Макс Коллинз - Road to Perdition

Mr. Looney called out after him. “I’m quakin’ in me boots!”

Michael ran up the steps and then wove through the throng of mourners and took the big winding stairway up to the second floor, where most of the lights were out. Though night had not yet fallen, the overcast day added to the general gloominess of the big house with its dark woodwork and Victorian furnishings, and the boy’s giddy mood shifted straightaway into apprehension.

This uneasy frame of mind was heightened when, as he started down the second-floor hallway, a man and woman emerged from a bedroom, kissing each other. The boy knew they were drunk — what his mother called “tipsy.” In their twenties, the man wore a nice dark suit that was strangely rumpled, the woman in a thin, almost flapperish dress; they didn’t seem to know they were at a sad occasion.

Ducking into a doorway, watching as if this were a car accident, Michael couldn’t believe his father would have found appropriate, even for the “celebration” of a wake, this kind of behavior: the man was pressing the woman against the wall, fondling her, touching her in all sorts of places. The couple’s expression of affection — blatantly sexual — was beyond the boy, and certainly bore no resemblance to the kind of affection he’d observed between his parents.

When the couple stopped their smooching, and laughingly, unsteadily passed by his hiding place, they didn’t see him, and Michael was relieved. He felt odd — vaguely dirty, as if he were the one who’d done something wrong.

Mr. Looney’s study was at the end of the corridor — Michael had sat with his godfather in the book-lined room several times (they’d even played craps up there before). So he knew his way and went in, but the darkness of the room — the curtains were drawn — and the smell of cigar smoke turned his uneasiness to fear.

On the leather couch to one side of the chamber, Connor Looney had stretched out, in his vest and shirtsleeves, a glass of dark liquid balanced on his stomach; he was smoking a cigar and the scent of it hung in the air, rich, masculine, nasty. Lanky, hooded-eyed Connor was in his thirties, a dark-blond handsome fellow who resembled his late mother.

Connor looked right at Michael, his face blank in that way Papa sometimes had. “Hiya, kid.”

“Hello.”

“Come on in — shut the door. Light hurts my eyes.”

Michael let the door close behind him. He and his godfather’s only son were alone, Connor’s cigar glowing orange in the darkness.

“Which little O’Sullivan are you? Remind me.”

“Michael, sir.”

“‘Sir?’” Glass of dark liquid in hand now, Connor leaned up on his elbow and his grin looked weird. “You don’t have to call me ‘sir.’ I’m not your old man.”

Michael, wondering what Connor was doing off alone with the house full of guests, said, “No, Mr. Looney.”

“Call me Connor. Hell, make it Uncle Connor. After all, doesn’t my old man treat you like grandkids?... since he doesn’t have any of his own. Suppose that’s my fucking fault.”

Michael said nothing, alarmed at hearing this legendary swear word (the only other time he’d heard it, a schoolyard bully had been expelled for its utterance). Feeling very nervous, he eyed his godfather’s jacket, slung over the back of the desk chair.

“You want something, kid?”

“No, Uncle Connor.”

With a shrug, Connor looked away from the boy, stretching back out, resting the drink on his stomach again, puffing the cigar, making smoke rings, whose floating ascent and ultimate demise he studied with those weird half-shut eyes of his.

Michael looked at the jacket over the back of the chair, where the dollar his godfather owed him awaited; but it seemed miles away, and he was scared. Connor Looney frightened him and he wanted to get out of there, right now.

So he did.

John Looney’s mansion provided an unrivaled view of the Mississippi River Valley, including the mansions below his on the bluff, which of course allowed him to look down on high society. In those days, only one bridge joined the Illinois and Iowa sides of the river — the government bridge, giving access to Arsenal Island from both shores — and most folks invested a nickel and crossed the Mississippi by ferry. The ferry — a riverboat called the Quinlan — included (after sundown) gambling and music .

Research tells me that Bix Beiderbecke and Louis Armstrong frequently played on the Quinlan, but the only time I heard the Quinlan’s jazz band was at Danny McGovern’s wake. Maybe Bix was there, but not Louis. As distinct as my memories are of that afternoon and evening at the Looney mansion, I would remember a black man — “colored,” we said back then — among the musicians assembled in the grand parlor .

Michael O’Sullivan, Sr., sat along the wall in a corner of the grand parlor, in a comfortable armchair, a softly glowing lamp on an end table between him and John Looney, sunk down in his own, rather more throne-like chair; the two men listened as the band played a ragtime tune. Night had come, and such liveliness was to be expected at a wake; the jazz boys from the Quinlan ferryboat were throwing in an Irish tune now and then, a reel here, a jig there — a tenor singing “Danny Boy” had elicited sobs, and Looney himself had instructed the musicians to avoid the number for the rest of the evening.

“Where’s Fin?” Looney — hands on his knees, rocking gently — asked O’Sullivan. It was almost a whisper.

O’Sullivan nodded in Fin McGovern’s direction — the brawny Irishman was sitting alone on the other side of the room, keeping a bottle of bourbon company. Said bottle was no doubt near empty, O’Sullivan reckoned.

“Has the boyo spoken to you?” Looney asked.

“Yes.”

“Any trouble?”

“Not yet.”

“Keep watch.”

“I am.”

His black suitcoat unbuttoned, Connor Looney — just enough weave in his walk to indicate he, too, had had his share of some bottle or other — leaned in on one side of his father, slipping an arm around the old man.

“Well, isn’t this swell,” Connor said, nodding toward the dancing and drinking. “You put on a hell of a show, Pa. Hell of a show.”

Looney touched his son’s arm — an affectionate gesture that put a warm look in Connor’s eyes, surprising O’Sullivan a little. “Show some respect, my boy,” the old man said, lightly. “All eyes are on us.”

“As in ‘Irish eyes are smiling’?”

“They’re not all smiling, son.”

The band was playing a peppy version of “Ain’t Misbehavin’.”

“Got a speech prepared, Pa?” Connor asked. “Nice and pretty?”

“Words from right here,” his father, patting his heart.

Looney leaned on Connor, bracing himself as he stood. “This tune seems to be winding down... best I catch them between songs.” He ambled away from them, toward where the band played on the little stage, leaving his chair to his son — the real son who now sat beside the surrogate.

Looking out at the reveling mourners, Connor etched half a smile. “Danny sure had a lot of friends.”

O’Sullivan couldn’t find any sarcasm in Connor’s words.

So he gave the man a serious response: “He did indeed.”

Now Connor looked at O’Sullivan, his handsome face twisted in its usual wiseguy fashion. “Think your wake’ll be this big?”

“No idea.”

Connor hitched his shoulders, looked toward his father, who was standing out in front of the band, now. “Guys like us, Mike, we don’t get no wake. We’re lucky to get buried on church soil.”

Somebody tapped a glass with a spoon, silence settled in, and all eyes — including O’Sullivan’s and Connor’s — were on the stage, where John Looney stood, withdrawing a folded sheet of paper from his inside coat pocket.