The Confessions of Al Capone

by Loren D. Estleman

  Johnny sank down onto the street, still holding the hatboxes so as not to spill Ann's pretties into the dirty gutter; you think you can think straight in that situation, you're just fooling yourself. Wham! A load of buckshot catches him going down, tearing his jaw clean off one hinge. He's lying on his back, the boxes still in his arms, blood snaking his face in every direction, blinking to clear it from his eyes, when Moran leans over him and drops the hammer in his face. It snaps on an empty chamber. He's miscounted his shots. There are sirens now, the bell clanging on a police sedan. Bugs and Weiss pile back into the Caddy and peel out.

  We spent the night in a waiting room at Jackson Park Hospital: me, Ann, and what boys I don't have posted at all the entrances and outside the operating room where they're prying lead out of Sonny's uncle Johnny. The buzzards from the papers were circling. They said I had on a "loud checked suit." Hell, I was at the track when I got the word, what do they expect, I stop on the way and change into something appropriate? My friend, my padrone is dying.

  Well, he pulled through. Nobody gave him any odds, but he was tougher than the whole North Side, as he'd proved. Not that he looked it when I went to see him the day after they took away the tent.

  Outside the door was a harness bull and a fed from the Prohibition detail, with a red nose and a flask in his coat pocket, probably filled with our stuff. Johnny's a flight risk, all shot up with more tubes in him than the underground railway.

  I thought the bed was empty at first. I realized how little he was then, and pale, you couldn't tell where his neck left off and the sheet began. His jaw's held together with pins, silver wires in his teeth like a kid with his first set of braces. Was this the guy who lit up my head with a short hard jab what, just seven-eight years ago: I took his hand, which felt like a dry empty glove, leaned over him and said, "We'll get 'em, Johnny, don't you worry," which I didn't add might take a while, Weiss and Moran are burrowed in deep with the Gennas and half of Italy out looking for them clear to the Indiana state line.

  "Mthrooal," he says, mumbling through all that tin.

  "What's that, Johnny?" I lean in tighter.

  "Mthrooaltsyrz."

  It's like hearing a bee buzzing, caught between screens. I lean in more. I can feel his breath in my ear.

  Then he did something nobody would've expected him to have the strength for. He snatches hold of my lapel in one of those dry empty gloves and pulls his shoulders up off the bed. I have to jerk back to keep from biting through my tongue from a head butt. His lip curls back from what looks like a radiator grille and he pushes his words through it one at a time.

  "I'm through, Al. It's yours."

  "What's mine, Johnny?" Only I know, in my heart of hearts I know. He made the same speech that first day in Colosimo's Cafe right after he said Diamond Jim's got to go, only then he was only offering me half.

  "Chicago," he said. "The Pearl of the Midwest, and it's all yours. I'm getting out while the getting's good."

  And he fell back.

  The getting was good, and he got, the only one of us ever to do it without a long stretch in stir or a liver full of lead. Oh, he kept his hand in; took his percentage from the rackets he invented, and sat in to arbitrate when the killing made it impossible to do business and it was time to talk truce, but there was no more Johnny Torrio, Crime Lord.

  Chicago was mine, from the top of the Wrigley Building down to the docks on Lake Michigan, second largest city in the country. I was twenty-six years old.

  THUGS AND KISSES

  TWENTY-FIVE

  CAPONE LOOKED AT HIS CIGAR STUB, TOOK ONE LONG LAST REFLECTIVE drag, and flipped it over the side of the boat. It spat when it touched the water and bobbed on its ripples, its wrapper turning dark.

  The day was getting on toward noon, and the sun was hot coming off the surface of the lake. Vasco felt the beginnings of a burn on the back of his neck.

  "Torrio retired?" Disbelief soured his tone. He still bridled at Hoover's dismissal of the information he'd given him on Capone's mentor. He wanted Torrio to be active still, an operator in the black market.

