The Confessions of Al Capone

by Loren D. Estleman

  He pulls up in front of the main entrance in the same bus I rode in my first day in town, the same chauffeur driving in his uniform. Frankie's running late on account of he didn't figure in the rush hour between shifts at the stockyards. Diamond Jim kills some time in his office discussing the dining room menu with his chef, Caesarino his name is, Jim shipped him in from Italy right out from under the best hotel in Rome. At 4:25 by Diamond Jim's diamond watch, he excuses himself and goes out to the vestibule to wait for his delivery. He sends in his secretary, Frank Camilla, to finish lining out the bill of fare with the chef.

  Bang-bang! Caesarino figures it's backfire. Camilla steps out for a look. Jim's on his face on the floor with a bullet hole behind his right ear. Another slug went through the cashier's window and stuck in the plaster wall behind it.

  The cops investigated, but of course everyone was where he was supposed to be when Jim went down. Johnny cried when they told him, real tears; I don't think he ever regretted the decision, just that it had to be made. "Jim committed suicide when he took up with that tramp," he'd say.

  What a funeral! It was like a block party, if you barricaded off all of Chicago, with the guest of honor riding up front in the procession in a bronze casket cost more than most houses, piled up so high with flowers the pallbearers had to shove it into the hearse with their shoulders, shearing off carnations, lilies, and roses big as bowling balls, the biggest displays with silk ribbons saying FROM JOHNNY and FROM AL; I tell you, if the cops weren't so stupid they'd put all their energy into the names on the splashiest bouquets.

  O'Banion outdid himself. If you used any other florist, your name was mud clear from Lake Michigan to Cicero. The procession was as long as the Great Wall of China, with Jim's showy widow leaning on Hinky Dink Kenna in the back of one of his limousines riding behind the hearse and every Cadillac and Lincoln in three states following bumper-to-bumper. It shut down the city for a solid hour.

  A Presbyterian minister showed up to pray Jim over; the Catholic bishop stayed home because Jim was divorced. The whoring and gambling didn't count as much as that. Ike Bloom, who ran one of his dance halls, delivered a swell eulogy: "Big Jim never bilked a pal or turned down a good guy and he always kept his mouth shut." When my time comes, I won't complain if somebody can say the same thing about me.

  Meanwhile the cops kept digging. A waiter sneaking a smoke outside the cafe said he got a good look at Frankie on his way out and gave them a good description, but by the time the cops hustled him back from Brooklyn the waiter lost his memory. Frankie had to pay his own way home, which shows you what kind of four-flushers cops are.

  One thing. Jim's widow told the papers that when he left their big house on Vernon Avenue he had a hundred and fifty grand in cash in his pocket, but when the cops inventoried the corpse they said he had only a few hundred on him. I don't begrudge Frankie a nice bonus, but I doubt he had time to rifle Jim's pockets between when the shots were heard and when Camilla came barreling out to see what the noise was about. Either the secretary got a windfall or the cops found themselves a retirement stake, or the money was never on him and Wifie took it out of the safe at home and told that story so she wouldn't have to pay taxes on it. Dames are resourceful even when they're in mourning.

  Anyway, it was chicken feed. Diamond Jim's last garlicky breath gave birth to the biggest golden goose since the Greeks knocked over Troy. From here on out we had nothing to worry about except ourselves.

  1944

  A SEASON OF SECRETS

  NINETEEN

  Capone seemed inclined to go on, but then the screen door opened against the pressure of its spring and Danny and Sonny came out onto the porch and sat in the remaining wicker chairs. They lit Camels from twin Ralph-agitating packs and Capone leaned over to fire up the cigar he'd been mangling with his teeth from Danny's stainless-steel lighter. Vasco asked how the ball game was going.

  Danny shrugged. "They keep breaking in with bulletins. We're bombing the shit out of Berlin. Guess I'll have to wait till tomorrow to collect on our bet."

  "Care to put something down on the war?" Sonny smiled.

  Capone said, "That's not something you joke about. We got family over there."

  "Sorry, Dad."

