All Souls: A Family Story From Southie

Michael is now the only one in the ten-room apartment: “I wasn’t home. I knew I never would be again” (224). After Johnnie gets out of the Seals, he takes the apartment. He is welcomed back to Southie and begins spending time with Frankie’s old circle. Michael avoids Southie whenever possible and he and Johnnie rarely see each other.

The little kids do not enjoy Colorado. Ma pretends to, but Michael suspects that she doesn’t like it, either. Seamus and Stevie tell Michael that there is no excitement there. Ma sends the two of them on a two-week visit to Southie, to see Michael. A few days into the visit, Stevie’s best friend, Tommy Viens, found one of Johnnie’s guns. Tommy dies of a gunshot wound to the head, which is ruled as a potential suicide. Detective O’Leary takes Stevie to the station for questioning, since he was in the apartment where Tommy died. When Michael and Johnnie get to the station, O’Leary is questioning Stevie and accusing him of the murder. Michael is furious, and thinks that he would kill O’Leary if he could: “Steven was just another easy target. His arrest would bring weeks of splashy Boston Herald headlines and a feather in the cap of the detective” (230).