Road to Perdition

by Max Allan Collins

  “Not lately…Mr. Looney sent this personal message for you…It’s in my inside pocket.”

  Calvino made a magnanimous gesture with a plump jeweled hand, nodded toward the bouncer behind O’Sullivan. “My boy says you’re clean. Go ahead.”

  But both Calvino and the bodyguard watched, tense and intent, as O’Sullivan reached under his topcoat into his suit-jacket pocket. And when he withdrew the sealed letter, the two men visibly sighed in relief…which amused O’Sullivan, some. Reputation did have its benefits.

  Calvino took the envelope, saying, “So I’m behind again… the old man didn’t need to…” As he reached for a letter opener—which jumped with the jazz beat, on his desk top—the king of Bucktown asked, “How much trouble am I in, son?”

  “I don’t know what’s in the letter, Calvino. I’m just the messenger tonight.”

  O’Sullivan glanced at the tented magazine; was something under there?

  Calvino unfolded the letter and read. His face gave away nothing—in fact, his reaction was so blank, it felt wrong to O’Sullivan.

  As the walls reverberated with the frantic music next door—”Muskrat Ramble,” at the moment—the objects, the papers on the desk, continued to do a little dance…and from beneath the tented magazine, something black and metallic peeked.

  Calvino was holding the letter in his left hand, studying it, thinking, thinking…then he looked up at Looney’s enforcer with a smile, but his eyes flicked toward the bodyguard behind O’Sullivan.

  Perhaps if the fleshy Bucktown monarch hadn’t been a hophead, he’d have moved fast enough; probably not—the man merely shifted in his chair, his hand moving only a fraction when O’Sullivan reached under that magazine and grabbed the cold metal of the revolver there, hand finding the grip, finger finding the trigger, and as the open-mouthed Calvino stared at him, the whites of his eyes as big as his pupils were small, O’Sullivan squeezed off one round—on the downbeat of the music, right into the gangster’s heart.

  Calvino flopped onto the desk, his head hitting first, scattering everything, everywhere.

  O’Sullivan had already turned to face the friendly bodyguard, who was fumbling for the gun in his waistband, O’Sullivan’s own .45; but the man knew it was useless, and even as he went for the weapon, he was moaning, “Jesus, no…no…”

  One bullet was all the job reference Mike O’Sullivan would ever give Calvino’s ex-employee—the burly bouncer bounced against the wall, almost in time to the music, sliding down just as “Muskrat Ramble” came to a big finish.

  O’Sullivan paused, waiting to see if anyone came charging into the room—but the raucous music had apparently covered the gunshots. He collected his .45 from the dead bouncer. The brothel was close by, and other than a few bouncers of their own—most likely unarmed—no threat should come from that direction.

  Alive but confused, wondering what had prompted Calvino turning on him, O’Sullivan looked at the desk, where the letter lay discarded by its dead recipient.

  O’Sullivan snatched up the missive he’d delivered, which consisted of one simple, boldly scrawled sentence…

  KILL O’SULLIVAN AND ALL SINS ARE FORGIVEN.

  A sudden realization gripped him—he knew he’d been sent on this mission for two reasons: to meet his death; and to draw him away from his family.

  O’Sullivan had been one target.

  But Connor Looney would have another target.

  “Michael,” he gasped, and he reached for the phone on the dead man’s desk.

  SEVEN

  The great unanswered question, after all these years, remains: Was the betrayal of Mike O’Sullivan the work of Connor Looney alone? What role, if any, did John Looney himself play in the treachery?

  Strangely, my father never spoke of this—to me, at least. The controversy rages, among true-crime authors, with depictions ranging from the old man masterminding the deception—sending my father to Calvino’s with the orders for his own execution in hand—to Connor acting independently, out of jealousy and rage over his father’s love for the O’Sullivans, as much as the need to remove an eye witness to the McGovern murder.

