Max Allan Collins
Road to Perdition
For Richard and Dean Zanuck—
another father and son
who shared the road
“You must choose a road for yourself.”
One
This Angel of Death you’ve heard so much about was my father, Michael O’Sullivan, born in Ireland in 1887.
The family nearly lost its “O” at Ellis Island, but my grandfather insisted it stay, and the family of three stayed too, right there in New York. For a time my grandfather toiled in a railroad switch yard, until the promise of better work drew the O’Sullivans to Rock Island, Illinois, with its John Deere and Harvester plants, and government arsenal, where guns and tanks were manufactured.
Immigrants in America — whether Irish or Italian or Jewish — quickly learned that local government ignored them; the only real government was what the Black Hand-type gangs provided. Little criminal kingdoms — subgovernments — grew up in cities all around America, thriving further with the onset of Prohibition. The Tri-Cities — Rock Island and Moline, on the Illinois banks of the Mississippi River, Davenport over on the Iowa side — were no exception. And the ruler of the Tri- Cities was John Looney.
The Irish Looneys had an unlikely but nonetheless abiding affiliation with the powerful Italian/Sicilian Capone gang in Chicago. John Looney himself was a self-trained lawyer, and considered by most micks in the Cities to be a benign presence, a benevolent despot. He and his son, Connor — a glorified chauffeur for his father, and widely considered a pale, rather unstable shadow of the old man — had the politicians and police in their pocket.
John Looney controlled everything in the Cities — brothels, bootlegging, gambling; but the most outrageous of Looney’s enterprises undoubtedly was his newspaper — the Rock Island News, which boasted of being the area’s only publication brave enough to print “all the facts.” In reality the News was strictly a shakedown operation.
Headlines would scream scandal at the rare politician who wouldn’t play ball — MAYOR SCHRIVER IN SANITARIUM FOR SYPHILIS TREATMENT — and typical front pages would announce “Acts of Shame Dishonor Prominent Citizens and Elected Officials,” and LOCAL BANKER SEEN WITH PROSTITUTE. In some cases these were adversaries and even enemies Looney was settling scores with; but mostly such tactics were bald-faced blackmail.
A victim would be approached with a scandalous story — sometimes containing a germ of truth, more often not — and be given the opportunity to pay for said story to disappear. Farmers from the surrounding rural area made easy targets: one of Looney’s prostitutes would throw her arms around some poor bumpkin and a photographer would just happen to be there to capture the moment for posterity... unless, of course, the rube chose to pay the price.
In retrospect, it’s hard to picture my father being any part of such sleazy underhanded racketeering. Michael O’Sullivan, Sr., was what they used to call a family man — quiet, dependable, honorable; he didn’t drink to excess, he didn’t whore around. Maybe you think he did those things and just didn’t tell me, or hid such acts from me — but I know he didn’t, just as I know with soul-deep certainty that he loved my mother... his Annie.
Yet, there was indeed another, darker side to my father. Though he never spoke of it to us, he was a proud veteran of the Great War. After all those years, he had returned to Europe, where he had learned to use a gun to kill other men, a sin in God’s eyes that Uncle Sam saw fit to reward him for, sending my father home with decorations for bravery... and a terrible new skill.
And so Michael O’Sullivan went to work for John Looney, and served him well, still a loyal soldier.
Whatever bad things the Looneys were involved in, the micks of the Tri-Cities knew only that — despite Hard Times — Old Man Looney got jobs for our people, at his newspapers, his restaurants, and, using his publication for blackmail leverage, at the factories and even the government arsenal. Of course for my father, and many of his peers, John Looney was the government.
I never knew exactly what Papa did for the Looneys. What I did know was that we lived in the nicest house in town (except for Mr. Looney’s) and that John Looney treated my father like a second son, and my younger brother Peter and me like cherished grandkids. We loved Mr. Looney — though we sensed our mother did not share that affection — and knew only that Papa did something dangerous for him... something involving a gun. Like Tom Mix, or the Lone Ranger.
Usually that gun was a Colt .45 automatic. We had seen him with that weapon, Peter and I, on many occasions — spying on him with pride and wonder as our father slipped the pistol into a leather holster under his coat, tucked under his shoulder. Once, however, we saw Papa with an even more formidable firearm, and the sight had fueled our kid conversations deep into the night.
On that one occasion, we had spied him with his shiny black case; this hard-shell valise-type affair we had seen many times, but only once did our wide eyes observe its contents; only once did we (unseen by Papa) observe that case actually being opened.
The shiny black case might have protected a musical instrument — a horn, say, or a violin; however, the parts broken down within, in their plush little compartments, were those of a Thompson submachine gun. These pieces my father could assemble quickly, efficiently, into a single frightful unit; and last would come the drum-like canister of ammunition, which he snapped onto the assembled weapon, closing the lid, flicking the latches until the shiny black case seemed harmless again.
Funny. When I look back now at those days and nights, after all these years, I can see little Michael O’Sullivan, Jr., and it’s from a distance wider than time — as if I were no longer that eleven-year-old boy who, for six weeks in the winter of 1931, went on the road with the killer called the Angel of Death.
As his accomplice.
On his bike, peddling furiously, Michael O’Sullivan, Jr. — hands warmly mittened, face obscured by a long woolen scarf, a satchel of newspapers slung over his shoulder — crested a hill and flew down a street whose gray cement was a solitary ribbon in a vast landscape of snowy white. Leaving the residential area behind, he was soon speeding along an endless stretch of closed factories — even Mr. Looney’s beneficence could not entirely wipe out this Depression — summoned by the whistle of one of the few remaining, thriving industries.
Before long Michael — a slender pale kid with a thatch of brown hair, small for his age — was standing out in front of the gates of the John Deere plant, whose smokestacks billowed black, as workers poured out to hear the paperboy’s cry: “Man dies in factory accident! Man dies!”
The Deere factory was not one of the boy’s usual corners to peddle his papers, but Mr. McGowan at Rock Island Drugs & Sundries — where Michael picked up his daily supply of the Rock Island News — had recommended he go there. White-haired bespectacled Mr. McGowan — the proprietor of the drugstore (though of course Mr. Looney owned it) — had said the working men at the plant would find this story of particular interest.
“People like to read about their own kind dyin’,” Mr. McGowan said, with the same twinkle in his eye that accompanied his serving up an ice-cream soda.