Road to Perdition

by Max Allan Collins

  “Doesn’t bother me,” the man said.

  O’Sullivan glanced up, seemingly unsteady, and—putting a tiny slur in his voice, not overdoing it—replied, “Bother what?”

  The man leaned forward and whispered, as if keeping this conversation from the cop at the counter. “The hooch—used to be a free country. Man wants a little snort, no skin off my hindquarters.”

  Eyes half-hooded, O’Sullivan smiled, poured more whiskey into the cup, hoping he was playing his role more convincingly than the fellow in the next booth was. Too friendly, way too friendly…

  O’Sullivan raised the flask, in offering.

  The man raised a hand in surrender. “No thank you, sir.” Then he returned to loading the camera, snapping it shut, fully loaded now.

  “Profession?” O’Sullivan asked, voice wavering slightly, referring to the camera. “Or passion?”

  “Little of both, I guess,” the guy said with a shrug. He had cold eyes that didn’t blink much; he’d probably worn that same smile, O’Sullivan thought, when he was a kid pulling the wings off flies.

  “To be paid to do,” the man was saying, “what you love to do…Isn’t that the American dream?”

  O’Sullivan lifted his shoulders, set them down, as if the action required both thought and effort. “Guess so.”

  “And yourself?”

  “Huh?”

  “What’s your business?”

  O’Sullivan blinked, thinking that over. “I’m in business.”

  “I knew it!” the guy said. “When I saw that fancy Ford, I thought, ‘There goes a businessman.’ And what is your business?”

  “Salesman. Machine parts.”

  “Machine parts. The wheels that make the world go ’round—vital work. That’s wonderful.”

  “Trus’ me,” O’Sullivan said, “it isn’t…So who do you work for?”

  “Can you keep a secret?” He sat forward again, whispering: “I’m afraid I’m a tool of the yellow press…for which I humbly apologize.”

  “No kidding? What paper?”

  “Different ones. Also magazines. Ever read Startling Detective? Real Fact Crime?”

  “No…I’m the squeamish type.”

  “Not me…I shoot the dead.”

  O’Sullivan tilted his head. “What say?”

  “Dead bodies, at crime scenes. The grislier the better, my editors say. What, did you think I killed them?”

  With a laugh, O’Sullivan said, “Should hope not.”

  Ruby came over to see if O’Sullivan needed more coffee. He said he didn’t. She asked if he wanted a slice of pie. He said not. Then she refilled the photographer’s cup and went back behind the counter.

  The photographer picked up where he’d left off: “I know it probably sounds…sick. But death has always fascinated me. Dead bodies, particularly.”

  O’Sullivan shivered. “Hey, I’m trying to keep a meal down, over here.”

  “Now, friend, wait, think it over—the world needs people who aren’t afraid to look at unpleasantness. Where would we be without doctors? Without morticians?”

  “I suppose.”

  “The look of a person, right after life has left him—it’s fascinating. Ever see a dead body? I don’t mean in a coffin…I mean within minutes, seconds, of their last breath?”

  O’Sullivan nodded.

  “You have? Well, I’m sorry for you, friend, if it was a loved one or a friend…terrible thing, loss of life. But it sure does make you feel alive, doesn’t it?”

  O’Sullivan raised his coffee cup. “I’ll drink to that.”

  The man was eyeing the cop at the counter, who was finishing up, paying Ruby.

  Then those unblinking eyes narrowed. “Funny—you’re sweating.”

  O’Sullivan sipped the spiked coffee. “Am I?”

  “Beads all over your forehead. Is a little warm in here. Funny, though, seein’ a guy sweating in the dead of winter. ’Course, the booze can make a man sweat.”

  “And piss, too,” O’Sullivan said, scooching out of the booth.

  “Hey, you need a hand, bud?”

  “No—I’ll be fine,” O’Sullivan said, standing unsteadily. He began to make his way to the john, stumbling as he went.

  “Take it easy, pal!” the man with the camera said.

  “Thanks…watch my coffee for me.”