  The latter view was seemingly confirmed around a decade ago by one writer, who located an elderly woman who claimed to have been a singer with a jazz band on the Quinlan riverboat, and one of Connor Looney’s many girlfriends. The woman claimed she had been in Connor’s apartment at the Florence Hotel, on the night of the tragedy. She had been in the bedroom, sleeping off a drunken two-person orgy that had apparently followed the McGovern slaying.

  The sound of the old man hammering on Connor’s apartment door had woken her, and she peeked out of the cracked bedroom door and witnessed a confrontation between the old man and his son, starting with Looney storming in, and hurling his son to the floor.

  Oddly, Connor had not tried to defend himself, rather began to cry, as his father loomed over him, accusingly.

  “I’m sorry, Pa,” Connor had said. “I’m sorry.”

  “Why did you do this thing? Why?”

  “That kid would’ve talked…he would’ve…”

  The old man exploded with rage, excoriating his son for his stupidity, and his cowardice, and then—apparently unable to verbalize his rage, much less satisfy it—the old man began to slap his son, striking him, forcing him to his knees.

  “Goddamn you!” the old man raged. “Since the day you were born you have brought nothing into my life but disappointment and shame…I curse that day, I curse the goddamn day you were born! I should have drowned you like a fucking cat…I should have…should have…”

  And John Looney, exhausted, an emotional wreck himself, fell to his knees, beside his son, as if they were both praying. Connor was breathing hard, and blubbering like a baby.

  And then the old man embraced his boy and soothed him, patting his back, there there, there there…

  The alleged witness to this claims to have crept back to her bed and crawled beneath the covers. Within minutes, however, Connor burst in and threw her out of the apartment. He was leaving, he said, and didn’t want any company.

  Given two dollars for a taxi cab, the singer was soon in her own bed, where she lay for hours, wondering what terrible thing Connor Looney had done.

  Troubled as she’d been the last few days—as disturbed as she was about whatever her son Michael might have seen the night before—Annie O’Sullivan could still laugh. Or at least Peter could make her laugh.

  Mother and son were in the bathroom upstairs. This was one of those ordinary yet precious moments that she did not take for granted: a year from now, if not sooner, her youngest son would be uncomfortable having his mother help him bathe. He was really already too old for it, she knew; but to her, Peter was still her baby, even though he’d turned ten.

  The child liked a hot bath, and the room was steamy, the mirrors fogged. She had told him to get out, now, “you’re getting all pruney,” and he’d splashed water at her, and she’d leaned over the edge, splashing him back—but the boy wasn’t much dissuaded by that.

  In fact, he seemed to find it very funny that his mother would be silly enough to splash somebody who was already dripping wet, and his childish laughter rang in the enclosed space. The little boy’s infectious glee had caught her, and as she held out a towel for him, and he stepped out over the high edge of the tub into the towel, and her drying embrace, they were both still giggling.

  Despite their laughter, Annie heard something in the hall. “That must be your brother, back from his party—or could that be your father, home so early…?”

  “If it’s Michael, I’ll splash him,” Peter said.

  “You better not.”

  “If it’s Papa, I’ll splash him!”

  “Don’t you dare.” She called out: “Which of my men is that?”

  The door cracked open, giving them a glimpse of an adult male figure in a topcoat in the dark hall.

  “Oh, it’s you, dear,” she said, toweling off her son.

&n
bsp; But when the door opened wide, the figure there—in a dark topcoat and a knit stocking mask, balaclava-style—said, “No it’s not.”

  Terrified, Annie drew Peter closer. The eyes in the knit mask were blinking—the intruder seemed almost as afraid as she felt. “What do you want?…Leave, please, leave now while you can. If you know who my husband is, you’ll leave.”

  And the man in the knit mask raised his right arm, revealing the long-nosed revolver in his gloved hand. “I know who your husband is.”

  Annie put herself in front of her child, but the gun in the trembling grasp of the intruder barked once, a terrible explosion in the small room that had not finished echoing in her ears when the bullet in her heart ended her life.

  She couldn’t help falling away from her protective stance, exposing the towel-draped boy, who cried, “Mama!” staring down at his mother’s open empty eyes and the spreading blossom of red on her blouse, and Peter wasn’t looking when the intruder fired the second shot.

