"Jake's Ralph's junior partner. He helps out in the kitchen when they're shorthanded, only Ralph don't like it because Jake can't keep his thumb out of the soup when he's waiting table."
At last Vasco knew how Guzik had gotten his nickname. "I didn't realize so many people from the Outfit spend time here."
"You got to go somewhere when the heat's on. The Little Bohemia Lodge ain't far from here. Johnny Dillinger and his boys crawled out of a second-story window when the feds raided the joint in '34. Dumb feds opened up on a bunch of fishermen when they came out the front door, thinking it was them. That kill-crazy punk Baby Face Nelson caught up with a couple of the assholes on the other side of the lake and mowed one down."
"Do you ever go there?"
"Once. It wasn't any fun. Couple that run it ain't spoken to each other in ten years except maybe to say they're out of firewood. The old lady was the one called the feds. All they got for it was all the windows shot out. If they just kept their lips buttoned, the bunch would've finished up their vacation in a day or two and cleared out. Them boys was good tippers. Johnny told me Homer van Meter gave their girl a C-note just for fetching him a pint."
"You met Dillinger?"
"Plenty of times. He used to lay low in Al's place on Cranberry Lake when he had it. Johnny always showed up with a different dame. They say he had a dick on him as long as his arm. I can believe it. He had to have something to attract 'em. He was built sort of dumpy and his head came to a point."
This was exclusive information (not the womanizing or the physical description, which were supported by evidence). Nothing in Capone's file linked the Chicago mob with the loosely organized gangs of desperadoes who'd carved a gory swath with machine guns through the banks of the Midwest for a few years during the Depression. The FBI line was that the Outfit considered such open outlawry beneath its notice except when it brought federal pressure upon criminal enterprises everywhere, at which point it offered rewards of its own dead or alive, and issued orders closing every door to bandits on the run. The very thought of an underworld plutocrat like Capone offering harbor to a mad dog like Dillinger challenged the Bureau's entire interpretation of the structure of American crime.
But then Rio had accepted that myth about Dillinger's colossal penis as gospel, and he claimed to have known him personally. An aging street soldier wasn't above trying to exalt his importance by hitching himself to notorious characters, particularly those who were no longer in a position to set the record straight.
They turned off the road into a pair of wheel ruts and wobbled over bumps and potholes while Vasco clutched the dash to keep from colliding with the driver. Pine boughs smacked the windshield and clawed the sides of the Plymouth, then they came over a low rise into a clearing where a one-story log building stood with a peaked roof at either end. Rio circled to a stop in front, with the radiator pointing out, and turned off the ignition. The motor continued knocking for another twenty seconds and died with a wheeze.
Vasco was just opening his door when Rio scrambled out and took his valise from the backseat. A cry made Vasco pause with one foot on the ground. It started low, climbed to a high fluting note, and died away without an echo. A ghost made just the same noise in his darkest imagination, and it sounded as if it were standing next to him.
"What was that?"
"Loon." Rio's nose wrinkled. "Ducks with whistles. If McGurn was still around I'd send him out with his tommy and shut 'em all up for good."
A plain curtain stirred in a window, and a moment later the screen door opened and Mae Capone came out, dressed as he'd never seen her in a black-and-white-checked blouse stuffed into a sturdy wool skirt, penny loafers on her feet. Her hair was tied up in a red bandanna. Her face was freckled all over and she looked much younger than she was. She was smiling broadly.
"Father! I was so afraid you wouldn't come." She wrapped his hand in both of hers, the next thing to an embrace. He noted an oily smell of insect repellent. Mosquitoes feasted on white Irish skin.
"I could hardly return such a generous gift."
"Not for our sake, then?"
He was confused and groped for an answer.
Her laughter was all merry bells. "I'm pulling your leg. Al and Ralph are out drowning worms, but I have a surprise." She wound her arm in his.
He allowed himself to be drawn inside, Rio following with his valise. He wondered if she was referring to Rose, whom Hoover had said had disappeared from Miami as well, along with Brownie. It was frightening, the depth of Mae's perceptions.
Rose was not the surprise. The surprise was as far from Rose as a surprise could possibly get.
