Road to Perdition

by Max Allan Collins

  “Strike up the band!” Looney said, buoyantly, and the musicians began a bouncy reel, as the host turned to the assembled guests with a smile and another raise of his glass. O’Sullivan had already hustled the grieving, drunken brother out the front door, two of McGovern’s friends emerging from the crowd to follow.

  At the back of the room, protective arms again around the shoulders of her boys, Annie watched—trying not let alarm show in her face—as Connor Looney stepped from the sidelines to follow after her husband and Fin McGovern…and two of Fin’s tough roughneck chums.

  “What’s going on?” young Michael asked, looking up at his mother.

  “Nothing,” she said, cheerfully. “Nothing at all. These parties can get a little out of hand…Let’s have some food.”

  “I’m not hungry,” Peter said, not whining, just honest. “I can’t eat with that dead guy in there.”

  Michael said, “There’s cake.”

  Peter thought about it, then shrugged. “All right.”

  And the three of them headed for the buffet table, though Annie glanced back several times, not showing her worry, while her older boy sensed it, anyway. As his mother helped Peter maneuver a piece of cake onto a small plate, Michael slipped away.

  The boy went to the front door, which was ajar. He peeked out and saw Mr. Looney from behind, standing in darkness, looking out on the driveway and front lawn, at a small commotion.

  Michael’s father was helping the deceased’s brother, the one called Fin McGovern, walking the big man toward a truck, where two more big men had gone on ahead, waiting, their nasty expressions at odds with their funereal fineries. Connor Looney was bringing up the rear, trotting alongside Fin McGovern, who was almost falling down, he was so drunk.

  His father didn’t drink much—he’d never seen his father drunk, rarely seen him take a drink—but one of their neighbors, a man named McFate, was a sloppy, loud “lush” (that was the word Papa had used, speaking to Mama). So Michael could recognize Fin McGovern’s condition as drunkenness; and he even understood that the man had gotten this way out of his sorrow.

  What surprised Michael was the vehemence, the savagery with which Fin McGovern refused Connor Looney’s help, shoving the man away, yelling, “First I bury m’brother! Then I deal with you, m’fine boyo…”

  But Papa, on the other side of the drunken man, didn’t seem to take this very seriously, just saying, “Yeah, yeah, Fin…You’ll deal with all of us. But first get a good night’s sleep.”

  Papa kept walking Fin McGovern toward that truck, where the two other big men were milling and grousing amongst themselves, as they waited. As Papa helped Mr. McGovern up into the vehicle, the other men quieted down and lent a hand, then got in themselves, one behind the wheel, steadying Fin between them.

  But Connor Looney—once he’d been shoved—had stayed behind; and when he turned away from them, his face looked white and strange in the moonlight. Michael saw no expression in Connor’s face, and yet he knew that the man was furious. What Papa had taken as a drunken remark, “Uncle” Connor seemed to consider a direct threat.

  As the truck rumbled off down the driveway, its headlights cutting through the night like swords, Mr. Looney stepped out of the darkness and went down the steps to join his son and Papa, who were heading back to the mansion. They met at the bottom of the porch steps.

  “Is Fin all right?” Mr. Looney asked.

  “Needs to sleep it off,” Papa said.

  Shrugging, Connor said, “Yeah, he’s fine. Mike’s right. Lug just drank himself cockeyed, is all…I’ll have a little talk with him.”

  But Michael knew Connor’s casual words didn’t match up with that awful expression the man had worn, just moments before.

  Mr. Looney said, “Talk to him, but take Mike along.”

  “That’s not necessary, Pa—why waste both our time? I’ll be fine.”

  “Take Mike with you, I said.” Mr. Looney shook a finger at his son, as if Connor were a child, not a man. “And you just talk to the lad. Nothing more…We’ve had enough rough stuff, for a while.”

  What did that mean? Michael wondered. He glanced back to see if his mother had noticed his absence, and when he returned to his spying, Mr. Looney was coming through the door!

  But all his godfather did was tousle Michael’s hair and smile down at him, before moving back into where the mourners were having their party. Connor ignored Michael, but Papa seemed surprised, and not happy, about seeing him. When his father’s eyes meet his, Michael wondered if Papa knew he’d been spying.

