Road to Perdition

Начало книги

This Angel of Death you’ve heard so much about was my father, Michael O’Sullivan, born in Ireland in 1887.

The family nearly lost its “O” at Ellis Island, but my grandfather insisted it stay, and the family of three stayed too, right there in New York. For a time my grandfather toiled in a railroad switch yard, until the promise of better work drew the O’Sullivans to Rock Island, Illinois, with its John Deere and Harvester plants, and government arsenal, where guns and tanks were manufactured.

Immigrants in America — whether Irish or Italian or Jewish — quickly learned that local government ignored them; the only real government was what the Black Hand-type gangs provided. Little criminal kingdoms — subgovernments — grew up in cities all around America, thriving further with the onset of Prohibition. The Tri-Cities — Rock Island and Moline, on the Illinois banks of the Mississippi River, Davenport over on the Iowa side — were no exception. And the ruler of the Tri- Cities was John Looney.

Читать дальше →