  "The krauts are getting their asses kicked in Russia, too," Danny said. "I said Hitler made a mistake when he turned his back on England. I got no reason to wish any good on John Bull."

  "You Micks are just plain sore at the world." Capone blew a series of aromatic smoke rings, each perfectly round.

  "Limeys first. Then the world."

  They were joined by Mae, Ruth, and Winnie. Vasco got up to offer his seat, but Mae shook her head, wiping her hands on a frilly apron. Winnie stood behind Danny and kneaded his curls with her fingers and Ruth sat on the arm of Sonny's chair, took a puff on his cigarette, and gave it back. It was as domestic a scene as Vasco had ever witnessed. It made him ache for something.

  "All those hours of work, it's over in twenty minutes," Ruth said. "Then another hour of washing dishes."

  "How long's it take to read Oscar Wilde, and how long did it take him to write it?" Danny purred under Winnie's attention.

  "You wouldn't know the answer," she said. "You never read a book in your life."

  "Why should I? If it's any good they'll make a movie out of it."

  "Where's Rose?" Vasco asked.

  Ruth smiled. "Looking after the girls. She insisted. She's a better servant than she ever will be a guest."

  "Maybe she'd rather be a mother," Winnie said.

  Vasco said, "I should get back to Redemption. Thank you for a wonderful day." He shook hands with Sonny, Danny, and Capone, took the women's in his. "I'll see you out." Sonny started to rise.

  "Please don't. I want to take away the picture of all of you relaxing."

  "Leave it to the Irish to declare Sunday in the middle of the week."

  "It isn't the middle of the week, Snorky." Mae laid her left hand on top of Vasco's right. "I want you to know I won't stop doing something kind for Rose every day. Monsignor Donahue would have let me off with a Rosary."

  "It's not my place to second-guess his methods, but from what I've seen of Rose, I'm glad."

  She smiled. "She's worked her spell on you, I can see."

  A strange thing to say to a priest.

  Rose was sitting cross-legged on the floor in the entryway, playing jacks with the two-year-old. Her sister lay on her stomach in the playpen, breathing evenly. The little girl squealed. Rose laughed, a musical sound. She saw Vasco and scrambled to her feet. He caught a flash of caramel thigh. "I didn't see you," she said. "Rose, play with me."

  "Hush, child."

  He said, "Did you enjoy yourself?"

  "I should've helped more."

  "That's not what I asked."

  She looked up at him, then to the side. Nodded. "Thank you again. It's been a good week."

  "It isn't over, Mrs. Capone says. I'll make sure she doesn't forget."

  She looked at him again, then went up on her toes and kissed him on the lips.

  "BLESS ME, FATHER, FOR I HAVE SINNED. IT'S BEEN FOUR YEARS SINCE MY LAST confession."

  "Four years." There was no inflection in Kyril's voice. His face was unreadable behind the screen; but that was normal.

  "What is your sin?"

  Where to start.

  "I have had impure thoughts. I have failed to honor my father. I have lied. I have practiced deceit, by commission as well as by omission. I have violated the sanctity of the Church. I have broken the vow of chastity."

  "Would you care to be specific?"

  "I allowed a young woman to kiss me."

  "That would seem to rule out the second sin. Which of the others applies?"

  "Breaking the vow of chastity."

  "No, that's restricted to having carnal knowledge. Kissing would imply impure thoughts."

  "You're right, of course."

  Kyril's vestments rustled, breaking the silence. "My son, I wo
n't press you for details. They're between you and your conscience, and between your conscience and God. Perhaps one day you'll have the courage to discuss them, but if I gave you absolution now, that conversation would only be in the nature of an exchange between colleagues. Do you understand?"

  "Yes, Father." No penance, no absolution from the sins that counted most. He was wasting the pastor's time and God's.

  "For having impure thoughts, say five Hail Marys and five Our Fathers."

  "I will."

  "For dishonoring your father, grant him forgiveness."

  "How shall I do that?"

  "I leave it to you."

  An easy out for the confessor. "I'll try."

  The prayer of absolution followed. After they crossed themselves, Kyril said, "Do you know golf, Father?"

  "I don't play." Was he inviting him out for a round?

