Road to Purgatory

by Max Allan Collins

  Annie did not know what Mr. Looney had said to Michael, other than a job had been offered. At first Michael called it a chauffeur position, later referring to it as a bodyguard; occasionally, in passing, he called himself Mr. Looney’s “lieutenant,” as if he were still a soldier.

  Shortly after, Annie and Mike had married at Sacred Heart. Over the next several years, her husband’s responsibilities and his position grew in the Looney organization. They were invited to events at the Looney home (Mrs. Looney had died in the flu epidemic in 1914, and he lived alone with his son, Connor; two daughters were away at convent school).

  And before long the money grew, as well—first the O’Sullivans had a car; then this lovely home of theirs. And along the way, they had their son, Michael, Jr.

  Of course there were those who shunned the O’Sullivans for their affiliation with John Looney. Briefly the family attended St. Joseph’s, near the courthouse, but turned-up noses and whispered remarks among these good Christians put them off, and they returned to the simple church where they had ties.

  Many in the Tri-Cities, and not just the Irish, considered the lanky, mustached, handsome John Looney to be a living folk hero, an Irish American rebel and entrepreneur, battling the powers that be. A self-schooled lawyer, Mr. Looney had run for the state legislature as a Democrat but was defeated through trickery by corrupt opponents; he had looked around at the way his people were treated in the Tri-Cities, it was said, and swore he’d provide his own government outside the system for these disenfranchised souls. He would see to it that “Micks” like Annie’s husband got jobs, if not in his own enterprises, then at the area factories, where he had influence.

  Some had no real opinion about John Looney—he was just a colorful character who dressed in black like a riverboat gambler and had a flair for theatrics (performing as Irish Catholic martyr Robert Emmet in a one-man play). And of course, he was the man who helped the good citizens of the Tri-Cities skirt a bad law, the Eighteenth Amendment, seeing to it a fellow could have a beer…which many decent people considered a public service.

  But still others saw Looney as, simply, a gangster.

  Before they’d moved to this big house, Annie had once risked speaking to Michael about his working for Mr. Looney. She did not refer directly to the bootlegging, brothels, and gambling that were as much a part of John Looney’s empire as his newspaper, the Rock Island News. Nor did she speak of the pistol (brought home with him from the Great War) that Mike carried beneath his shoulder.

  All she’d said, serving him coffee in the kitchen after supper, was, “You’re respected, Mike. You did your people right proud, over there. You could work for anybody.”

  “I work for Mr. Looney,” he’d said. He lifted the filled coffee cup and said, “Thank you, dear.”

  She sat. “Some say Mr. Looney makes his money in sinful ways.”

  Mike had given her a hard look—almost cold. Certainly his words chilled her: “We don’t question how Mr. Looney makes his money. It’s not our place.”

  On very rare occasions, when she had dared refer to this subject, Michael would speak almost exactly those same words; more often, he would silence her with a look.

  And now in this grand house, with a wonderful son upstairs and another baby in the oven, Annie considered herself complied in whatever her husband and their patriarch did. What was the word, in the newspapers and magazines? She was an accomplice. She prayed for forgiveness, but she never spoke of her conflicted feelings to any priest—how do you confess to things you don’t know about?

  And don’t want to know about?

  Yet, the notion that her reserved husband was a “gangster” seemed an absurdity. Surely the whispered stories, the awful rumors, which she heard only the edges of, were gross exaggerations if not outright falsehoods.

  This was a man who did not swear. Who did not smoke. Who did not drink (in a rare candid moment, he had admitted to her…when she wondered why they couldn’t have a simple glass of wine now and again…that his father had been a good man who showed a bad side when he drank, and Mike’s mother had suffered because of it).

  And Annie had a deep and abiding faith in his faithfulness, where their marital bed was concerned, despite the loose women in the world of John Looney.

  The smell of corned beef and cabbage emanated from the kitchen—her recipe, but not her doing. Mike had hired help for them, a Greenbush girl. Mary Jane Murphy, a sweet, crude slip of eighteen, cooked indifferently and cleaned lackadasically, but was gentle, even loving with the child.