  Naked as the day his mother had given birth to him, the late Peter O’Sullivan tumbled into his mother’s lifeless arms, and their blood ran together on the white tile floor, making crimson pools, the towel a puddle of white flecked red.

  “So much for my little squealer,” Connor Looney said, with a bravado at odds with his trembling gun-in-hand, unaware that he had shot the wrong O’Sullivan boy.

  After an evening of pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey, and several plates of birthday cake, Michael O’Sullivan, Jr., was pedaling home from St. Pete’s. Tonight was clear and cold, and his breath was pluming as he tooled his bike down the street.

  He’d had a long day, and kind of a lousy one—all the cake in the world couldn’t make up for what he’d been through at the Villa today. At lunch, out on the courtyard, an older boy had made a crack about Papa working for “that gangster Looney,” and Michael had lost control, punching, kicking, pummeling the kid. Neither boy had been the victor, and both stayed after school.

  Michael’s hand was still sore from writing I WILL NOT FIGHT WITH OTHER BOYS on the blackboard, a hundred times.

  He was nearly home, just gliding into the driveway, when he heard the harsh crack. At first he didn’t know what it was—a car backfiring maybe? But the noise had seemed to come from the house, and when he looked in that direction, a flash in the bathroom window, on the second floor, was accompanied by a second harsh crack…

  …And he had heard similar sounds, last night, hadn’t he? Could those have been gunshots?

  He abandoned his bike in the drive, and ran toward the house, with no thought of the danger, or what this might mean; all the eleven-year-old knew was that his mother and his brother were in that house! Was Papa home, too? He hadn’t noticed whether the car was in the garage…

  These and a dozen other frantic thoughts tumbled through the boy’s brain as he ran up on the front porch, and he was about to rush inside when the figure of a man appeared in the glass of the front door.

  Michael froze: the man wore one of those stocking masks, a bala-what’s-it, but the boy thought he recognized the figure—wasn’t that…and the man pulled off the mask and confirmed Michael’s suspicion: Connor Looney.

  Who seemed to be staring right at Michael!

  Michael wanted to run, but his feet wouldn’t respond; and then, suddenly, he realized Uncle Connor couldn’t see him—the man seemed to be trying to compose himself before going outside. Then the boy understood: with the lights on in the house, Connor couldn’t see Michael standing out in the darkness—what Connor was doing was looking at his own reflection!

  And now the man was reaching for the doorknob.

  Michael plastered himself to the side of the house, so that when the door opened, he’d be tucked behind it.

  Which was exactly what happened. Uncle Connor didn’t notice him there, door open wide. The man stood on the porch, on unsteady feet, and fished a hip flask from inside his topcoat. He took a healthy swig.

  Then, leaving the door wide open, Connor Looney—who the boy could tell was drunk, like those people at the McGovern wake—tottered off into the night, picking up speed, running, till the blackness swallowed him.

  When Uncle Connor had gone, Michael came out from behind the door and just stood there, on the porch, staring at the open doorway for a long, long time.

  He knew this had to be bad. The sick feeling in his stomach was only partly all that cake he’d eaten at St. Pete’s. Maybe Uncle Connor had been here to do business with Papa; but Mama had said his father would be late, that he had to go do something for Mr. Looney.

  And those noises had sounded like the gunshots at that warehouse, last night.

  If something bad had happened in the house, he knew he should help—he should be running in there, at top speed; but he was a kid, and afraid, and perhaps he knew, instinctively, that if something bad had indeed happened, due to that crazy man he’d just seen leave, there would be no help he could give.

  But Michael finally went in. The house was strangely still—the ticking of clocks, some dripping of faucets, nothing more. A droning sound turned out to be the phone—it was off the hook, in the hall. He thought about putting the receiver back in place, but didn’t. Nearby the stairs yawned endlessly—and at the top, steam from the bathroom floated like fog, but other smoke was mingled there, too. He’d seen such smoke last night.

