Road to Perdition

by Max Allan Collins

  “What men do after work,” Looney said, cutting off his son, “has made everyone at this table rich…including Mr. Rance and our friends in Chicago. Men like to drink, men like to place a bet, men like to wench…and they pay us dearly for the privilege. We don’t need to screw them at work, as well…Next subject.”

  Connor almost spoke, thought better of it, and glanced down the table toward Rance, whose flicker of displeasure was not lost upon O’Sullivan, who wondered if Looney—the old man sat with arms folded, staring straight ahead—had noticed.

  Kelly, who knew not to challenge his longtime law partner, had moved on to a new topic. “John also made it clear, in our meeting, that Fin McGovern’s operation will be divided up locally among two territories.”

  A hand down the table from the manager of the Quinlan riverboat casino half-raised, but Kelly beat the man to his question.

  “John will study the situation,” Kelly said, “and will select personally how this division will be made, and to whom.” With a less than subtle nod toward the empty chair of Fin McGovern, Kelly added, “Since everyone in Rock Island County and the surrounding area respects John, and his wishes, there will be plenty of help and protection, should there be anyone else with different ideas.”

  “And good luck to anyone,” Looney said, “with different ideas.”

  Connor laughed at that, but no one else did.

  O’Sullivan knew Connor had misread his father—laughter was not the appropriate response, here; no one in the room—except perhaps Connor himself, the man who’d pulled the trigger on Fin McGovern—took what had happened last night lightly.

  Kelly was saying, “That wraps up what I have—any other business, anyone…John?”

  Looney was staring at the empty chair. Then, without looking at his son, the old man said, “Connor—perhaps you’d like to say something regarding last night’s unfortunate events.”

  And now John Looney turned his gaze upon his boy—O’Sullivan could not see the gaze, from where he stood, but in his mind’s eye he saw it vividly: ice-blue eyes, a face as blank as a slate, but ready for rage to be written on it.

  Yet the son—who clearly hadn’t planned to speak on this subject, as unprepared as a kid in class with a surprise test sprung on him—said, awkwardly, with a touch of laughter in his tone, “Well, yeah—I guess I should apologize for what happened. Especially to you, Pa—two wakes in a week…what can I say? It’s an embarrassment.”

  The two bodyguards at the door—who sometimes rode with Connor—found this funny. Their laughter elicited from the man at the head of the table a slap…against the wood, but it rang in the room as if against their collective cheeks, Connor’s included.

  The Grand Parlor went deathly still.

  John Looney’s face was long and pale, his eyes glittering with anger. “We lost a good man last night. A misunderstanding among associates led, tragically, to more death…” His head swiveled toward his son and his stare would have turned Lot’s wife to salt as surely as Sodom and Gomorrah. “…And this you find funny? This you find an embarrassment?”

  Connor, already shaken, did his best to maintain a shred of dignity. He said, without laughter, but so quiet it was difficult to hear, “I’d like to apologize for what I did—”

  Looney cut his son off at the legs this time. “You’d like to apologize?” He slapped the table again, not as hard, but nonetheless a telling echo. “Try again.”

  Silence draped the room, a shroud of humiliation worn by Connor, but uneasily felt by all of them, except old man Looney himself. Much as he despised Connor for what he had done last night, O’Sullivan felt bad for the man, who now pushed his chair away from the table, got to his feet, head hanging, a disobedient child shamed before his peers.

  “Gentlemen,” Connor said. “My apologies.”

  Face flushed, Connor was looking nowhere; trembling under his father’s censure. Anger would come later—right now it was all the man could do to hold back tears.

  Kelly, who O’Sullivan had always found to be a decent man, for an abject crook anyway, said, “Oh, I do have another piece of business,” and he launched into a short tirade about the affiliated businesses, roadhouses and brothels on the outskirts of Looney territory that had not been kicking in their share, of late…at least not on time.

  Connor, let off the hook, was back in his chair, glazed, silent.

  Looney said, “Our angel can wing his way to these misguided souls, and nudge them into righteousness…Right, Michael?”

  “Just tell me who to call on,” O’Sullivan said.

  Kelly said, “That character Calvino, over in Bucktown, is way in arrears.”

  Looney said to O’Sullivan, “Come up to my study.”