  Capone didn't seem to have noticed his skepticism. "I think his mind was made up before he got shot. Brains and guts are two things you had to have to stay in our business. O'Banion had guts, all right, but framing Johnny was a lunk-headed thing to do, and telling the Sicilians to go to hell was plain crazy. The Gennas wanted to skin him alive, and they didn't deal in figures of speech. I knew they'd have to be dealt with in time; disaster, you know? I always saw a twister coming when everybody else was bitching about rain. Johnny had brains around the block, but he didn't have the stomach for the fight. He was smart to quit when he did. He never did a dumb thing in his life till he crawled in bed with that stinkin' Dutchman in '32."

  "Then he didn't retire."

  "Sure he did. He just sold his name so Schultz could claim Brooklyn, the way Clark Gable peddles Chesterfields. A man sells his name's got nothing else to sell. They took mine away for seven years. I know what it's worth.

  "And look what happened," he went on. "Couple of years later, Schultz declares war on Tom Dewey there in the prosecutor's office and Charley Luciano has the Dutchman popped to avoid the heat. Hit more times than a rigged game of Bingo and he still takes two days to die, jabbering all the time to a police stenographer. I bet Johnny sweated like a horse that whole time, expecting his name to come up instead of a load of crap didn't make any sense."

  Vasco didn't care about Dutch Schultz. Capone was wandering off track. Vasco asked an innocuous question to bring him back to the subject of Chicago. He wasn't interested in the answer—tales of adultery wearied him there as they did in the confessional, maudlin self-flagellation or pathetic boasts that they were—but he didn't want to appear too curious about old crimes. "Did you ever hear from Maggie again?"

  "I heard she died."

  He waited, but nothing more was forthcoming. Capone's face was clouded. It was the first time Vasco had sensed regret for anything in his past; neither his brother Frank's death nor his degrading apprenticeship to Frankie Yale at the Harvard Inn had brought him to this moody silence.

  "Did you kill Joe Howard?"

  The clouds parted suddenly, split by a grin. "I knew you'd be interested. That was the night I gave your old man a C-note just to drive my piece around the block."

  "I was too young to remember when you came to the apartment to get it back. My father never mentioned it unless he was drinking." Too late, he realized that was an admission of indiscretion on Paul Vasco's part. But Capone was thinking along other lines.

  "It was a break he was there. Not many hacks would go to that neighborhood that time of night. It didn't matter who dropped the curtain on Ragtime Joe. Some guys are born counting backwards till their number comes up. He roughs around a butterball like Jake who couldn't defend himself, and insults me to my face when I call him on it. No guts and no brains either. He should've been a hotel clerk."

  Not exactly a confession, but he had the man's word he'd orchestrated O'Banion's murder. He had to keep reminding himself the Bureau wasn't interested in Capone, only in what he had to say about his accomplices.

  "You can't let a man go around beating up your friends and calling you names," Capone said. "Maybe in your line, Padre, but not in mine. You try turning the other cheek, they blow it off with buckshot."

  "I don't judge anyone."

  "It'd be okay if you did. I'm used to it. Luckily I had an alibi for Pearl Harbor."

  "What happened to the detective who killed your brother?"

  "He made captain."

  Vasco waited again.

  "What the hell." A meaty shoulder rolled. "It was war. And I learned enough about the law that night to pass the bar in the State of Illinois."

  Vasco probed some more, but the subject—it might have been the word war—shifted to what was going on in Europe. The popular opinion that the fighting would be over by Christmas made Capone shake his head. "We're on Jerry's turf now
. A punk from another neighborhood don't stand a black ant's chance on a red ant hill, unless the red ants chase him back to his own. Then it's God help the stranger." He blushed, shocking his companion; he wouldn't have thought Capone capable of embarrassment. "Family saying. It sounds better in Italian. Italy didn't always spread her legs for everybody who came along."

  They broke out the sandwiches and shared coffee from the Thermos. Cheese on cold toast was delicious out in the open. Vasco was getting used to the hyena laugh of the loons: He saw one when Capone pointed it out, submerged to its neck so that the head on the stalk cleaved through the water like a submarine periscope in a newsreel, then tipped forward suddenly and vanished, to reappear an impossibly long length of time later several hundred yards away, a fish flapping in its bill. Capone laughed, spitting food. "I don't know what we're doing out here," he said. "The pros got the territory all buttoned up."

