Road to Perdition Read online

  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 agai
n, 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.

  THREE

  John Looney’s mansion provided an unrivaled view of the Mississippi River Valley, including the mansions below his on the bluff, which of course allowed him to look down on high society. In those days, only one bridge joined the Illinois and Iowa sides of the river—the government bridge, giving access to Arsenal Island from both shores—and most folks invested a nickel and crossed the Mississippi by ferry. The ferry—a riverboat called the Quinlan—included (after sundown) gambling and music.

  Research tells me that Bix Beiderbecke and Louis Armstrong frequently played on the Quinlan, but the only time I heard the Quinlan’s jazz band was at Danny McGovern’s wake. Maybe Bix was there, but not Louis. As distinct as my memories are of that afternoon and evening at the Looney mansion, I would remember a black man—”colored,” we said back then—among the musicians assembled in the grand parlor.

  Michael O’Sullivan, Sr., sat along the wall in a corner of the grand parlor, in a comfortable armchair, a softly glowing lamp on an end table between him and John Looney, sunk down in his own, rather more throne-like chair; the two men listened as the band played a ragtime tune. Night had come, and such liveliness was to be expected at a wake; the jazz boys from the Quinlan ferryboat were throwing in an Irish tune now and then, a reel here, a jig there—a tenor singing “Danny Boy” had elicited sobs, and Looney himself had instructed the musicians to avoid the number for the rest of the evening.

  “Where’s Fin?” Looney—hands on his knees, rocking gently—asked O’Sullivan. It was almost a whisper.

  O’Sullivan nodded in Fin McGovern’s direction—the brawny Irishman was sitting alone on the other side of the room, keeping a bottle of bourbon company. Said bottle was no doubt near empty, O’Sullivan reckoned.

  “Has the boyo spoken to you?” Looney asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Any trouble?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Keep watch.”

  “I am.”

  His black suitcoat unbuttoned, Connor Looney—just enough weave in his walk to indicate he, too, had had his share of some bottle or other—leaned in on one side of his father, slipping an arm around the old man.

  “Well, isn’t this swell,” Connor said, nodding toward the dancing and drinking. “You put on a hell of a show, Pa. Hell of a show.”

  Looney touched his son’s arm—an affectionate gesture that put a warm look in Connor’s eyes, surprising O’Sullivan a little. “Show some respect, my boy,” the old man said, lightly. “All eyes are on us.”

  “As in ‘Irish eyes are smiling’?”

  “They’re not all smiling, son.”

  The band was playing a peppy version of “Ain’t Misbehavin’.”

  “Got a speech prepared, Pa?” Connor asked. “Nice and pretty?”

  “Words from right here,” his father, patting his heart.

  Looney leaned on Connor, bracing himself as he stood. “This tune seems to be winding down…best I catch them between songs.” He ambled away from them, toward where the band played on the little stage, leaving his chair to his son—the real son who now sat beside the surrogate.

  Looking out at the reveling mourners, Connor etched half a smile. “Danny sure had a lot of friends.”

  O’Sullivan couldn’t find any sarcasm in Connor’s words.

  So he gave the man a serious response: “He did indeed.”

  Now Connor looked at O’Sullivan, his handsome face twisted in its usual wiseguy fashion. “Think your wake’ll be this big?”

  “No idea.”

  Connor hitched his shoulders, looked toward his father, who was standing out in front of the band, now. “Guys like us, Mike, we don’t get no wake. We’re lucky to get buried on church soil.”

  Somebody tapped a glass with a spoon, silence settled in, and all eyes—including O’Sullivan’s and Connor’s—were on the stage, where John Looney stood, withdrawing a folded sheet of paper from his inside coat pocket.

  Looney looked out on the crowd, his sky-blue eyes moving from face to face, making each of them feel he spoke directly to them.

  “I welcome you to my home,” he said.

  Looney’s brogue seemed thicker when he spoke in public, O’Sullivan thought.

  “It’s good to have so many friends in this house again. Since Mary’s death, it’s just been me and my boy, walking around these big empty rooms…”

  He opened up the speech, looked at it for several long moments, then folded it back up.

  “I had a speech, but…truth to tell, it would be dishonest if I pretended I knew Danny well. But lose one of us, it hurts us all.”

  Around the parlor, murmurs of approval.

  “I’ll tell you what I do remember—and Fin, I know you’ll recall this, too—when Danny was on the high school football team? He’d done us proud all year. Then came state championship: six points behind, ten seconds left on the clock…and Danny threw the block of his lifetime…and took down his own quarterback!”

