Макс Коллинз - Road to Perdition

A gunshot trumped the car horn, punching a hole through the bridal suite door — a rifle blast at close range! — splintering the wood, the honeymoon over.

O’Sullivan took cover behind the trunk, its metal lid up, as somebody kicked the door in with a forceful boot heel, wood crunching, metal snapping, and the man in the bowler filled the doorway and — not seeing O’Sullivan — fired off five loud sharp shots in quick succession, all around the room, including the bedroom door and wall.

Two shots slammed into the open metal lid, which was providing a shield of sorts for O’Sullivan, who stayed down as low as possible, the body of the trunk serving better cover.

As the man with the rifle paused to reload, stepping inside what appeared to be an empty room, O’Sullivan popped up from behind the trunk and blasted away with the .45. But he’d been shooting somewhat blindly, and the slugs thudded into the sofa near the door, as the guy with the rifle, losing his bowler, scrambled behind an end table that supported a crystal-shaded lamp, crouching there to finish reloading.

O’Sullivan, huddled low behind the trunk, could see where the two slugs had dimpled the lid; breathing hard, he mentally counted how many rounds he had left, as time itself seemed to pause, and the room took on a ghostly silence broken only by the sound of his opponent reloading the rifle. In the wall and the door to the bedroom adjacent, where Rance had fled, daylight was slanting through bullet holes like swords in a magician’s box. Dust motes floated. Crystal lamps stood mute and the elegant surroundings seemed at odds with the conflict at hand.

O’Sullivan didn’t see his adversary pop up from behind the end table, but the punch of the bullets from the rifle — two more rounds — pounded into the trunk, which slammed into O’Sullivan, knocking him backward and to one side, robbing him of cover. The second he realized he was exposed, O’Sullivan squeezed off three fast rounds, and one of them shattered the crystal lamp on the end table, showering his opponent with flying shards of glass, hitting him right in the face, like a dozen terrible bee stings.

The gunmen screamed in pain and surprise, and dropped to his knees. O’Sullivan, still on his side on the floor, out in the open, kept firing with the .45, though his bullets only served to send his bleeding moaning adversary seeking refuge behind the overstuffed sofa.

And then O’Sullivan was clicking on empty chambers, and he got a glimpse of the man with the rifle cowering behind the sofa, his bloody face in one hand, the rifle impotent — at least for the moment — in the other.

O’Sullivan took the opportunity to get to his feet and run over to that bedroom door, and — in a panel that had bullet holes punched in it already — kicked, then kicked again, letting daylight flood in, and he reached in and around and turned the key in the lock.

Pushing into the room, O’Sullivan quickly turned, staying in a crouch, in case the man with the rifle advanced on him; he slammed a fresh clip in his .45 and, as he backed in, he finally saw Rance — flung on the bed, on his back, his eyes and mouth open, and a blossom of red on the green silk robe, a spray of scarlet on the headboard and wall. One of the rifle slugs had caught the accountant, and taught Rance a final lesson about the business of crime.

O’Sullivan almost stumbled over something, and he looked down and saw a small black strongbox, amid a scattering of file folders and accordion envelopes next to the bed; too much stuff to grab up and carry... but the strongbox had a tiny label that said something big: CHIEF ACCOUNTS.

With his left hand, O’Sullivan grabbed the strongbox by its little handle, his right hand still ready to send death flying at that bleeding bastard in the next room.

The bedroom had a separate exit, and O’Sullivan took it, running down the corridor. On the second floor he found a window out onto a fire escape that brought him to the alley; and within seconds he was sprinting across the main street, toward where Michael was parked.

He didn’t realize that Harlen Maguire had managed to stagger to the window and draw back the curtains and, pulling a revolver from his topcoat pocket, blinking away blood — no shards in his eyes, one small miracle — took aim.

Michael had spotted Papa, exiting that alley, and threw the Ford into reverse, backing the car toward his advancing father, neither of them wasting any time. But two gunshots discouraged them — holes punched in the roof of the car, sunlight streaming in! — and the boy heard his father yell, “ Go! Get out of reverse, damnit — go!”

And Michael knew not to disobey his father. He changed gears, as professional as any outlaw wheelman, and began to pull away, his father running alongside the car. The boy’s reach wasn’t long enough to open the door for his father, but Papa managed to get the door open himself and was almost inside when another gunshot rang out, and Papa’s shoulder flinched, even as he winced from the impact and pain.

Still, Papa somehow flung himself in the car, and shut the door, saying, “ Go! Go! ”

Frightened as he was, knowing his father had been shot, Michael did his job, hitting the accelerator, speeding and winding and weaving in and around and through the morning traffic, as sirens wailed behind him.

On the outskirts of town, he allowed himself to look at his father, who was holding onto his left shoulder with fingers that had blood seeping through them, making red trails down his hand.

O’Sullivan could see the panic on his boy’s face, and he snapped, “I’m okay! Eyes on the road! I’m okay... ”

The boy drove.

And in the bridal suite, Harlen Maguire dropped to his knees, as if about to pray, only he didn’t clasp his hands: he held them before him, palms up. In the other room, through the open door, the corpse of Alexander Rance beckoned.

But Maguire didn’t have his camera. And he was busy looking at his hands, anyway, the hands that had been holding his poor glass-ravaged face...

... hands covered in blood, dripping with red, and he was startled. It was as if all the blood he had on his hands was finally showing.

As the great film director John Ford put it, “When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.” Depictions of my father and myself paint us as well-known figures in the outlaw Midwest of the 1930s, placing us side by side with the likes of the Dillinger gang, the Barker boys, and Bonnie and Clyde. In truth, latter-day stories of my renown as the Angel of Death’s “boy getaway man” are gross exaggerations .

The only time we made the papers was the shooting at the Grand Hotel in Stillwater, when witnesses indeed saw me fleeing the scene at the wheel of the Ford, my father slumped on the rider’s side. Those contemporary newspaper accounts, however, were even more inaccurate than subsequent speculation about us at the hands of Hollywood and the more sensationalistic true-crime writers .

In recent years, the truth has been sorted out, somewhat, as Alexander Rance’s role as a Capone organization financial wizard has come to light; and research into photographer/reporter/assassin Harlen Maguire’s bizarre life has helped clear our record .

At the time, “the Bridal Suite Bandit” was painted as a homicidal thief who murdered a respectable accountant — one Alexander Rance — robbing him of hundreds of thousands of dollars from his rooms at Stillwater’s Grand Hotel. Of course, my father took no money at all, merely records — ledger books and files .

And, at the same time, Harlen Maguire was portrayed in the press as Rance’s bodyguard, who bravely did his best to ward off a murderous brigand, suffering injuries in the process. Which was how Maguire managed to walk away from the carnage, or rather was gurneyed away, spirited like a hero to the Stillwater hospital for emergency care of his glass-ravaged face .