  Guns had made it.

  Trembling, he moved up the stairs. In his mind he was running; but the reality was, he’d never climbed them more slowly. At the top, he turned and headed down the corridor to the bathroom.

  He went in.

  His instincts had proven right: there was nothing he could have done. His mother and his brother lay sprawled lifelessly, eyes open, but with no more expression than marbles; they’d both been shot in the chest. Pools of blood glistened. The faucet dripped. The mirror was fogged up. They were dead.

  He did not go to them. Somewhere inside, a voice was screaming, “Mother! Mother!”

  But the boy only backed out of the bathroom, a sleepwalker caught in a bad dream, and moved down the hall, and down the stairs. Still in his trance, he found himself in the kitchen. His mother had left his plate on the table, the food spoiled, all nasty and crusty; he had told Mama he’d clean it off later, and she had left it for him, to show him. Teach him a lesson.

  Michael cleared the plate off into the trash, then went to the sink to run water on it. Like his mother had requested. Lesson learned.

  Then he went to the dining room table and sat there. He folded his hands, like when saying grace. The boy knew not to call the police; it was not what Papa would have wanted. And he was still sitting there when his father flew into the house, through the front door, his big pistol from the war in hand.

  O’Sullivan—unable to raise the family on the phone, knowing he could call neither anyone associated with John Looney nor the police—had broken every speed law getting here, hurtling across city streets, passing traffic on the government bridge, earning outraged honks and curses from other drivers, and barely noticing.

  He said nothing to his son, who was sitting at the table, dazed.

  He took the stairs three at a time, and ran until the terrible sight stopped him at the bathroom doorway. The husband went to his wife, knelt beside her, touched her throat where a pulse should be; then the father did the same for his youngest boy. Finally, he stood, turned off the harsh overhead light, so they could sleep better, and he went out into the hall.

  He leaned a hand against the wall, and then slid to the floor and sat there, gun beside him, his head in his hands. He had lost everything. Everything.

  “Papa?”

  Almost everything.

  Michael was at the top of the stairs. “It was Uncle Connor. I think he thought Peter was me. It’s my fault.”

  O’Sullivan just stared at the boy; then he got to his feet and joined him. They sat on the top step, their backs to the carnage. “Michael, it’s not your fault.”

  “It is
!”

  “None of that…Were you were here when this happened?”

  “I was coming home from the church—I saw him leaving.”

  “Did he see you?”

  “No. He was drunk.”

  O’Sullivan thought about that for a moment, then said, “Son, go to your room and pack your things. We have to leave.”

  Michael swallowed. “Okay, Papa.”

  The boy went to the bedroom he’d shared with his brother, wondering why Papa didn’t even seem surprised to have found Mama and Peter that way. He packed his clothes, and a few toys and the Big Little Books he hadn’t read yet, thinking Papa didn’t even seem all that sad.

  But when he went to his parents’ bedroom, to join his father, the boy changed his mind.

  Papa had carried the bodies to the bed, and was tucking Peter in next to Mama right now. He’d put Peter’s teddy bear next to him, and now was smoothing his youngest son’s hair, then kissed his forehead, as he’d done a thousand times.

  “Sleep well, son,” Papa said.

  Michael wondered if Papa really thought Peter was just “sleeping,” and then his father turned to Michael and said, “Say goodnight to your brother, son.”

  The boy set his suitcase down, and went to his father, standing next to him alongside the bed.

  “G’night,” Michael said.

  “You need to say good-bye to your mother, too, son—before we go.”

  Michael looked up at his father. “I don’t want to say good-bye to her, Papa.”

  “You need to. Bid them both Godspeed, Michael—there’ll be no wakes, no attending services for us. No graveside good-byes.”

  “Why, Papa?”

  “Because the men who did this thing will come back for us.”

  The boy frowned. “Only one man did this, Papa.”

  “Son, if Connor Looney did this, all of them are our enemies.”

  “Even…Mr. Looney?”

  “Especially him.”

  “Then give me a gun! We’ll wait for them—this is our home!”