  And Michael O’Sullivan, Sr., wondered what his son may have seen and heard—and, if so, what the boy had understood.

  While young Michael did not really understand why these supposedly sad people were having a party, he did enjoy himself, as the festivities got more lively. Plenty more people were at least as tipsy as Mr. McGovern had been, dancing to the band, which played lots of different kinds of music.

  The mourners seemed to like the reels best of all, and Mr. Looney, charming host that he was, would shuffle across the room, nodding to people, sometimes chatting with them, a glass of whiskey in hand—sometimes two glasses.

  Their mother danced with several of Mr. Looney’s men—oddly, never with Papa, who sat on the sidelines mostly, just watching—and she would whirl around, her hair flying, looking as pretty as the young unmarried girls. Several times Michael found himself wondering if Mama was drunk, too—but that seemed impossible. Still, he’d seen her pouring something from a silver thing into her coffee cup…

  Connor Looney, strangely enough, turned out to be a really good dancer. Much as he didn’t care for his so-called uncle, the boy enjoyed watching the man dance—he was really good, slick and smooth, like one of those dark handsome dancers in tuxedos in the picture shows. What was the name of that one actor? George Raft?

  Michael wasn’t the only one who enjoyed watching Connor dance—everybody kept an eye on him, and he got a lot of applause. The young woman he was dancing with was good, too; she had on more makeup than some of the other girls, and when she looked at Connor, she had a funny expression—like she was hungry or something.

  Probably Connor’s biggest fan was Mr. Looney, and Michael could tell Uncle Connor liked that—maybe it made up for being treated like a kid, outside. When Connor finished up the latest reel, he executed a deft dip that didn’t hide how drunk he was, or how pleased that Mr. Looney was laughing and clapping and proud.

  Michael had never seen a grown-up act like a child before—except maybe for drunken Mr. McFate next door (although their neighbor hadn’t been causing trouble since Papa “talked” to him).

  Even Mama was acting, if not like a kid, kind of…young. His mother, after dancing with another of Mr. Looney’s men, flounced over to Papa, on the sidelines, and she was out of breath and smiling and laughing. The boy didn’t hear their exchange.

  “Kiss me,” Annie said to her husband, slipping an arm around him.

  He just looked at her. “You’ve had too much to drink.”

  She arched an eyebrow. “Maybe I need it.”

  “The children.”

  “…Do you really think this is a good time to play holier than thou?”

  “Annie. Please.”

  “Can I get you something, darlin’?”

  “No.”

  A bit of a weave was in her walk as she headed to the table where she could get coffee and something to spike it with. She was just doing that when, from the stage, came a gentle rainfall of piano notes—the opening chords of an Irish air.

  As “aaahs” issued forth from the crowd, all eyes were turning toward the piano, along one side of the room, where John Looney sat, playing. The room had gone otherwise silent when Looney looked up, caught O’Sullivan’s eye, and with a bob of the head, motioned him over. Moments later, O’Sullivan was sliding in next to the old man on the piano bench.

  Annie, cup of coffee in hand, swiveled to watch. So did Michael, off to one side,
eating a slice of cake, finally. Peter somehow wound up standing next to Connor Looney, and the two drank in the sight of their respective fathers melding musically, as O’Sullivan played along with Looney, hesitant at first, but gradually catching up.

  The beautiful melody had people swaying, eyes tearing; but then—with a leprechaun twinkle—the old man shifted gears, starting in on a jig. O’Sullivan stopped, then joined back in, keeping up easily now. Looney would play an improvised variation on a phrase, as a sort of challenge, and O’Sullivan would play it back at him.

  The crowd loved it, laughing, clapping along. To Michael, this was as amazing a sight as it was a sound. His father, who usually seemed so austere, was having a good time! Something moved the boy, seeing his Papa next to Mr. Looney, who was so much like a father to Papa, just as he was like a grandfather to Michael and Peter. To see Papa playing so freely, beside Mr. Looney, made Michael happy…though, oddly, his eyes were tearing up, as if he were sad.