  "That wasn't the question, but I'll assume you know one or two things about the game. In regard to the other sins you mentioned, we'll call this a mulligan. I hope next time I can give you comfort."

  "You're a good man, Father." His eyes swam.

  "I'm not even a particularly good priest. I should be out stumping for a new roof instead of sitting around waiting to hear from the War Department. But I appreciate the sentiment. Are you free for supper?"

  The dining room was narrow and medieval, with a refectory table that had been cut in half or it would have stuck out into the hallway. (Where was the other half? In the library of some indifferent antiquarian?) The meal, fish stew with leeks to correct the blandness of an ignominious haddock, stewed peaches on the side, was served by Sister Mary Engelbert, a novice from Sisters of the Covenant, a convent Redemption shared with Blessed Sacrament, and the oldest woman Vasco had ever seen who had yet to take the vows, with wisps of gray hair straying out from under the bandanna tied around her head, in a shapeless housedress that was more practical than the habit in the kitchen. Vasco suspected she was a widow who had traded worldly discontent for a life of service; she lacked the bright eyes of fresh devotion and responded to compliments to her cooking with only a distracted nod. She did not dine with them, retreating from the room after clearing the dirty dishes to plunge them into scalding water, on the evidence of her hands, boiled red as lobsters.

  The conversation was secular, shop talk being just as tiresome in the clergy as in other professions. Brother Thomas contributed nothing to it, eating in respectful—if not sullen—silence while Kyril displayed an exhaustive knowledge of Russian literature. He appeared capable of separating the genius of Tolstoy's prose from his sympathy with bolsheviks and considered Dostoievski a champion of the Christian faith. ("Crime and Punishment," he said. "Also absolution and resurrection.") He thought Gogol a frustrated Cossack, but forgave him that blindness for his grasp of scan and meter. The pastor's face lost its animation only when Vasco asked if he thought the Corps of Chaplains would summon him soon.

  "They're overstaffed." Kyril chewed reflectively, his fork pointed at the ceiling. "We'll be invading Europe soon. I expect openings then. I'm caught between ambition for myself and despair for the human carnage. Monsignor Donahue has had an earful from me in confession and is running out of Acts of Contrition."

  "Perhaps it's the Lord's will. You're needed here."

  "Perhaps so, but I can't help thinking the adulterers of this parish will find balm for their guilt in my absence; possibly from you, Father."

  Vasco made the appropriate expression of humility, but he was only half engaged in the conversation. He'd gone straight to confession from Sonny's house, burning with shame, and his long-term memory was busy preserving Al Capone's memoirs of Chicago 1920 in his own words. They had to be committed to paper before they ebbed away.

  The material was explosive. Vasco had no idea if Joe D'Andrea and Mack Fitzpatrick, whom Capone had fingered for the ambush slaying of three Black Hand extortionists in a railroad underpass, were still alive, or if they were important enough to attempt to indict on hearsay evidence, but according to Capone's file Johnny Torrio was in good health, a man of respect as one of the early architects of the modern rackets, and his own former lieutenant had linked him to the ambush—and on more direct evidence to the murder of Diamond Jim Colosimo. It was enough to hang Capone, who had set it up; but Capone was neutralized. Torrio was a sitting duck. It was the first solid foothold Vasco had managed to establish in Hoover's campaign to break organized crime and its stranglehold on the black market. Torrio meant a grand jury, subpoenas, and big black headlines, which to the Director were mother's milk. There was an appointment to Special Agent in Charge for Vasco if he played his cards carefully. The trick was to make Hoover aware of his value to the Bureau without threatening to carry away too much of the credit.

  The Fargo office would be good, or Denver; some far-flung assignment outside the chill shadow of the Seat of Government.

  "... your father?" Kyril asked.

  He blinked at the pastor, watching him above his glass of Chablis. Red wine was readily available for sacramental purposes beyond the reach of the long arm of the OPA, but white was an indulgence. Vasco recognized its significance as a compliment to his presence. He reconnoitered, grasping for the connection.

  "I had dinner with him and his lady friend last week. It was pleasant."

  "Pleasant is a start. Did you like her?"

