Wards were the rule at St. Anthony’s, but exceptions were made for the family and inner circle of a hospital benefactor like John Looney.
So it was that in another private room at the modern facility, Annie O’Sullivan held her new son in her arms, the tiny thing slumbering peacefully.
Last night around eight, she’d known the time was nigh; following her husband’s instructions, she called the hospital and an ambulance came quickly around. Mary Jane stayed with Michael, Jr., and Annie went off to St. Anthony’s, into the loving hands of nuns in white who hovered like friendly ghosts, and where hours later, she was joined by a red wee squalling thing whose beautiful ugliness stunned her.
Now she could hardly believe that, barely fourteen hours later, she felt fine. Exhausted, but fine.
Sitting beside her, wearing a silly grin, was the baby’s father; dark circles under his eyes, skin a grayish pallor, tie loose around his collar, suitcoat rumpled, he looked like a corpse. But a happy one.
Whispering, not wanting to wake the child, she said, “We haven’t spoken of a name, yet.”
“Your father was Peter,” he said. “Mine David. I vote for Peter David O’Sullivan.”
“Lovely. How lovely. It’s unanimous, then.”
The baby woke and cried just a little — sort of a halfhearted wail, as if only doing what was expected of him.
Annie began to nurse the child, saying, “Welcome, Peter. Welcome to the family.”
And Mike sat watching, with the goofiest expression.
After a while one of the sisters came and took the child back to the nursery, so Annie could get her rest.
Mike sat on the edge of her bed and held her hand.
“I hear there was a terrible riot last night,” she said.
“There was.”
“Something to do with Mr. Looney, wasn’t it?”
“Don’t worry yourself about that.”
“So sad.”
“Sad?”
Annie sighed. Shook her head. “I overheard two of the sisters talking, this morning. Three died, they say.”
“Yes.”
“One a policeman.”
“So I understand. Annie—”
“One was just a boy of eighteen, running an errand for his mother, taken down by a bullet. In the back. Isn’t that terrible?”
How mournful Mike’s eyes seemed as he said, “Please don’t think of such things, dear.”
“Can you imagine? Sending your boy off for an errand, only to have him struck senselessly down like that?”
And then she began to weep.
He climbed up on the bed and slipped an arm around her and lay beside her, comforting her.
“I’m sorry... sorry,” she said, sniffling. He gave her his hand-kerchief, and she said, “It’s just... I’m so emotional right now. Please forgive me.”
“You should be happy.”
“Oh, I am! I am! But when I think of that poor mother... Never to see...”
And she began to cry again.
Arm still around her, Mike patted her gently, soothingly, as if she were a child herself.
Dabbing her eyes with her husband’s hanky, she said, “You have to promise me, Mike...”
“What?”
“I don’t want Peter, or Michael, involved in such things.”
“Such things?”
“The kind of work you do. You had no choice. I mean no disrespect, no lack of gratitude. But they must have... a better life. Promise me!”
“I promise, darling.”
And she could tell by the look in his eyes that he meant it. That he wanted nothing more in life than a different path for his boys.
She fell asleep in the crook of his arm, just as Peter had slept in hers; warmth flooded through her, happiness spreading its glow, with the promise of a shining future for her family, for her children, the likes of which only a great land like America could provide.
Book Three
American Dream
Chicago, Illinois
through March 1943
One
Michael Satariano lay on the bed in the darkened room, curled into a fetal position.
He did not know how much time had passed since the carnage at the Capone estate. Although awake, he remained sluggish, and felt certain the hot tea he’d been given, after entering this room, had been laced with a Mickey Finn.
But, whether his captors had doped him or not, he made no effort to emerge from a funk that came largely from within. Something inside him had died, or at least retreated to its own small, private corner, where it, too, rolled itself up, as if the posture of birth somehow welcomed death.
The recent dispatching by Michael of one Capone gunman after another, piling up dead thugs like kindling, filling doorways with bodies, draping stairways with corpses, splashing blood and gore around the grounds like a sloppy child diving into his birthday cake and ice cream, well, it... all seemed strangely dream-like now. He could still see in his mind’s eye combat in the jungle of Bataan, and himself chopping down Japs with the tommy, summoning gritty sounds-sights-smells reality that, however nightmarish, remained vividly tangible.
But his attempt to shoot his way through an army of bodyguards to carry out his vendetta on Alphonse Capone... hours ago, or at most days (how long had he been held here?)... had already taken on a distinctly surreal cast.
When he woke periodically, in the darkness of the room (what room? where?), he would laugh and weep at once, thinking of the terrible irony of it all, Al Capone a gibbering drooling idiot, beyond Michael’s grasp, free from the responsibility of his crimes and his sins, an unfit target for the revenge of Michael O’Sullivan, Jr.
Who would die at the hand of these Sicilians, and justifiably: hadn’t he for no reason (no good reason, no real reason) betrayed their trust to enter a household where he rained death down upon... how many men? A dozen? More? Invading the home of their retired, revered leader with the intent to kill...
He had been caught red-handed — literally — surrounded by his pointless homicidal handiwork. And now they would kill him for these transgressions, and his father and his mother and his brother would never be avenged, could never be avenged, because the man responsible was lost in the empty rooms of his mind, waiting unaware for death.
Perhaps in hell Capone would return to cognizance; no doubt Michael would be there, waiting for him...
Mimi Capone, accompanied by two armed men, had walked Michael away from the poolside where Al Capone fished in the deep end while, all around, corpses leeched blood and other fluids into the grass under the moonlight. Michael had a sense of the wide-eyed awe and horror of these tough men who’d rushed onto the scene, shocked speechless by the battlefield they’d stumbled into.
As Mimi ushered him across the backyard, Michael had half-sensed questions, but they’d had a hollow, underwater sound, and though he recognized the words as English, they formed no thoughts or concepts he recognized. Vaguely he remembered being escorted up some steps, and shortly after he entered this small room, this cell-like space with just a single cot-like bed and no table or light or anything else.
Someone had made him sit up and drink the tea — was it Mimi? — and the voice had been soothing, gentle, encouraging Michael to drink.
Which he had. Not that he’d been thirsty, just that he was in no state of mind to refuse. Warmth had saturated his system and, without getting under the covers, he got himself (or had they put him there?) onto the bed.