  Gentle laughter rippled across the room.

  “Mistakes—sweet Jesus knows, we all make ’em…wouldn’t be human, otherwise. Wouldn’t need a God, a savior, such case… Give me that bottle would you, son?”

  The band leader handed the bottle to the patriarch.

  “Great country we live in,” the old man said, without irony. “But it does have its quirks, doesn’t it? Against the law to a have friendly drink…” He leaned forward, bottle in one hand, raising a forefinger of the other, issuing a mock whisper. “Don’t tell the chief, now…”

  Rather bawdy laughter erupted as the portly chief of police made a show of turning his back, so as not to see this law being broken.

  Looney stood tall; his voice turned somber. “We drink today in our late compatriot’s honor.”

  Around the room glasses and bottles appeared, held high in the fashion of a toast, saluting the dead man. Watching this carefully, Michael O’Sullivan—on his feet now, as was everyone in the room but the musicians behind their stands—casually removed a small silver flask from a jacket pocket. He was not aware that his wife Annie—standing between their two boys, a protective arm around either—watched him closely, studying him as he listened to his “father” speak.

  His voice strong, loud, Looney said, “Let us wake Danny to God.” Then his voice grew even louder, and wry humor touched it now: “And may he be in heaven half an hour before the devil knows he’s dead.”

  Standing in back with his mother, young Michael—who had never before heard this traditional Irish commemoration—found the words fascinating, and disturbing. Why would a good person need to fool the devil? Had the man with the pennies on his eyes been a sinner?

  On the stage, Mr. Looney was introducing the brother of the dead man, “our good friend, Fin McGovern.”

  Michael O’Sullivan, Sr., was observing this tableau carefully.

  “Fin will now honor us with a few words,” Looney was saying, somehow managing to be light and serious at the same time, “words that I’m sure will have far more poetry than my own… Fin.”

  The burly brother of the deceased took the stage, and Looney gave him a fatherly hug. McGovern accepted the gesture, though stiffly…

  “Thank you, Mr. Looney…John.” Then the roughneck in his Sunday best turned toward the assembled mourners. “My brother Danny was not a wise man, nor was he a gentle man. Like many of us here, he worked with his hands…the sweat of his back, not his brow.”

  Smiles and nods blossomed around the room.

  “And it would be a shameful oversight,” McGovern said with a smile, though the moisture in his eyes glistened enough for O
’Sullivan to see, halfway back in the crowd, “not to admit that—with a snootful of liquor in him—he was a royal pain in the patoot.”

  Now a gentle wave of laughter rolled across the assemblage. O’Sullivan, however, was not smiling. Neither was his wife Annie, who—leaving the boys for a moment—slipped up beside her husband.

  “Why didn’t you warn me?” she whispered.

  O’Sullivan glanced at her, almost startled by her presence—and her question. He just shook his head.

  “This was not a natural thing, was it?” she asked, an edge in her voice, despite the softness of it.

  “Not the place,” O’Sullivan whispered back. “Not the time.”

  She returned to her children, while on the stage, McGovern continued his tribute.

  “For whatever his failings,” the burly brother was saying, “and Mr. Looney is right, Danny, like all of us, was human…He was a brave boy. A loyal boy. And he spoke the truth…sometimes to a fault.”

  An uncomfortable silence was settling over the crowd.

  “Oh, he’d have enjoyed this party, he would,” McGovern continued, rocking a bit, his unsteadiness showing. “Me and the family, we want to say thank you, to all of you…and most of all to our generous host.”

  These words seemed to relieve the mourners, the sarcasm not registering on many of them—though O’Sullivan knew. And Annie.

  “Where would this town be without Mr. John Looney, God love him,” McGovern said, voice trembling.

  A murmur of approval undulated over the room, Looney bowing his head, humble, grateful for such kind words.

  On wavering feet, McGovern turned to Looney, studying him. “I have worked for you many years now, sir…nearly half my life. And we have never had a disagreement…”

  Few in the room could have noted the shift in John Looney’s expression—the steel coming into his eyes. O’Sullivan did. He was already slowly working his way forward in the crowd.

  “But I have come to realize a hard thing,” McGovern said, voice quavering…Was it anger? Sadness? Both? “Looney rules his roost, much as God rules the earth. Looney giveth…Looney taketh away…”

  And O’Sullivan was on stage, now, making sure his expression seemed friendly as he took Fin McGovern’s arm—gentle but firm in his grasp—and walked him off the stage, as the mourners watched, uneasy, not certain what they had just witnessed.