  And in her condition, Annie could not even bend over and pick the boy up.

  The girl was skinny, almost scrawny, and looked like a child playacting in maid’s cap and costume. Mike quietly suggested Annie be tougher on the lass, but Annie could not bring herself to do so: she had been a maid herself, for several of the wealthy families, the Baileys with their lumber, the Greggs with their factories.

  She had suffered cruelty at the hands of these “upper class” people, overhearing vile remarks that she recalled to this day… as when one of Rock Island’s wealthiest socialites cattily commented to another that Mrs. Bailey “could surely do better than a little Shanty Irish wench” like Annie.

  The socialite said she herself preferred colored help, acknowledging that their service cost more than Irish girls.

  No, Annie would not be a strict mistress where Mary Jane Murphy was concerned…at least as long as the wench stayed faithful to Annie’s recipes…

  Mrs. Michael O’Sullivan did particularly love to cook, but she also took pride in her housework; still, like many women, the enforced relaxation of pregnancy provided a blissful vacation. Mike was insistent that she take it easy—she’d lost a daughter, by miscarriage, last year—and assured her that this time, she’d deliver “right and proper,” having been conveyed to the hospital “in good time.”

  When the labor pains for their first child had come, Annie had been carried by her husband like a bride over the threshold up the hill to St. Anthony’s on Thirtieth Street. They had no car at that time, nor phone, and no neighbors did, either. Despite the pain she’d suffered, her memory of the event was a warm one—held in the loving arms of her husband, as he stepped gingerly over the railroad tracks, and strode up the hill, to save her and their son.

  John Looney had paid off their doctor’s bills. Rumor had it that Mr. Looney, shortly thereafter, contributed to the hospital’s new wing, in gratitude for the hospital’s policy of never turning away the residents of Greenbush.

  Certainly John Looney had been kind to their little family; he was like a grandfather to Michael, Jr. (much of the train set had been Mr. Looney’s doing), and looked upon Annie with affection, always with a wistful remark about how she reminded him of his late wife. From time to time, they had entertained Mr. Looney in their home, and the patriarch’s praise for her cooking was effusive and apparently genuine.

  Annie always made a point of inviting Mr. Looney’s son, Connor, but never had Connor accepted. She had noted a certain tension where Connor Looney was concerned, and suspected the man resented his father’s regard for her husband. Mr. Looney’s son, a little older than Michael, had a snake’s smile and awful dead eyes. That he and Michael often worked together gave her many an uneasy night.

  Definitely, the pages of her storybook life were frayed, here and there. Just last month, her son had sat in his short pants on the couch, bouncing, kicking his feet up, looking across his trains at his mother, who was seated with a novel by Gene Stratton Porter, her feet up on the ottoman.

  “Papa has a gun,” Michael said.

  “Yes, he does, dear.”

  “Why does Papa have a gun?”

  “He protects Mr. Looney.”

  “What is ‘protects’?”

  “Keeps him from harm.”

  “Mr. Looney’s nice.”

  “Yes, dear.”

  “Nice man.”

  “Yes, he is, dear.”

  The boy bounced.
“At church? Tommy said his mama said Mr. Looney’s the boogeyman.”

  She managed not to smile. “Well, he’s not, dear.”

  “Boogeyman can’t be hurt.”

  “I suppose not, dear.”

  “So why does Papa need a gun?”

  “Play with your trains, dear.”

  Though amused by this exchange, Annie had also been troubled. She’d spoken about it, after supper, to Mike, who said he would talk to the boy, and make sure his son knew the gun was not a toy.

  “You keep that thing under lock and key,” she said, in a rare scolding tone, “when it’s not on your person.”

  “I will,” he promised.

  Mike had been as good as his word, talking to their son, showing him the weapon, comparing it to a toy gun the boy had; and had been extremely discreet about the pistol, thereafter. He wore it to work, and then removed it and locked it away in a bedroom drawer, when he got home.