  "I did. She's Jewish," he added; not knowing why, although it seemed important.

  "A noble creed. A good people. They were generous to give us the use of the Old Testament. I don't hold with the popular belief that they betrayed Jesus. In any case, whatever sins they may have committed as a race are more than wiped away by what's happening in Poland. But I'm more curious about your relations with your father. You needn't answer if it makes you uncomfortable."

  He sensed that Kyril was backing off, as if he felt he'd come perilously close to Vasco's confession about dishonoring his father. Such things did not stray outside the booth.

  "Not at all. Sharon told me he's a better man than I know, and I'm inclined to give the statement the benefit of the doubt. I just wish I knew him better." Brother Thomas spoke up. "Maybe he should make the effort to know you." Both of his tablemates stared at him. It was as if a figure on a stained-glass window had addressed one of them.

  "What do you mean, Thomas?" Kyril asked.

  Thomas's long pale face turned copper. He scraped at the scraps on his plate. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have said anything."

  "But you did, and now you must explain."

  "It just seems to me that clothing and feeding a child and giving him shelter are required of parents by Christian and American law, and that they shouldn't expect blind loyalty just for providing them. In order to have it they should themselves be loyal."

  "Well, well." Kyril skewered a morsel of fish with his fork. "Perhaps what the Dominicans say is true. Silence leads to wisdom."

  HE transcribed Capone's narrative into his notebook, writing feverishly and without stopping, by the light of the smoking oil lamp that was the only illumination in his room.

  How many religious scholars, he wondered, had sat in that same spot, recording and interpreting the words of the Lord by greasy light? The comparison was blasphemous, but it kept his mind off Rose.

  In the clarity of industry and solitude, he decided she deserved no blame. Some people were more demonstrative in their thanksgiving than others. He hardly thought he represented any kind of attraction, even if the priestly vows held no interest for her. He was more concerned with his own reaction. The memory of her lemon soap lingered in his nostrils, of the soft touch of her lips on his. The blame was his.

  The one confession he had been clear on with Kyril was based on a lie. He had not sworn himself to chastity and so he had violated nothing, while violating the law of the confessional by saying he had. In his brief time at Redemption he'd heard admissions he knew were false, but these were made by lonely people craving attention and the presence of another human being in a
n otherwise empty life. When he'd given them absolution, it had been for that. No such escape route existed for him. His hand raced across the page, fleeing before his thoughts. When he was finished he knelt on the floor with his elbows on the bed and his hands clasped, like a child praying before retiring. "Dear God, am I acting upon Your will or the devil's? Give me a sign."

  Silence.

  IN THE MORNING HE POSTED HIS NOTES TO THE BUREAU THROUGH THE STAtionery company and found his way finally back to the commercial garage where the mechanic who reminded him of his father took two dollars for the spare tire he'd been hoarding and mounted it on the back of the Model T. A soap opera sobbed away on a radio in the grimy office as he worked, whistling a dance tune. A silver star pennant hung in the front window. Vasco hadn't noticed it before and wondered if the man had lost a son in the fighting since his last visit. And he wondered if it was possible to whistle one's way through everything.

  The days passed seamlessly in a place without seasons. He took most of his meals at the drugstore counter, but ate at Kyril's table once or twice a week, where the talk ranged between literature and the arts, popular music (Kyril favored the waltzes of Wayne King; Brother Thomas had no preference and, Vasco suspected, no ear), and of course the war, which was stalled in the Pacific but was going badly for the Germans in Russia and Africa. Thomas said little, and nothing to make anyone pause in his eating. Sister Mary Engelbert brought out dishes and collected them, a serving machine.

  He ran across Sergeant Fowler quite by accident at a fruit stand, hefting an orange in each hand as if to test the accuracy of the vendor's scale; Vasco was passing on the street and recognized him at the last moment. The Bunko detective who had given him the lowdown on Capone in Florida looked more than ever like a distinguished banker in gray gabardine that matched his temples and a well-brushed fedora. He placed Vasco immediately and smiled. "You're tanning well, Father. Looking less like a ghost. Been sunning yourself by that big pool?"