The Confessions of Al Capone

by Loren D. Estleman

  Peter choked on his beer. It was his best day in as long as he could remember. After two hours, the wind came up and the sky turned dirty. Paul wrestled with the wheel as the waves grew steep, the spray now more than mist. Peter felt the beer in his stomach imitate the action of the sea, the rolling of the hull. His father tuned the radio to the Coast Guard band. There was a small-craft warning out all along the coast. They turned back toward land.

  Big drops pelted them as they got out and secured the lines, Peter obeying all orders. Paul wanted him to stay until the all-clear, but he said he had to get back to Redemption.

  They shook hands. "It's early for hurricane season, but you see any chicken coops bouncing across the road, pull over and find a ditch. Man on his face, it's like scraping off a postage stamp with your thumb, but a box on wheels—"

  "I know. The wake from a fish fart. I had a good time, Dad."

  "Everything's better with beer."

  He sprinted to the car and got thoroughly soaked working the crank. After that, there was no reason to seek cover when he stopped at a station to fill the radiator. Driving back, the vacuum wipers making no dent in the downpour, he shivered while his feet and ankles roasted near the heater, set too close to the floorboards to warm him above his shins. His throat was scratchy. The worst, most miserable colds he'd ever suffered from had started with a sore throat. Then he remembered the story about the hand model at sea and had to pull off the road to avoid losing control of the wheel. Yes, it was his best day in as long as he could remember.

  SERGEI KYRIL STEPPED OUT OF HIS STUDY AS VASCO WAS TIPTOEING PAST. The pastor was in his shirtsleeves with his vest buttoned over his dickey.

  The sun was just setting, but Vasco had been feeling happily drained by the day, despite his sniffles, and ready to catch up on the sleep he'd lost the night before. Now he felt like an adolescent boy who'd been caught sneaking home after curfew, and in inappropriate clothes. He'd left without notice and had missed confession.

  Kyril held up a hand the moment Vasco's mouth opened. "You volunteered to serve. You can ask out whenever you like, although it would be polite to ask. That's not what I wanted to tell you. That woman's been calling all day."

  "Woman?" He thought of Rose for no reason at all.

  "The one who's called before. She says it's urgent."

  Helen Gandy. "Thank you, Father."

  "I'd offer you the use of the parish instrument, but you seem to prefer calling from outside."

  "It's long distance. I don't want to run up the bill."

  "I didn't ask for an explanation. You should change before you go out. Pneumonia is a scourge even in the tropics." He went back inside and shut the door.

  Vasco went to his room and resumed his disguise.

  The rain had stopped. The street shone as if oiled, littered here and there with broken palm fronds. The druggist was out front removing precautionary tape from his display window.

  The man in the tweed cap was in the booth, cigarette bobbing between his lips as he placed his bet. Vasco hovered outside, coughing and sniffing, then dived in as soon as it was vacant. Their roles had reversed. The receiver was still warm when he dialed the Director's office. Helen Gandy put him straight through.

  "Is that you?" Hoover rapped. "You sound different."

  "I'm coming down with a cold."

  "Where have you been?"

  He had lied all day. He hadn't the energy to make a new one convincing. Better to tell the truth and take his lashing.

  "I…"

  "Never mind. Where are you?"

  He told him.

  "I instructed you last time not to establish a pattern of calling from the same place."

  "I was told it was urgent. This is the nearest public phone."

  But Hoover had moved on. Most of his conversation was monologue. "You can stop trying to reach Capone. He's gone."

  "Dead?" The floor collapsed beneath his feet. Why was that?

  "If he were dead I'd have said so. I have no time for polite euphemisms. I mean he's flown the coop. Taken a powder, in his own parlance. Fled Palm Island, possibly Florida, and right out from under the noses of the men I assigned to keep an eye on him."

  TWENTY-ONE

  "When? How?"

  "I intend to find out how, and to discipline the men who let it happen. As to when, I'm narrowing that down. Up until a week ago his wife and son were seen entering and leaving the estate at irregular intervals, but then Mae disappeared. Since Danny Coughlin's wife returned from visiting a sister we assumed he's been staying with her at their home in Miami; that's now confirmed. The fact that Dr. Phillips has been calling frequently suggested that Capone's been ill and in no need of Coughlin's services as his chauffeur.