The living room belonged to one of the sections with a peaked roof, done entirely in knotty pine and stone, with massive timbers overhead and no ceiling. A fire crackled in a hearth large enough to roast a hog on a spit. Built-in shelves flanked it, packed with leather-bound books in sets that looked as if they were dusted occasionally but read never, and the head of a six-point buck deer gazed out quizzically from the wall to the right of the stone chimney. A bearskin with head attached bared impotent fangs on the plank floor. The furniture was rustic and still wore its bark. Over everything had settled an olfactory mulch of sweet cedar and charred wood and mothballs.
In one of the chairs, seemingly absorbed in a garishly wrapped pulp magazine with an Indian snarling on the cover, sat a large man running to fat, wearing a shirt with pearl snaps, ragged denims, and a broad-brimmed gray Stetson on the back of his head. An ankle in a scuffed leather boot with a hole in the sole rested on the opposite knee. He was white-haired and could pass for a man of seventy, but his ruddy, wind-chapped face might have been responsible for that and not the normal wear-and-tear of years. He went on reading as if he were alone, his jaws working ruminatively at a bulge in his cheek.
"Jim," Mae said, "get your nose out of that book and say hello to our visitor. Father Peter Vasco, this is Vincenzo Capone—Jim—Al's oldest brother. He's a genuine cowboy from Nebraska."
TWENTY-THREE
"How do." Jim Capone turned his head, spat a yellow-brown arc into a Maxwell House can on the floor beside his chair ("Good to the last drop!"), wiped his mouth with the back of a thick-veined hand, and got up, marking his place in the magazine with a finger. Vasco, who was familiar with the family rite of initiation, thrust his fingers deep into the man's calloused palm to maintain blood circulation. The eldest brother favored one eye. A gummy line sealed the other shut over what was obviously an empty socket. "I got out of the church-goin' habit when I run away with the circus."
Vasco had read a sketchy account of Jim's life in his brother's file, which drew heavily from a Sunday feature titled "White Sheep of the Family." He had indeed left Brooklyn in his teens to become a circus roustabout, ridden the rails for a time, visited Central America, and served as a town marshal out West, where he'd slain a bootlegger in a gunfight and earned the nickname "Two-Gun Hart," using the alias he'd adopted when he fled home. An American Legion post in Nebraska had elected him commander on the basis of his service during the Great War.
"Al almost fainted when Jim showed up at Palm Island three years ago," Mae said. "Everyone in the family thought he was dead."
"I ain't much for writin' either."
"The prodigal son," Vasco said. "What brought you back after all those years?"
"Time goes harder on a man where I come from. You start to get on, you think about fambly. They didn't know nothing about me, but I sure knew about Al. I kept a scrapbook till I lost it in the train station in Sioux City."
Vasco nodded politely. Whoever had added Jim to the file had taken pains to correct the popular record. He'd killed the bootlegger during a brawl in a speakeasy, not in his capacity as a peace officer, and been arrested for it, then released when eyewitnesses refused to identify him as the killer; it was the old Capone pattern, running true to form. Friends of the dead man had then ambushed him and beaten him half to death, gouging out his eye in the process. The citizens
of Homer, Nebraska, had turned him out of office when they learned he'd been using the keys he was entrusted with to loot a number of the stores on his rounds, and the American Legion had thrown him out when he failed to produce documents to prove he'd ever served in the military. By the time he'd landed on Al and Mae's doorstep, he'd been flat broke, looking for a handout.
The criminal taint ran strong through all seven Capone brothers. It wasn't a matter of environment—Jim had left behind the reeking slums at a young age for the Great American West, maker of heroes—nor was it the fault of their parents. Gabriel had been an honest, hard-working barber who'd wanted one of his sons to enter the priesthood, Teresa the quintessential Old World combination of cook, housekeeper, nursemaid, marital partner, and stern disciplinarian, who still saw fit to counsel her son the public enemy. The world was filled with honest men who'd had far fewer advantages at the start. An accident of birth, this strain of violence and larceny, like a physical deformity: spiritual dwarfism.
Oddly, it seemed to reside most potently in this least notorious of all the Capones. Of the three Vasco had met, Jim was the only one whom he disliked instantly. His body gave off a fetid odor of unwashed flesh marinated in sour mash and personal corruption. He was the one among them who had operated from a position of trust.
