chicago, you mean?”

  “Yes, after Chicago.”

  “Assuming all goes well, I’m thinking Vancouver.”

  She flashed him a surprised look. “Really? Why?”

  “Money won’t go as far there as in Mexico, but we’ll fit in better, be an easier…transition. You can go to college up there, pursue your theater. I can find work.”

  Her eyes, on the road again, tensed; she was thinking.

  Some while later, they’d run out of forest, in fact run out of Arizona—this was New Mexico now—and he was driving again, when she said, with quiet bitterness, “Canada, huh?”

  “Hmmm? Yeah. Canada.”

  “Kinda funny, isn’t it?”

  “What?”

  “That’s where Mike’d be. If I’d had my way, anyway.”

  She looked out the window, and he could see her reflection in it—she was crying again, chin crinkled; she dried her eyes with the knuckles of a fist.

  They had supper at a diner in Gallup, New Mexico, and outside Albuquerque found a motel not unlike the Solona, arriving about ten o’clock. Very little conversation preceded bedtime, although they did watch Johnny Carson (which jarred Michael, remembering the last time he’d heard Ed McMahon summon the host with “Hiiii-yo!”). Neither laughed at anything, though they did smile occasionally.

  The following morning, with Michael behind the wheel, the rolling plains of New Mexico encouraged boredom so severe that the daughter actually initiated a conversation.

  “Daddy?”

  “Yes?”

  “Can I ask you something?”

  He let out a laugh. “What, and take me away from this fascinating scenery?”

  She smiled politely, then said, “Who were your real parents? What did you mean when you said that you’d…sat where I sat? Was your mother…my real grandmother, was she…murdered, too?”

  He’d forgotten he’d blurted that to her, at the prom; and her words punched him in the belly. He glanced at her, his mouth open but no words finding their way out.

  “And your father, not Gran’pa Satariano, but your real father, who he was has something to do with why you got in with those… those Mafia people…doesn’t it?”

  He was still searching for words.

  She went on, “Hey, I know you provided for us well and everything, and we had really nice lives, really great lives, till, uh…recently. But why’d you choose that road to go down? Or did it choose you?”

  He glanced at her, hard. “You really…really want to know all this?”

  “I would, yes.”

  “It’s a long story.”

  “Daddy—it’s a long drive.”

  “I’m not much for talking, sweetie.”

  “Hmmm. Must’ve been some other father lecturing me and Mike all those years.”

  He grinned a little. “All right. Only…if you get bored, or tired of it or anything…just say so, okay?”

  She did not get bored.

  For almost two hours, until his throat was as dry as New Mexico itself, he told her, the words tumbling out, the story of the Michael O’Sullivan family in Rock Island, Illinois. How his father worked for John Looney, the patriarch of the Irish mob in the Tri-Cities, and how Mr. Looney had been wonderful to the O’Sullivans. How he and his brother, Peter, wondered exactly what their father did for Mr. Looney, and how Michael had stowed away in the back of a Ford and wound up witnessing a murder committed by Mr. Looney’s crazy son, Connor, and also saw a machine-gun massacre, with Michael O’Sullivan—his father, her grandfather—wielding the tommy.

  And how John Looney’s son, Connor, had killed Peter—thinking the younger boy was murder-witness Michael—and his mother, Annie.

  That had been one of a handful of times the girl interrupted: “Annie…? My real grandmother was named Annie? I was named for her?”

  “Yes.”

  “But Mom never lived in Rock Island or anything.…”

  “No, I didn’t meet your mother till I was in DeKalb, a year or so later. But she knew everything about me, including that I’d lost my mother. It was her idea to name you, more or less, after your late grandmother.”

  Anna smirked. “But I couldn’t ever know, right?”

  “You know now.”

  She blew air out, shook her head, said, “So what happened after my grandmother was murdered? What did your dad do?”

  And so he told his daughter about the eventful road trip he and his father had taken in 1931—how he’d been an underage getaway driver. This, and various exploits he related, earned a number of exclamations from Anna, all pretty much the same: “Wicked” or sometimes “Wicked cool” or the ultimate, “Wicked awesome.”

  She was appropriately somber, however, when he came to the end of his tale—the death of his father at the hands of an assassin in a farmhouse outside Perdition.

  “And you…you killed the guy?”

  “Yes.”

  “How old were you, anyway?”

  “Twelve.”

  “That is out there. That is way the fuck out there.”

  “Anna.…”

  “Oh, the kid getaway driver wanted in six states thinks his daughter’s language is too salty? Sorry!”

  She had him, and he laughed.

  “And what’s…” She did a silly impression of cornball Paul Harvey from the radio. “…the rest of the story?”

  “Why don’t we save that for later. I’m getting hoarse from all this. Aren’t you hungry yet?”

  In a roadhouse-type diner outside Amarillo, Texas, they sat in a booth by a window and shared one order of Texas fried steak the size of a hubcap, with country swing on the jukebox that wasn’t half-bad.

  “You and your father…my grandfather…were you kind of, like—famous?”

  “In a way.”

  “I think I saw an old movie about you on TV.”