  Annie O’Sullivan could only smile and shake her head a bit, knowing that her husband would do anything that terrible wonderful old man might ask. And soon she too was caught up in it, as the music built in tempo—phrase and answer, phrase and answer.

  Michael noticed his brother standing next to the scary Connor, who was also clapping along, grinning, watching—but something about the man’s expression reminded Michael of Connor’s face earlier, in the moonlight. The man’s mouth was smiling, but his eyes sure weren’t.

  After the piano duet had built to a big, improvised, train wreck of an ending—which had the mourners laughing and applauding, wildly—Looney turned to O’Sullivan, held open his arms, and the two men embraced.

  Peter, next to Connor Looney, looked at the grown-up next to him; the slender, dark-haired man was an odd duck, the boy thought—something really strange about his eyes. They were always sort of half-closed, like any second he could fall sleep.

  But most of all, the really weird thing, was how the man smiled all the time. Peter wondered about that, and being a child, he decided to ask.

  “Why are you always smiling?”

  And Connor Looney looked down at him, the smile still going. “’Cause it’s all just a goddamn joke.”

  The boy stood frozen for a few moments, then scurried off, disturbed, terrified, and yet strangely exhilarated, at hearing the lord’s name taken so carelessly in vain.

  Several hours later, at home, in his pajamas, Michael was in the hallway, padding back from the bathroom, when he heard muffled voices. Pausing by his parents’ bedroom door, he could make out both his mother and his father, talking…more Mama than Papa, maybe. Were they…arguing?

  Desperate to know, and yet not wanting to, he headed quickly back to the bedroom he shared with Peter. The lights had been officially out for some time, and Peter had been asleep for maybe half an hour; but Michael—as was his habit—was up late, reading.

  Crawling back under the covers, he picked up the flashlight and held it over the book he was reading—The Lone Ranger Rides, a Big Little Book. He loved the fat little books, which were about four inches wide and four inches tall and two or three inches thick—on each page at left was text, and on each page at right a full-page picture.

  Most of the Big Little Books (ten cents each at the dime store) featured comic-strip characters, like Dick Tracy and Little Orphan Annie; Michael’s favorites, though, were the western heroes, like Tom Mix from the movies and the Lone Ranger from radio. He flew through the thick books, gulping down the words, inhaling the pictures, each of which had a caption: “Moonlight streamed into the room.” Unless he was in the middle of a sentence, he would always look at the picture first, and then read the caption, and finally the page of text. He flipped a page, revealing a shadowy figure climbing in a window: “A man climbed in the window.”

  The captions always told you what your eyes had already seen, yet somehow the repetition made everything seem more important, more suspenseful…

  “Michael?”

  He jumped, even though it was just Peter’s voice.

  “What?”

  “I had a bad dream.”

  “Go back to sleep.”

  “…It was about Mr. Looney’s house.”

  “Peter, it’s just a house.”

  “The house was scary in my dream.”

  “It was scary when we were over there—there was a dead body in it.”

  “…Is that why I had a bad dream?”

  Michael wanted to get back to his reading. “Gee, I wonder. It’s a big old house, with a dead body and a bunch of drunk people. But it’s still just a house. Go back to sleep.”

  Silence.

  Then Peter asked, “Is Mr. Looney rich?”

  “What do you think?”

  “Richer than Babe Ruth?”

  Interested suddenly, Michael leaned on his elbow, thinking about his little brother’s question. “Sure—richer than the Babe, even…and the Babe is richer than the president.”

  “Wow…How about us?”

  “What do you mean, ‘how about us’?”

  “Are we rich, Michael?”

  “No, stupid…but we’re richer than some people, I guess.”

  Michael heard Peter getting settled in his bed, again; relieved, the older boy returned to his reading. The first part of the story was about the bad things the outlaws did; later would be the good part, when the Lone Ranger got even.

  “Michael?”

  “What!”

  “You don’t have to be mad.”

  “…What?”

  “What does Papa do?”

  “What do you mean, what does he do?”

  “What’s his job?”

