Road to Perdition

Two

John Looney’s mansion was on 20th Street in the area known in those days as the Longview Loop — so-called because this bluff area had been made accessible by, first, horse-drawn trolleys and, later, electric streetcars. This was Rock Island’s Knob Hill — doctors, lawyers, and old money. Looney must have been considered an outsider, where some of these high-society types were concerned, though I certainly wasn’t aware of it.

My brother and I went to a private Catholic school — the Villa de Chantal — not far from the Looney mansion. My legs start to ache when I think of peddling my bike up that hill — and back then the streets were brick. At 16th Avenue and 20th Street stood the building where carriers would pick up their copies of Looney’s Rock Island News — Looney’s Roost, we called it. Several locations around town, including Looney’s drugstore, were sort of substations.

Wealthy though he was, Mr. Looney was a man of the people — a Catholic. Most of Rock Island’s wealthy Irish were Orangemen, Protestants, while most Irish Catholics were laborers, skilled and unskilled. My father was working-class poor and had grown up in the area known as Greenbush. He’d been in a gang in that rough part of town, though thanks to Sacred Heart Church there had also been a baseball team and other more wholesome recreational activities.

Still, looking back, I can see that my father — when he was my age — must have been a young roughneck. And when Mr. Looney took my father under his wing, he gave our family a life my real grandparents could never have provided.

The next afternoon, a Saturday, the overcast sky suggested the imminent arrival of an overanxious night. Young Michael could think of better ways to spend any part of a Saturday than at a funeral; but he knew not to object — particularly since Papa had said nothing more about the infamous briar pipe... and had obviously not shared his son’s dire misdeed with Mama.

Papa had gone out to pull the car around close to the house and get the engine going, to provide his family with a warm car on this cold day. And Michael was the first to join his father, scrambling into the backseat. Papa’s eyes probed him in the rearview mirror.

“Michael,” his father said.

“Yes, sir?”

“This is a solemn occasion. I don’t want to see those dice... all right?”

“Yes, sir. No, sir.”

“I don’t care if your godfather instigates it. No gambling.”

Papa meant Mr. Looney.

“Yes, sir,” the boy said, nodding. “Because it’s a funeral.”

“It’s a wake — that’s a little different. But I don’t want gambling because gambling is wrong.”

“How is a wake different from a funeral, Papa?”

“It’s a kind of... celebration.”

“Why would anybody celebrate someone dying?”

His father’s eyes in the rearview mirror grew thoughtful. Then he said, “It’s a celebration of the dead person’s life — a sort of a send-off.”

“An ‘old country’ thing, right?”

“Right.”

Soon Papa was driving, Mama next to him, Michael and Peter in back, everyone in their church-going finery. The boys, like their father, wore suits with ties and vests. Papa was all in black, even his tie, and Mama’s navy-blue dress was so dark it too was almost black.

“Papa?” Peter said.

“Yes,” Papa said, his eyes on the road.

“Did you know the man who died?”

“Not very well.”

“... How did he die?”

“An accident.”

“In a car?”

“At work.”

This was no surprise to Michael; he knew this was the dead man in the headlines yesterday, whose family Mr. Looney was helping out by holding the wake at his mansion.

But Michael was also aware that the paper he sold — the Looney-owned News — was often at odds with the Argus and other papers in the Cities. Who was telling the truth? Papa would know...

“What happened to the man, Papa?” Michael asked.

His father’s eyes went from the road back to the rearview mirror. “He choked to death smoking a pipe.”

Michael almost laughed, Peter, too, but then both stifled it, as his mother glanced first at Papa, then at her eldest son, with her brow knit in curiosity. The boy felt lucky, at that moment, that his mother so seldom asked his father what he meant by the sometimes puzzling things he said.