  And O’Sullivan staggered into the men’s room.

  Harlen Maguire sat, turned around in the booth, wondering if Mike O’Sullivan was as drunk as he seemed. Half a minute passed, and the bell over the door dinged—the cop going out.

  Maguire reached in his jacket pocket, withdrew the .38 revolver, keeping it out of sight, beneath the counter. A car started up—pulled out. Good. With the cop gone, Maguire had no problem with what lay ahead of him—a farmer, a waitress, a cook. The gleaming tile of the diner, with its chrome fixtures, splashed with blood (red registering black on film), littered with corpses…what a picture. He wouldn’t even need a flash…

  The bell over the door dinged—okay, one more customer, just another element of his composition…but it was the cop again!

  Ambling in, the officer said to Ruby, “I’m sorry, ain’t got my head screwed on, tonight—I forgot your tip!”

  And Maguire flew out of the booth, out of the diner, and the Ford was gone—he could hear it accelerating down the highway, roaring off.

  Shit!

  He ran to his own car—the Illinois plates screaming at him: idiot!—and found his tires slashed…four goddamn flats!

  Cop inside or not, Maguire ran into the road, where O’Sullivan’s taillights receded into the distance, and slowly, steadily, he aimed the long-barreled revolver…

  In the Ford, O’Sullivan—not drunk at all, though rolling down the window one-handed, to combat the whiskey he’d chugged for the sake of show—was yelling at his boy: “Down! Get down—stay down!”

  Michael, waking up in the backseat, popped his head up, saying, “What? Why? What’s goin’—”

  And his father reached back and physically shoved him down as the rear window exploded.

  Behind them, pleased at the sound of the shattered glass, Maguire fired again, this time with no success.

  “Damnit,” he said, standing in the road.

  The cop, having heard the shot, came running out, one hand unbuttoning a holstered sidearm. “Hey! What the hell you think you’re—”

  Maguire turned and shot him in the head.

  Blood mist blossomed in the night, as the dead cop tumbled onto his back. With a sigh, disappointed but willing to salvage the evening, Maguire and his gun and his camera headed back into the diner, to finish up.

  O’Sullivan drove the speed limit, relieved that no headlights were coming up behind him, grateful for the dark night and the empty highway. He was heading up Highway 13, back toward where they’d come, the turn-off to the Perdition road no longer an option.

  In his cap and heavy winter coat, pushed down by his papa, Michael hadn’t been hurt by the flying glass—neither had O’Sullivan—and shards lay in the backseat like scattered ice.

  Questions were tumbling out of a frightened Michael. “What happened back there? Who shot at us?”

  O’Sullivan answered, watching the boy in the rearview mirror. “A man in the diner was sent to kill us.”

  “How did you know he was? Did he point a gun…?”

  “No. I saw him and knew, that’s all.”

  “But, Papa—how could you know?”

  Now he turned and looked back at his son and told him—flat-out told him: “Because, Michael—I used to have his job!”

  O’Sullivan took a side road. A few miles later, he drove up into the entry of an open field and after perhaps half a mile stopped the car, cutting the lights. The man with the camera would not find them here.

  Out of breath, he turned to his son, who was wide-eyed and also breathing hard. Fury rose in O’Sullivan like lava, erupting: “When I tell you to do something, goddamn do it!”
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  “Papa…”

  “When I say get down, you get down. You don’t ask questions. There’s no time for questions. You can die in the time it takes to ask a goddamn question!”

  “I didn’t—”

  “You didn’t listen. From now on, if I say we’re stopping to eat, you stay with me! At my side. You will listen to what I say and do as I say, or you can get the hell out of this car and take care of yourself.”

  The boy’s eyes were huge. “What?”

  “Make up your mind, Michael. I can’t fight them and you. Not at the same time.”

  And now the boy got mad, shouting defensively, “I can take care of myself just fine! You never wanted me along, anyway! You blame me for this—you think it’s all my fault!”

  “Stop it, Michael…stop that talk.”

