Road to Perdition

by Max Allan Collins

  “Don’t think I don’t feel for you,” Connor was saying. “We’ve all suffered losses in our lives—it’s been over a year since Ma died, and yet, still I hurt. We’re more than flesh and blood, us people—we’re feelings, we’re family…So don’t get me wrong, Fin—I know what you’re goin’ through.”

  McGovern said nothing, just sat in his chair and stared at the floor.

  Connor was pacing. “But a little sorrow, and too much booze, can cause misjudgment. What you’re suffering don’t give you the right to shoot your mouth off like that—embarrassing, disrespecting the man who makes everything in your life, in this town, possible.”

  McGovern remained silent.

  “My Pa is willing to let that pass, however—you and he go back many a year, after all…your father and his father, back in the old country, they shared their share of pints. John Looney is, if nothing else, a fair man…a just man. He asks no apology. All he seeks is an end to this foolish talk.”

  McGovern shifted in his chair.

  “A few ill-chosen words at your brother’s wake, we can forgive. But no more mouthing off, Fin—it must end now.” Connor wasn’t pacing, now—he planted himself before the seated man. “What do you say?”

  And now the man in the chair seemed to be looking right at Michael! The boy backed up, an inch, but didn’t go scurrying—he was frozen with fear—and interest.

  Of course McGovern had not been looking at the boy, whose presence remained unknown; rather he was seeking a more sympathetic court from O’Sullivan.

  “Be reasonable, Fin,” O’Sullivan said, stepping in front of the door. “Come on, now.”

  The boy—hearing his father’s voice just beyond that door, his view now partially obscured by Papa’s feet—knew he should flee. But he couldn’t help himself; he was fascinated by the tense tableau before him…

  “Fin?” Connor said.

  McGovern spoke, but the boy couldn’t hear him; the rain drowned out what was clearly a whisper.

  Apparently Connor couldn’t hear the man, either, because he said, “Speak up, Fin!”

  “All right,” McGovern said tightly.

  Connor sighed and smiled. “Good. Thank you, Fin—thank you for a civil meeting, thank so much for being a reasonable fella. And I am sorry for your loss, and for this misunderstanding…but mostly I’m sorry your brother was a goddamn liar and a thief.”

  And with a self-satisfied smile, Connor headed away from the seated man, moving toward the door, where O’Sullivan waited.

  O’Sullivan—appalled by that last unnecessary twist of the knife—knew trouble could well follow, and his hands tightened around the machine gun.

  And indeed—though the spying boy couldn’t see them, from his gap-at-the-bottom-of-the-door vantage point—those two men of McGovern’s—looking like the workers they were in caps and woolen jackets—stepped from the shadows with their rifles in their hands.

  McGovern stood, holding up a hand, cautioning his men. O’Sullivan could tell that the man had been wrestling with himself, going along with these indignities for the good of the cause; but Connor had gone too far.

  “My brother was not a thief,” McGovern said, loud and unafraid. “My brother was not a liar.”

  Connor stopped, glanced at O’Sullivan with a slight smile. The man was enjoying himself, O’Sullivan knew, and it sickened him.

  Turning to McGovern, apparently unimpressed by the two armed men (who the spying boy could not yet see), Connor said coolly, “Excuse me?”

  McGovern stepped forward, chin high. “To protect my family, and for the sake of my livelihood, I’ll look the other way…I’ll say nothing…for the present. But don’t think I don’t know something shady’s going on, something I can’t believe John Looney knows about.”

  Connor seemed tense now, his voice threatening. “Careful what you say, Fin.”

  “Something’s going on, boyo, and don’t think I won’t find out.”

  The men behind McGovern hoisted their rifles.

  And McGovern raised a hand, first to O’Sullivan, then to his own men, saying, “Easy, buckos. We’re just talking. Friendly conversation…right, Connor?”

  “Sure.”

  McGovern raised a lecturing finger. “You tell Father Looney that my brother never stole from him—I’ve gone over the books with a fine-tooth comb, and Danny never sold no booze to no one. Every single barrel—accounted for.”