Though Mr. Looney was their godfather, the boys had seldom been to the mansion. They would see their surrogate grandfather at their own home (when he came by to see Papa), or one of his restaurants (he liked to buy them pancake breakfasts), or Water Tower Park (with its carnival-type rides) for Looney employee picnics. Michael had even been to the newspaper offices, and had been given a tour of the printing facility by Mr. Looney himself.

For the first time, however, as their automobile rolled up the winding driveway, Michael viewed the Looney mansion as not just impressive, but ominous. Probably the dark sky, and the funereal occasion, were giving him this impression, the boy knew... but the massive castle-like structure, with its sand-color brick and reddish tile roof and fat formidable twin towers bookending the main building, loomed like a gothic haunted house. Maybe it was the vaguely Arabic archways mixed in with the otherwise medieval look of the place. Whatever the case, Michael shuddered, a chill running through him that had nothing to do with winter.

Out in front of the mansion were a number of cars and, oddly, several trucks. Mourners of every social station — rich and poor alike bedecked in their finest apparel — were trooping up into the house with the weary inevitability of the occasion.

Mama was carrying a covered dish, the crock containing a corned beef casserole that was something of a specialty of hers. The boys had taken the lead, heading up the cement steps to the landing where massive doors waited. Michael’s younger brother was limping.

“What’s wrong with Peter?” Annie asked her husband. “He doesn’t need new shoes, does he?”

“He might,” O’Sullivan said. But he was eyeing his sons suspiciously.

The boys waited on the stoop until their father opened the door for them; their mother, crock in hand, went in first, followed by Peter and Michael, then Papa, filing into a long wide hallway that set the tone for the mansion. They had entered into a high-ceilinged world of walnut paneling and mahogany trim, of parquet floors and oriental rugs, Tiffany lamps and velvet upholstery, ornate mirrors and shimmering chandeliers.

Despite the Sunday finery, it was clear even to an eleven-year-old like Michael that many of the mourners in this entryway contrasted sharply with the lavish surroundings. These were grizzled working men and their careworn wives and their scruffy children, sometimes grandparents, too, ancient-looking with sunken eyes and wrinkled-paper skin and Sunday clothing that dated to the turn of the century.

Hat in hand, their father was guiding them through this chattering, sometimes laughing throng, toward a sitting room.

Peter whispered to his mother: “If the man died, why are they laughing?”

“It’s better to be happy than sad,” she said, “because the man is with God now.”

“But there’s nothing wrong with respectful silence,” their father put in, his eyes tight in an otherwise blank face.

In the sitting room, a respectful silence, even an anguished one, was indeed on hand, draping the proceedings like a shroud. Relatives and friends were gathered here, seated on all sides. A parlor to the left, its doors folded open wide, served as the visitation area, elaborate flower arrangements surrounding the open coffin, which rested on a bed of ice, buckets catching dripping water.

Michael was wondering what the ice was for when his father leaned over to him and said, “Preserves the body.”

“Oh,” the boy said.

He and his father were walking in lockstep toward the coffin, but his brother Peter and Mama lagged behind.

Wide-eyed, horrified Peter came to a stop and tugged his mother’s sleeve. She looked down at him as he said softly, “I don’t want to go up there.”

“It’s all right, honey,” she said gently. “Come on... ”

But Peter held his ground, and Mama gave in. They stood just inside the room as Michael and his father went to the coffin and knelt before it and prayed.

Michael was still praying when he peeked over the casket rim at the body. The dead man looked strange: his skin was waxy, pale as spilt milk, his lips and cheeks touched with clownish red; and weirdest yet, pennies covered the corpse’s eyes.

Sneaking a sideways glance, Michael saw his father was still praying — something intense in his face.

“Amen,” O’Sullivan said, finally.

Then the father noticed his son staring at him and said, “The pennies?”

The boy nodded.

“He has to pay the toll to get into heaven.”

They got to their feet, and turned away from the casket. Michael, still mulling that over, asked, “Does that work?”

“I don’t know. What do you say we light a candle for him at St. Pete’s, just to make sure?”