  “He meant to kill me and Peter died instead and—”

  “It was not your fault! The fault lies with the betrayers—Looney and his son. Listen to me—listen! You are not responsible for the deaths of your brother and your mother…and neither am I. But I am responsible for their retribution.”

  The boy seemed to understand; but he still sounded angry when he said, “Just take me to Aunt Sarah’s.”

  “I can’t.”

  “…What?”

  “Not now.”

  “But…why?”

  He answered the boy’s question with one of his own: “How did that man find us tonight?”

  “I don’t know—how did he? How could he?”

  O’Sullivan shook his head. “There’s only one way, son—he knew where we were heading.”

  “So I can’t go stay with Aunt Sarah and Uncle Bob.”

  “Someday, maybe we both can.”

  He could tell this terrible turn was, to his son, good news.

  Trying not to smile, the boy said, “So…what are we going to do, now?”

  O’Sullivan sighed. “Get in front.”

  “Okay,” Michael said, and scrambled up next to his father.

  O’Sullivan touched his son’s arm. “I’ve been thinking about doing something…but I couldn’t figure out a way to do it alone. With you helping, I can make it work. But it’s dangerous.”

  Michael shrugged. “I don’t care. I just want to be with you. I just want to help.”

  He held his son’s eyes with his. “Then you need to listen to me…all right? You can’t be a little boy—you have to be the man helping me. Or we’ll both be dead.”

  Michael nodded.

  “This is what we have to do,” O’Sullivan said. “We have to convince the Chicago gangsters to give us Connor Looney.”

  “How can you make them do that?”

  “‘We,’ son…‘we.’ Now, these men in Chicago, they talk about loyalty and honor and family, but what they really care about is money.”

  “Root of all evil, Bible says.”

  “The Bible’s right. These big men, Capone and Nitti, they keep their money in little banks all over the Midwest. It’s sort of…spread around, for safety sake.”

  “What banks, Papa?”

  “They’re the same ones your godfather John Looney uses, for the same purpose…hiding money from the government, for tax reasons. I know where these banks are, son.”

  The boy was shaking his head—grasping some of it, but not all of it. “But Papa, they won’t just give you the money.”

  “That’s right, son—we have to take it.”

  Michael’s eyes got big again. “Like robbers? Like Pretty Boy Floyd and Baby Face Nelson?”

  O’Sullivan frowned. “How do you know those names?”

  “From the newsreels at the moving pictures.”

  “…Think of it more like Robin Hood. Are you going to help me, son? Can you do this?”

  This time the boy answered with a question: “Do you think I can?”

  “Yes.”

  Michael smiled—eager. “When do we start?”

  “Not until I teach you something.”

  “What?”

  “How to be a wheelman.”

  “What’s a wheelman?”

  “First thing tomorrow, after breakfast…you’ll see.”

  ELEVEN

  For my father and me, the road to Perdition, Kansas, was ever-winding, and (or so it seemed to me then) never-ending. We could have been to the farm by the lake a thousand times in those long months. We traversed the same midwestern states often enough—dirt roads, gravel roads, occasionally concrete, ever traveling, ever nearing, never arriving.

  When my father would call my uncle in Perdition, the answer would always be the same: crows on the fence. Looney (or were they Capone?) men were posted on the road outside the farm, “sittin’ out in front of the place in broad daylight,” Uncle Bob would say. And another group of Capone (or were they Looney?) men had a room over the hardware store, in the little downtown of Perdition itself. Two sets of four, at the house, downtown, watching in shifts…

  And of course my father wouldn’t allow my uncle and aunt to bring in the sheriff, and Papa’s “no” was emphatic when Uncle Bob suggested, “Should I take my own shotgun, and pay ’em a visit?”

  So, in a way, the real start of our journey began the morning after that man with the camera tried to kill us at the diner.

  And on that morning—when I had my first lesson as my father’s underage wheelman—I accomplished something that all of Capone’s thugs (and Looney’s too) never could: I frightened my father. Not that my father was immune to fear, and I don’t mean to suggest that the various scrapes and shoot-outs with gangsters and assassins didn’t affect him.