  “On paper, maybe.”

  “Danny was not that clever—not with numbers, not with nothing. And besides, where’s the money, if he was selling your father’s booze?”

  Suddenly defensiveness colored Connor’s voice. “How the hell should I know? Check his fucking mattress, why don’t you?”

  “Perhaps,” McGovern said, with a nasty smile, “you should check yours.”

  Hands stuffed in his topcoat pockets, Connor began to pace again; his voice took on an edge that reminded O’Sullivan why the man had been nicked named “Crazy Connor” since his childhood.

  “You know, this is downright immoral,” he was saying, and he turned toward O’Sullivan, saying, “Don’t you think so, Mike?” Then to McGovern he ranted: “My old man, foolish, sentimental soul that he is, throws your little brother the wake of a lifetime—even if the undeserving little son of a bitch had been robbing us blind—and this is your goddamn thank you? What a terrible world this is.”

  O’Sullivan’s spirits had fallen, even as his hackles rose: had he been in charge of this “talk,” both sides would have shaken hands and gone about their business. Now violence was in the air…

  McGovern stepped forward, shaking his finger like a scolding parent. “You think you’re so damn clever, but don’t mistake me for my brother—I know what’s going on! You’ve been spending so much time in Chicago, it’s—”

  Connor’s hand flew from his pocket and the pistol in his fist bucked twice, putting two bullets into McGovern, one in the chest, another the head—stunned, surprised at his own death but without time to come to terms with it, the big man, a red kiss on his forehead and another blossom of red on his chest, flopped face-first on the cement floor.

  That was still happening when the two men behind McGovern raised their rifles and Michael O’Sullivan opened fire with the Thompson, round after round chewing the men up and spitting them out, shaking them like naughty children, dropping them to the floor like the meat they’d become, unfired rifles clanking impotently on the cement, streaming blood seeking drains.

  It happened so fast Michael wasn’t sure what he was seeing, such a blur of activity the boy didn’t even rear away, such a thunder of gunfire his ears seemed to explode, as he froze in wide-eyed horror and fascination, viewing the scene of carnage between his father’s feet, shell casings falling like brittle rain.

  Where one of the men had fallen was directly in Michael’s view, a bloodied face with unseeing eyes, and the boy tried to move, tried to run, but he couldn’t. His body seemed stalled, as if its engine wouldn’t start.

  And then he began to cry. He had seen death, and it hadn’t been like Tom Mix at all, and his father was no Lone Ranger; the Lone Ranger shot guns out of bad men’s hands—his father had gone another way. He lay in a fetal ball and wept and the sky joined in, crying down on him.

  Within the warehouse, Mike O’Sullivan was furious. “What the hell was that about?”

  Connor, as exhilarated as he was frightened, was breathing hard. “Let’s take our leave, shall we?”

  “That’s your idea of talk? You jackass.”

  Connor glared at him. “Watch what you say to me.”

  “Jesus, Connor!”

  But John Looney’s son was moving quickly toward the door, leaving the scattered trio of bleeding corpses behind like so much refuse.

  “Hey!” O’Sullivan said. “Don’t walk away from me…”

  Connor stopped, but not at O’Sullivan’s bidding; the man held up a hand, cocked his head. “Quiet—don’t you hear that?”

 
; The sound of weeping issued from the doorway, barely audible under the rain.

  Connor looked sharply at O’Sullivan. “We got a witness!” He pointed—a small hand was visible just under the ragged, rotted-away lower edge of the door.

  Michael O’Sullivan, Sr., knew. He didn’t know how he knew, but he knew: that small white hand, that snuffling sob…both belonged to his son, Michael, Jr.

  And he ran to the doorway. “Michael!”

  The hand disappeared, and O’Sullivan pushed open the door, barging into the alleyway, where—in the darkness and the rain—Michael stood, sobbing, slump-shouldered. Seeing his father, with the tommy gun at his side, its snout still curling smoke, the boy recoiled, but he did not run.