"We weren't expecting Jim," Mae said. "Are we ever? He came in on the morning train and hitchhiked out from town."
"Walked mainly." Jim shifted his cud to the other cheek. "Them loggers don't take passengers and I didn't see but two cars the whole way. The one that picked me up didn't seem any too happy about it; the wife, anyway. Reckon she thought I was Jesse James. Pur-dee humiliating, an experienced horseman like myself having to get along by shanks mare. I'd've brung along Old Red, only the clerk wouldn't sell her a ticket. For a horse she's a mite more well-behaved than most of them birds I seen lapping up likker in the club car."
He spoke with a western drawl Vasco supposed he'd picked up from Gary Cooper movies, and with the easy arrogance of a man who had cash in his pocket for the first time in months. Al was the bank he drew on when all the loan officers found pressing business in back the moment he came through the door.
Politeness cost nothing, and Vasco was bound by his alleged vows to reach out to all God's creatures. "I'm pleased you made it. I may live long enough to meet all the Capones."
"Matt's tough to know, and Mimi's in trouble more often than usually. Frank was the best of us, but he got kilt by crooked cops just for trying to elect Al's boys in Cicero. Albert wants to be Al; nothing wrong with that, except a man's not his own man is no man a-tall." Jim's single eye wandered toward the magazine in his hand. Human discourse was evidently not his long suit.
Mae missed nothing. "We'll leave you to your cowboys and Indians. I'm sure the father wants to freshen up."
Jim sat back down and resumed reading as if they'd already left the room. Vasco thought he could follow all the action just by watching the motion of his lips.
"I'm sorry," Mae said, when they were in the long central portion of the building, with doors leading to what were probably private bedrooms. "Jim's been out in country so long he gets on better with horses than people." Her distaste for this particular brother-in-law was tangible.
"He's like a character in a Max Brand novel."
"Please don't tell him that. He's the most preening man I ever met. I thank the Lord he wasn't around when Sonny was little, with his rip-roaring yarns. I wouldn't trust him with the silver, let alone my only son. Is it a sin to detest a man who shares my husband's blood?"
"One can't be judged for his feelings, only for how he acts upon them." That sounded pompous even for a real priest. "Will he be staying long?"
She laughed, surprising him with that silvery tinkle.
"That's the Christian way of asking when he'll leave. Soon, I'm sure. He only shows up when his creditors are barking at his heels. This is your room, Father. I'm afraid it's not the Vatican."
"I'm happy to hear it. I'm used to simple accommodations."
"Well, it's not quite Sing Sing either. Ralph's a bellyacher, but he's a good host. He likes people to be comfortable around him." She opened one of the doors and stood aside for him to pass through.
A double bed on a painted iron frame shared a space twice as large as his room at Redemption with a black-and-red Navajo rug, a bureau with its green paint rubbed down to bare wood on the corners, and a nightstand supporting a filigreed brass lamp that had been converted from oil to electricity, with a faded fringed shade. Green-matted hunting prints hung on the walls and there was a pitcher and bowl on the bureau. Vasco's valise stood at the foot of the bed, which solved the mystery of what had become of Frankie Rio. A window looked out on woods, with a patch of water belonging to a lake turning violet under the setting sun.
"It's perfect," he said. "Very restful."
"You wouldn't say that if it were deer hunting season. Last November, Ralph sent Louie Campagna packing when he brought a machine gun. I'll leave you to freshen up. The bathroom's down the hall on the left."
"However did you do it?"
She paused in the midst of drawing the door shut. A sudden bright Irish grin broke on her face and he saw the resemblance to Danny Coughlin. She tamped it down with a slight effort. "Do what, Father?"
"Escape. You can't park a strange vehicle on a logging trail without attracting attention, so I know there are no FBI men around. How did you slip out from under them?"
"Promise you won't tell?"
He promised, knowing he would.
"The G-men wouldn't hear a rowboat drifting up to the dock in back, or pay attention when a speedboat started roaring out in the bay. A car was waiting in Miami to take Al to a private airstrip. Rose and Brownie and I went along later when we were sure the coast was clear. Ralph set it up, with some advice from Al. Ralph's popular here; he's good for the local economy, and he helped put out a forest fire last summer. He doesn't want his neighbors being bothered with a lot of men in suits asking questions."
