Road to Perdition

by Max Allan Collins

  “I’m taking steps,” Maguire said.

  “Steps don’t make it,” Nitti said. “Try leaps.”

  “He’s hopping around a seven-state area.”

  “Look, I didn’t call to shoot the breeze,” Nitti said. “Just do what you have to do,” and doubled the photographer’s retainer.

  “That’s generous of you, Mr. Nitti.”

  “Wait till you see how generous I am,” Nitti said, “the day you find them.”

  Maguire, back in his Chicago flat, hung up the phone, after telling Nitti “this might take some time.”

  He returned to what he’d been doing—not work in his darkroom, for a change, rather a wall map he’d tacked up in his living room, removing a few of his framed death photos to make space. He had already indicated which midwestern banks held Capone money with a bold red dollar sign.

  Now he used red thumbtacks to show which banks had already been robbed. Once that was done, he traced between the red dots with a spread forefinger and thumb; try as he might, the photographer could find no pattern. Which of course was a pattern in itself, just not a very useful one.

  He spent the rest of the evening deep in thought, even as he cleaned the lenses of his cameras with methodical precision, and then identified—and studied—the photos he’d taken inside the O’Sullivan house, when he and other mourners had dropped by to give their condolences.

  Then Maguire went back to his wall map, looking at each bank that had not yet been robbed, as he rolled a cigarette, licking the paper, finally firing up with a golden lighter. Still seeing nothing, he walked away, doing make-work, like replacing the bulbs in his carrying case…and adding bullets to a secret compartment in the camera he’d carried into the diner a few weeks ago.

  He poured himself a glass of whiskey, smiling bitterly at the thought of O’Sullivan playing drunk, fooling him, making a patsy of him. Sipping the liquid, he idly, almost unconsciously, shot off flashbulbs with his other hand, as he sat on his couch and looked at the map on the wall…studying the nonpattern of O’Sullivan’s trail amid the lightning-like bulb bursts.

  They had robbed their fifth bank—in Loose Creek, Missouri—this morning; it was evening and the father and son were in a small family restaurant in Farmington, Iowa. The place had a homey feel—a few booths, more tables, picnic-style tablecloths, curtains on the windows, the light soft and warm and yellow.

  O’Sullivan and his son sat at a small table near an improvised dance floor, where a couple of couples danced to the radio—right now that new jazz singer, Bing Crosby, was singing “Where the Blue of the Night Meets the Gold of the Day.” The singer’s warm voice, his casual style, pleased O’Sullivan. Both he and his boy were having the meat loaf with mashed potatoes and creamed corn; both ate heartily.

  Their waitress—whose name BETTY was stitched on her neck-high apron—freshened O’Sullivan’s coffee. She was probably forty, a slender brunette with dark red lipstick, though not heavily made up. A nice girl. Nice woman.

  She noticed him looking her over, and their eyes met, and hers told his she didn’t mind the friendly onceover.

  “What brings you boys to the middle of nowhere?” she asked.

  Michael, turning a piece of white bread brown by mopping up gravy, said brightly, “We’re bank robbers!”

  His father gave him a look, but Betty just laughed. “If so, there are nicer places for men with money to eat!”

  “In Farmington?” O’Sullivan asked.

  She laughed again. “Well, you got me there.”

  “We’re just traveling through.”

  “On your way somewhere?”

  “That’s right.”

  She accepted this nonanswer with another smile, and he watched as she headed behind the counter, taking off her apron. The restaurant was about to close.

  His plate clean, Michael pushed it forward and, as if inquiring about dessert, asked, “So—when do I get my share of the money?”

  O’Sullivan thought about that. “How much do you want?”

  The boy clearly hadn’t expected such an open-ended response, and O’Sullivan watched with amusement as his son’s face registered the effort to come up with a suitably high, but not outrageous, figure.

  “Two hundred dollars,” the boy said, firmly.

  “That’s a lot of moolah.”

  “I coulda asked for half. But I figure you got the hardest job. You’re the brains of the outfit.”

  O’Sullivan shrugged. “Doesn’t say much for the outfit. Okay—two hundred it is.”