  But no gangster, however hardboiled, however ruthless, managed to do what I did—turn my father’s face as white as a sheet, as white as a ghost, as white as that priest stepping out of his confessional.

  The next morning—while a service station repaired the Ford’s rear window—Michael’s father gathered some items at the motel, and they had a nice breakfast at another diner, where, between bites of toast and nibbles of crisp bacon, Papa gave Michael the first part of the driving lesson. He told the boy about the gears and the clutch and brake, and the boy—so excited he could barely eat—grinned and nodded and took it all in…or anyway thought he had.

  Before long they were on the road again, Papa behind the wheel in his dark topcoat and fedora, looking serene, even comfortable as he turned off the main highway onto a farm road, where right now they seemed to be the only traffic. Soon he pulled over, and got out, telling the boy to do the same.

  From the compartment under the backseat Papa collected the items he’d rounded up at the motel—a stack of newspapers he piled on the seat behind the wheel, and pieces of block-like wood that he tied with twine to the various pedals. His father didn’t explain, but Michael realized this was to enable him to sit higher, and reach those pedals easier.

  This took quite a while, and by the time Papa had finished, Michael’s heart was a triphammer—he wasn’t scared, not really…more exhilarated, and even astonished. How many fathers would entrust their car to a boy his age? Who needed a bicycle, anyway? Kid’s stuff.

  “Get in,” his father said, gesturing to the driver’s door.

  Delighted, the boy climbed behind the wheel, and his father came around and got in on the passenger side. Doors closed, they were ready. And Papa still seemed calm, relaxed—apparently confident in Michael’s abilities.

  “Do you remember everything I told you?” his father asked.

  “Sure.”

  “Would you like me to go over it again? I’ll point things out to you.”

  “…Sure.”

  And his father gave him a refresher, the abstract instructions from breakfast becoming real, gaining context…

  Then Papa asked, “Ready?”

  “Sure.”

  “Okay, then…ignition.”

  “…Now?”

  “Yes, now.”

  Michael turned the key in the ignition and it seemed wondrous, the way the engine burst to t
hrumming life. How many times had he sat in this car with his father (and his mother) and taken that magic for granted.

  Michael turned to his father, who remained casual, composed, the car throbbing. “Now what?”

  “You remember what the clutch is?”

  “Of course I remember what the clutch is!”

  “What’s the clutch?”

  “It’s the clutch. It’s the thing that…clutches. You know—grabs.”

  “Right. And which pedal does the clutching?”

  Michael put his foot on one of the blocks-tied-to-

  pedals and pressed. The engine roared, and he reared back from the wheel.

  “That’s the gas,” his father said. “The accelerator.”

  The boy blinked. “Sure. Yeah—it…accelerates.”

  “Right. That’s right. Let me show you which one is the clutch…”

  Then the car was moving forward, a few feet, and Michael tried to put it in gear; but the car shuddered to a stop.

  “Don’t worry,” Papa said. “It just stalled. The engine died.”

  Alarmed, Michael asked, “Died?”

  Papa smiled just a little. “It’s not hard to bring it back to life, son…Let’s try again.”

  His father reached over, started the car again, and Michael looked at him, asking, “Release gas, clutch, shift gear, hit gas?”

  “That’s right. That’s right.”

  Michael tried that sequence—and the car lurched forward!

  “And shift!” Papa said.

  And the car stopped—died again.

  They sat in silence for a moment, then his father asked, gently, “Might I make a suggestion?”

  “No! Pop, I have to do this myself.”

  His father’s eyebrows were raised, and the boy didn’t sense the man’s amusement.

  Before long, however, Michael was driving, the car crawling along the country road…but moving.

  “Is this better, Papa?”

  “Very good, son. Very good…but I’m going to need you to go a little faster.”

  “When?”

  “I would say…any time now.”

  “Right now?”

  “Son, when I come out of a bank with the bank’s money, I don’t want the police to be able to catch us by running alongside the car.”

  “Police?”

  “It’s a good idea to practice. Faster.”