  “Sure.”

  Then Looney placed both hands flat on the table and pushed himself to his feet, chair scraping back. “Thank you, gentlemen.”

  As the men stood, gathering their papers, Looney went to O’Sullivan, slipped an arm around his shoulder, saying, “I know you’re wondering why I’d make an errand boy of you, Michael.”

  “No, sir. I wasn’t thinking that.”

  Looney, his manner as warm as it was familiar, walked O’Sullivan out of the Grand Parlor, toward the stairs. His voice was affectionate, respectful. “…But when these recalcitrant lads see my angel of death on their doorstep, they’ll know just how serious I am…that the next time they see you, the message you deliver might be from the barrel of a gun…”

  Connor Looney, the only man still seated at the table, watched this bitterly—the men in this room, men who one day would be under his command, had seen his father disrespect him, and treat with favor that gunman, O’Sullivan.

  When the room had emptied, Connor moved to the chair at the head of the table, where he could get at his father’s bottle of whiskey. He sat and poured himself a healthy glass, and drank it, sitting alone, deep in thought, lost in the twisted passages of his mind.

  Less than an hour later, after meeting with Looney in his study, O’Sullivan strolled to his Ford, parked in the driveway near the Pierce Arrow. He and the old man had gone over the list of bit-borrowers who needed nudging, starting with Tony Calvino.

  “Word about McGovern will be out,” Looney had said. “Can you drive over across the river, to Bucktown, and call on Calvino, tonight? We need to make a statement—to show our people it’s business as usual.”

  So he called Annie from Looney’s study—he’d been home already, for an early supper, a sandwich—and told her not to expect him for an hour or two, at least.

  “Is Michael behaving?” he asked her.

  “Yes—just a little quiet. He has a birthday party tonight, at St. Peter’s. That should cheer him up.”

  “Should,” he said, and they said good-bye to each other.

  O’Sullivan had reached his car when he heard Connor’s voice, surprisingly cheerful, calling out, “Mike! Wait up.”

  He turned and Connor trotted up to him. “Pa forgot to give you something—a message for Calvino.”

  Connor handed O’Sullivan the sealed envelope with Calvino’s name scrawled on it.

  O’Sullivan asked, “You going with me? Better grab your coat.”

  “No. You don’t need my help, handlin’ that fuckin’ hophead Calvino…Anyway, I’m kinda sitting in the corner, right now. I’m a bad little boy, I guess.”

  “I guess.”

  “Hey, uh, Mike—about last night…sorry. I should’ve watched my mouth around McGovern. He always was a proud son of a bitch.”

  “Yes he was.”

  “I put you in a bad place…and I just want you to know that, uh…hell, you know.”

  “All right.”

  O’Sullivan got behind the wheel of the car, and Connor tossed him a wave and headed back into the mansion. The guy seemed in an awfully good mood for someone who’d been humiliated by his own father, not so long ago.

  Of course, a lot of Connor’s actions could be explained by one fact, O’Sullivan
knew: the bastard was crazy as a bedbug.

  On the Iowa side of the river, given over to sin of varying stripe, Bucktown nestled in the riverfront blocks of Davenport’s west side. The wide-open area—where it was said you could buy anything for a buck—resided mostly in Tony Calvino’s pocket. This seedy, trashy district was not O’Sullivan’s favorite part of the world; he parked his Ford on the street, ignoring the devil-red glow of the CALVINO’S neon, walking around to the alley entrance.

  Tony Calvino had once been a contender in local rackets, and Bucktown remained his stronghold. But Calvino had a reputation for indulging in his own merchandise—from booze to dames to drugs—and that had reduced him to just another acolyte of John Looney.

  Breath smoking in the cold, O’Sullivan moved down a stairway to a basement door, a wooden sign next to which read SUBWAY POOL AND BILLIARDS. A size-48 bouncer in a size-44 suit stood guard at the door, arms folded, rocking on his heels; a small kerosene heater kept the air warm. He had the bored, self-confident look of a guy who had beaten the crap out of countless others.

  “Help you, sir?” the bouncer said, with a faint lilt of sarcasm. O’Sullivan, in his dark suit and topcoat, must have seemed like another slumming businessman. “Or just lookin’?”

