The Confessions of Al Capone

by Loren D. Estleman

  He felt the need to defend his flesh and blood. "He said he'd saved up."

  "Unlikely. The bills for your mother's medical treatment and her funeral expenses would have strained the budget of someone much higher up in the organization. The rent alone would have been beyond his means, not counting the day-to-day graft every legitimate merchant in Cook County must pay to remain in business."

  The Director's casual dismissal of his mother's illness and death—the central tragedy in Vasco's life—shocked him into silence.

  His own file was back open. "Three years ago, Paul Vasco sold his interest in the bar to Rocco Fischetti, a Capone cousin—honestly, this shapes up to be the most incestuous gang of cutthroats since the Borgias—and retired to Florida to operate a charter-boat service in Fort Lauderdale. Everyone in the Chicago underworld seems to migrate to the Gold Coast eventually. The wind off Lake Michigan in January gets to be too much if they survive long enough for their skin to wrinkle."

  "Sir, my father was hardly an underworld character."

  "Granted, he didn't wear silk shirts or keep a mistress. How far do you think the men who did would have gotten if not for the thousands of supernumeraries they paid to run errands for them?

  "I've said I don't condemn him," Hoover continued. "No one took taxis to bread lines and there weren't any defense plants to put him to work." He frowned. He was repeating himself, and he might have suspected that he wasn't as convincing when he sympathized with the plight of the working man as when he was sermonizing against the criminal cancer infecting society. "The situation pleases me, as a matter of fact. All our attempts to place agents inside the gang were failures, and we couldn't turn anyone already there because the penalty of discovery trumped anything we could offer. But the son of a loyal soldier has the advantage of tradition. Peter, do you consider yourself a man of courage?"

  The use of his first name struck him as clumsy, an adjective he would never have thought to apply to a man who had outmaneuvered political infighters from both sides of the aisle through five administrations. He proceeded cautiously, anticipating a trap. "I like to think so. Then again, I've never been tested. I tried to join the army, but I was rejected on the grounds that I provide an essential service as an employee of the FBI."

  "I saw to it you were rejected. Normally the deferment is restricted to special agents and my personal staff. But your background is unique in the Bureau. It's the reason I expedited your assignment to Records and Communications, where I could keep an eye on you, and it's the reason this country can't afford to waste you on some beach; Miami Beach excepted." Perfect teeth flickered, acknowledging the slightness of his joke. "I asked if you're courageous because I don't believe in sending a man into harm's way without satisfying myself he's aware of the risk."

  Hoover, the master magician, exhibited his legerdemain, shuffling the folders on the table once again so that the hefty Capone file was back on top. Vasco pictured the Director alone in that homely room night after night, repositioning his cardboard army like a general pushing toy tanks around a map table.

  "On St. Valentine's Day, 1929, seven men died in a commercial garage on North Clark Street in Chicago." He wet his thumb and paged through the tattered sheaf of pink carbons, yellow flimsies, crumbling clippings, densely typed reports, and letters written in smudged pencil and blotchy ink. " 'In a hail of bullets' is the journalists' hackneyed phrase. Forgive me if I insult your intelligence with a nursery tale everyone knows, but to presume knowledge is to encourage ignorance. That Al Capone was behind the massacre there is no doubt, despite the appalling lack of evidence needed to indict.

  "We know also, within an acceptable margin of doubt, that two of his favorite shooters, John Scalise and Albert Anselmi, were directly involved. The gang had absolute faith in their allegiance based on past performance, and Capone himself refused to turn them over to Hymie Weiss over an old offense in the interest of restoring the peace: 'I wouldn't do that to a yellow dog,' I believe, was Capone's response. But the wheel of gangdom turns perpetually, as do the gangsters' coats. Scalise and Anselmi were accused of conspiring against their boss with his enemies. Capone threw a banquet in their honor at an Indiana roadhouse, raised toasts to their health, and then demonstrated for their benefit how his good friend, Babe Ruth, hit home runs. He started things off with a baseball bat and left the rest to hired guns. Ah. I knew it was here somewhere. These prewar files are in deplorable condition." He snatched up an eight-by-ten sheet and paid Vasco the compliment of rising from behind the table and walking around to hold out the item.

