The Confessions of Al Capone

by Loren D. Estleman

  "Well, tools are tools. Sorry to delay you, Father. Don't forget that taillight."

  He thanked him and watched in the mirror as the officer strode back to his motorcycle, putting on his helmet and buckling the strap under his chin. Vasco hoped he'd pull out ahead of him and out of his life, but instead after straddling the seat he removed a clipboard from one of his saddlebags and wrote on the top sheet with a fountain pen, glancing once at the watch strapped to his wrist. Vasco could wait no longer without attracting suspicion. He put the Ford in gear and steered back into the driving lane.

  As he'd anticipated, the patrolman fell in behind him three minutes later and stayed there despite the fact that Vasco was now driving five miles an hour below the limit, and despite numerous opportunities to pass. Vasco wondered again, as he had when he'd run into Sergeant Fowler on the street in Miami, if the authorities were keeping tabs on him. Would he ever again be in a frame of mind to accept the existence of coincidence?

  After half a mile, the officer gunned his motor, swung into the opposite lane, and passed him with a loud blatting that hurt Vasco's ears. The motorcycle swerved back into his lane and sped out of sight.

  Vasco drove another five miles before he felt the tension go out of his shoulders. It brought pale comfort. He'd lost that early exhilarating sense of escape. Reality had come crashing back in like high breakers, drenching him from head to foot. The mask did not come off with the collar. In all his life he'd never felt so guilty as when he'd joined the forces of justice.

  Fewer hotels now, more open stretches of Atlantic. White-painted marinas with white-painted boats bobbing in their berths, flags stirring on staffs mounted in the sterns. Figures in striped shirts and bare chests polishing brass and scrubbing and sanding decks. Fat women in one-piece bathing suits, clogs on their red-heeled bare feet, sat in chairs made of bentwood and woven strips, sipping Coca-Cola through straws under hats with brims the size of manhole covers, ruffled skirts attached to their suits like mud flaps on moving vans. All the trim waists and perky breasts were in Hollywood (California, not Florida, a community now behind him, indistinguishable from its sun-bleached neighbors), or busy making bomb bay doors out of donated coffeepots and aluminum awnings. He felt a little more comfortable entertaining these carnal observations outside of vestigial uniform, until for some reason he found himself thinking of Rose.

  In Fort Lauderdale, he entered a restaurant with a seven-foot marlin mounted above the door, shining blue over white; it looked as if it had been cast from fiberglass. He sat in a leatherette-upholstered booth at a window with an ocean view and ate a plate of fried shrimp. He'd gone without breakfast and cleaned his plate quickly, although he had to summon his waitress back to bring him coffee because the glass of water she'd set down when he arrived brought out the fishy taste. He was still hungry afterward and had apple pie for dessert, an uninspired finish not baked on the premises. The fishermen were all out and the lunch rush wouldn't start for two more hours, and his was one of only three tables occupied, all in a row so the staff wouldn't wear out shoe leather that was difficult to replace. He wondered if things would ever return to normal or stay the way they were from sheer habit, regardless of what happened overseas. He left a tip designed to preserve his invisibility and left.

  He turned into the last available parking space at the marina. The federal ban on pleasure driving had been lifted as unenforceable, and tourism had picked up. Steam hissed drowsily from the radiator as from a broken pressure cooker; probably the car had not been driven so far in years. He reminded himself to refill it with water before he left town. He didn't want to have to confess to cracking an engine block belonging to the Church.

  The sun, much higher now, assaulted him from above and from the bright-metal surface of the bay. It was like being in a convection oven. How his father had managed to live there all these years without shriveling up like a dried apple was one more of the mysteries that surrounded him. The beer he drank by the gallon must have contained some kind of lubricant.

  With business improving, he half expected the old man to be out on the water with a customer. But as he approached the homely headquarters of Sunrise Charters, he saw the boat was in its berth. He was about to knock on the door of the shack when a movement in the water drew his attention back to the boat. Paul Anthony Vasco was standing naked to the waist in water up to his hips, painting over Peter's mother's name on the fantail.

  "Dad?"

  Paul turned, scowling against the glare. The paintbrush in his right hand paused between the U and R in maureen. After a moment his teeth shone white in his mahogany-colored face.