  "At one time we had them all under surveillance, but after December 19411 reassigned those agents to Alien and Enemy Control. When we lost track of Mae, I directed the Special Agent in Charge in Miami to obtain a warrant to search the house. There wasn't a soul in the place, not even the colored servants. The bodyguard at the gate said he wasn't even aware the house was deserted; he'd been letting the doctor and Sonny in and out every day and said he had no reason to believe they weren't being greeted by someone inside. He was taken to the federal building there, but he stuck to the story, and with no charges to hold him on he was released."

  "Did you interview Danny and Sonny?"

  "Of course. Danny said Capone had been under the weather, so he was putting the free time to use managing the waiters' and bartenders' union accounts and the two restaurants he owns. He acted surprised to learn his sister and Capone were missing. Sonny refused to answer questions and referred us to Abe Teitelbaum, the family's legal representative. Dr. Phillips told us to talk to his attorney as well. There is no law against visiting an empty house, and since Capone isn't wanted for anything at present, there was no use pursuing the matter." He sounded as if he thought the legislature had failed him personally in not passing such a law. "Needless to say, I have agents watching all of them now, on the chance one will lead us to where Capone is hiding. Did you have any sense at all that something like this was in the works?"

  "No, sir. Mrs. Capone told me Capone was in no condition to travel any great distance. He couldn't even sit still at the opera, let alone aboard a train or an automobile."

  "Undoubtedly a ruse. We know Mae and Al and Rose, their girl, returned to Palm Island from Sonny's on St. Patrick's Day. They may have been planning this even then. After Capone left, Mae stayed behind a few weeks to keep the surveillance team from suspecting anything, then joined him. Sonny's job at the air depot prevented him from following, but he kept up the pretense until the agents managed, astonishingly, to put two and two together."

  Vasco closed his eyes, sympathizing with the agents. He thought it unlikely they'd draw so plush an assignment as Miami for a very long time. How had it been done? With Mae free to move about unobserved, she could have stepped aboard a train anytime, possibly in some disguise as simple as sunglasses and a scarf so ticket agents and porters couldn't identify her from photographs (certainly not from the one Vasco had seen, enveloped to her eyes in a mink collar) and report on her destination; but how did one spirit away a conspicuous person like Al Capone, with experienced men watching him around the clock? Something had been said, weeks and weeks ago, about chartering planes to the Bahamas; but that had been in palmier days, when neither illness nor the law could reach him in his armor-plated Cadillac. Surely a seaplane could not land and take off from his back dock unobserved. A boat seemed more likely, and Cuba its port of call.

  Not Cuba. The heat in Florida during the off-season was hard on Capone, and would be worse there. The man had simply vanished.

  "Sir, what can I do?"

  "Wait for word."

  "From you?"

  "From Capone. It's all you can do. You're our man inside the family. He trusts you, that much is clear. He told you about four murders no one has ever been able to pin on Johnny Torrio, his old friend and
mentor. Stay close to Redemption. Notify me the moment he makes contact."

  "I'm not sure he will. He never so much as hinted to me he had anything like this in mind."

  "He might not have known about it. Mae's the mastermind in that family. I underestimated her. I should have learned from Ma Barker that you can't deal a woman out of the hand just because she's a woman. This in no way exonerates the agents on the scene," he added quickly. "I don't hire them to sit in the back of a delivery van and read Dime Detective."

  Sit tight and keep your ears open and your eyes peeled. Was that Helen Gandy's idea of an urgent communication? She had probably been exasperated when she couldn't reach him right away. A regular J. Edgar, Miss Gandy. "You can count on me, sir."

  "If I didn't think that, I'd never have taken you out of Division Four." He hung up.

  Vasco walked back through dim streetlight shed by low-watt bulbs, a wartime measure to foil enemy aircraft, but a boon to footpads; he hurried past the mouth of an alley with his eyes and ears open. The air reeked of brimstone, a combination of rain on hot concrete and the fear of damnation that dogged him.