The boy nodded again.

That was when a husky, unmistakable brogue-touched voice boomed through the room: “Who’s got a hug for a lonely old man?”

The attention of all four O’Sullivans flew to the commanding presence standing just inside the room, in vest and shirtsleeves, his arms thrust wide: John Looney.

The two boys ran to their substitute grandfather, filling his outstretched arms.

Annie O’Sullivan watched, fighting feelings of contempt for the man who had done so much for them. The lanky, almost tall, white-haired, white-mustached paterfamilias had been a rakishly handsome young man — Looney had harbored theatrical ambitions prior to politics and law (and crime) — and even now, in his seventies, his powder-blue eyes, Apache cheekbones and strong chin gave him the sort of distinctive good looks many a lady (not Annie) still sighed over.

But of late Annie noted a certain shambling gait, and a wearied, even haunted expression, that indicated John Looney might feel some small burden, anyway, carrying so many sins on his shoulders. She sometimes felt a hypocrite, knowing she and her family thrived thanks to this devious devil; and she tried not to think of what deeds her husband might be carrying out for the godfather of their sons.

She seldom raised the issue with her husband, who would say, “We don’t question how Mr. Looney makes his money. It’s not our place. We won’t speak of it.”

And the boys did so love this old man.

Looney was playing a game with them that was almost a ritual by now. “Now which is which?” he said, gazing down at the boys, a pointing finger traveling from Michael to Peter and from Peter to Michael.

Peter began, “I’m—”

“Don’t help me!” A fingertip touched one nose. “Michael... ” And then another nose. “... and Peter.”

The boys groaned and laughed at this purposeful misidentification.

An arm around either boy, Mr. Looney looked across the room where Papa and Mama stood side by side now, the casket just behind them.

“Annie,” he said quietly, with a nod, “Mike... Thank you for coming. You brighten a dark day.”

Papa twitched a small smile, shrugged a little.

Mr. Looney’s eyes widened and his head went back. “Is that heaven I smell?”

Michael didn’t smell heaven, not in this room, but Mr. Looney apparently referred to his mother’s fabled casserole dish.

She smiled awkwardly by way of response, and then, turning to Papa, said, “I should take this out to the kitchen. If you’ll excuse me... ?”

Mr. Looney gestured with an open hand. “Only if you’ll promise me a dance, later.”

She smiled again, just as awkwardly, and that might have been a nod; then she eased away from Papa, through a side door into the kitchen.

Mr. Looney looked down in mock confusion at the boys. “Who is that woman?”

Michael and Peter giggled at this jest; their father didn’t — his eyes were going past them, to the mourners in the sitting room.

Mr. Looney knelt. To Michael he whispered, “Did you bring the necessary equipment?”

Michael nodded, but eager Peter said, “Yes!”

Mr. Looney stood, still with his arms around his godsons, and said to Papa, “I have urgent business with these gentlemen. Please excuse us.”

O’Sullivan watched as Looney led the boys away, in a conspiratorial huddle, and knew exactly what they were up to, and could only smile about it. A little.

Moving into the sitting room, various mourners and Looney minions nodding to him respectfully, O’Sullivan made his way to a table piled with food and drink — appetizers, sandwiches, punch, hard liquor. He helped himself to a glass of whiskey: he needed it.

When he raised the glass for a sip, O’Sullivan noticed brawny Fin McGovern, in his best suit, standing nearby — a bottle of bourbon in one hand, like a Molotov cocktail he was about to throw.

McGovern — in his forties, the oldest of the brothers who had just lost their youngest, Daniel, the man in the casket — seemed to be studying O’Sullivan. His eyes might have glared had they not been slightly bleary.

“Fin,” O’Sullivan said with a nod, and a toast-like gesture of the whiskey glass. “My condolences. Danny was a good boy.”