  "Jesus, I almost didn't recognize you. What'd they do, catch you with your mitts in the collection plate?"

  "I took the day off. What are you doing?"

  "Sprucing up the old tub. Don't let 'em ever tell you the seaman's life is a life of ease." He resumed obliterating the legend.

  "Are you going to repaint the name when you're finished?"

  "Not exactly. I'm painting a new one on."

  "Sharon?" Sudden hatred coursed through him like an electric shock.

  "I ain't sure yet. I'm still thinking about it. I mean, if it turns out we're a mistake it ain't as bad as getting rid of a tattoo, but it's bad luck to change the name of a boat even once and I got too much of the Old Country in me to tempt fate more than that. Meanwhile she needs a fresh coat of paint."

  "If you're not sure, why not leave Mom's name on it?"

  He redipped his brush in the bucket on the pier. "Well, son, your mother never did care for her given name. She got it from an aunt she hated, old bat left what little she had to the Church. Only time she was ever inside it was the day they buried her. Spite. I was drunk when I painted it or I'd-a remembered. I always called your mother 'old girl,' or 'Mommy,' when you was little."

  "Her friends must have called her something."

  "If they did, I never heard it. They dropped her like a turd when she married a wop."

  "She must've made new friends later."

  "Ever see any hanging around the apartment?"

  He hadn't, only associates of Paul's. His mother was a lonely woman, he realized suddenly; not just in terms of being left alone by his father, but by everyone. Marriage and illness had sequestered her from life.

  One long last swipe of the brush and the faint final evidence of the name was gone. It was as if even her memory had been painted away.

  Paul tipped the brush into the bucket, braced his palms on the pier, and hoisted himself out of the water. It streamed off his soaked black swimming trunks, which clung to his genitals and sagged in the back, exposing his crack. He replaced the lid on the bucket and pushed it down with the heel of his hand, sealing the brush inside. "I'll finish up tomorrow. I got a late start and it's too fucking hot. I took Sharon out dancing last night, woke up with the sun in my face."

  "I'm surprised you have so much time on your hands since they lifted the ban."

  "My own damnfool fault. I had an appointment to take someone out this morning and when I didn't show up I guess he took his business down the dock. Hell with it. Less fishing, more drinking. How about a beer?"

  "It's still morning."

  "We'll drink to the boys in London. It's after five there." He knelt, displaying more of his buttocks, and reeled in a rope he had tied around a piling, hand over hand. His old green ice chest broke the surface. "Who needs Westinghouse when you live next to the world's biggest refrigerator?" With sudden exertion he jerked the chest up onto the pier, opened the lid, and punched two holes in a can of Pfeiffer's with an opener tied with a cord to the handle.

  "Death to the enemy." He drank. He stood with his thick-veined feet spread, water dripping off his slat-thin body and streaking his trunks with salt. "How's Mr. Capone?"

  "I don't know. I haven't seen him since St. Patrick's Day."

  "Your mother never cared for corned beef and cabbage. That's one of the things I loved about her. You piss him off about somet
hing?"

  "Not that I know of. Maybe he's under the weather."

  "Sure you didn't preach at him too much."

  "I don't think we've talked about God at all, except in passing."

  "How you going to save his soul without His help?"

  "I didn't say I was going to. Capone talks, I listen."

  He paused in mid-swig, his bright eyes on Peter's. "Talks about what?"

  Peter smiled thinly and shook his head.

  "Yeah, I forgot." He tipped up the can and swallowed twice. "So what brings you up here? There's lots better things to do on your day off than chew the rag with an old fart like me, even if you are a priest."

  "I'm not used to the heat. You said when it got hot I should go out with you on the boat. I should've called you at Sharon's first. If I knew you planned to paint it I wouldn't have come."

  "Not even to visit your dear old dad?" Paul's bottom teeth formed a wicked grin.

  "I didn't mean that. You'd still be painting if I hadn't interrupted you. I should've called to ask if you were free."

  "I'm teasing, Pietro. You're losing what little sense of humor you had hanging around with all them sky pilots." He blew air reeking of hops, swirled the beer in his can. "What-a hell, paint's cheap. Go get your hat and I'll fuel up."