  Occasionally Mike traveled; sometimes he was gone for as much as a week. Nothing was said about why, save for possibly, “A friend of Mr. Looney’s needs help.” But in his absence, flowers would be delivered to her, the message always the same: “To Annie from your loving husband.”

  When Mike got home, Annie was still seated in the living room. Tall, broad-shouldered, somber, Mike bestowed a tiny smile upon her—but she could read something in it. A tiny sign of something, if not wrong, then…out of the ordinary.

  He removed his topcoat and hat, hung them in the front closet. He motioned upstairs, meaning that he was about to proceed with the ritual of disposing of his gun and shoulder holster in their bedroom, and she nodded.

  Soon, in his shirtsleeves but with his tie still on, looking like a shopkeeper in his suspenders, Mike deposited himself on the couch where not so long ago his son had been, brimming with questions about “Papa’s gun.”

  Sitting forward, eyes earnest, clasped hands hanging between bowed knees, Mike said, “I’m asking Miss Murphy to stay with you, this evening.”

  “Is that necessary?”

  “I’m afraid I have to go out.”

  “It’s not your poker night, is it?”

  “Mr. Looney business.”

  “Oh.” She shrugged. “No need, Mike. We’ll be fine, alone. As long as you’re not gone long.”

  “I’m not sure how long I’ll be gone. Could be late. You never know with these things.”

  She knew enough not to ask for a definition of “these things.”

  “Well,” Annie said, “perhaps we would be better off with Mary Jane here. Just in case.”

  “With you due so soon, I hate not to be here.”

  “I know, darling.”

  “If I ever thought I’d let you down…”

  “You never have and you never will. We’ll be fine.”

  He raised one eyebrow. “Oh, in Mary Jane’s capable hands, I’m sure you will be…If you have a problem, call the hospital number. I’ve made arrangements for an ambulance to come pick you up.”

  “Don’t be silly.”

  “Nothing silly about it. I don’t want anything to happen to you.”

  Or to our baby, she thought. But it went unsaid.

  “Shall we have a walk before dinner?” Annie asked.

  “Are you up to it?”

  “I have to get some fresh air or I’ll die.”

  “The park is out of the question.”

  “I know. Just up and down the block.”

  His smile was mocking, in a nice way. “I could just sit here and bask in the bouquet of your corned beef.”

  “Mary Jane cooked it.”

  A week ago he’d have made a face; but Annie had been schooling the girl. “If she sticks to your recipe, we’re a cinch for a feast.”

  They walked down toward the corner, slowly, Annie just trundling along, her gloved hand in his, her fur-collared coat not buttoned around her (that would have been an impossibility), him in his topcoat but without the fedora. In the spring or summer, the street was lushly lined with trees; now, in winter’s final days, their skeletal branches silhouetted themselves eerily against a dusk-tinged sky.

  “Please be careful tonight,” she said.

  “It’s just business.”

  A car rumbled by over the brick street.

  Then she commented, “We’re saving money, you know.”

  He nodded.

  “Nice nest egg,” she said.

  They were at the corner now. Stopped and looked at each other, breath smoking. “We could go somewhere else,” she said. “Live somewhere else.”

  He frowned slightly, just the faintest hint that her words had hurt him, somehow. “I make a good living.”

  “Oh, I know.”

  “Don’t you love your house?”

  “I never dreamed we could live like this.”

  He shrugged. “Then let’s go home.”

  Shortly, they were enjoying Mary Jane’s corned beef and cabbage, or most of the family was. Young Michael, recently graduated from high chair to oak youth chair, just picked at his food, which his mother had cut into small pieces.

  “Too salty,” the boy said.

  “Just eat half of it,” his mother said.

  “It’s nasty.”

  Mike looked sharply at his son.

  The boy lowered his gaze, which brought his eyes in closer proximity to the corned beef, and he shuddered.

  “I can’t help it,” the boy said. His lower lip extended; his chin crinkled in a familiar preamble…

  “If you cry in your food,” his father said matter of factly, “you’ll only make it more salty. Eat half of it. It’ll grow on you.”

  The boy frowned in horror. “Grow on me?”