  “Tell Mr. Calvino I’m here,” he said.

  “Oh really? And who might you be? Mr. Calvino don’t see just anybody.”

  “Mike O’Sullivan. I work for Mr. Looney.”

  The bouncer stopped rocking on his heels; his eyes widened, his complexion paled, as the blood in his face ran for cover. “Oh…Mr. O’Sullivan. Of course. I shoulda recognized you.”

  “Why? Have we met?”

  “No, no…but everybody’s heard of the Angel…if you don’t mind my callin’ you that.”

  “Just tell Mr. Calvino I’m here.”

  “Oh, well, sure—come on in, I’ll show you the way…”

  “Shouldn’t you pat me down first?”

  “Uh, should I?”

  “Good idea to.”

  The bouncer gave O’Sullivan a quick frisk, found the .45 in the shoulder holster, and stuck the pistol in his own waistband, under his suitcoat, with an apologetic shrug.

  “That’s the only one,” O’Sullivan assured him.

  Then the bouncer—flustered and friendly—led the way through the pool hall beyond the door; in a room awash with green-felt tables under pools of light from conical hanging lamps, no one was playing right now. Tumbleweed might have blown through.

  “I’ll know you next time, Mr. O’Sullivan,” the bouncer was saying, clearly nervous in his presence. “I’m kinda new, still putting names with faces—I’m from over Elgin way. I had no idea Mr. Looney’s influence was so…influential.”

  O’Sullivan said nothing. The bouncer was showing him through another door, into a storeroom filled with barrels of liquor, which he led O’Sullivan across.

  “They say Mr. Looney, he’s as big as Westinghouse,” the guy said, rapping his knuckles on another door, a coded knock.

  The heavy door opened, revealing a bright bustling casino area, unleashing the near-hysterical sounds of laughter and dismay, roulette balls spinning, dealers calling out cards, dice clicking against wood. For the most part, however, the patrons here were not high-hat high rollers, just working men with their girlfriends or maybe even their wives, or anyway somebody’s wife, risking money they were lucky to be making in these hard times.

  A giddy group of little boys and girls—children!—were playing ring-a-round-the-rosy with some slot machines, getting in the way as the two men moved through the gambling hall. It sickened O’Sullivan, seeing children around this vice.

  The bouncer seemed to agree. After shooing the kids out of the way, he glanced back at O’Sullivan, saying, “Not right, kiddies around a place like this; but some of the workin’ girls got nowhere’s else to put ’em. In my opinion, some things a kid just shouldn’t see, know what I mean?”

  They had moved into a barroom now, where couples were dancing and, on a stage at the far end, a colored jazz band was blaring away at “When the Saints Go Marching,” making up for what they lacked in skill and musicianship with enthusiasm and volume.

  The bouncer almost had to yell to be heard over the brass. “Hey, I’m a grown man, and this place gets to me, sometimes. Seems like every night there’s trouble—I collected more knives from people than a busload of bus boys.”

  O’Sullivan said nothing.

  “Answer me this, Mr. O’Sullivan—if nobody’s got any dough in this Depression, what the hell are these chumps doin’ in here throwin’ it away? Seems like there’s always money for frills and frails, never money for food and flop…If this is the human race, I say we’re losin’.”

  Moving to the next circle of hell, a door opened onto the receiving area of Calvino’s brothel, where low-key lighting didn’t soften the reddish velvet drapes and black-and-red flocked wallpaper, the air ripe with the smell of cheap perfume and face powder. Ranging from their late teens to their early thirties, soiled flowers in overstuffed chemises on overstuffed settees perched and preened along the walls, like a buffet line of sex, working stiffs and men of means alike moving down each row, picking out their selections.

  At the door, the madam, a hussy in her fifties with troweled on makeup, called out a number—as if this were an ice cream parlor—and the lucky girl who’d been chosen stood to receive the arm of the patron who’d picked her. With a smile worth every penny, the blonde floozy led her salesman-looking fellow down a dim corridor, and the bouncer and O’Sullivan followed after.

  The hooker and her john ducked into a cubicle, shutting a velvet drape over the doorless doorway; the entire corridor was lined with such curtained doorways, and as the two men passed by, the muffled music of sexual intercourse—funny, O’Sullivan noted, how remarkably similar the sounds of pleasure and pain were—provided a backdrop for the bouncer’s endless chitchat.