  Vasco stood to accept it. Hoover had the smallest feet he'd ever seen on a grown man, neatly encased in black wingtips laced so tightly the tongues didn't show, polished to a high gloss like onyx. He thought, disloyally, of a doll, or of a small boy carrying the ring at a wedding.

  The grainy black-and-white photograph, reproduced on coarse police stock, drove all personal remonstrances from his head. He'd begun to fidget when the names Scalise and Anselmi came up; his father had attended that banquet as a guest, invited by a shylock to whom he owed money, and although Paul Vasco had been laconic about the details, even deep in drink as he was, his son had gathered that the fate of the guests of honor had served as a lesson to those who failed to live up to their obligations. The pictures Peter had seen in tabloids had been unsettling enough—too much so to appear even in the sensational Hearst press—but this one would have shut down the yellowest bosoms-and-blood sheet under the laws of decency. It was for official use only.

  The murdered men lay naked on gurneys in a bare room, hairy specimens of Sicilian manhood with large, flaccid genitals and puckered holes in their chests (il cuore, the heart), temples (il cervello, the brain), and throats (la gola, the center of speech—a customary precaution in case they survived long enough to name their assailants). A little finger was missing; a defensive wound, proof that at least one of them had been alive after the beating. All four arms were bruised and probably broken. But the worst injuries were the blows to the skulls. They looked like empty goatskin bags. An orbit had been crushed, spilling the eye.

  "Thank you." Vasco returned the photo with the slow elaborate gesture of a drunkard trying to pass for sober.

  "Are you all right? Do you need a stimulant?"

  "Please."

  The Director disapproved. His face was as transparent as a baby's: arranged into upright V's, pleasure; V's inverted, the opposite. But Vasco was beyond caring. His head felt as light as the goatskin bags.

  A switch snapped on the intercom on the table, a twin of the sleek walnut instrument on Helen Gandy's desk. Within three minutes, two inches of Kentucky rye materialized in a glass as heavy as a paperweight. Miss Gandy glided out with no smile his way. A more intimate connection with the man she worked for could not be imagined.

  "Better?" Hoover sounded impatient.

  "Yes. Thank you." He was seated again, the warmth of the spirits climbing up from the floor of his stomach to turn his ears pink. His father's taste for the stuff had made him numb to its pleasures.

  "I sometimes forget what impact these things have on the layman. Most people encounter death only after the mortician has done his wonders with wax and paint."

  "It isn't that. I knew those fellows. They came to my fifth birthday party. They brought a wooden rocking horse signed by Tom Mix." Scalise and Anselmi had not been the kind that attracted banner headlines. Their gruesome deaths alone had made them worth the outlay in paper and ink. He remembered their loud neckties and immigrant haircuts, their halting command of English; attempts at the th in "birthday" had made Peter giggle, and grown men present to hoot and put them in headlocks. He had not connected the men to their names until that moment. Photos of their corpses released to the press had shown them with sheets drawn to their chins, their features foreshortened.

  "That's understandable," Hoover said. "Jesse James read to his children from the Bible, and Capone himself set up free soup kitchens in the depth of the Depre
ssion. These hooligans will stop at nothing to win over the illiterate. Your rocking-horse heroes poured seventy slugs into a Chicago Police car in 1925, killing two officers before they had a chance to return fire. The murderers pleaded self-defense and were acquitted." His eyes lingered on the photograph. Then he returned to his chair. "Are you prepared to accept the assignment, knowing how these people reward those who plot against them?"

  "I don't know what the assignment is, sir. I understand I'm to join the household, but I don't think just being Paul Vasco's son will get me in the door."

  "Nor do I. But Capone's a superstitious peasant, despite his modern methods, the automobile and the machine gun. Medical reports confirm his fear of death and eternity. In Alcatraz he spent nearly as much time in the chapel as at the mangle in the laundry. Like all the rest he thinks he can fix God.