"I thought Al couldn't travel."
"He's much better now, thanks to you, but he missed you. We all did."
"All?"
"Al and I, and Rose. You've made quite an impression on her."
"And Brownie?" He was anxious to deflect the conversation.
"Brownie's Brownie. You couldn't make an impression on him with a shovel. It all went off more smoothly than any of us expected; except Al, of course. He's always surprised when something doesn't go according to the grand plan. What do you think, Father? Was it slick or was it slick?"
"It was more than slick. It was Dunkirk. But it seems like a lot of trouble to go to just for a vacation."
"Dr. Phillips ordered it. The heat was getting to Al, and we can't use the air conditioner because he might come down with pneumonia. Phillips even helped out by agreeing to go to the house on Palm Island every day with his bag so Hoover's spies would think Al was sick in bed instead of on the lam." She caressed the phrase with her tongue; it seemed to be a favorite. She'd used it in her letter. "It was medicinal, and the arrangements took time. You probably thought we'd dropped you."
"I was curious. But I'm very grateful for the invitation. I know at last what people mean when they refer to places like this as God's country."
"It is now," she said, and left him, closing the door.
The bathroom was painted country blue, with an old-fashioned gravity toilet with the tank mounted just under the ceiling, a claw foot tub, and a mirror in a tin frame hanging above the sink. He emptied his bladder, pulled the flush chain, and washed up. Back in the room he unpacked, using the bureau drawers, and after a moment's deliberation changed out of his collar into a hunter-green twill shirt he'd bought for the trip and tucked it into pleated khaki flannels secured with a woven-leather belt. The result in the bureau mirror suggested a military uniform. Men's and women's fashions had taken on a decidedly martial air since the beginning of the war: flap pockets and epaulets, overseas
caps for women, Eisenhower jackets for men, cut off square at the waist and modified for the Home Front with pale cream-colored sleeves and the rest chocolate brown. His shoes were cordovan loafers, embarrassingly glossy; the untrodden soles were slippery on the Indian rug. He took them off, sat on the bed, and used a pocket knife (the Woodsmaster, complete with two blades, a fork, a spoon, a nail file, and a corkscrew) to score the pale shining leather.
Someone tapped at the door. He put on the shoes and got up to greet Rose. She stood in the door frame in a plain cotton blouse and tweed skirt; livery was for the city, as Al would have learned from his old tutors. Her hands were folded in front of her and she wore one of those smiles that came on you during solemn moments in church and were as hard to get rid of as a fly in August. Her dimples were deep parentheses bracketing the corners of her mouth. As always, she wore no makeup and looked and smelled as fresh as the woods.
She curtsied. "Mr. Capone and Mr. Ralph are back from fishing. Mrs. Capone asks if you care to join them outside."
"Outside?" It was getting dark.
"It's real nice. Brownie's got the citronella burning, for the bugs."
"Mosquitoes?"
"Big as B-17s. Lake flies, too, up here, but they bite like bedbugs. No-see-ums, they call 'em. Even Eden had its serpent, Reverend."
"Please tell them I'll be down soon."
She started to close the door, paused. "I'm glad you made it. Everybody here's old."
He smiled when the door was between them. In addition to being hard to shoo away, that smile was contagious.
CHINESE-TYPE LANTERNS HUNG FROM ALUMINUM POLES IN A BACKYARD that was all sand and quack grass, shedding tangerine-colored light in an ellipse. Yellow pennants of flame fluttered from round black smudge pots, the kind farmers used to combat frost, that looked like anarchist's bombs, and moths swarmed around the lanterns out of range of the fumes. Every now and then one of them spiraled down to investigate the cylinder of pale blue light suspended from the overhang of the roof, only to incinerate itself in the flash and buzz of an electrical surge, leaving behind a brief brimstone stench of charred wings and exoskeleton. Ralph Capone, sprawled like an upturned toad in his Adirondack chair, never failed to mark the event with a wheezy, "Hah! Fried the bastard!" He interrupted his own conversation to say it.
The Confessions of Al Capone Page 33