  “There were a couple, actually.”

  “Who played you?”

  “Jimmy Lydon in the ’40s one. Bobby Driscoll in the ’50s.”

  “Never heard of them.”

  “Well, your grandfather fared better—Alan Ladd and Robert Mitchum.”

  “Cool!”

  He promised her the second half of the story on tomorrow’s drive, and let her tool the Caddy across the rest of the Texas panhandle.

  In Oklahoma, the red earth and the rolling plains sparking memories, he said, “We traveled through here, your grandfather and I. No turnpikes, then.”

  “Like in that movie—Bonnie and Clyde?”

  “Right.”

  Then, as they left 40 and headed north on 35, he found himself telling her about the time he caught scarlet fever, and he and his father had to stay put in one place for a while, and how bounty hunters had caught up to them, and how they’d gotten away. Over supper in Wichita, he told her about the shoot-out in the country church, and when they stopped for the night, at a motel outside Kansas City, shared with her the time his father had robbed a police station of the week’s bag money—right here in K. C., the very town they were staying in!

  In the dark, after The Tonight Show, she said, “Daddy? Is it terrible that we…had kind of a good time, today?�
��

  “I don’t think so, sweetheart.”

  “Mom…Gary.…Your life with Mom is over…and mine with Gary never really got…got started; and we’re laughing and talking and eating and…are we evil?”

  “No. We’re just.…I don’t know.”

  “Dealing with it?”

  “In our way, yes.”

  This was the first night she hadn’t cried herself to sleep, and Michael felt more alive than he had since losing Pat. He and his daughter were closer now; they’d always been close, but finally she knew him. Knew who he was. Knew who he’d been.

  And didn’t hate him for it.

  That day, they angled up 35 through Nebraska—“Great,” Anna said, “Oklahoma again, minus the interesting red dirt”—into Iowa, which seemed rich and green and varied, compared to what they’d endured. They shared the driving evenly, and he told her “the rest of the story.”

  Anna already knew about her father’s life growing up in DeKalb with the Satarianos, and going steady with her mother in high school. And the heroic service on Bataan, and coming home and getting married.

  But she did not know that he’d gone to work for the Chicago Syndicate in order to take revenge on Al Capone and Frank Nitti. The ins and outs of that were complicated, and the tale made today’s trip a more somber one, with not a single “wicked,” much less “wicked cool,” though the girl listened in awestruck attention.

  On Interstate 80, he said, “Short side trip,” and took 61 down into the Quad Cities. Anna said nothing; she seemed to know what he was up to, if not where exactly he was headed, which turned out to be downtown Davenport and across a black ancient-looking government bridge over to Illinois.

  In Rock Island, in Chippiannock Cemetery, father and daughter stood with bowed heads, paying silent respect at small simple gravestones honoring Michael O’Sullivan, Sr., Anne Louise O’Sullivan, and Peter David O’Sullivan. The afternoon was cool for June, and a breeze ruffled the many trees on the sloping grounds. Alone together in the vast graveyard, surrounded by stone cherubs and crosses—“City of the Dead,” the cemetery’s Indian name meant—they held hands, and Michael was surprised to find himself praying, silently.

  After a while, Anna said, “You didn’t go to your mother’s funeral, either, did you?”

  “No. And I’m afraid, for us…for all our sorrow right now… this will have to do.”

  Her hand slipped from his, and she knelt at her grandmother’s gravestone and touched the carved name there. Looking up at him, she said, “O’Sullivan.…Is that who I am, really, Daddy? Annie O’Sullivan?”

  He reached out to her, helped her back up, slipped an arm around her shoulder, and said, “No, sweetheart. You’re Anna Grace.”

  She sucked in a breath. “I am, aren’t I? I am.”

  “Lovely name. For my lovely girl.”

  She hugged him, and they made their way out of the cemetery.

  In twenty minutes, they were back on Interstate 80. A quick supper at a truck stop would mark their last meal on the road.

  By mid evening they would be in Chicago.

  TWELVE

  At the turn of the century, Oak Park had been dubbed Saints’ Rest, due to its many churches, and perhaps because the idyllic, largely white village was so quiet, and quietly affluent.

  But on this June night, Chicago’s nearest neighbor to the west suffered under a hellish humidity, heat lightning streaking the sky, wind rustling the leaves of the suburb’s many sizable trees in an unsettling, ceaseless whisper.

  Just before ten, walking easily up Lexington Street, Michael—in a black sport coat over black Banlon with black slacks and matching loafers and socks—might have been a priest but for the lack of white collar. Despite the thick-aired swelter, and the ominous atmosphere, the neighborhood seemed peaceful; a dog barked, crickets chirped, window air conditioners thrummed. Houses here dated to the 1920s, substantial bungalows blessed with generous yards, while countless shade trees—mostly namesake oaks—stood sentry.

  He and Anna had arrived in Oak Park less than two hours ago. This represented something of a homecoming, as the Satarianos had called the village home until about ten years ago. But Anna had just been in first grade, and her memories were hazy, while Michael had maintained no friendships here. No real risk being seen.