  His mother covered her smile with a napkin.

  “I mean,” his father said, “someday you’ll acquire a taste for it. You’ll like it when you’re a man.”

  “I don’t wanna be a man,” the boy said, “if I have to eat this.”

  And he began to cry. The child’s stop-and-start wailing agony ricocheted shrilly off the kitchen walls.

  His father stood. Pointed. “Go to your room.”

  Still crying, but obviously relieved, the boy climbed down out of the youth chair with the help of Mary Jane, who walked him out of the kitchen. The boy halted and the maid almost stumbled.

  “Mama,” he said, pausing in the doorway, looking back at her with red eyes and a tear-streaked face, “will you read to me, anyway?”

  “Yes, dear.”

  “Daddy?”

  “Yes?”

  “Will you still tuck me in?”

  “I’ll think about it.”

  The boy smiled, just a little, through his tears, realizing his victory.

  Then the maid and the child were gone. Mike was reaching for his son’s plate to help himself to the extra serving when Annie began to laugh.

  “What are you laughing about?”

  “Cry in your food,” she said, “you’ll make it saltier.”

  He grinned. “Well…it’s what my pop said to me.”

  “And look at you today, the corned beef fiend.”

  Mike shrugged and dug in.

  Half an hour later, she managed, despite her girth, to embrace her husband at the door; she could feel the hardness of the pistol under his arm. She even managed to get up on tiptoes to kiss him on the mouth. Then she settled back on her sore feet and looked up at him, stroking his face.

  “Every time I leave the house,” he said, with a funny little smile, “you look at me like…like you’re trying to memorize this puss of mine.”

  “Maybe I am.”

  “Baby,” he said, “I memorized your kisser a long, long time ago.”

  And he gave her a quick smooch and slipped out.

  She stood in the doorway and watched him cross to the garage, wondering if he’d avail himself of further weapons from the arsenal out there, kept under tight lock and key.

  Annie O’Sullivan loved her life, her storybook life, and
yet every time her husband left the house, she had to wonder: how could there be a happy ending, when Mike worked for John Looney?

  TWO

  On Twentieth Street’s bluff, the formidable three-story structure rose castle-like, with its gabled red-tile roofs, ceramic lions, bay windows, sloped turrets, substantial dark-brick walls, and many-pillared porch. The mansion provided its owner a view of the Mississippi River second to none; but also on the mansions below, the homes of high society, his perch enabling the master of this domain to look down upon those who considered themselves his betters.

  This had given John Looney no small pleasure, over the years.

  The mansion’s interior had a warmth to the eye—walnut paneling, mahogany trim, parquet floors, oriental carpets, massive fireplaces—that did not extend to physical reality. The downstairs, with its high ceilings and various cavernous rooms, was prey to winter chill, wind whistling through, turning the place into the haunted house the local children had long ago deemed it. For all its elegance—Victorian furniture, velvet upholstery, stained glass, ornate mirrors, sparkling chandeliers—the mansion was (Looney had to admit it) good and goddamn cold.

  Only when a party—holiday festivities or a wedding reception or the occasioned wake—brought the warmth of other human beings into the sprawling place did Looney’s Roost seem a home, and he’d come to relish such gatherings, accordingly. With Nora gone these eight years, and his daughters off to boarding school, that left only himself and his son Connor to knock around these endless rooms.

  When Nora was alive, and the girls underfoot, Looney never conducted business in the mansion—would never think of it! He left such things for his law office or the Java House at the Sherman Hotel; or possibly out at Bel Aire, his second, less ostentatious mansion on the Rock River.

  Now, of course, parties at Bel Aire weren’t the family affairs the Roost occasionally put on; they were for men only…and a certain type of woman, the kind who fit in with cockfights in the barn, shooting matches in the yard, and drunken orgies upstairs.

  Bel Aire was where Looney entertained the Chicago boys, when they came to town. Looney had been aligned with Johnny Torrio for years, though Looney did not have much faith in the chunky scar-faced youth Torrio was grooming for his heir, a hot headed Sicilian named Capone.