  After lunch, he handed Vasco a fishing rod and showed him how to attach a lure he took from his pocket, a masterpiece of wood carving painted to resemble an arching fish with an iridescent blue top and a white belly, with disturbingly realistic staring eyes made of glass. Vasco nicked his thumb on one of the razor-sharp hooks; there must have been an artery involved, because it gushed blood until he took Capone's advice and submerged his hand in lake water until it congealed in the cold. The green tackle box delivered up a first-aid kit with gauze and iodine and adhesive. Capone dressed the wound expertly. "Five Points," he explained. "You went to the doctor every time you got stuck, sooner or later it turned into real money."

  He learned how to tip the rod back over his shoulder, swing it forward and to the side in a long graceful loop, and release the catch so that the line whizzed out in ah arc propelled by the lure, which splashed into the water a hundred yards from the boat. Capone changed seats so that he could embrace Vasco from behind, one arm wrapped around his chest and the other pressed against the arm manipulating the rod, tipping it back and following through, gripping Vasco's wrist in his iron grasp. "That's how it's done, son, easy as taking a piss." In the moment he'd forgotten to call him "Padre," and in the moment, Vasco had forgotten to notice.

  He hooked a fish on his third cast. Rather, the fish hooked itself, striking with an impact he felt through the line all the way to his hand. With Capone yelling instructions he set the hook with a jerk, released some line for the fish to run it out, then put the catch back on, bending the rod. With the hook now set solidly, he released the catch and started reeling in line. The weight on the end was as heavy as a pipe wrench, and he seemed to have entered into a tug-of-war with something that wanted the pipe wrench as badly as he did. Then whatever it was was alongside the boat, writhing and twisting just below the surface, and Capone leaned over with a net and scooped it up. It flashed silver in the sun, a sleek torpedo-shaped creature fourteen inches long suited in chain mail. When the net was safely aboard and he lifted the fish from it at the end of the line, its body moved convulsively as it worked its parrot-like beak and its eyes rolled. "Walleye," said Capone. "Your first?"

  "My first fish of any kind."

  "I'll tell Mae. She'll break out the dago red."

  "With fish?"

  "Hell, no. The fish is dessert. First you got to get drunk on the main course." When dusk turned the lake purple, Capone started the motor and they putted toward shore. It took three pulls on the rope; he was visibly tired, and Vasco thought he saw him shivering. The heat of the day had retreated. Vasco had caught four fish: two walleye salmon, a trout Capone had persuaded him to throw back because it was too small, and a bass he said made strong eating but went well with red wine and to hell with what the snobs said on Lake Shore Drive. He staggered when he climbed out of the boat and Vasco finished beaching it and gathered up the picnic basket and tackle. He stayed close to Capone on the way up the path to the cabin, ready to drop his burden and catch him if he stumbled.

  Mae expressed delight with Vasco's success, but saw Capone's condition right away and helped him to an armchair upholstered in an Indian design next to the burning fireplace. She touched his forehead with the back of her hand. "You're burning up. You shouldn't stay out all day."

  "Lemme 'lone." His tongue seemed too thick for his mouth. She snatched an Indian blanket off the back of a sofa and spread it on his lap. He dislodged it with a savage kick. "Jesus, I'm roasting."

  She used the old-fashioned crank telephone on the wall of the kitchen to call the doctor in town. His wife said he was out on a call, but she'd send him over as soon as he came home.

  "He's not Dr. Phillips," she said, hanging up, "but he won't stop to buy a pack of cigarettes. Mercer is one town where the name Capone still means something."

  "I'm sure he'll be all right." Vasco was distractedly watching Brownie clean and filet the fish he'd caught, on a slimy cutting board on the counter next to the sink. The hand that was missing two fingers manipulated the wicked curved-blade knife like a scalpel, separating the pinkish meat from bone and entrails swiftly. He repressed a shudder. Rose stood by and wrapped each fish in butcher paper from a big roll that stood on the counter as he finished and put it in the refrigerator.

  "He shouldn't have stayed out so long," Mae said.

  "I'm sorry."

  "Don't be. Al doesn't take orders well. He'd have served all eleven years of his sentence if he hadn't got sick."