  Once his father had seen him, that was that, and he just stood there, letting the rain and his father have him. Stern as he could be, Papa was a kind father—he had never hit either of the boys. Though he had just seen his father killing people, Michael felt not afraid, rather ashamed for what he’d done, for the line he’d crossed…

  His father approached, slowly, quietly. “Are you hurt, son?”

  Michael said nothing at first, then shook his head. Uncle Connor filled the doorway—the man had that same terrible expression as in the moonlight; the door framed him, making an awful portrait.

  O’Sullivan turned, called to Connor. “It’s just my boy… Michael, Jr. Must’ve have tagged along.”

  Connor said nothing.

  Thompson still clutched in one hand, O’Sullivan knelt before his son, rain streaming down the boy’s face like a thousand tears. “You saw everything?”

  “…Yes, sir.”

  O’Sullivan glanced back at Connor, who was approaching from the doorway, slowly. His mind reeled as he calculated a new host of dangers. Jesus, he thought, then he looked at his boy, shivering in the rain.

  “You must never speak of this to anyone but me.”

  Michael managed a nod. “Y-yes, sir.”

  Connor ambled up beside O’Sullivan, who stood again.

  To the boy these were two nightmarish figures before him, not his father and “uncle.” They were both looking at him, strangely, like the boy was a painting in a museum they couldn’t figure out.

  Finally, Connor smiled but it was a ghastly thing. “Can you keep a secret, kid?”

  O’Sullivan answered for his son: “He’s given me his word he’ll never speak of this.”

  Connor touched O’Sullivan’s sleeve. “You’re sayin’ this brat knows enough not to squeal?”

  O’Sullivan shook off Connor’s hand. “He’s not a brat, Connor—he’s my son. A man of honor. You do understand the idea?”

  The two men looked at each other, rain pummeling them, the brim of Connor’s hat collecting the water, his father’s fedora funneling the moisture. Even the boy, shaken as he was, could sense the tension.

  Then Connor lifted his shoulders in a shrug. “Good enough for you, Mike me boy, good enough for me.” He nodded toward the Ford, blocking one end of the alley. “Why don’t you take your kid home. I know a speak, couple blocks from here—I’ll find somethin’ to do.” He turned his collars up. “Nice night for a stroll, anyway.”

  And Connor Looney walked the other way, footsteps splashing, as he headed out into the pouring rain and a dark night, leaving behind three corpses, one father, and one son.

  FIVE

  Before that dreadful night, I hadn’t known who or what my father was. All I’d had to guide me were my childish enthusiasm, an imagination fueled by radio, comics, and the movies, and the natural hero worship my brother and I shared for Papa.

  In the intervening years, I learned more. Numerous books about Michael O’Sullivan have been written, some well researched, others far more speculative; and, as I write this, a movie is being made. This narrative, however, is the first time an insider’s view of these events and people has been presented; but my very participation in these events, and my closeness to some of the people, limits my perspective.

  For example, I never heard my father referred to as the “Angel of Death,” and whether that phrase was ever actually applied to him—or was merely some journalist’s contrivance—I can only guess. I suspect there’s at least a grain of truth in it, because I did on occasion hear him called “Angel,” by men we met on the road.

  According to one writer, John Looney stood before my father, in the study of the mansion on the bluff, and raised a hand as if in benediction, saying, “In the Great War you made me proud—now you will be my soldier of soldiers. But I will never ask you to employ your terrible talents upon the innocent, only the disloyal…or other soldiers. Soldiers of my enemies, who will be visited by my Michael—my archangel of death.”

  This may have been spun out of melodramatic whole cloth, but my research indicates some underlying truth, anyway. Certainly my father’s reputation extended beyond the Tri-Cities. This substantiates the claims that Papa was often loaned out by Looney to affiliated gangs around the country, including that of Al Capone and his associate Frank Nitti.

  By all accounts, Michael O’Sullivan was efficient, unflappable, deadly. “Was it his somber, almost regretful expression that made them call him the Angel?” one writer wondered.

  That question, which implies its own answer, I fully understand: I saw that somber, sorrowful expression many times, on the road. The first time was that night, that awful night.