  What if Capone hadn't left voluntarily? What if he'd been taken for a ride? His own parlance, as Hoover had put it, meaning Capone's. Had Danny overheard their conversation on Sonny's porch and reported it to Ralph? It made sense: a middle-aged man, owner of two restaurants and an important position with a union run by the Outfit, reduced to driving his brother-in-law around, his kid sister to Mass and the supermarket, hoping to win favor in Chicago: Ralph was Al's own brother, but family ties could be lethal if Frank Nitti considered Al a liability and suspected Ralph of protecting him. Ralph would protect Ralph. Scalise and Anselmi had been so close to Capone he'd risked prolonging the beer wars by refusing to betray them to a rival in return for peace, but he hadn't hesitated to bludgeon them personally and then hand them over to assassins the moment he detected disloyalty. There was no honor among thieves, not in a world where legitimate contractors bought contraband building materials through Washington.

  The more Vasco pondered, the more he was convinced Capone was dead, feeding alligators in the Everglades, and that Vasco had put him there. What sort of Purgatory awaited him, and what chance had he for salvation, if someone like J. Edgar Hoover sat on the tribunal?

  He tried, but could not quite convince himself, that his feelings of guilt lay in his betrayal of the Church and of the brotherhood of man. He was strangely sympathetic toward Al Capone in his present state; certainly not for his mortal sins, which piled up day by day like the tiers of hotels under construction in southern Florida, but for his personal charm and his refusal, nearing the end of a life of unspeakable evil, to apologize for it or even to dissemble his darkest crimes against man and God. He was honest about his dishonesty. Who else could claim that? Certainly not Vasco, whose self-flagellation took place in private, and not even in the absolute sanctuary of the confessional.

  Pity for the man in his reduced circumstances played a part. He was the same tyrant who had ruled his kingdom with guns and graft, a killer, thief, and philanderer, corruptor of Vasco's father; a monster who'd swaggered among mayors, judges, and cardinals, all of whom accepted his authority without question, and now he couldn't even light a cigar without looking over his shoulder to make sure his wife wasn't watching. When all was said and done, he was human, no more and no less, therefore worthy of compassion. Vasco had never had a friend; although his relationship with Capone would never approach friendship, he was packaging their connection for sale to the highest bidder, and not even for money, but for a numerical step from Division Four to Division Five, a progression that existed nowhere else but the Bureau. Jesus had foresworn earthly kingdoms for agonizing death on the cross; Vasco had traded the closest thing he'd ever had to a friend for a number.

  He sat up in bed that night with a pulsing headache, part of it caused by two hours wearing a fisherman's cap too tight for his cranium, and did not know he'd slept until he awoke with a memory of dead men's hats rolling around in gutters, one of them sporting a long bill designed to keep the sun out of the eyes of men at sea.

  Over the succeeding days he was surprised that Kyril made.no mention of either his dereliction or his return in layman's clothes. The pastor spoke to him politely in his slightly dated Old World fashion and gave no indication that he even remembered the lapse. But no more invitations came Vasco's way to dine with him and Brother Thomas, and on Sunday Mass, Vasco stood with Kyril behind the altar but took no active role in the service because none had been assigned. He knew he was being punished, but it was so subtle he would feel he'd committed an unpardonable breach if he brought it up for discussion. He ate most of his meals at the drugstore counter, read the sacred scriptures to pass the empty hours, and waited for news on the Capone situation. Mornings he walked to a kiosk two blocks over from Redemption where a blind man sold him local and out-of-town newspapers and made change from a contraption on his belt. The war pushed all the other news into the inside pages, but it seemed to Vasco that the mysterious disappearance of Miami's most notorious resident was noteworthy, if only to fill out a column that had run short. No mention was made. Was Hoover's power so great he could drop a cloak of secrecy over the press, sparing embarrassment for himself and the Bureau, or was Capone so much a relic of forgotten days no reporter thought a trip to Palm Island worth the expense of a ration stamp? Vasco pictured the vice lord at thirty, surrounded by newspapermen eating his caviar and drinking his imported liquor, smoking his cigars, and asking him who he liked in the Dempsey fight, CAPONE BACKS THE MANASSA MAULER, the next day's headline would read, and the odds would go through the roof. Now he could be rotting in some roadside ditch and no one had noticed he was gone.

