Road to Perdition

Sixteen

John Looney had a ranch in Chama, New Mexico, an adobe fortress where he had gone from time to time, to rest or to hide out from his enemies. After the Market Square riot, when Looney was fined by the court for incitement and his newspaper (temporarily) shut down, the patriarch went to the ranch to recover from injuries delivered by local cops who were in the pocket of a Looney rival. Another time Looney holed up at the ranch recovering from wounds received in a duel. Many true-crime historians have wondered why Looney stayed around the Tri-Cities when the trouble with Mike O’Sullivan started. Some contend that he did flee, briefly at least, to his New Mexico “home away from home,” and one account has federal agents arresting him there.

Though I have no direct proof other than my recollection, I believe my father had heard from a friend on Looney’s payroll that the old man was packing up for another of these New Mexico “vacations.” This was in part why we rushed from Oklahoma back to Illinois, while Papa was still weak from his injury.

That, and the discovery he had made in that strongbox he’d taken from the suite of Alexander Rance.

A sunny Sunday morning, crisp but not quite cold, found the bells ringing and the Irish Catholics of the Illinois side of the Tri-Cities converging on St. Peter’s. The parking lot was full outside, the pews full within. God was doing a hell of a business today, John Looney thought, eyeing the throng — better business than he had, of late, his mind on this goddamned O’Sullivan matter.

Looney — along with his trusted bodyguards Jimmy and Sean (on his right and left hand, respectively), as well as other more respectable members of the parish — knelt at the altar rail to receive communion. Among the morning’s last group to receive the Eucharist, Looney rose and returned down the aisle, the congregation all around kneeling in their pews in meditation. The choir sang in the Latin gibberish that the old man found so soothing — all this ritual was reassuring, the pomp and circumstance of it such wonderful theater, the trappings a delightful blend of fear and forgiveness, mass itself a droning reiteration of tradition and order in a cruel, chaotic world.

John Looney had no use for the empty cross of the Protestants, who insisted their Christ had risen, and that the cross should be a symbol of redemption. He embraced instead the cross of the Catholics, with Jesus in plain view, suffering, bleeding, living the life of hell-on-earth His father had willed to man.

The old man in his well-pressed, somber dark suit and tie looked like a Methodist preacher himself; but the irony was lost on him. Looney sidled into his pew, and with Jimmy and Sean’s help lowered himself at the padded kneeling bench; moments later — in the row behind him — a man spoke, not in a whisper, but softly enough that only Looney (and perhaps his boys) would hear.

“Hello, John.”

Looney did not need to turn to know Mike O’Sullivan knelt at the bench in the pew directly in back of him. “I’ll be damned,” the old man breathed.

O’Sullivan said, “Not a good churchgoer like you... Sean, Jimmy. Morning.”

Looney, almost smiling, said, “You’re a clever boy, Mike. Neutral ground — sanctuary. What do you want?”

“I want to talk... in private. Downstairs.”

Looney sensed the man behind him standing, and he got to his feet — batting off the help of his chowderheaded bodyguards — and, with a nod to Sean to let him pass, moved out of the pew. In a brown suit that looked somewhat the worse for wear, O’Sullivan stood waiting for Looney to fall in alongside him, and the two bodyguards followed as the two men moved together up the aisle toward the church entrance. Around them heads were bowed, as Latin call and response echoed throughout the cavernous church and sunlight filtered in colorfully through stained glass.

Near the front doors, to the left, were stairs that went down into the basement. Then the little group, footsteps ringing off cement, was in a corridor, off of which a large room could be used for various meetings and even banquets; Michael O’Sullivan, Jr., had attended a birthday party in that very room, the night the boy’s brother was killed in his stead.

Looney nodded to Sean and Jimmy to wait outside, and he and his former chief enforcer went through a small door into another room. O’Sullivan snapped on the lights, a few bare hanging bulbs exposing in their yellowish glow an unfinished windowless concrete area that had a crypt-like atmosphere, littered with religious artifacts, some of them stored, others just abandoned.