  The doctor arrived thirty minutes later, driving a Model A pickup that banged and burned oil in choking black clouds. He was a textbook specimen of the country physician, wearing a fishing vest over a blue flannel shirt and bow tie and a weathered fedora with rusty stains on the brim that Vasco hoped was fish blood. He carried a scuffed black leather satchel and smoked a pipe.

  Capone was semiconscious. Vasco helped support his weight as he and the doctor got him into a bedroom not much larger than Vasco's and undressed him. He'd sweated through his long gray cotton underwear; they took that off him too. Pale fat quilted a body that seemed built of muscle. It was something to tell his grandchildren when they were old enough; how many people could claim to have seen Al Capone's genitals? They were unspectacular, but engineered in proportion with the rest of him. Counting morgue photos and his father's lack of modesty in semiretirement, Vasco had spent an inordinate amount of time lately inspecting the male sex organs. He covered the sick man to his waist in a buffalo plaid blanket and the doctor shooed him out to begin his work.

  He found Mae seated in the chair her husband had vacated, holding a tall water tumbler half-filled with amber liquid. She was wearing a man's hunting shirt with the cuffs turned back to her wrists and the tail out over white duck slacks. They accentuated her somewhat matronly hips and the weary lines in her face made her look her age. "Are you a drinking man, Father?"

  "I've begun to develop a taste for Kentucky rye."

  "I'm afraid Scotch is all we have. It's in the kitchen; glasses in the cupboard over the sink. Bring the bottle back out with you, please."

  Brownie had finished cleaning fish and was outside chopping wood. The blows of the axe sounded like distant mortar fire. Rose, scraping vegetables for supper with a large triangular-bladed knife, smiled encouragingly at Vasco as he joined her at the sink.

  "Don't you worry, Reverend," she said. "Mr. Al catches every bug that comes along, but he's strong as a bull."

  "I hope so." He excused himself to bring down a tumbler and fill it halfway from the faucet. Rusty water sputtered out.

  "Mr. Ralph, he'd be jealous, the fish you caught. He's got a brown thumb when it comes to catching fish."

  "Beginner's luck."

  "Don't you worry about Mr. Al."

  It touched him that she would repeat it. She was concerned more for him than for her employer. He thanked her and went out.

  He refilled Mae's glass, which was almost empty, set the bottle on a birch coffee table littered with ashtrays and anglers' publications—big leaping fish on all the covers, hooks in their mouths—and sat on the sofa with his drink. He found h
e didn't care for the iodiney flavor of Scotch. It reminded him of his throbbing thumb. His face must have shown his distaste, because Mae said, "I don't like it either, but it's all Ralph stocks. It caught on back when everyone thought it must have come from Scotland and not someone's bathtub in Cicero." She drank, wrinkled her nose. "Anyway, it works fast."

  "I take it Ralph and Frankie got off all right."

  "Jim too, with all his things rolled in a ratty old blanket. Ralph and Frankie will be back tomorrow, starving. Ralph won't eat what they serve in dining cars. I'm considering asking him to raise our household allowance so I can pay Brownie and Rose more for working in a short-order restaurant."

  "Ralph's frugal?"

  "If you mean is he a cheapskate, no. He doesn't have to give us anything, which is why I hate asking for more. But every time something happens in Europe or the Philippines the cost of living goes up."

  The conversation lulled. He was groping for a neutral subject when voices rose down the hall. He started to rise, but she waved him back down with an impatient gesture. "Al's worse than Sonny was when he caught the sniffles at ten. If he's mad it's a good sign."

  "I hope so," he said, and was surprised to realize he was being sincere. He'd thoroughly enjoyed the day, more so after Capone finished reminiscing. Catching his first fish had brought a rush of emotion he hadn't anticipated.

  Mae was studying him. "I have to ask what you talked about."

  He'd been dreading the question, but he'd prepared his answer. He told her what Capone had said, with certain alterations. He employed the same circumspect language Capone had applied to the Joe Howard killing in describing the war with the O'Donnells and the murder of Dion O'Banion, distancing the instigator from the acts, and placed more emphasis on the death of Frank Capone than had actually been the case, to explain away the time. He left out the Maggie episode—not so much, he told himself, to spare Mae's feelings as because telling it would serve no purpose. Capone was unlikely to expose the omission. It wasn't a lie, merely an alternate version of the truth.