  "I left it in Miami."

  "Jesus Christ. When God made the sun He left it on its own. It boils the hired help's brains same as everybody's. Let's go in and get you fixed up. Christ Almighty."

  "Dad, just for today, can you—?"

  "Yeah, yeah." He crossed himself with the hand holding the can. "Just don't preach at me out there or I'll dump you in Davy Jones's locker."

  Peter followed him toward the shack. The can gurgled empty and flew out over the edge of the pier.

  Inside, his father scooped his fishing cap off its nail and tossed it to him. The leather sweatband was stained with brine and sweat and there was a greasy worn spot the shape of a thumb tip on the end of the long bill. Without warning, Paul stepped out of his trunks and left them in a sodden heap on the floor. Peter had never seen him naked. His buttocks were practically nonexistent, blue-white above and below the tan lines, and when he turned to snatch his khaki shorts off the back of a chair, his son averted his eyes from his plum-colored organs. His dirty yellow shirt hung on the other corner; the sparse furniture in the shack performed double-duty as hangers. When his loins were covered he pulled it on over his head. Fastening and unfastening buttons apparently cut into time reserved for drinking and boating.

  Paul's cap was uncomfortably tight and clammy against Peter's forehead. He didn't see another in the place. There wasn't even a nail to hang one up on. "What about your brains? Don't they boil too?"

  "Not if you pickle 'em. Oh, I keep an old hat in the boat in case it blows off." He dragged a yellow slicker off a tall square can labeled inflammable, picked it up by its handle, and turned toward the door.

  "Is it safe to keep that here? You sleep here sometimes."

  "It ain't if the krauts strafe the place. I think they're too busy ducking for cover back home."

  "My first day here I saw a Civil Defense man watching for submarines."

  "Them four-f boys got to have something to do outside air raid drills. Son, right now some grease monkey named Otto's busy in Berlin cannibalizing two wrecked Messerschmitts to make one that works and watching the sky fill with Detroit steel."

  "That's almost poetic."

  His father actually blushed under his deep burn. "Sharon's rubbing off on me, looks like. Get a move-on. There's storm warnings off the Keys."

  "Should we be going out?"

  "Sure, but if it makes you feel better, you can bless the boat."

  It would and he did, but not as a priest. As Paul stepped aboard carrying the can of diesel fuel, he stood on the pier and quoted a layman's prayer he'd seen hanging above the cash register in a fishermen's restaurant: "Oh, Lord, Thy sea is so great and my boat is so small." He crossed himself and boarded.

  It was a twenty-foot cabin cruiser from which the upper part of the cabin had been removed to make room for extra cargo. A hatch had been added and all the passenger comforts stripped from inside. "Rumrunner," Paul explained, screwing the cap back onto the fuel can and lowering the engine hatch. "Guy I used to lease it from bought it at a Coast Guard auction in '34. It had two engines then, forty-horsepower Lycomings, but they was both froze up, so he yanked them out and replaced 'em with a Chrysler sixty. Made more room to store tackle. In its day it could outrun any U.S. cutter, but it still scoots like a greased pig when you drop the hammer down. Shallow draw. All the bullet holes was in the stern, which tells you something." His bottom teeth showed wolfishly at Peter's expression. "Don't worry, he replaced the boards."

  "If it was so fast, how'd the Coast Guard end up with it?"

  "It capsized during its last run and the legger had to be rescued by the same guys who were chasing him."

  Peter laughed. The only times he'd laughed lately were at things his father said.

  "The legger fell in love with a Cuban cooch dancer and changed the name of the boat from The Shamrock to the Carmelita. Told you it's bad luck."

  He stopped laughing. "I wish now more than ever you'd kept it the Maureen."

  "Ten minutes out and it will be again. That paint takes twelve hours to dry. Anyway it wasn't so much luck as poor judgment. Ten cases too many and you turn turtle in the wake of a fish fart."

  How far did a man have to travel to escape Prohibition?

  Paul clambered back onto the pier and handed the chest of beer down to Peter. Then he cast off and bounded to the deck. For a man of fifty he was as agile as a monkey. A brass-framed swivel chair stood bolted in the stern with a safety harness attached made of leather-reinforced canvas. He slapped the chair as he passed it.