The old man and his younger ex-associate stood facing each other — no chairs were available, though they might have used one of the pews stacked around, amid kneeling benches, various plaster saints, and a bloody Jesus on the cross leaning against the wall, a bystander with more on His mind than the two of them.

Looney had a flash of the basement of his home, and the last good time he’d had with his two godsons, playing dice, rolling the “bones” against the concrete wall, losing to Peter. He was still losing to Peter, after all these weeks.

Above them the muffled sound of mass made the Latin even more indecipherable, providing a strange, otherworldly accompaniment to their conversation.

Emotion swelled through Looney’s chest; seeing Mike O’Sullivan — his other son, the better son — filled him with emotion, much of it contradictory: love, hate, pride, shame.

“And here I thought,” Looney said, letting the brogue roll, “I would never see you again.”

“Not alive,” O’Sullivan said flatly.

That hurt the old man, and he flinched as O’Sullivan thrust something toward him: a file, a manila folder, stuffed with papers and such.

“Read that,” O’Sullivan said. “Take out your glasses, if you like.”

Looney did not reach for the file his former soldier offered him.

O’Sullivan made his sales pitch: “It’s interesting reading, John. The kind of story the News specializes in... crime, sin, betrayal... It’s all there.”

Looney waved a hand: no. Shook his head the same way.

“Read all about it, John,” O’Sullivan said, as if hawking an extra edition of Looney’s paper. “Your son has been working for Chicago. When you turn down something as beneath your dignity... narcotics, forcible white slaving, union racketeering... Connor goes right ahead with it, with Capone’s blessing.”

Looney held up a palm. “Mike, please stop. Don’t waste your breath.”

Above them, Latin droned.

“Of course,” O’Sullivan was saying, “your boy’s been stealing from you for years... in league with your good friends, your business partners Nitti and Capone. He’s been keeping accounts open under the names of dead men — men like the McGovern brothers. I stood and watched him kill Danny, and I helped him kill Fin, and I did these distasteful things under the mistaken impression I was working for you. Doing your bidding — but I wasn’t.”

O’Sullivan dropped the file to his side; it was clear Looney would not accept it.

Finally the old man said, “Do you think I’d give up my son?”

“He’s been stealing from you, John.”

“You’re a father, Mike. My own son?”

“He betrayed you. Sold you down the river.”

“And you think I don’t know that?”

The simple question almost knocked O’Sullivan back.

The old man was smiling bitterly, shaking his head again, as if disagreeing with himself. “I know, Mike... I know what Connor’s done, and what Connor is. Hell, those things in that folder, I’m proud of him for ’em... it’s the only time he ever showed any goddamned initiative!”

Michael O’Sullivan had not expected this response from the old man. Right now, he felt as if he’d been struck a blow to the belly. This had been his last effort, one final chance to get through to the one man who could end the nightmare.

The old man’s face was a wrinkled mask of intensity, his blue eyes cold as ice, and yet blazing. “Listen to me, boy! I tried to avoid more bloodshed — I sent you an emissary with an offer of amnesty and money and freedom, and you butchered him to send me a message. Well, you wouldn’t accept my offer, so I did what was necessary.”

Above them, the congregation said, “Ah-men!”

O’Sullivan said, “I loved you like a father.”

“And I love you like a son... I always have. And I am begging you, boy, to leave... before there’s no leaving.”

“That sounds like a threat.”

Looney sighed. “I am too old and tired for threats. When did either of us make such idle comments? You can leave this town, this country, with your remaining son, and live long happy lives. Open a shop, buy a farm, or sit back and spend Capone’s money till Gabriel calls.”

“And if I don’t?”

The old man looked at him gravely. “Then you know how it will end.”

O’Sullivan felt he was talking to a brick wall, whose response to whatever he said was to fall on him; but he had to try again — he and this man had been close, so very close, and their heart-to-heart talks had gone long into many nights.

“Think it through, John. Capone and Nitti are protecting Connor, now — but when you’re gone, they won’t need him. They’ve been using him, manipulating him, positioning themselves to take over the Tri-Cities action.”