  Michael frowned. “I coulda had more, couldn’t I?”

  O’Sullivan sipped his coffee. “I guess you’ll never know.”

  One of the dancers went over to the console radio and turned it up, not long before Crosby came to his big finish, the music swelling.

  Working his voice up over this pleasant racket, Michael said, “I gotta go to the bathroom.”

  “What?” his father asked, innocently.

  “I gotta go to the…” And the music stopped, but Michael blurted on: “…bathroom!”

  His voice seemed to echo through the room, and the boy covered his mouth, embarrassed but grinning, as the patrons and dancers laughed and smiled.

  “You’re only human,” O’Sullivan said. “Go on. Go.”

  Michael left the table, and Betty walked over—not a waitress now, just an attractive woman, who’d been watching O’Sullivan from across the room (he’d noticed).

  “Hi again,” she said.

  “Hello. Closing up?”

  “’Bout that time. You fellas ate kinda late.”

  “You know how it is when you’re on the road. Trying to make time.”

  She smiled, and he realized what he’d said; he hadn’t intended the double entendre, and felt almost as embarrassed as his son had.

  “I can get you another cup,” she said, nodding to his coffee.

  “Thanks. But aren’t you off work now?”

  “Yeah, but…I don’t like going straight home. House is empty since…Maybe I oughta get a cat.”

  O’Sullivan smiled, wondering if it was a divorce or if death had taken someone from her, too.

  She brought over the coffee pitcher, topped off his cup, then took the chair next to O’Sullivan, leaned an elbow on the table, her chin on her hand. Her eyes were hazel—as lovely as they were sad. “You men traveling alone?”

  O’Sullivan nodded, sipped his coffee. “His mother passed away, not long ago. My wife, I should say.”

  Her eyes tightened. “Oh…gee, I’m so sorry.”

  “We’re just driving through, you know?”

  A new song started up on the radio—Kate Smith, singing “Dream a Little Dream of Me.”

  “Oh, I just love this song,” Betty said.

  “Nice song. Nice voice.”

  “Oh yeah…Funny, doesn’t matter how long I been on my feet, I can always make these dogs get up and dance. I just love to dance…Would you like to? Dance?”

  She looked just enough like Annie to tempt him; but too much like Annie for him to say yes.

  Gently, he turned her down: “I don’t think so.”

  “Okay. Too soon?”

  He swallowed. Nodded. “Too soon.”

  “I understand. Really I do.”

  “But, Betty…”

  “Yes?”

  “Thank you.”

  Michael was walking back toward the table. The boy watched his father and the waitress sitting, listening to the music, smiling at each other. It made him think of his mother, and that made him sad…but it was nice to see his father smiling just the same.

  They drove a few hours, and took a motel in another Iowa town, Muscatine, on the Mississippi River, at a motor court that was awfully shabby for a couple of bank robbers in the money.

  In the room, before bed, Papa counted the “take” (as he called it), removing the packets of cash one at a time from the black satchel. Michael took his two hundred dollars and sat like an Indian on the bed
and counted it over and over.

  “Are we rich, Papa?”

  As he counted the bundles of cash, Papa said, “No, son. We’re very poor.”

  “But, Papa—so much money!”

  “Without your mother and brother, there can never be true prosperity.”

  The boy thought about that, but it still looked like a lot of loot to him.

  Papa was saying, “All this money is much more than we need right now. Most of it will be yours one day.”

  “Not just the two hundred dollars?”

  “Not just the two hundred dollars.” He came over and sat next to Michael on the boy’s bed. “As we travel, I’ll deposit what we don’t need for expenses at more honest banks than the one we stopped at today.”

  “That’s a good idea. We don’t have enough room in the compartment anymore.”

  Papa touched Michael’s shoulder. “This money, when it’s yours, son…you must promise me you’ll put it to a good use.”

  “What sort of use, Papa?”

  “That’ll be your decision. You could go to school…college. You could buy a business. Perhaps a farm.”

  “I wouldn’t want to be a farmer, Papa.”

  “Be whatever you want, son…as long as it’s not like me.”