  Looking at the Lone Ranger’s picture—he was on his horse, next to Tonto, his Indian friend—Michael said, “He works for Mr. Looney. You know that.”

  “Why?”

  “Well, you know. Our grandpa died before we were born, and Mr. Looney sort of…stepped in. Looked after Papa.”

  “I know all that. That’s not what I mean.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “What does Papa do for him, Michael? What’s his job?”

  Michael turned the page. The picture was of Beasley, the rancher, in his bed at night, sitting up to turn toward the sound KLIK! And the caption said, “Beasley heard the click of a gun.”

  Peter said, tauntingly, “You’re not telling me, ’cause you don’t know.”

  “Do so.”

  “Do not.”

  Michael said nothing, studying the picture of the frightened rancher.

  Peter was saying, “You don’t know any more than I do…and I’m younger than you.”

  Michael, not wanting to admit that Peter was right, said, “Papa goes on missions for Mr. Looney…They’re very dangerous—that’s why he takes his gun along…” Michael turned the page. “Sometimes the president sends Papa on missions, too—because Papa was a hero in the war and all.”

  Peter, sitting up now, covers in his lap, thought that over. Finally the younger boy said, “You’re just making that up.”

  “I am not!”

  Peter rolled over in bed, with a sigh, facing the wall as he said, “It’s all just a goddamn joke…”

  Alarmed, Michael sat up. “Peter—Peter, don’t ever say that word.”

  The younger boy, without turning, said, “I heard Uncle Connor say it.”

  “Well, he’s a grown-up, and not a very nice grown-up, either.”

  “He’s Mr. Looney’s son, isn’t he?”

  “Why don’t you use that word in front of Papa and see what he thinks?”

  Now Peter sat up, in alarm. “Don’t tell him I said it!”

  “I won’t, I won’t. Just don’t say it again.”

  “…Okay.” Peter curled back up in bed.

  Michael read a few pages, then he said, “Peter? You still awake?”

  “Yes.”

  “I heard Uncle Connor use the other bad word…the really bad one.”

  Pet
er rolled over and faced Michael again. “The one that Billy used that time?”

  “Yes—the word Sister Mary Teresa used the soap to wash his mouth out with because of.”

  Even in the near-darkness, Michael could see Peter’s eyes were wide, whites showing all around. “He must really be a bad man…I don’t care if he’s Mr. Looney’s son, I think he’s scary. Scarier than that house, even.”

  “I think you’re right. Go to sleep.”

  “Turn off the flashlight and I will.”

  “…Okay.”

  Michael put the Big Little Book, folded open to his place, on his nightstand. The boys said goodnight to each other, and Michael hoped he wouldn’t have any nightmares. If he did, he figured it wouldn’t be that house or even the dead body that gave them to him, or even the Frankenstein monster.

  Most likely it would be the boogeyman that was Uncle Connor.

  FOUR

  My brother Peter and I attended a private Catholic school called the Villa de Chantal, a sprawling Gothic affair of spires and stained glass peeking through trees on the bluff—not far from the Looney mansion, actually.

  None of those stories you hear about rulers on the knuckles and other severe forms of corporal punishment pertain to the Villa—the nuns were charming and gracious, and wonderful teachers (“It’s in a nutshell,” Sister Aloysius would say, meaning we were supposed to get all the aspects of a subject tied together).

  The Villa went from second grade all the way through high school, so it became a little world a child would live in. Not everyone was from the Tri Cities—the girl students, who outnumbered us boys, were from almost everywhere, though mostly from Chicago. Dorms were strictly for the girls—even most of the local girls stayed there—and only they could eat in the beautiful dining room. Peter and I always packed a lunch, and ate it out in the courtyard, around which the complex of buildings was built, where we played games and sports and generally horsed around, under the nuns’ wary supervision.

  I do remember some of the other kids whispered about Peter and me, because our father worked for John Looney. I remember my confusion that the gentle man who was my godfather was also the stuff of grisly local legend. Most kids would never cross 20th Street, not wanting to go near the looming Looney house. You see, older children told the younger ones that Looney was hiding in his mansion, waiting to capture little children and take them inside and grind them up into sausages.