Макс Коллинз - Road to Perdition

It was a good thing, too, that these hold-ups were so nonviolent, because I didn’t get the hang of my wheelman role all at once. The lack of a parking place, on our second job, sent me around the block, and I got turned around somehow, and left my father cooling his heels at the curb with a bag of money in one hand and gun in the other (in his topcoat pocket). He probably stood there less than a minute, but it must have seemed a lifetime before I showed up — coming in the wrong direction, hitting the curb, making Papa jump back .

But every time I got better, and I was probably as smooth and professional a getaway driver as anybody in the outlaw game — Bonnie and Clyde, and Ma Barker and her boys, had nothing on the O’Sullivans .

It didn’t take long for the Capone forces to get wise to our tactics — not the aiding and abetting of the bankers, but that Michael O’Sullivan was plundering their hidden coffers. After all, Papa advertised it — encouraged the bankers who were in collusion with him to tell Chicago the looting would stop, when Connor was turned over to him .

So after the fourth robbery, we found a farmhouse where the people were away, and borrowed their barn to turn our green Ford into a maroon one. Good thing, too, because on the fifth robbery, we rolled up to find a contingent of Capone thugs milling around outside the bank Papa had chosen .

My father nodded at me, and I drove away. No problem. And the Capone money was spread around in too many banks all over the Midwest for goon squads to be sent to all of them .

My father didn’t smile much — not ever, but especially not after my mother and brother were murdered. Sometimes at night, though, in our shabby little motel rooms, he would sit and grin. I would ask him what was so funny, and he would tell me .

“I’m just thinking about Frank Nitti,” Papa would say, “and how he must be taking all this.”

In the executive suite on the top floor of the Hotel Lexington in Chicago, Frank Nitti — impeccable in a gray pinstriped suit, immaculately groomed right to every hair on his mustache, ex-barber that he was — listened on the phone as the president of the Loose Creek, Missouri, Farmers’ Savings and Loan explained what had happened.

Nitti listened quietly. His secretary, a handsome, professionally attired woman of about thirty who’d been taking shorthand when the call came in, sat with her legs crossed, waiting to get back to it. Her boss seemed placid.

Then he exploded into the phone: “ How much did he take?”

The voice on the end of the wire said, “As I said, seventy-five thousand, Mr. Nitti — all of it, everything you had with us. He said he’d kill me, otherwise!”

Relaxed again, seemingly, Nitti replied: “I’m sure he would have.”

“I’m glad you understand, sir. He said to say his name was O’Sullivan and that he was prepared to give up his ‘fun,’ as he called it, if you’d turn over a Conrad Looney to him.”

“That’s Connor Looney,” Nitti said patiently.

“It may well have been. I do apologize. I wish there were some way—”

“May I just ask, Mr. Ingstad, one small question.”

“Certainly, sir.”

“Do you have security guards on staff?”

“Oh, yes. Two at all times. Former police officers. Very efficient.”

“Are they armed?”

“Certainly. We take all reasonable precautions.”

“Well, perhaps not all. One last question?”

“Yes?”

“ What the fuck are we paying you for? ”

And Nitti slammed the receiver in the hook, glancing at his secretary, shaking his head in disgust. “Where were we... ?”

The door burst open and Connor Looney stalked in, the bodyguard Nitti had assigned to him, Little Louis Campagna, on the man’s heels. Looney was not drunk at least, but he looked terrible, his suit rumpled, his complexion gray and waxy — like he hadn’t slept in days. Weeks.

“I’m working,” Nitti said tightly from behind his desk, not rising. “What the hell’s the idea, barging in on me? You make an appointment like anybody else.”

“The hell with that,” Connor said, standing right across from Nitti. “Where is my father?”

Nitti flinched a nonsmile. “What do you mean, where is he?”

“I’ve been calling the house — his office — trying everywhere. He’s either not there, they say, or there’s no answer.”

“How should I know?”

The slender gangster began to pace. Campagna took a step back, but kept an eye on his charge. Connor was saying, “Has my own father turned his back on me? Now, you want me to make a fucking appointment? Why the hell is no one talking to me? I don’t know whether I’m a leper or a goddamn prisoner!”

Nitti, arms folded, composed in the detached way he preferred, said, “You’re not a prisoner, Connor. You’re my guest — under my protection. That’s what your father wants.”

Connor came back over to the desk, leaned on it, his expression indignant, eyes flaring. “I can protect myself. I’m not afraid of Mike O’Sullivan.”

“You should be.”

“What, you believe these stories about him? Angel of Death? He’s just a man.”

“The night of the Market Square Riot, how many men did he kill? Protecting your father? And where were you?”

Connor ducked the question. “Listen, I can handle myself. Let me out of here — I’ll find the son of a bitch and—”

“Just what O’Sullivan would love.” Nitti stood behind the desk. “And you can’t handle yourself. That’s the point, here. You’re a big baby, all confused, sucking his dick like it’s his thumb.”

Connor’s eyes flared again, nostrils too, like a rearing horse. “Go fuck yourself, Nitti!”

Nitti was cool, calm, as he replied: “Sonny... listen carefully. The only thing keeping you alive is you’re John Looney’s kid. Your father covered Al’s back a thousand times, and Mr. Capone does not forget such favors.”

“My old man covered Capone’s back, and your back, with Mike O’Sullivan! Explain that, Nitti!”

The diminutive ganglord held up his hands, in “stop” fashion; Campagna continued to monitor the conversation closely.

Nitti said, “I don’t have to explain anything to you, you worthless little prick.”

Connor paced again, in front of the desk, now. “Worthless, huh? Aren’t you being a little shortsighted, Frank? Aren’t you forgetting who your real friend is? The Tri-Cities area, it’s a goldmine — a goldmine my old man owns. And he is an old man — and what you’re really protecting is your future... ’cause I am your goddamn future, you dago bastard. And talk to me like that again and I’ll be your angel of fucking death. Capeesh ?”

Connor stormed out, followed by Campagna, who threw Nitti a shrug on the way out.

Nitti sighed and looked at his secretary in a what-are-you-gonna-do manner. “Sorry for the unpleasantness. The language.”

“That’s all right, Mr. Nitti.”

He sat back down. “But if that clown’s the fucking future, we should all go straight.”

And before Nitti got back to his dictation, he rang up Harlen Maguire, and told him to find O’Sullivan and the kid.

“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.”