McGovern’s unblinking gaze held on O’Sullivan for several long moments; then the dead man’s brother said, “I’m sure that would warm the cockles of his heart.”

And with a disgusted grunt that was almost a laugh, McGovern strode away.

O’Sullivan watched him go, hoping he’d just experienced the worst of it, convinced that was just the beginning.

In the basement of the mansion, O’Sullivan’s youngest son had removed a shoe, tilting it to allow a pair of dice to roll from the toe into the heel. The boy plucked out the dice and passed them to Mr. Looney, who said solemnly to his godsons, “Gentlemen — let’s play craps.”

Michael watched with delight as the old man shook the dice in his cupped hands, then shook them some more; the old man kissed his clasped hands, tossed the dice in the air, caught them deftly, before lifting his left leg and firing them at the far cement wall, from which the dice bounced and rolled to a stop to the tune of the boys’ laughter.

Mr. Looney had a grace to him, and a sense of fun, that gave Michael a warm glow.

His mother upstairs, however, was feeling a chill. When she had entered the spacious, up-to-date kitchen, filled with wives busy preparing the evening’s buffet, the room was alive with feminine chitter-chatter. But upon her greeting (“Hello, Rose... how are you, Helen?”), all bantering had come to a halt.

Feeling like a leper but not knowing why, Annie looked for a place to set down her covered dish. The chattering did not resume — the silence quickly became oppressive.

She found a place for her casserole on one of the tables, several of which were already laid out with scores of dishes, and went to a counter, helping herself to a cup of coffee. Gradually conversations resumed, none involving Annie, as the women drank coffee and/or liquor, smoking, relaxing, sampling one another’s cooking.

Annie found a chair at a table, and though the others were all around her, she sat alone, with her cup of coffee.

Finally heavy-set Mrs. Begley (her husband worked in Looney’s soda-pop bottling plant) settled herself down in a chair next to Annie. Dirty looks flew their way, but Mrs. Begley — who’d always been friendly to Annie — seemed to pay no heed.

“You look like you could use a little company,” Mrs. Begley said, some Irish musicality in her voice.

“It’s nice to see a friendly face,” Annie said softly.

“What do you mean, dear?”

She leaned forward, whispered. “When I walked in here, everybody looked daggers at me.”

Mrs. Begley smiled and shrugged. “Oh, well, this has been such a shock, dear. Times like this, everyone’s under a terrible strain. Nerves ajangle.”

“I suppose.”

“You probably came in, all somber and respectful, them babbling like magpies — you just embarrassed them.”

“Oh. I see. I’m sure you’re right... I feel foolish, now... ”

The heavy-set woman raised a gesturing finger; the volume of her brogue-inflected voice heightened a notch. “And I want you to know, Annie O’Sullivan, I myself have said to more than one person, I think it’s a brave and honorable thing, you coming to pay your respects like this.”

Annie frowned. “What do you mean?”

Another shrug. “Well, dear, frankly — Danny McGovern’s wake? Even I didn’t think you’d have the nerve to show your face.”

And Mrs. Begley’s smile froze into something that wasn’t a smile at all; then the woman rose and left Annie alone again.

Confused yet embarrassed, Annie got up and left the kitchen, aware suddenly that this wake had implications that went beyond what little her husband had told her.

In the basement, the boys were doing much better than their mother. Mr. Looney sat on the floor, his back to the wall, apparently devastated, mopping his brow with a handkerchief. He’d been wiped out by the boys of an astonishing sum: one dollar.

“The chief of police is upstairs, you know,” Mr. Looney said. “There are laws against highway robbery!”

“We won fair and square,” Peter said, hands on his hips.

“I know hustlers when I see ’em,” the old man growled.

“No hustle, old-timer!” Michael said gleefully.

“Pay up!” Peter said.

Mr. Looney held out his hands and the boys each took one, to help him up, but their godfather was the one hustling: he pulled them down to him, drawing them close, arms around them as he kissed their foreheads. The boys hugged the old man back.