  "Marlin," he said; "but it's just for show in these waters. The real monsters run farther down the Gulf Stream. I don't run that far usually. Marlin men head straight down to Miami Beach, on account of the fuel shortage. I can't exactly advertise I don't have any problem with rationing."

  "I'm surprised Hemingway didn't go down there when his boat was in dry-dock."

  His father registered surprise. He'd had many beers when he'd told the story of the writer and his runaway tommy gun and seemed to have forgotten he'd mentioned it; either that, or he'd made up the whole thing.

  "He came with his own supply in the back of a Chevy truck. He's tight with the government in Havana. They get it from the Mafia and give it to him so the president can have his picture taken with the gringo that wrote To Have and Have Not. Nobody's on the legit, son, except Sally Rand and her fans. She's got nothing to hide." He grinned and clapped a filthy fedora onto his head. It might have been the one he wore back in Cicero when he left Peter with a neighbor and took his mother into the city to celebrate their anniversary. It had been immaculate then, pearl-gray fur felt with a wide black silk band. Now the band was missing and a piece of the silk lining hung down behind his head like a pigtail.

  The pilot house, which was just big enough for them both to stand up in, contained an old-fashioned ship's wheel with rounded pegs like ice-pick handles for gripping and spinning and a two-way radio and gauges built into a dash trimmed with polished teak. When Paul pulled out the choke and switched on the ignition, the motor turned over like a bear waking up from hibernation and settled into a throaty rumble. Peter felt the vibration through the soles of his feet all the way up to his knees. His father pushed in the choke, depressed the throttle, and steered them out toward open water. When they were clear of the harbor he opened it up. The boat skipped over the waves, climbing up one side and plunging down the other. Spray dashed over the bow, cleared the top of the windscreen, and misted in Peter's face, cooling his skin on contact.

  Paul became a tour guide, pointing out shoals, leaping fish, other craft. He named the ones he knew, shouting above the roar of the engine. He told stories.

  "This guy hires me for the
day, swear to God, he shows up lugging five hundred bucks' worth of tackle, fiberglass rods, and hand-carved lures some sharpy unloaded on him in Cleveland. He had on hip boots, for chrissake. I said, 'You gonna wade out into the shipping lanes?' We go out, he starts rubbing on hand cream. 'What are you, a fairy?' 'No, I'm a hand model.' 'Fuck's a hand model?' So he tells me. You open a magazine, there's a Lucky Strike advertisement shows the cigarette all peeled open, you can see the fine tobacco, how it's packed.

  There's a finger pointing to it, it's his finger, attached to his hand, which if there's a hangnail or a blister or a paper cut, he don't get the job. His hands looked like Marlene Dietrich's.

  "His fancy rods are swell for freshwater fish, perch and trout. He coulda left 'em in Cleveland for all the good they are out here, but he's got a hard-on to use 'em and won't rent from me. See, he knows now he's been screwed, so now he's suspicious of anybody else he figures is looking to make a buck; it's always like that, the honest businessman gets the blame for what the crook done ahead of him. Fine. I strap him in the chair, give him a thrill, like he's ever gonna hook something bigger'n one of his dumbshit boots this side of Key Largo. Hang on." Paul spun the wheel left to describe a wide arc around a navy P.T. boat Peter assumed was out on maneuver. Sailors in combat helmets stood at the rail and a man in a flak jacket braced himself on the handles of a water-cooled machine gun mounted on a swivel.

  "Nervous nellies," Paul said when they were well out of the P.T.'s lane. "Think I'm the Bismarck. Toss me a beer, son. All this salt's making me thirsty."

  Peter surprised him by opening a can for himself as well. They clanked them in a toast. His son found the taste unexpectedly pleasant out there in the sea air. A boy having a beer with his father on a fishing boat.

  "Well, the joke's on me, because he ain't in the chair fifteen minutes, he snags something that takes out his line like Seabiscuit, reel's spinning a mile a minute. A ray, maybe. Comes to the end, his seventy-five-dollar rod squirts right out of his hand and over the fantail. All that slippery hand cream, you see. Last we see of it, it's heading straight to Bermuda like a bat out of hell."