  June was like a winepress, flattening the city beneath a solid slab of heat. Nightfall brought no relief; Vasco spent the night of the fifth with the door of his room open to invite any current of air that stirred in the rectory, lying atop the covers in only his undershorts and turning his pillow every five minutes to the cool side. He arose with swollen eyes, dried himself after his shower, and began to sweat again as soon as he hung up the towel. He was buttoning on his collar when the church bell started ringing.

  It was too early for Mass. He entered the church and called out to Brother Thomas, who was moving toward the bell tower from the front entrance at an unprecedented trot, carrying a stack of newspapers under one arm. It was Kyril ringing the bell. Thomas stopped, appeared uncertain whether to continue or to acknowledge Vasco's cry. Then he snatched a paper from the stack and held it up, front page out. It was an extra edition with black letters stacked in three lines across the top:

  INVASION ON, ALLIES LAND IN FRANCE AS PLANES AND SHIPS BLAST COAST; MONTGOMERY LEADS THE ADVANCE

  "It was on the radio," Thomas said. "It's started."

  "Ask Father Kyril if he wants to arrange a special Mass."

  "I already did, and the answer was yes." He left him.

  Paul had said the invasion would end the war by Christmas. His son wasn't so sure. A smaller headline said the Germans were putting up fierce resistance. (A smaller one still said American vegetarians had denounced Hitler as a carnivore on the sly.)

  The bell stopped. Now he heard horns honking, men shouting, a high trill of feminine laughter ending in a note of drunken hysteria. It was morning. At this rate there wouldn't be a drink to be found in town by sunset.

  He held the door of the drugstore for a woman carrying a paper sack with bottles clinking in it and stood in line until the druggist heard his request and raised his eyebrows. He was gaunt, all right angles as if he'd been assembled from an Erector Set; his white lab coat hung on his shoulders as from a wire hanger. "You're in luck, Father. Just one left." He stood a bottle of Old Overholt Kentucky rye whiskey on the counter. "You'd think it was all over but the shouting."

  "I'll pray for that until it's true." He handed over cash and stamps, watched the man ring up the sale, and took his change. "Do you ha
ve family in the service?"

  "No. I'm a widower, no kids. I tried to sign up, but they told me I had a hole in my heart."

  "I'm sorry."

  "Me, too. I got along just fine not knowing it all my life. Now I think about it every time I go up the ladder for stock. I've been grinding prescriptions for fifteen years, and not one for a hole in the heart." He sacked the bottle and held it out. Vasco took it and thanked him. It was their longest conversation. There was still a line of people waiting, one of them the handicapper in the tweed cap with the Racing Form under his arm.

  The bell was still silent at Redemption. Father Kyril's study door stood open for ventilation; the heat wave hadn't paused even for D-Day. The pastor sat at his desk with his elbows propped on the blotter and his face in his hands. Vasco hesitated, then knocked on the door frame. Kyril dropped his hands. His gaze went to the sack Vasco was cradling in one arm.

  "I take it you've heard the news."

  "Brother Thomas told me. Of course, I heard the bell."

  "Early exuberance. I wasn't aware you were a drinking man."

  "I'm not, as a rule. I thought you might like to celebrate. I'm afraid I didn't pause to wonder if you were a drinking man."

  "I'm Russian, Father. Ninety percent of my body weight is vodka. That's why I don't keep it in the rectory."

  "I should have asked first."

  "Come in and shut the door. Thomas is under the impression I'm material for canonization and I haven't the heart to disabuse him of the notion. What's on the menu?"

  Vasco pushed the door to and slid the bottle from the sack, showing the label. "I'm afraid it's the only kind I know to ask for. I had a taste of rye aboard the train on my way to Florida."