O’Sullivan smiled, wondering if it was a divorce or if death had taken someone from her, too.
She brought over the coffee pitcher, topped off his cup, then took the chair next to O’Sullivan, leaned an elbow on the table, her chin on her hand. Her eyes were hazel — as lovely as they were sad. “You men traveling alone?”
O’Sullivan nodded, sipped his coffee. “His mother passed away, not long ago. My wife, I should say.”
Her eyes tightened. “Oh... gee, I’m so sorry.”
“We’re just driving through, you know?”
A new song started up on the radio — Kate Smith, singing “Dream a Little Dream of Me.”
“Oh, I just love this song,” Betty said.
“Nice song. Nice voice.”
“Oh yeah... Funny, doesn’t matter how long I been on my feet, I can always make these dogs get up and dance. I just love to dance... Would you like to? Dance?”
She looked just enough like Annie to tempt him; but too much like Annie for him to say yes.
Gently, he turned her down: “I don’t think so.”
“Okay. Too soon?”
He swallowed. Nodded. “Too soon.”
“I understand. Really I do.”
“But, Betty... ”
“Yes?”
“Thank you.”
Michael was walking back toward the table. The boy watched his father and the waitress sitting, listening to the music, smiling at each other. It made him think of his mother, and that made him sad... but it was nice to see his father smiling just the same.
They drove a few hours, and took a motel in another Iowa town, Muscatine, on the Mississippi River, at a motor court that was awfully shabby for a couple of bank robbers in the money.
In the room, before bed, Papa counted the “take” (as he called it), removing the packets of cash one at a time from the black satchel. Michael took his two hundred dollars and sat like an Indian on the bed and counted it over and over.
“Are we rich, Papa?”
As he counted the bundles of cash, Papa said, “No, son. We’re very poor.”
“But, Papa — so much money!”
“Without your mother and brother, there can never be true prosperity.”
The boy thought about that, but it still looked like a lot of loot to him.
Papa was saying, “All this money is much more than we need right now. Most of it will be yours one day.”
“Not just the two hundred dollars?”
“Not just the two hundred dollars.” He came over and sat next to Michael on the boy’s bed. “As we travel, I’ll deposit what we don’t need for expenses at more honest banks than the one we stopped at today.”
“That’s a good idea. We don’t have enough room in the compartment anymore.”
Papa touched Michael’s shoulder. “This money, when it’s yours, son... you must promise me you’ll put it to a good use.”
“What sort of use, Papa?”
“That’ll be your decision. You could go to school... college. You could buy a business. Perhaps a farm.”
“I wouldn’t want to be a farmer, Papa.”
“Be whatever you want, son... as long as it’s not like me.”
But as the boy lay in the darkness, waiting for sleep to come, he knew he did want to be like his father. Papa was a courageous soldier, and a resourceful one, too — hadn’t he found a way to take money from his enemies without firing a shot?
Maybe it was a sin to steal this money; the boy wasn’t sure — Papa had said it was like Robin Hood. And, anyway, he could go into a confessional, like Papa had, and be forgiven for his sins. After all, everybody was a sinner — the sisters at the Villa said so. But everybody could be forgiven, too — like soldiers who God forgave for the sins that war made them commit.
Seeing Papa talking to that pretty waitress had reminded the boy of his mother, but Michael would have thought about her, anyway, in his bed. He missed her so much, and every night he would think about her and the pain would be real, the emptiness awful; and he missed Peter, too — he’d give anything to be hit by just one more snowball by that little assassin...
Nonetheless — and despite what his father had said — Michael O’Sullivan, Jr., trying to sleep in the Muscatine motel, did not feel poor. Prosperity may not have been around the corner, but it sure was in the satchel between their beds, and in the backseat compartment of their Ford.
And never in his life had he felt closer to his father.
They were still a family, Papa and Michael.
Still a family.
Thirteen
As the weeks rolled by, my father filled his black satchel at banks in Iowa and Illinois, Nebraska and Oklahoma, Missouri and Kansas, even Indiana and Wisconsin. Never was a shot fired, and our hold-ups became as close to routine as bank robbery could get.
Still, my father warned me: “Keep alert, son. Never forget what we’re doing and why we’re doing it... or who it is that’s pursuing us. Complacency kills as surely as a bullet.”
We did stop at other banks, as my father had indicated we would — not to rob them, but to place our excess cash into safety deposit boxes. As we traveled, Papa would read the papers religiously, looking for mention of our robberies, never finding anything, which pleased him.
He was less happy about the lack of other news. He never said, but upon reflection, I understand he was thumbing through the pages of papers looking for a mention of Connor Looney’s body turning up in a ditch somewhere, signaling Chicago’s surrender, and an end for our journey.
Sometimes at night, when my father grew sleepy behind the wheel, we would sleep in the car. I disliked this, and most of the time, he tried to find motels, or at least campsites where, when we parked, a few of the amenities of civilization were on hand.
And when we stopped to eat at a diner or cafe, he would call the farm at Perdition, at least once a day, talking to my aunt or uncle, who continued to report that crows were indeed on the fence. I was not aware of it at the time, but historians of the mob, including two Capone biographers, claim that among the phone calls my father made along the road were several that went directly to Frank Nitti.
At his desk, in a crisply knotted four-in-hand tie and his long-sleeved white shirt and dark suspenders, Nitti leaned over the phone, saying, “Mr. O’Sullivan — what can we do to put an end to this little misunderstanding?”
“Mr. Nitti, I have no misunderstanding with you,” O’Sullivan’s voice said, calm, reasonable over the crackling lone-distance wire. “I’ve no grievance against the Capone organization — I think I’ve made that clear from the start.”
“And I hope I’ve made it clear,” Nitti replied smoothly, “that the Looneys are business associates of ours, of long standing, and such alliances must be respected.”
“I still have friends back home, Mr. Nitti — and they tell me John Looney is a shambles. Not tending to business, his mind strictly on this present matter... and the welfare of his son.”
“You have a son, too, Mr. O’Sullivan. You can understand that view, certainly.”
“I hope that’s not a veiled threat, Mr. Nitti.”
Nitti, having just lighted up a cigarette, waved out the match. “Of course it isn’t. I merely—”
“I have a son, and if any harm comes to him, all of you best pray the breath has left me — because as long as I have one breath, all of you will pay.”
“Now who’s making threats, Mr. O’Sullivan?”
“I don’t threaten, I take action. Do you have a wife, Mr. Nitti?”
“I do.”
“A son?”
“Yes. And if that is—”
“No. I would never touch them. I would feed you your eyes, if necessary — but your family... no.”