Макс Коллинз - Road to Perdition

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.

Then, without moving, he disappeared into darkness. Looney waited. Why run? Mike had figured it, hadn’t he? The only way to get Capone to give up Connor was if John Looney were dead.

The old man could hear the footsteps on the wet pavement, growing closer, closer, and then Mike O’Sullivan — the machine gun in his left hand now, the .45 Colt in his right — was standing before him, the two almost close enough to reach out to each other... but not quite.

“You would kill your father,” Looney said, “to avenge your son?”

“You’re not my father.”

Looney’s chin jutted — trembled. “I was as much a father to you as to my own boy.”

“Only I wasn’t blood.”

The old man swallowed. “And now you need mine, don’t you?... Well, those of us who take this path, we know don’t we, son? Someday... some night... we all may come to an end like this.”

O’Sullivan kept the .45 trained. “Spare me your blarney, old man.”

But there was truth in his voice when Looney said, “If this way it must be... I’m glad it’s you.”

O’Sullivan shot him anyway.

Looney, a bullet in the brain, stumbled back into the Pierce Arrow and slid down the side of the car, sat for a moment, then fell on his side. A stream of blood from his forehead made its way toward the gutter.

O’Sullivan stood for several long moments, staring at the corpse of a man he had loved; he had wept over his dead wife and son, and for Michael too, and he might have been weeping now, but the rain streaming down his face concealed it, even from himself.

Around him, in buildings on all sides, lights were going on in windows, yellow squares glowing in the dark wet night — then faces appeared in those squares, indistinct, smeary bystanders looking down on the carnage in silence from the warmth of their lodgings.

Only one man in the street was standing — the rest were scattered in various postures of violent death. He must have looked so small to them, O’Sullivan thought, viewed from on high, a man standing alone in the rainy street.

He looked up at them, his face moving from blurred face to blurred face, explaining himself... no, warning them of where life could take them.

“Go back inside!” he called, voice echoing like the earlier gunfire. “And pray — pray that God never puts you on my road!”

But the lights stayed on, the faces continued to watch... to judge. Police would be called; sirens would wail.

And Mike O’Sullivan — knowing he hadn’t made his point to these witnesses, but confident he’d made an impression on John Looney — walked back into the rainy darkness, which swallowed him, leaving the empty street behind.

The almost empty street.

Though Frank Nitti’s office was in the Lexington Hotel, he — unlike Capone — did not live on the premises; he’d come over from his home on the near West Side to be available when O’Sullivan called back.

Right now, with most of the lights off, he sat at his desk, in his shirtsleeves and suspenders and no tie, taking his second call tonight from the remarkable Mr. O’Sullivan.

“It’s done?” Nitti asked.

“John Looney is dead,” O’Sullivan’s voice said over the scratchy line, as cold and matter of fact as a nurse saying the doctor will see you now; the sound of clatter and chatter in the background indicated the man was calling from a restaurant or diner.