  But as the boy lay in the darkness, waiting for sleep to come, he knew he did want to be like his father. Papa was a courageous soldier, and a resourceful one, too—hadn’t he found a way to take money from his enemies without firing a shot?

  Maybe it was a sin to steal this money; the boy wasn’t sure—Papa had said it was like Robin Hood. And, anyway, he could go into a confessional, like Papa had, and be forgiven for his sins. After all, everybody was a sinner—the sisters at the Villa said so. But everybody could be forgiven, too—like soldiers who God forgave for the sins that war made them commit.

  Seeing Papa talking to that pretty waitress had reminded the boy of his mother, but Michael would have thought about her, anyway, in his bed. He missed her so much, and every night he would think about her and the pain would be real, the emptiness awful; and he missed Peter, too—he’d give anything to be hit by just one more snowball by that little assassin…

  Nonetheless—and despite what his father had said—Michael O’Sullivan, Jr., trying to sleep in the Muscatine motel, did not feel poor. Prosperity may not have been around the corner, but it sure was in the satchel between their beds, and in the backseat compartment of their Ford.

  And never in his life had he felt closer to his father.

  They were still a family, Papa and Michael.

  Still a family.

  THIRTEEN

  As the weeks rolled by, my father filled his black satchel at banks in Iowa and Illinois, Nebraska and Oklahoma, Missouri and Kansas, even Indiana and Wisconsin. Never was a shot fired, and our hold-ups became as close to routine as bank robbery could get.

  Still, my father warned me: “Keep alert, son. Never forget what we’re doing and why we’re doing it…or who it is that’s pursuing us. Complacency kills as surely as a bullet.”

  We did stop at other banks, as my father had indicated we would—not to rob them, but to place our excess cash into safety deposit boxes. As we traveled, Papa would read the papers religiously, looking for mention of our robberies, never finding anything, which pleased him.

  He was less happy about the lack of other news. He never said, but upon reflection, I understand he was thumbing through the pages of papers looking for a mention of Connor Looney’s body turning up in a ditch somewhere, signaling Chicago’s surrender, and an end for our journey.

  Sometimes at night, when my father grew sleepy behind the wheel, we would sleep in the car. I disliked this, and most of the time, he tried to find motels, or at least campsites where, when we parked, a few of the amenities of civilization were on hand.

  And when we stopped to eat at a diner or cafe, he would call the farm at Perdition, at least once a day, talking to my aunt or uncle, who continued to report that crows were indeed on the fence. I was not aware of it at the time, but historians of the mob, including two Capone biographers, claim that among the phone calls my father made along the road were several that went directly to Frank Nitti.

  At his desk, in a crisply knotted four-in-hand tie and his long-sleeved white shirt and dark suspenders, Nitti leaned over the phone, saying, “Mr. O’Sullivan—what can we do to put an end to this little misunderstanding?”

  “Mr. Nitti, I have no misunderstanding with you,” O’Sullivan’s voice said, calm, reasonable over the crackling lone-distance wire. “I’ve no grievance against the Capone organization—I think I’ve made that clear from the start.”

  “And I hope I’ve made it clear,” Nitti replied smoothly, “that the Looneys are business associates of ours, of long standing, and such alliances must be respected.”

  “I still have friends back home, Mr. Nitti—and they tell me John Looney is a shambles. Not tending to business, his mind strictly on this present matter…and the welfare of his son.”

  “You have a son, too, Mr. O’Sullivan. You can understand that view, certainly.”

  “I hope that’s not a veiled threat, Mr. Nitti.”

  Nitti, having just lighted up a cigarette, waved out the match. “Of course it isn’t. I merely—”

  “I have a son, and if any harm comes to him, all of you best pray the breath has left me—because as long as I have one breath, all of you will pay.”

  “Now who’s making threats, Mr. O’Sullivan?”

  “I don’t threaten, I take action. Do you have a wife, Mr. Nitti?”

  “I do.”

  “A son?”

  “Yes. And if that is—”

  “No. I would never touch them. I would feed you your eyes, if necessary—but your family…no.”

  Nitti blew out smoke. “Well, I do appreciate that. There are lines even men like us mustn’t cross.”

  “Then you would you agree that some things in life are more important that money?”

