+J.M.J.+

A Slaying Song Tonight

By "Matrix Refugee"

Author's Note:

I shouldn't be writing this since I haven't actually seen the movie Road to Perdition; I've only read the movie novelization and heard the kick-rear soundtrack (If this does not get the Oscar for best original score, or at least a nomination, I am gonna be MAD!), so if the facts are off in this, blame it on that. This was too wild an idea to keep under my fedora for long. When the Ref gets nasty, she goes whole hog! The gentle, sensitive Ref has turned out a fic that is not for the sensitive, yet not for the cynical, either. Arguably AU or pre-film (Obviously). I was in a verrrry strange mood when I wrote this: anyone who's been stuck in a house on a cold afternoon, babysitting a berserk eight-year old girl who practically lives on cookies (And who looks like she lives on cookies) will identify with this fic. If the gentle Jude Law who charmed us as Gigolo Joe in "A.I." and shattered our hearts as Jerome (Eugene) in Gattaca could play a creepy, crooked reporter turned assassin, Ref can write this little shocker…

Dedication:

For Sapphire Rose: from one fan of the talented Mr. Law to another, Merry Christmas! If I got any of this wrong, don't hold it against me: I'll have to wait until February for the DVD release, since I didn't get the chance to see the film in the theatre.

Disclaimer:

I don't own Road to Perdition, its characters (certainly NOT Maguire), concepts, or other indicia, which are the property of Sam Mendes, Max Allen Collins, David Self, DreamWorks SKG, 20th Century Fox, et al. I also do NOT own the song "Jingle, Bells", fragments of which appear throughout this fic, including the title, which is the product of my own twisted, slightly goth sense of humor (The line was "a sleighing song tonight"…you get the idea). I can't remember who owns/wrote that silly song, but I happen to live in Massachusetts, not far from Malden, where the song was written, and where there is a plaque somewhere in a park there to commemorate said song.

I: What Fun it Is

The phone rang in Harlen Maguire's bachelor flat early in the evening of Christmas Eve. He was just rinsing the afternoon's batch of photos in the darkroom in one of the back rooms, but he set aside the fresh prints and carefully lifted a corner of the heavy curtain which separated the work area from the rest of the dim-lit room.

He stepped out into the short hallway and headed for the front room.

He picked up the receiver and sat down in the armchair next to the telephone table.

"Harlen Maguire," he answered.

"Frank Nitti," replied a familiar voice. "I got a little Christmas present for you, fella, but I'd better warn you: it's a tough one."

Maguire chuckled dryly. "I think I'm man enough for whatever you throw my way. Why, what's the deal?"

"Here's the short version of the background: Come to find out one of my associates' granddaughters was witness to a little business dealing of ours that got, shall we say, heated."

He pulled a pad of paper closer to him on the end table. "So you want me to give her something else to think about. Name? Address? What does she look like: blonde? Brunette? You know I'm partial to blondes."

"It isn't that simple: she's eight years old."

A kid. Well, there's a first time for everything…He jotted an 8 on the pad.

"Angelica Campanini, short, golden brown hair, gray eyes, pudgy."

He scribbled down the info. "One of these baby burlesque types?"

"Yeah, the kind who plays the sweet little miss in the pictures, the one who's always rescuing puppies from drowning, but you KNOW she drop-kicks them when she's off camera…oh, and she wears pink a lot."

Maguire doodled the bottom of the figure-8, widening it, sketching in a skirt on it, adding little stick arms and legs, putting a few curlicues for curls around the top of it, two dots for eyes inside the top half.

"She's going to a Christmas party over on the West Side, Vitti's place over Compass Street. She'll probably be with someone, so find a way to separate them, if at all possible, probably her governess, old man Rooney in Rock Island's grandniece Bridget Rooney: about twenty, twenty-two, tall girl, dark hair, glasses.

"You sure you want the job? You might have trouble," Nitti concluded.

"I can handle it."

"How's nine hundred sound for your trouble, dragging you out Christmas Eve?"

Maguire added a mouth to the doodle, a round O of surprise or shock. "No trouble at all: it'll make a good picture."

"I wish you wouldn't keep making these photo records of your work."

"The papers eat up this kind of stuff: Christmas, a sweet little girl's holiday revels cut tragically short."

"That's what I'm afraid of. Someday, someone's going to get wise to you."

Maguire laughed. "Have they questioned Weegee in New York? He's got nothing one me, and I have that from my editors. Papers don't care who shoots to kill and who shoots to capture the moment, as long as it sells sheets."

Nitti was quiet for a moment; Maguire could hear music in the background.

"What's that song playing?" he asked. He recognized it as a dance band version of "Jingle, Bells."

"'Jingle, Bells'," Nitti said, "Why?"

"What fun: I guess I'll be singing a different kind of sleighing song tonight. Get it?"

"I get it, I get it. Now get going, fella. I don't want this to explode in our faces."

"It won't."

They said their goodbyes and hung up.

Maguire went back to his workroom to finish up. Then he reached up to one of the shelves laden with cameras. He took one down and drew out the .38 revolver he kept back there, "for protection".

To be continued…

Literary Easter Eggs:

Vitti—an homage to Analyze This, one of the most hysterical comedies I have ever seen (it's even funnier when you've been in therapy as long as I have, and when you once had a very slight run-in with Mafia types [I'll tell that story some other time]): seeing Robert DeNiro as an emotionally frazzled Mafioso having a breakdown was worth watching it