  Though the suburb boasted a few gangster residents, it wasn’t nearly as dangerous for them as that nearby Outfit enclave, River Forest (where Tony Accardo lived, when he wasn’t in Palm Springs). The downtown might have been a theme-park replication of a typical quaint shopping district of the 1950s, before shopping-mall casualties. At the south edge, they sought out the Oak Arms, a four-story tan-brick residential hotel whose specialty was being nondescript.

  In a featureless lobby, Michael paid the desk clerk seventy-five dollars and eighty-five cents, cash—the weekly rate—for a “suite” on the second floor. What father and daughter got was a small apartment consisting of a bedroom, living room with “sleeper” couch, and a kitchenette—everything brown, tan, or dark green, and not because any long-ago decorator had been thinking “earth tones.” They were on the alley, which was fine with Michael, the fire escape access next door, sharing space with Coke- and candy-vending machines.

  They sat on the uncomfortable nubby couch, pregnant with fold-out bed; he was in a light blue sport shirt and tan chinos, she in an orange tank top and brown bell-bottom jeans—what they’d worn driving today. The glow of a streetlight bounced off a brick wall in the alley and filtered in through a gauzy secondary layer of curtain; a small lamp on an end table provided the only other illumination, a parchment-style shade creating a yellow cast.

  He told her, “I think you should get some rest—maybe take a couple of Mom’s sedatives again.”

  She eyed him with frank suspicion. “Why? I’m not having any trouble sleeping, anymore.”

  “It’s just…tomorrow’s a big day.”

  “What’s big about it?”

  He shrugged a little; they were eyeing each other sideways. “Tomorrow’s when we’re taking care of the problem.”

  “The ‘problem.’ That man, you mean…Giancana. That problem.”

  He sucked in air, nodded, let it out.

  “I thought you respected me,” she said, chin crinkling.

  “I do, sweetheart.”

  “Then don’t yank on my ying yang.”

  “Huh?”

  “Don’t lie to me. You wanna dope me up, like you did in Palm Springs, so you can go play Charles Bronson again! Well, I won’t put up with it—I’m part of this, too, you know.”

  He patted the air with a palm. “Baby—really. It’s better I do this alone.”

  She crossed her arms; her jaw was set. “No fucking way.”

  “I can’t involve you in this—if we got caught, or, or.…”

  “Killed?” Her eyebrows hiked. “What if I was Mike? What about that…Daddy?”

  “I, uh…don’t know what you mean, honey.”

  She swung around, and sat on her legs Indian-style, so she could face him, confrontationally. “If it was Mike, with Mom murdered, you’d hand him a goddamn gun and say, ‘Come on, son.’ Man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do. Tell me I’m not right!”

  “You’re not right.”

  “You’re lying.”

  And he was.

  Then he said, “Baby, this is no time for some kind of…what, feminist stand. I want you to stay here, right here, while—”

  “You want to knock me out with sedatives, I-am-woman-hear-me-snore, while you go off and maybe get killed, maybe because you didn’t have, what, backup when you needed it.”

  He was shaking his head. “Don’t be absurd.”

  She played patty cake with the air. “Wait a minute, wait a minute—aren’t I talking to the eleven-year-old baby-face bank robber? Wanted in six or seven states?”

  “…That’s beside the point.”

  “Hell it is! It’s right to the point—your father took you along
, made you his partner, trusted you to drive the damn getaway car. Me? I’m supposed to take my medicine like a good little girl and zonk out, and maybe wake up an orphan. No way. No fucking way, Daddy.”

  He just looked at her—she seemed so young and yet much older than when this trip had started. Did he have any right to leave her behind? Giancana was responsible for her mother’s death—and her husband’s death—and had created the utter shambles that was now both their lives.…

  Of course he had the right: he was her father. When Michael O’Sullivan, Sr., had gone for the final showdown with Connor Looney, Michael O‘Sullivan, Jr., had been left behind in a residential hotel not unlike this one, in Prophet’s Town, Illinois.…What had it been called? Could it have been…the Paradise Hotel?

  And Papa had left him a letter, like the one he had ready to leave Anna, and…how had he felt about it? Frightened, alone, and a little betrayed. He’d promised his father he would not open that envelope, and he had stared at it long and hard, wondering what was inside, terrified of what was written in there, and that his father would never return.

  What an awful, endless night that had been.…

  “All right,” he said. “You can drive.”

  “All right!” she said, and swung a tiny fist. “And I’ll have my gun along? I’ll be armed and dangerous, won’t I?”

  “Bet your life,” he said.

  But he left his eighteen-year-old getaway girl in the Caddy, parked on Lexington, and walked a block before turning right and walking another three to Wenonah Avenue, where he turned right again. Two blocks later he could see the house on the corner of Wenonah and Fillmore, a distinctive red-tile-roofed yellow-brick bungalow, one-and-a-half stories with arched windows—solid, spacious, unassuming, perfect digs for the gangster who wants comfort without calling undue attention to himself.

  Earlier, from a phone booth at the Interstate 80 truck stop, Michael had called the number Accardo gave him, and Accardo himself called back in two minutes—better service than the WITSEC panic button.