  "You'll be retrained by a priest. The Bureau will arrange the necessary documents and references to show you completed your novitiate at St. Francis Catholic Church in Cicero, Illinois. The records of your expulsion will be destroyed. It so happens the parish is in need of a new community center, and the diocese has promised to cooperate in return for a donation to the building fund. All we need now is agreement from you."

  Vasco opened his mouth to ask a question. But the Director picked up the Teletype Miss Gandy had brought earlier.

  "Paul Vasco just secured a loan from the Everglade State Bank of Miami, Florida, to buy the charter boat he's been leasing for three years. He doesn't know it, but the Bureau is now his business partner. You'll visit him. Friendly relations must be established."

  "Sir, I—"

  "Ralph keeps tabs on all his brother's confederates, current and former. If he suspects you're estranged, the operation will fail. I understand it's distasteful, but your country requires it."

  "I suppose if it's necessary—"

  "It is, I said. Do you object to posing as a priest on moral grounds?"

  "No." Fearing he'd answered too quickly, he shook his head. "No, sir, I don't." The Director pursed his lips; a distressing effect, more blowfish than feral hog. "If you're afraid of the consequences of discovery, there's no shame in it. These men are savages. You'll return to your duties and no one will know what took place in this office."

  He remembered the picture of J. Edgar Hoover with Alvin Karpis in handcuffs. "I'm not afraid."

  "You accept the assignment."

  It wasn't a question, but he said, "Yes."

  "Splendid. As far as anyone is concerned, you're a man of the cloth, and thanks to Paul Vasco you're practically family. Al Capone is looking for a father confessor, to hear his sins and pray him through Purgatory. There's no reason it shouldn't be one of ours, because either way he's going to hell."

  Hoover traded the Teletype for another sheet and wrote on it with a fat fountain pen. "This is a directive reassigning you from Division Four to Division Five: National Security." He stood and held out his hand. "Congratulations, Special Agent Vasco."

  THREE

  IT WAS A BEAUTIFUL SPRING DAY ON THE MALL. THE MONUMENTS LOOKED like soap sculptures in the sun. The marine guards posted in front were as motionless as cribbage pegs in their white gloves, rifles at parade rest. Men from other branches of the service leaned on fountains and sat on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial smoking, some with crutches beside them. Nurses, office workers, tourists, and couriers with briefcases bustled about. A portable radio mentioned Monte Cassino. It was four o'clock Eastern War time, and a long way from dark.

  A great change had taken place since Vasco had walked through the place that morning on his way to work. Then, he had avoided eye contact with the military men and women, ashamed of his obvious good health and lack of a uniform while others his age and younger were fighting and dressing wounds on foreign shores throughout the world. They could not know that his attempt at selfrecruitment had failed under the Essential Services clause of the Selective Service Act: but in his heart he knew that any four-f clerk or war wife could sit at his desk polishing the Bureau's image while he trained for combat. Now he strolled past the soldiers and sailors on leave and the marines on duty with his spine straight. He was preparing to fight the war at home.

  And he had already made a sacrifice. He'd given up his fifth birthday party, one of the few happy memories of his childhood.

  He had no idea what had become of that rocking horse, built by hand from sturdy pine by some Old World craftsman, brightly painted, with the cowboy star's name written on the neck in simple script that even a small boy could read. Lost, no doubt, in some move; the Vascos had changed addresses several times as their fortunes slid up and down the turbulent scale. He'd outgrown it by then, so it didn't matter. What did was that two men he didn't know ("Uncle John" and "Uncle Albert" barely resonated, mysterious relatives entering and leaving their kitchen and parlor as frequently as they did) had thought enough of his father to bring his only child so grand a gift.

  When he was older, he'd assumed the two were like Paul Vasco, worker ants toiling at the base of the heap: the Outfit, as the press called it after Capone went to prison and peace descended—as of course it had to, with him out of commission and most of the O'Banion gang in the ground. Public outrage and private crusades had had little to do with ending the violence. It had swept through the city like influenza, sparing some, striking down many, and run its course once the last susceptible party had fallen. Now he knew that the two funny foreign men who'd stumbled over "Happy birthday" had been both virus and victim. He would never again think of that day without seeing two pale naked bodies stretched out like hogs that had been stunned, then slaughtered.

