Looney, almost smiling, said, “You’re a clever boy, Mike. Neutral ground — sanctuary. What do you want?”
“I want to talk... in private. Downstairs.”
Looney sensed the man behind him standing, and he got to his feet — batting off the help of his chowderheaded bodyguards — and, with a nod to Sean to let him pass, moved out of the pew. In a brown suit that looked somewhat the worse for wear, O’Sullivan stood waiting for Looney to fall in alongside him, and the two bodyguards followed as the two men moved together up the aisle toward the church entrance. Around them heads were bowed, as Latin call and response echoed throughout the cavernous church and sunlight filtered in colorfully through stained glass.
Near the front doors, to the left, were stairs that went down into the basement. Then the little group, footsteps ringing off cement, was in a corridor, off of which a large room could be used for various meetings and even banquets; Michael O’Sullivan, Jr., had attended a birthday party in that very room, the night the boy’s brother was killed in his stead.
Looney nodded to Sean and Jimmy to wait outside, and he and his former chief enforcer went through a small door into another room. O’Sullivan snapped on the lights, a few bare hanging bulbs exposing in their yellowish glow an unfinished windowless concrete area that had a crypt-like atmosphere, littered with religious artifacts, some of them stored, others just abandoned.
The old man and his younger ex-associate stood facing each other — no chairs were available, though they might have used one of the pews stacked around, amid kneeling benches, various plaster saints, and a bloody Jesus on the cross leaning against the wall, a bystander with more on His mind than the two of them.
Looney had a flash of the basement of his home, and the last good time he’d had with his two godsons, playing dice, rolling the “bones” against the concrete wall, losing to Peter. He was still losing to Peter, after all these weeks.
Above them the muffled sound of mass made the Latin even more indecipherable, providing a strange, otherworldly accompaniment to their conversation.
Emotion swelled through Looney’s chest; seeing Mike O’Sullivan — his other son, the better son — filled him with emotion, much of it contradictory: love, hate, pride, shame.
“And here I thought,” Looney said, letting the brogue roll, “I would never see you again.”
“Not alive,” O’Sullivan said flatly.
That hurt the old man, and he flinched as O’Sullivan thrust something toward him: a file, a manila folder, stuffed with papers and such.
“Read that,” O’Sullivan said. “Take out your glasses, if you like.”
Looney did not reach for the file his former soldier offered him.
O’Sullivan made his sales pitch: “It’s interesting reading, John. The kind of story the News specializes in... crime, sin, betrayal... It’s all there.”
Looney waved a hand: no. Shook his head the same way.
“Read all about it, John,” O’Sullivan said, as if hawking an extra edition of Looney’s paper. “Your son has been working for Chicago. When you turn down something as beneath your dignity... narcotics, forcible white slaving, union racketeering... Connor goes right ahead with it, with Capone’s blessing.”
Looney held up a palm. “Mike, please stop. Don’t waste your breath.”
Above them, Latin droned.
“Of course,” O’Sullivan was saying, “your boy’s been stealing from you for years... in league with your good friends, your business partners Nitti and Capone. He’s been keeping accounts open under the names of dead men — men like the McGovern brothers. I stood and watched him kill Danny, and I helped him kill Fin, and I did these distasteful things under the mistaken impression I was working for you. Doing your bidding — but I wasn’t.”
O’Sullivan dropped the file to his side; it was clear Looney would not accept it.
Finally the old man said, “Do you think I’d give up my son?”
“He’s been stealing from you, John.”
“You’re a father, Mike. My own son?”
“He betrayed you. Sold you down the river.”
“And you think I don’t know that?”
The simple question almost knocked O’Sullivan back.
The old man was smiling bitterly, shaking his head again, as if disagreeing with himself. “I know, Mike... I know what Connor’s done, and what Connor is. Hell, those things in that folder, I’m proud of him for ’em... it’s the only time he ever showed any goddamned initiative!”
Michael O’Sullivan had not expected this response from the old man. Right now, he felt as if he’d been struck a blow to the belly. This had been his last effort, one final chance to get through to the one man who could end the nightmare.
The old man’s face was a wrinkled mask of intensity, his blue eyes cold as ice, and yet blazing. “Listen to me, boy! I tried to avoid more bloodshed — I sent you an emissary with an offer of amnesty and money and freedom, and you butchered him to send me a message. Well, you wouldn’t accept my offer, so I did what was necessary.”
Above them, the congregation said, “Ah-men!”
O’Sullivan said, “I loved you like a father.”
“And I love you like a son... I always have. And I am begging you, boy, to leave... before there’s no leaving.”
“That sounds like a threat.”
Looney sighed. “I am too old and tired for threats. When did either of us make such idle comments? You can leave this town, this country, with your remaining son, and live long happy lives. Open a shop, buy a farm, or sit back and spend Capone’s money till Gabriel calls.”
“And if I don’t?”
The old man looked at him gravely. “Then you know how it will end.”
O’Sullivan felt he was talking to a brick wall, whose response to whatever he said was to fall on him; but he had to try again — he and this man had been close, so very close, and their heart-to-heart talks had gone long into many nights.
“Think it through, John. Capone and Nitti are protecting Connor, now — but when you’re gone, they won’t need him. They’ve been using him, manipulating him, positioning themselves to take over the Tri-Cities action.”
Looney’s smile was like a skeleton’s. “But I’m still alive, Mike — and as long as I’m alive, they won’t give you Connor. Now, Capone might steal from me — and if I were to look at that file, I believe it would be Frank Nitti’s fine Sicilian hand I would see at work, not the pudgy fingers of Capone — but in any case, the Big Fella would never have me killed.”
“I have a strongbox of Alexander Rance’s ledgers and files — this... ” O’Sullivan hefted the manila folder, “... is just the small part of it that applies to you.”
Looney grunted a humorless laugh. “And what would you do with this strongbox of information? Trade it back to Capone and Nitti for them giving you my son?”
“That’s right.”
“If you believe that, Mike, why are you here? Why take this risk? Or have you already figured out that those records wouldn’t have been in that hotel suite if someone didn’t want you to have them.”
O’Sullivan had considered this, but had not been able to sort it out; so he had to ask, “What do you mean, old man?”
“I mean Frank Nitti wants Capone’s chair, but he wants it to come to him by rights of succession, not violent overthrow. Voices within the Capone organization whisper to me that Nitti has paved the way for these federal indictments dogging Capone’s heels.”
O’Sullivan tried to absorb this twisted news. “Nitti is helping the feds?”
Looney nodded. “Oh, they don’t know he is... but he is. So you do not hold the cards you think you hold, Mike.”