  The rain turned to snow, the windshield wipers icing up. His father drove slowly, carefully, watching the road unwind before him, lost in thought, troubled but trying not to show it. Young Michael shivered, staring at the man next to him, his eyes accusing him, but also studying this hero turned monster.

  Only the scraping of the wipers, the blowing of snow, and the jostling of wheels on pavement created any sound; otherwise, silence shrouded the car.

  Finally his father glanced at him and said, quietly, “What you did was wrong.”

  Michael reacted as if cold water had been splashed in his face. “What I did was wrong?”

  And with sudden recklessness, wanting to do anything to get away from the man he’d idolized, the boy threw open the car door. Snow and chill air rushed in, and his father slammed on the brakes, car skidding, but slowing enough for Michael to jump into a snowbank, making a hole in its brittle icy surface, then pick himself up and take off into the nearby woods.

  The boy wasn’t thinking—he was running, and he was feeling, but not thinking; the woods were brown and white and their darkness promised shelter, not danger. The man running after him—footsteps breaking the glassy surface of frozen water on snow—was the danger…the man who had pretended to be his father…

  “Michael!” the man called.

  And the boy ran harder, through the trees, feet crunching the sugary frozen sheet of ice and snow, cracking twigs and crackling leaves, a landscape as beautiful and forbidding as a fairytale forest, that childhood place where Little Red Riding Hood, Hansel and Gretel, and Snow White so often found themselves… but wolves and witches were in those woods, too, like the beast pursuing him, the creature that had been his father, a thousand years ago, tonight.

  “Michael!”

  The sound of his father’s footsteps terrified the boy, but something in him longed to stop, to turn and run open-armed to the man and hug him, so Papa could explain away the blood and death…and then his feet made up his mind for him, tripping over a buried gnarl of root, sending him stumbling into the snow, breaking through its crisp crust of ice into something soft, soothing, but very cold.

  Then his father was standing over him. The trees loomed, icicles hanging, melting, like long ghastly faces; the trees had faces, too, distorted ones…

  But his father looked…like his father. His expression was sad—sadder than Michael had ever seen it, and his father hadn’t ever been a particularly cheerful man.

  “Michael…son…”

  The boy couldn’t help it—he began to cry…not in fear. Not anymore, not after seeing that look on P
apa’s face. Papa was sad. Michael, too.

  He knelt beside his boy. “Son…are you all right?”

  “Why…why did you kill those men?”

  “Because they had guns, and they’d have killed me.”

  “But Uncle Connor…he shot first…”

  “I know. Come with me. We can talk about it in the car.”

  “Have you killed other people?”

  “Yes.”

  “In the war?”

  “Yes.”

  “…But not just in the war.”

  Papa shook his head, then held out his hands. “Come on, back to the car…you’ll freeze out here.”

  “How many did you kill?”

  “Son…”

  Michael felt more relaxed. Less afraid. And that enabled the physical pain to edge out the emotional upset, and assert itself; wincing, he said, “I think…I think maybe I hurt my leg.”

  “Here…I’ll carry you.”

  The boy allowed his father to cradle him in his arms, to lift him from the snow, and carry him like the child he was, out of the woods. Michael even rested his head against his father’s chest, wishing he could forget what he’d seen tonight, knowing he never would.

  As they drove, they spoke—softly, in a grown-up way that was new between them.

  “Why, Michael?” his father asked.

  “I just…just wanted to see you in action. I wanted to be proud.”

  His father, eyes on the road, swallowed. Then he said, calmly, “It’s natural for a boy to want to be proud of his father. But, son—what I do for a livin’ is not to be admired.”

  The boy looked sharply at his father. “Then why do you do it, Papa?”

  The night was dark, flecked by snow, the world vague on either side, the beams of the headlights dancing with white flakes; but the road ahead was visible enough.

  “Do you know what a soldier is, Michael?”

  “Sure. You were one in the war.”

  “Yes. But life is like a war, sometimes. You see that, don’t you?”

  The boy understood; on his paper route, he had seen the people out of work, hungry, huddling in the recessions of doorways, lining up for Mr. Looney’s free soup.