  The St. Valentine's Day Massacre was too monumental a thing to have been the work of two men operating under the direction of a third. It was more on the order of a natural disaster. To a boy staring at a front page, seven corpses sprawled on a poured floor might as well have littered a beach in Singapore, hurled there by a typhoon, mindlessly and without malice. Shotguns and Thompsons had done the damage: So what? They were machines, hardly less sentient than the anonymous fingers on the triggers.

  It was names that made the difference. Scalise and Anselmi and Capone, who as everyone knew was answering routine questions by the Dade County, Florida, district attorney while bullets were chugging into James Clark, Albert Weinshank, Adam Heyer, Frank and Pete Gusenberg, a quack optometrist named Schwimmer, and John May, a mechanic; who to Peter Vasco's thinking was the only one with a legitimate excuse for hanging around a garage. George "Bugs" Moran, O'Banion's heir and the principal target, was absent also, lingering over a cup of coffee in a drugstore up the street. The Outfit's track record in missing the whole point of a mission almost matched the law's.

  He wondered if that mistake had helped to erode Capone's faith in the loyalty of his two favorite killers. He wondered, too, if he himself was a "man of courage," to borrow Hoover's radio-drama rhetoric. He pictured himself with his arms pinioned to a chair, watching the slow approach of the bull-shouldered vice lord patting his palm with a Louisville Slugger, the long scar on his cheek flaring white against a face engorged with rage. Such exertion would be beyond him now, if his medical information could be trusted, but Brother Ralph was healthy enough, and in any case all his old associates had rallied around him in defeat as they had at the height of his brutal reign.

  Vasco's blood pressure dropped at the thought. But then he supposed it was no worse than riding a landing craft through heavy seas toward a fortified beachhead. Either event would be the test of a man.

  Florida.

  The place came up nearly as often as Chicago when Capone's name was mentioned. He fled to its refuge whenever the city on the lake failed to smile upon him; when he tired of riding his custom Cadillac tank a distance he could have walked in five minutes and crossing hotel lobbies inside a scrum of bodyguards just to buy a newspaper; when the city fathers decided to throw a bone the reformers' way and issue a warrant for his arrest. Legend said a secret passageway led from h
is office in the Lexington Hotel to an alley where the armored sedan waited to whisk him to Union Station whenever uninvited visitors entered the reception room.

  Even when, after the massacre, Miami wouldn't have him, the place remained his good luck charm. He remembered Hialeah and a Philadelphia detective he'd befriended there, who arranged to jail him in coal country for the crime of carrying a concealed weapon until cooler heads prevailed and Moran withdrew the five-figure bounty he'd put on Capone's head. (The chief turnkey placed an armchair and a Turkish rug in his private cell.) Federal agents gave him a cross-country lift to his Palm Island estate after he was discharged from Alcatraz. Asked by a fresh reporter if he intended to go after any of his old enemies, he'd said the only thing he wanted to kill was fish. It was all there in the file in Vasco's moleskin briefcase, next to his Thermos.

  Florida was a sanctuary, and he'd agreed to violate it.

  It was like being asked to ambush Hitler at Berchtesgaden, only better. Der Fuehrer had done nothing to him personally, but Al Capone had taken his mother from him, his respect for his father, and now his fifth birthday.

  He didn't like the priest who'd been selected to reacquaint him with the ceremonies of the Church. The feeling was mutual, although on Father McGonigle's part it was more a matter of general policy than personal distaste.

  He lived a streetcar ride away from the marble halls of government, in a Negro neighborhood where boys barely old enough to walk pitched pennies against the curb and overweight women sat on stoops fanning themselves with paper fronds advertising a local funeral parlor. Youths in zoot suits and peg-top trousers smoked cigarettes on street corners and everyone stopped what he was doing to look when a white man got off at that stop, holding a scrap of paper with an address written on it; but they lost interest when he started up the steps of a row house near the end of the block. Pennies resumed jingling, fans fell back into their halfhearted rhythm. Shrill nasal voices argued over the day's number.