Looney, who had ulcers, felt pain streak through him.
“I want a retraction,” the mayor said, “and an apology... in print!”
“All... all right.”
Schriver went back around the desk, opened a drawer, and when he returned, had a length of rubber hose in his hand.
“I... I said I’d apologize... retract it...”
The mayor whacked the rubber hose alongside Looney’s right ear; cartilage snapped like twigs underfoot. “Glad to hear it, John! But that’s the last time I want to see my name in your scandalous, blackmailing rag again, understood?”
“Un... understood...”
The mayor whapped the rubber hose alongside Looney’s left ear. More snapping cartilage.
Looney shrieked, “You’re killing me! You’re fucking murdering me!”
The mayor waved the limp phallus of the rubber hose in Looney’s blood-streaked face. “No, John, I’m just warning you. Warning you that your paper will have one more edition, apologizing to me, before you disappear. Before you go out to your New Mexico ranch and hump cattle or cactus, for all I the hell care. Because, John?”
And the mayor kneed Looney in the groin.
Crying out in agony, spitting blood, Looney screamed, “Help! Mike! Emeal! For God’s sake!”
“They’re not available, John. What was I saying? Oh yes, because if I or any of my men see you in Rock Island two days from now, you’ll be shot on sight.”
Looney, barely conscious, said nothing, held up like a rag-doll by the coppers.
The mayor tossed the bloody rubber hose on the desk and then flexed his hands. “I’m tired, fellas. You work him over for a while. I’ll just watch.”
And they did, and the mayor did.
Three
In recent years, Michael O’Sullivan had rarely felt helpless.
He had survived the war, when many around him in the trenches had not. And he had returned to America with a new confidence and a fatalistic outlook that served him well. Along the way, he had earned the allegiance of John Looney, even as he paid Mr. Looney that same respect.
But as he stood in the city hall hallway, next to his friend and fellow Looney aide Emeal Davis, O’Sullivan felt helpless indeed, hearing the cries of his chief, the agonized calls for help, the pitiful shrieking from beyond the pebbled glass doorway guarded by the two armed police officers.
“They’re killing him in there,” O’Sullivan said to the pale young cop, over the muffled yet all too distinctive cries of pain.
“I have my orders,” the young cop said; something in the man’s voice said he did not necessarily relish these orders.
“Nothing’s keeping you here,” the other cop said. He was about thirty with a chiseled look and eyes that conveyed a cynical acceptance of his lot in life. He clutched his nightstick in his right hand, tapping it into the open palm of his left, to produce a rhythmic, suggestive thumping.
Looney cried, “Sweet Jesus!”
This was not a prayer.
Trembling with rage, Emeal Davis stepped forward and raised a pointing finger. “We’re not putting up with that — that’s our boss in there!”
The chiseled copper said, “Don’t wag your finger at me, nigger. Get the hell out while you still can.”
Davis’s eyes were wild, and O’Sullivan knew the man was seconds away from drawing down on the officers and storming the office and taking back their boss. O’Sullivan grabbed Davis by the elbow, shot him a hard look, and took several steps back, as did Davis, his eyes now hooded and ominous.
Looney’s cries continued.
“We can go,” O’Sullivan whispered. The two men were huddled against the opposite wall while the coppers eyed them. “And we should.”
Davis whispered back harshly: “And leave Mr. Looney in there, to be beaten to death?”
“I don’t think the mayor brought him here to kill him. Just to teach John Looney a lesson.”
“But the Old Man’s health is frail...”
“Emeal, he’s strong at heart. He’s got spine.”
Undercutting O’Sullivan’s argument, a shrill cry of pain from Looney emanated from the closed office door. The pale young cop swallowed; the older one swung that nightstick into his palm again, harder now.
“You could always go get reinforcements,” the smug older cop said, thump, thump, thump. “We only have thirty-five, forty fellas on hand, downstairs.”
O’Sullivan stepped forward, holding an arm out to keep Davis back. “I know you’re just doin’ your job, gents.”
With a curt nod, O’Sullivan took Davis by the arm, and on the first-floor landing Davis glared at his companion. The dark blue derby was at a jaunty angle, and the effect, with the intense clenched anger, was almost comic.
Almost.
Whispering, Davis said, “You and me can take those two lads out, easy. Schriver’s probably got his bully boys, Randell and Simmons, in there, working John over, tenderizin’ him like a bad cut of beef. We can take them out, one two, and His Honor’ll be shakin’ in the corner.”
“Can we do that without firing a shot?” O’Sullivan asked. “Without attracting the boys in blue down below?”
Davis’s eyes tightened in doubt. “Well... I say we take the risk.”
“I say we take Mr. Billy Club’s advice.”
“What advice?”
“Seek reinforcements.”
O’Sullivan took Davis by the arm again, and they went quickly down the stairs and out into the night. At the top of the steps, city hall at their back, the two men could hear the cheers, the applause, the shouts, the intensity of which had grown considerably since they’d gone inside.
“If our triggermen rush the police station,” O’Sullivan said, “then every Looney enemy on both sides of the river’ll have all they need to end our endeavor, forever.”
Davis frowned, his breath steaming through flared nostrils like an angry bull. “Goddamnit. You’re right, Mike. Schriver’d be the kingpin of the Tri-Cities. But he’s killin’ John in there!” O’Sullivan walked down to the sidewalk, Davis following. “Emeal, if Harry kills John, it’ll only be ’cause it got out of hand. He means to take our friend to the woodshed. Take him down as many pegs as pegs there are.”
They walked across the street and faced each other.
Davis said, “John may not survive.”
“That’s true. Schriver’s risking that — you know how cozy the Old Man is with Chicago. Torrio and Capone would come down on this town with biblical fire. When the smoke cleared, Schriver would be dead, and some Chicago pawn would have the local throne.”
Davis was shaking his head. “Mike — I never heard you talk like this. You always seem like you’re just... in the background; but you been listenin’, ain’t ya?”
“I haven’t been asleep.”
Providing O’Sullivan with applause, the crowd a block over roared.
O’Sullivan began to walk toward Market Square, and Davis put a hand on his friend’s shoulder.
“Mike, I parked down the other way.”
“Never mind the car. We’re going over to the rally.”
“Why?”
O’Sullivan flashed the derby-sporting gangster a small nasty smile; put a brotherly hand on the man’s shoulder.
“If an angry local populace rushes city hall, Emeal, seeking release of their champion, John Looney... serving that recall on His Honor a bit early... then we’d have our way, wouldn’t we? And take no blame.”
Davis had the expression of a man who’d been slapped; but then he grinned, the gold teeth gleaming. “You ain’t been asleep, Mike. Not in the least bit.”
Connor Looney, on the sidelines, was watching the socialist speaker, Gardner, further inflame the flock. A skinny man with a narrow face and sharp features, Gardner wore a black suit with string tie; with his Lincolnesque features, his itinerant preacher air, the orator played the crowd like a goddamn nickel kazoo.