Looney’s smile was like a skeleton’s. “But I’m still alive, Mike — and as long as I’m alive, they won’t give you Connor. Now, Capone might steal from me — and if I were to look at that file, I believe it would be Frank Nitti’s fine Sicilian hand I would see at work, not the pudgy fingers of Capone — but in any case, the Big Fella would never have me killed.”

“I have a strongbox of Alexander Rance’s ledgers and files — this... ” O’Sullivan hefted the manila folder, “... is just the small part of it that applies to you.”

Looney grunted a humorless laugh. “And what would you do with this strongbox of information? Trade it back to Capone and Nitti for them giving you my son?”

“That’s right.”

“If you believe that, Mike, why are you here? Why take this risk? Or have you already figured out that those records wouldn’t have been in that hotel suite if someone didn’t want you to have them.”

O’Sullivan had considered this, but had not been able to sort it out; so he had to ask, “What do you mean, old man?”

“I mean Frank Nitti wants Capone’s chair, but he wants it to come to him by rights of succession, not violent overthrow. Voices within the Capone organization whisper to me that Nitti has paved the way for these federal indictments dogging Capone’s heels.”

O’Sullivan tried to absorb this twisted news. “Nitti is helping the feds?”

Looney nodded. “Oh, they don’t know he is... but he is. So you do not hold the cards you think you hold, Mike.”

O’Sullivan pointed at Looney. “When you’re gone, Nitti will kill Connor and take over here in the Cities. You know that, John — either way, this ends with your boy dead.”

“That may be. But I won’t be alive to see it. Anyway, do you expect me to give you the keys to his room and point the way for you to walk in, put a gun to his head, and pull the trigger? No. He’s my son. I’m his father. I will not do that.”

Quietly, as if praying, O’Sullivan said, “For your godson — Peter. For my wife — Annie.”

“No! No... Mike, how many men have you killed? Do you imagine they didn’t each have a wife? Children? A mother, a father? Didn’t Danny McGovern have a brother? Who were these men we killed, you and I — clay figures? Phantoms? Or men who lived and breathed, until we took that away from them, forever?”

“Soldiers kill soldiers. Your boy murdered a woman and a child.”

Looney’s eyes and nostrils flared; his false teeth flashed. “Open your eyes! Look around you — who do you see in this room? Only murderers, nothing but murderers, here. This is the life we chose, Mike... and the only certainty in this life is that we’ll be damned in the next one.”

Muffled Latin filled the silence.

Then O’Sullivan said, “My boy Peter is in heaven, with his mother. Michael will join them one day — many years from now.”

Looney winked at him. “If that’s what you want, boyo, do everything you can to make sure that happens. But never mind the next life — there’s still a life here on earth for you and your son. Reach out for that life, Mike... and take it! Leave us; go! It’s the only way out.”

“Not the only way.”

Looney nodded. “You could kill me,” he granted. “And then Nitti might give up Connor. But can you do that, son? Can you look me in the eyes and see me off to hell?”

“Suppose... ” For the first time O’Sullivan considered the possibility of taking Looney at his word. “... Suppose I do go.”

Looney nodded, pleased. “Go with my blessing, and take the money you’ve stolen with you.”

“Capone’s money.”

“I’ll replace it.”

“I took a lot.”

“I have a lot.”

O’Sullivan stared at the old man; the old man stared back.

“And what will you do, John, if I go?”

“Why, I’ll mourn you, Mike... mourn the son I lost.”

O’Sullivan wondered if this was more self-serving blarney, or came from Looney’s heart; then he had a sudden revelation: the answer to that question didn’t matter! When the time had come to choose between loyalty and blood, between sentiment and blood, even money and blood, Looney had chosen blood.

As he stepped from the room, leaving Looney to the plaster Christ, backing out into the corridor with his .45 drawn, keeping a close eye on Sean and Jimmy, O’Sullivan could not shake that thought: Looney had chosen blood.

And by the time he slipped away from the sanctuary of the church — the mass loud now, muffled no more, though still its arcane Latin self — O’Sullivan knew what had to be done.