  “…I would.”

  “Well, then I remind you: the murderer of my wife and son is in hiding, with your help.”

  Nitti sighed, shifted in his swivel chair. “Mr. O’Sullivan, despite what you say, the Looney interests in the Tri-Cities continue to flourish. It would not be good business to—”

  “Then I’m going to continue disrupting your business. Just keep a running tally and when it’s costing you more to be friends with the Looneys than not, make a business decision.”

  “Back to threats, Mr. O’Sullivan?”

  “Either turn Connor Looney over to me, or kill him yourselves in a way conspicuous enough to make the papers.”

  And the line clicked dead.

  Nitti looked across his desk at the well-dressed, moon-faced figure with the high forehead and parallel scars—a long and a short—on his plump left cheek, his forehead beaded with sweat; the man had been fighting a fever for several days.

  “Find the prick,” Al Capone said, clenching a fist, “and kill him.”

  “It’s not that easy, Al,” Nitti said, leaning back. “He stays on the move. And he knows just enough about our inside operations to really do us financial damage.

  “Isn’t Ness and his goddamn metal-prow truck costin’ us enough these days! Legal fees up the ass…we’re drowning in negative fuckin’ cash flow.”

  Nitti shrugged. “And when O’Sullivan finishes with banks, he can start knocking off casinos—or a brothel on a Saturday night. Where does it end?”

  “Where the fuck does it end?” Capone lighted up one of his pool-cue Havanas, while Nitti fired up a fresh cigarette. “You suggestin’ we should do what he says? Give up Crazy Connor?”

  Nitti was thinking.

  Capone said, “The Looney interests in the Tri-Cities are still a goldmine, Frank—and the feds ain’t touching us there.”

  “Fine, but if we gave Connor Looney to O’Sullivan, without making it look like we betrayed him, or his father, we could step in and ta
ke over those interests ourselves…with no cut going to the Looneys.”

  Capone got up. He seemed unsteady. “Fuckin’ flu…”

  But Nitti knew it wasn’t the flu: Big Al’s syphilis was kicking in again. The Big Fellow had started really having problems with the old Cupid’s itch lately, a doctor on staff fulltime at the Lexington these days.

  “Al, the Looneys killed his wife and son. O’Sullivan was a loyal soldier, and they sold him out.”

  “The old man didn’t do it,” Capone said. “That old mick and me go way back…Life ain’t all ledger books and balance sheets, Frank. Life—and business—has to do with respect. We cave in to O’Sullivan, we look soft.”

  Nitti could see that. “Well, I have my best man on it. A real pro…”

  “What, Maguire? That screwball photographer? He makes my skin crawl.”

  “You’re not takin’ him home to mother, Al—he’s a coldblooded killer, and a kind of bloodhound…and that’s what it’ll take to find O’Sullivan, and stop him. Already caught up with him once.”

  “Yeah, and he slipped through this so-called pro’s fingers.” Capone, cigar in his mouth, flopped onto a couch and mopped his brow. “Call the old man, in Rock Island. Call Looney, tell him to get his ass up here. I want to talk to him.”

  “All right.”

  “And this photographer—this ‘pro’ of yours, Maguire, him, too. Tell ’em both to come with answers.”

  “Answers to what, Al?”

  “Questions.”

  “What questions, Al?”

  “The answers are their problem, Frank—I’ll handle the fuckin’ questions.”

  And the next afternoon, in the executive suite at the Lexington, John Looney and Frank Nitti were seated on a small sofa adjacent a larger couch where Al Capone—suitcoat off, in the vest of his sharp green suit, his green-and-black floral tie loosened, his shirt soaked with sweat, forehead beaded—lay propped up behind a pillow, a thermometer in his mouth.

  The most famous criminal in America, on his back, removed the shaft of glass from his full, sensual lips and studied the line of mercury, muttering, “Fuck Mike O’Sullivan…and fuck this flu.”

  Nitti exchanged glances with Looney, in a dark vested suit and tie. Both men knew what the “flu” really was. To Nitti’s left, arms folded, his expression as cool as it was unreadable, stood Harlen Maguire, bowler hat in hand.