  “You know, I’m a boxer by trade—nine consecutive wins, held the South Orange record. I got what it takes to make a hell of a bodyguard.”

  O’Sullivan remained mute as they moved down another corridor, at the dead end of which was a door labeled OFFICE—PRIVATE.

  “What I’m gettin’ at,” the bouncer said, “and I mean Mr. Calvino no disrespect, but…you wouldn’t happen to know if Mr. Looney needs another good man? I’m lookin’ to move up in the world. Any chance you could ask him for me?”

  “Sure.”

  A big grin broke out on the bouncer’s mug. “Ah, thanks, Mr. O’Sullivan, I really appreciate that. It’s been great talkin’ to you—nice to chew the fat with somebody who really sees eye to eye with ya.”

  Aglow, the bouncer knocked on the door, and stepped inside without waiting to be summoned.

  O’Sullivan, alone in the hallway, pressed his ear to the door and heard the following exchange:

  “Mr. Calvino, sorry to in’erupt, sir…but Mike O’Sullivan’s here.”

  Calvino’s husky baritone, slightly slurred, responded: “O’Sullivan…Looney’s enforcer?”

  “Yeah, it’s him, sir. Angel of…”

  “I know who he is, I know who he is…aw, shit. What’s he want?”

  “To see you, sir.”

  “Fuck a duck. Is he packing?”

  Pride colored the bodyguard’s voice: “Not anymore.”

  O’Sullivan smiled as he listened.

  Then Calvino’s voice: “All right—show him in…but you stick around, see? Keep an eye on the mick son of a bitch.”

  “Sure, boss.”

  “Wait…wait a second…”

  O’Sullivan’s eyes narrowed—a drawer opened; he heard something being put away—dope paraphernalia, maybe? And a faint but unmistakable clunk on wood—a weapon?

  Then the bodyguard emerged, smiling, friendly, as he said, “Come on in, Mr. O’Sullivan—Mr. Calvino’s pleased to see you.”

  O’Sullivan went in, surprised by how slovenly the office was—buckets caugh
t dripping water from overhead pipes, boxes were stacked precariously against wallpaper-peeling walls, newspapers and ledger books lay piled on top of file cabinets. Framed portraits of Louis Armstrong and other jazz greats who’d played Calvino’s hung on one wall, at varying askew angles.

  And behind the big desk was the man who at one time had been John Looney’s only real competition in the Tri-Cities: Anthony Calvino, his dark suit and colorful tie a wrinkled mess, though not as much a mess as he was. Calvino was a big dark man, once a powerful person in every sense; now his rheumy eyes—and the sickeningly sweet smell of opium smoke—told another story.

  On the big man’s cluttered desk, in front of him, was a RING magazine, folded open, tented there, as if he’d been interrupted reading. Papers and paperweights alike were jiggling on the desk, and the framed photos on the wall were shimmying. The office shared a wall with the bar, it seemed—the loud jazz music was bleeding through, sending a slight reverberation through the room. Any boss other than the drug-addled Tony Calvino would have minded; Calvino probably hadn’t noticed.

  Without rising, the fleshy Calvino held open his hands, and beamed, as if he and O’Sullivan were dear old friends, not adversary acquaintances.

  “Mike! Mike O’Sullivan—how the hell are you…and how is the old man? Things good?”

  They did not shake hands.

  O’Sullivan said, “Some things are good.”

  “How come ol’ John never comes ’round to see me? We could talk old times.”

  “Mr. Looney doesn’t like Bucktown.”

  “Ah, but he likes the money Bucktown puts in his pocket.”

  “That’s why I’m here, Calvino. You been light of late.”

  “Yeah, yeah, I didn’t figure you came for the quiff…but it’s always there for you, Mike, on the house. Some very pretty ladies. There’s one can pick up a dime off the floor with her—”

  “No thanks. I’m not here to collect dimes.”

  Calvino raised his palms as if in surrender. “I know, I know…it’s my goddamn overhead, expenses, grease for the cops and politicians…the Iowa side’s no picnic, y’know. But I’m good for it. Don’t I always render under Caesar?”