“Mike, me boy, I have no truck with pacifists; I believe a man has to stand and fight for what he believes is right, and that he must redress the wrongs committed against him.”
“As do I, sir.”
“And I respect you and the honor you brought on the Irish Catholic community with your valor.” Looney did not add what he really felt, for fear of truly alienating his top lieutenant: that what went on over there had been England’s war, not the war of a “Free Ireland!” rebel like John Looney.
Who said, “I’m a Democrat like you, Mike. And a capitalist — if you haven’t noticed by now that I’m a capitalist, then you just ain’t been paying attention.”
And O’Sullivan actually smiled at that. So did everyone else at the table.
“All around us workers are going out on strike,” Looney said. “And the unions’re on the rise. That’s good for us — we support the working man, because we want him to relax with the diversions we can offer him, after work... Right, Helen?”
Chuckling, she said, “Right, John.”
Suddenly Emeal Davis, looking sideways at the bodyguard, spoke, in his brooding baritone: “Mike, we make alliances. That’s how we can do what we do. And a lot of working stiffs these days vote socialist. Don’t kid yourself.”
Obviously not liking the sound of any of this, Frank Kelly, pale as a ghost, rose and said, “Well, I better get over there, and make our pitch. Are you willing to run as a socialist, John?”
“No need. It’s a recall ballot. My name will be listed, and that will be enough.”
Distractedly nodding to everyone, Kelly shuffled out.
Looney gave O’Sullivan a hard look. “What do you say, Mike?”
O’Sullivan said, “Mr. Looney, politics aren’t my calling. Anyway — you know I’d follow you into hell.”
“That I do know, son.”
Connor winced at “son,” and Looney immediately regretted using the word. But he was a man who spoke from his heart.
“Tonight, at that rally,” Looney said, “we’ll build support for my candidacy, and stoke the fires that already rage in Rock Island against this mayor.”
“Fueled by the News,” Helen Van Dale said, puckishly. “I start all my fires with copies of the News.”
With a small smile, Looney cast his gaze on the madam. “Do you have more information for me, Helen?”
“If I didn’t, would that stop you? Wouldn’t you just put your most creative reporter in front of a typewriter and let him run wild?”
Helen could get away with this taunting because Looney had great affection for her; and because, next to him, she was the most powerful person in the Tri-Cities.
Much of the information that gave Looney’s scandal sheet, the Rock Island News, its unique leverage came from Helen, who was in a position (so to speak) to know the sins of various and sundry local men. Looney felt no shame for using his newspaper in a so-called “blackmailing” manner that rival publication the Argus had termed “a paper gun held at the heads of his victims.”
Looney merely used the naked truth culled from the lives of these hypocrites to sway them to do his bidding, from paying him off for not running a story to cutting him in for a piece of their action. That was how he’d built his empire: bootleggers, gamblers, and whoremongers had a choice of exposure in the News or taking on a new partner. Right now, John Looney had over one hundred and fifty such partners, who paid him on average four hundred dollars a week in tribute.
“There can be no question that the mayor is feeling the heat,” Looney said. “Which is the other piece of news I have for you — I’m meeting with Mayor Schriver in less than an hour. At his invitation.”
Connor frowned, and Emeal Davis exchanged worried glances with O’Sullivan.
Davis said, “You could be walking into something, Mr. Looney.”
O’Sullivan, sitting forward, asked, “Where is the meeting to be held?”
“Oh, we’re quite safe,” Looney said, with a dismissive wave. “City hall! Right out in the open. Above board.”
Connor said, “What are you meeting with that clown for, anyway? If you’ve decided to run for mayor, already.”
“If the mayor can convince me he is ready to change his ways,” Looney said to his son, “to cooperate with my various requests, to go back to our old arrangements... I will consider taking myself out of the recall equation.”
Davis was nodding. “That sounds reasonable.”
“Emeal, Mike,” Looney said, “I want you to accompany me. Connor, we have dozens of boyos in that Market Square crowd. You circulate. Make sure they do their jobs.”
“You can count on me, Pop.”
Looney stood, motioned with outspread hands, palms up, that the meeting was over.
Connor turned to Helen, and Looney overheard his son say to her, “After the rally, how about I stop by?”
She touched his cheek. “Not tonight, sweetie. Another time.”
And the black-satin madam and her mink coat swished by.
Looney went to his son. “What was that?”
Connor’s eyes went wide with feigned innocence. “What do you mean, Pop?”
“I told you to lay off that...” He turned to make sure Helen Van Dale was gone, but finished in a whisper. “...flesh peddler. You find yourself a nice girl.”
“I’m just havin’ fun. I’m young, yet.”
“You’ll grow old fast, hanging around with whores. You want to catch something?”
Connor frowned, and nodded toward the other side of the room, and O’Sullivan and Emeal Davis, whose proximity meant they could not have avoided hearing the exchange. The father had unintentionally embarrassed his son.
Looney smiled at Connor. “Ah, I’m just an old woman. You’re right, my boy, you’re young... Have a good time. Sow your wild oats.”
Connor grinned. “Thanks, Pop.”
The father raised a forefinger. “After you do your work at the rally.”
“Right.”
Looney patted his offspring on the cheek. “Good boy.”
Then the mob kingpin gathered his two most trusted men, neither of which was his son, and headed out for a meeting with Mayor Schriver.
Market Square, actually a triangle, was the center of rural commerce in this part of Illinois. An open area of hard-packed earth at Seventeenth Street, from Second to Third Avenues, here farmers could sell corn, potatoes, and hay, among other produce, the railroad station only a block away, making shipping a snap.
The rowdy buildings surrounding Market Square housed first-floor restaurants, saloons, and retailers, with upper-floor hotels for farmers and other transients; on the Seventeenth Street and Third Avenue corner stood John Looney’s Sherman Hotel, whose Java House was a wide-open speakeasy and whose upper floors were the bailiwick of madam Helen Van Dale.
At the opposite end of the same block, the stodgy four-story brick Argus newspaper building seemed to avert its many-windowed gaze from the indecency surrounding it; this competitor of the News had made a crusade out of bringing down publisher Looney, who regularly responded to charges with his own assertions of the rival editor’s supposed sojourns at an insane asylum.
At the center of the square squatted an ornate turn-of-the-century pump house with archways and a speaker’s platform bearing built-in electric illumination under a gingerbread roof. On this clear, not terribly cold March evening, streetlamps joined with the glow of the speaker’s platform to provide plenty of light for the several thousand people, primarily men, who had gathered to hear speakers demand the recall of Mayor Schriver.