On the tenth floor, O’Sullivan exited the elevator, taking the corridor at left, following Nitti’s instructions. His gloved hand was in his topcoat pocket clenching the.38 revolver. He moved down the empty corridor, glancing at doors, ready to react — trusting Nitti, but not trusting him.
At room 1032, with his left hand, O’Sullivan knocked twice — softly. Almost at once, the other brawny watchdog from his previous visit — Harry — answered the door.
The two men nodded at each other, Harry standing aside as O’Sullivan entered the comfortably plush, well-appointed suite. In the adjacent room, a radio — turned up perhaps a shade too loud — played Paul Whiteman music, jazz for white people who hadn’t heard colored people play it.
O’Sullivan gave Harry a look, and Harry nodded toward a door.
“Bathroom,” Harry mouthed, and pointed.
O’Sullivan nodded, and Harry moved back nearer to the entry, as the Angel of Death made his way deeper into the suite, approaching the door the watchdog had indicated.
He took a breath, and pushed open the door, a bright white-tiled bathroom, larger than some whole apartments; the mirrors were fogged, the air thick with steam.
Lolling back in the hot, soapy bath, a whiskey flask near his reach on the edge of the tub, Connor Looney — his eyes closed, dark hair plastered down — said, “Harry — take your piss down the hall, for Christ’s sake! A little privacy, please.”
O’Sullivan stood looking down at the pale figure — a scrawny-looking naked man, such a pitiful creature to have caused such a fuss.
Then Connor sensed something and his eyes popped open and his sallow complexion paled even further, his mouth open as if frozen in midbreath.
“I should take my time killing you,” O’Sullivan said, “but I can’t bear your company.”
Connor’s eyes narrowed, flaring in defiance, and he was coming up out of the tub when he said, “I’ll see you in hell!”
O’Sullivan shot him once in the chest, and again in the stomach, the naked man smacking against the tile wall, making a bloody trail as he slid back down sloshingly into the tub, not dead yet.
“Hell will be heaven,” O’Sullivan said, “if I can spend eternity making you pay for what you did to them.”
And O’Sullivan shot Connor in the head — just as he had the man’s father.
The corpse dropped down into the soapy, blood-frothy water, the white tiles surrounding spattered and smeared with crimson.
When O’Sullivan emerged, Harry said, “That was quick,” and the Angel said nothing, not waiting even for the watchdog to open the door for him. He walked down the corridor, staying alert, and at the end of the hall — as Nitti had requested — he dropped the murder weapon to the carpeted floor.
He would still have his .45 if the little gangster crossed him.
But Nitti was true to his word, and O’Sullivan’s exit through the Lexington lobby was as uneventful as his arrival. Within minutes he was in the maroon Ford, heading back to his son.
Michael had slept very little. He never did put on his pajamas. He tried to read the Big Little Book, but the Lone Ranger just seemed... silly, now. From time to time, he would kneel by his bed and pray for his father’s welfare.
But he was confused — because he wasn’t sure if God could protect Papa, if what Papa was doing was a sin. After all, his father wasn’t Mr. Looney’s soldier, anymore. Maybe he was God’s soldier, now — administering justice to sinful men like Mr. Looney and his son.
And Michael had never sorted out his feelings about his godfather. The man had been like a grandpa to Peter and him, and in these long weeks, in the boy’s mind, Mr. Looney had become a sort of boogeyman... and yet the good images of his godfather remained in his memory. Papa had said all men — and that included boys like him — were sinners. Could a sinner seem kind, like Mr. Looney, and really be a monster?
When he heard the footsteps at the hall, he’d been sitting on the edge of the bed, eyes shut tight, praying for his father — at this point, just that his father would return. Never mind any of the rest of it.
And then he opened his eyes, the footsteps very near, surprised to see light coming in the window — dawn — and the key turned in the lock... the boy’s hand moved toward the small revolver on the nightstand... and the door opened.
Papa.
The man shut the door behind him and rushed to the boy, dropping to his knees, and Michael threw himself into his father’s arms. Had their embrace been any tighter, it would have hurt.
Then Papa held him by the arms and looked into the boy’s face. “The man who killed your mother and your brother,” he whispered, “is dead.”
“Good... Did he suffer?”
“Not enough,” Papa admitted. “But the world is rid of him.”
“And... Mr. Looney?”
“He’s gone, too. It had to be, son. Don’t ever ask me of it.”
“I... I won’t, Papa.”
His father sighed, smiled tightly. “... And now we can finally go on with our lives.”
“To Perdition, Papa?”
“Yes... but together.”
They hugged again. Michael closed his eyes, blinking away tears — and the brightness of the dawn. The way the sun was pouring in the window, you would never know how hard it had rained last night.
Eighteen
My memories of the drive to Perdition may be less than trustworthy. Everything I remember prior to that day is a winter memory — largely in black and white, like old movie footage, or some people’s dreams.
But the drive to Perdition, in my mind’s eye, is in full color, dominated by the clear blue of the sky and the green of a world that had had been bleak winter yesterday and was glorious spring today.
Surely these recollections are influenced by emotions and time — the last day of winter is not a dead thing, with the first day of spring an explosion of life.
Yet that is how I remember it. And while I have endeavored in these pages to provide the reader with factual background material, the most valuable commodity I have to offer is my memories — however accurate or inaccurate they may, at this late stage of my life, be.
I am, after all, the only one left. I’m in my winter now, recalling the spring day we drove to Perdition.
They had spoken little, on the first day of the trip to Perdition, but a new warmth seemed to bind them. Smiling like the child he still was, the boy was enjoying the spring day, drinking in the sun, hanging his head out the window, letting the wind skim over him and roar in his ears. That his son had retained a certain innocence after this ordeal was a small miracle — that the little revolver O’Sullivan had given Michael had never been used gave O’Sullivan strength, and hope.
The man did not want to spoil the boy’s joyful disposition with what he knew would be disappointing news. He intended to leave Michael with Bob and Sarah — just for a while — until he had started a new life, perhaps in the old country. He wanted to make sure this was really over — that Capone’s people indeed weren’t after them... and that Frank Nitti could be trusted.
Michael would be disappointed, but O’Sullivan would make him understand that this was only a temporary state of affairs. In six months, a year at the most, he would send for his son; and they would start over — clean, fresh... a second chance.
They stayed at a motel in Missouri, knowing they would be at the farm on the lake by the next afternoon, evening at the latest. And now, gliding down paved roads — the sun reflecting off the green leaves so brightly, the man had to stop and buy sunglasses — they began to talk. For the first time, the father and son seemed to share something beyond blood — they liked each other. They were comrades who had shared hardship and weathered adversity, who had helped each other through a difficult, even tragic time.