Alone in the room now, Michael eyed the letter on the nightstand suspiciously. The word “good-bye” seemed to rise off the envelope like steam. Glancing toward where his father had gone, the boy saw a strip of light along the doorway’s edge. He rose and went to the door, nudging it open another crack, and peeked in.
His father sat at a table, the hard-shell black case before him, closed; like a master musician, he unsnapped the clasps, lifted the lid, and revealed the protectively nestled parts of his instrument — the tommy gun, which had been with them on their journey, but had gone as yet unused.
Michael was amazed by the speed, the precision of it: piece by piece, checking each one, his father assembled the gun quickly, efficiently, snapping the parts together, tiny loud mechanical clicks and clacks, each one making the boy flinch. Michael had seen his father like this many times on the road — intense, methodical, precise; but something seemed different tonight. Papa was preparing not just the gun, but himself — snapping his own parts together, somehow.
Steeling himself.
Finally, the drum of ammunition was clicked in place onto the assembled machine gun, and the boy went in.
O’Sullivan turned to him, with an expression almost like a kid getting caught doing something he shouldn’t — the gun before him like the contents of a forbidden cookie jar.
“What are you doing?” the boy asked sternly.
“Preparing myself.”
“For what?”
“For the one last thing that has to be done.”
“And then?”
“Then we’re free of it, son.”
Michael just stood there in his rumpled clothes, and stared at his father with blank accusation.
Papa, not irritated, even gentle, said, “Go back to bed, Michael.”
“Who are you going to kill?”
“Michael... ”
“I know I should want you to kill Mama’s and Peter’s killer. But right now I just want us to go off somewhere. Even if it is Perdition.”
“This is perdition, son.”
“What?”
“Son — go to bed.”
“Shall I say my prayers, Papa?”
“If you like.”
“Because I’m a sinner, too, Papa? Helping you like I have?”
He shook his head. “We’re all sinners, son. That’s the way we enter this world. But we can leave it forgiven.”
The boy knew what that meant — more candles. But he had been skeptical when the nuns at the Villa taught him theology, and he was skeptical now, when a man holding a machine gun was giving the lesson.
“You’re leaving me here,” Michael said — the accusation boldly out in front of them both.
“... I’ll be gone tonight... tomorrow morning, I’ll be back.”
“If you don’t get killed, you mean.”
His father shot him a look. “Michael — I’ll be back. I promise.”
But neither of them quite believed it.
And nothing was left to say. The boy stumbled off to his bed, and the man took one last look at the machine gun before moving on to his Colt .45 automatic, which could use a cleaning.
When he was done, O’Sullivan made his phone call.
For several hours that rainy evening, at the small restaurant in downtown Rock Island, not far from his newspaper office on Second Avenue, John Looney met with certain key associates. Looney was handling his own legal matters now, since the demise of Frank Kelly, and he needed to make sure the wheels would move smoothly while he had his little rest out at the ranch.
His bags and a trunk were already waiting at the train station, where they would head now — a ten a.m. night coach west awaited. Seven bodyguards — Sean and Jimmy among them, all the boyos armed to the teeth — would be at his side, throughout his travels, just in case Mike O’Sullivan hadn’t taken their little church talk to heart.
Even the boss got chased out at closing time, and as the restaurant staff piled chairs on tables, and lights winked off, the old man and his six young bodyguards (the seventh, Jimmy, had stayed with the Pierce Arrow) shrugged into topcoats, Sean plucking his umbrella from where it leaned against the wall, and prepared to head out into the storm. Out the restaurant windows, the night was as dark as it was wet, raindrops streaming down in glimmering ribbons, the street black and shiny, as if freshly painted.
Thunder growled, as Looney stepped onto the sidewalk, rain pelting the umbrella Sean held for him. Sean and the other watchdogs had no umbrellas of their own — the rain had at them, assailing them as they flanked their boss, their eyes searching the darkness, the downpour, for anything suspicious, any moving shape, any sign of life on streets where reasonable men had long since been driven indoors by the weather.
The two automobiles were parked down the street a bit — Looney’s Pierce Arrow touring car, and the Velie sedan, for the bodyguard overflow — and the old man walked quickly, not anxious to get wet, his shoes and spats taking a shellacking as he strode through puddles. He paused at the car — did he hear something? Something other than the relentless raindrops?
He looked around, and so did Sean, and so did the others. Nothing. Just ovals of streetlamp light and pools of water making strange designs on the pavement as rain slanted down like a watery ambush. How welcome the dry heat of New Mexico would be after this sodden godforsaken night...
Looney waited for Jimmy to open the door; he could see his driver, behind the wheel, but not clearly, the rain-streaked window clouding the issue. Annoyed, Looney tromped around to the driver’s side, the bodyguards following, Sean keeping the old man covered with the umbrella — and shook the driver’s door handle, saying, “Hey, Jimmy! Open the door, boy — Jim!”
His shaking of the locked door handle was just enough to prompt a reaction from Jimmy — who slumped forward onto the steering wheel, face tilted toward the side window. Even through the smear of rain, the dark-red hole in Jimmy’s forehead could be seen, as could the man’s open, empty-staring eyes.
“Christ,” Looney said, stepping away from the grisly, ghostly sight, “Mike’s killed him... Jimmy’s been shot!”
And all around him his bodyguards drew their weapons, spreading out along the traffic-free street, eyes fanning the rain-swept darkness.
Looney did not carry a gun — he left that to his men. And a small army of his soldiers were all around him. O’Sullivan would know what he’d be up against — so he’d killed Jimmy, as a warning, to spook Looney, and fled into the night. The old man just about had himself convinced of that when thunder shook the night.
Not God’s thunder: a Thompson submachine gun’s.
All around Looney, in rapid succession, his bodyguards — few of them even getting their weapons unholstered, to fire off shots of their own — were cut to pieces by a rain of lead, the chopper blazing orangely in the dark, sending his soldiers tumbling, stumbling, flopping, dancing, shaken like naughty children, blood mist puffing in the night. One by one these fierce men with guns splashed whimpering to the wet pavement, blood flowing into rain puddles, turning the street a glistening pink.
Looney could not watch. Unarmed, he could not act. Trapped, he could not run. So he just stood there and stared at the pavement and listened to the ungodly roar of gunfire until it had stopped, only to echo through the empty streets of Rock Island.
And now, scattered all around him, his loyal boyos, this one on his belly, that one on his back, this man in the gutter, that man rolled into a ball, another with brains leaching out of his shattered skull like jelly... and Sean on his side, the umbrella just out of his grasp, as if he were reaching for it, the gun in his limp hand only half-raised. Rain pounded the blood and the gore, diluting, then obliterating it; and lightning flashed and thunder clapped, and in a momentary flash of white, there stood O’Sullivan — down the street — with the Thompson in his hands.