“Michael,” Mr. Looney said. “Fetch your dollar — jacket pocket in my study — before I come to my senses and call the cops.”

Michael got up, headed toward the stairs, then turned and said, “When I’m gone, don’t go gypping my kid brother!”

The old man’s eyes flared with mock indignation. “That’s slander!”

“You’ll have me to answer to, you sidewinder!” Michael enjoyed using the word he’d heard the Lone Ranger use on the radio.

Mr. Looney called out after him. “I’m quakin’ in me boots!”

Michael ran up the steps and then wove through the throng of mourners and took the big winding stairway up to the second floor, where most of the lights were out. Though night had not yet fallen, the overcast day added to the general gloominess of the big house with its dark woodwork and Victorian furnishings, and the boy’s giddy mood shifted straightaway into apprehension.

This uneasy frame of mind was heightened when, as he started down the second-floor hallway, a man and woman emerged from a bedroom, kissing each other. The boy knew they were drunk — what his mother called “tipsy.” In their twenties, the man wore a nice dark suit that was strangely rumpled, the woman in a thin, almost flapperish dress; they didn’t seem to know they were at a sad occasion.

Ducking into a doorway, watching as if this were a car accident, Michael couldn’t believe his father would have found appropriate, even for the “celebration” of a wake, this kind of behavior: the man was pressing the woman against the wall, fondling her, touching her in all sorts of places. The couple’s expression of affection — blatantly sexual — was beyond the boy, and certainly bore no resemblance to the kind of affection he’d observed between his parents.

When the couple stopped their smooching, and laughingly, unsteadily passed by his hiding place, they didn’t see him, and Michael was relieved. He felt odd — vaguely dirty, as if he were the one who’d done something wrong.

Mr. Looney’s study was at the end of the corridor — Michael had sat with his godfather in the book-lined room several times (they’d even played craps up there before). So he knew his way and went in, but the darkness of the room — the curtains were drawn — and the smell of cigar smoke turned his uneasiness to fear.

On the leather couch to one side of the chamber, Connor Looney had stretched out, in his vest and shirtsleeves, a glass of dark liquid balanced on his stomach; he was smoking a cigar and the scent of it hung in the air, rich, masculine, nasty. Lanky, hooded-eyed Connor was in his thirties, a dark-blond handsome fellow who resembled his late mother.

Connor looked right at Michael, his face blank in that way Papa sometimes had. “Hiya, kid.”

“Hello.”

“Come on in — shut the door. Light hurts my eyes.”

Michael let the door close behind him. He and his godfather’s only son were alone, Connor’s cigar glowing orange in the darkness.

“Which little O’Sullivan are you? Remind me.”

“Michael, sir.”

“‘Sir?’” Glass of dark liquid in hand now, Connor leaned up on his elbow and his grin looked weird. “You don’t have to call me ‘sir.’ I’m not your old man.”

Michael, wondering what Connor was doing off alone with the house full of guests, said, “No, Mr. Looney.”

“Call me Connor. Hell, make it Uncle Connor. After all, doesn’t my old man treat you like grandkids?... since he doesn’t have any of his own. Suppose that’s my fucking fault.”

Michael said nothing, alarmed at hearing this legendary swear word (the only other time he’d heard it, a schoolyard bully had been expelled for its utterance). Feeling very nervous, he eyed his godfather’s jacket, slung over the back of the desk chair.

“You want something, kid?”

“No, Uncle Connor.”

With a shrug, Connor looked away from the boy, stretching back out, resting the drink on his stomach again, puffing the cigar, making smoke rings, whose floating ascent and ultimate demise he studied with those weird half-shut eyes of his.

Michael looked at the jacket over the back of the chair, where the dollar his godfather owed him awaited; but it seemed miles away, and he was scared. Connor Looney frightened him and he wanted to get out of there, right now.

So he did.