The Confessions of Al Capone

by Loren D. Estleman

  He fell to chuckling, chewing slowly at his gum. Vasco waited thirty seconds, the landward wind stirring the sparse hairs on Capone's crown, then realized he'd lost the thread of his story. "Annie Oakley," he prompted.

  Capone shifted his weight in his chair, coming alert. "Two bits, the bet was. I missed the bottle. Charley says, 'Pay up.' I said the mirror had a flaw in it, which it did; when you looked in it your nose bent off to the side like in the funhouse in Coney Island. But we didn't lay down any rules about the quality of the equipment, so I said, 'Double or nothing I get two next time, only I use a different mirror.'

  "Charley's game, but the odds of digging up two hand mirrors in a joint like the Adonis weren't great. Ten minutes we're at it, then Charley goes out and comes back with a pocketbook item from a dame of his—they're like subway stations with him, always one handy—a little round gold box that opens up and there's a powder puff in one half and a mirror in the other. It's tiny: Charley's counting that four bits already. But I popped the bottles and we were square. 'Charley,' I said, 'someday them skirts are gonna put you in a mess of shit you won't buy your way out of.' Swear to Christ. And there he is, doing thirty to fifty in Sing Sing for pimping."

  Vasco was wondering how much of the story was embroidery when Capone shifted positions again, his jaws going still and his face stiffening into a mask. His companion realized they were no longer alone. He turned in his chair and felt his blood sliding into his feet. Otis and the guard from the gate were approaching from the house with their hands gripping the upper arms of a square-shouldered man with a narrow waist in a suit far too heavy for Miami in summer. It was the driver of the gray Plymouth. His handsome face, spoiled slightly by the flattened bridge of the nose, lacked emotion, but the mouth was drawn tight.

  Doubtless all his circulation was cut off above the elbows.

  "Mr. Capone—" Vasco began. A heavy palm slashed sideways, silencing him. The gray eyes were fixed on Frank Nitti's man, standing still now between his escorts six feet from the table. His hat was missing, probably knocked off in a struggle; his hair, thick, black, and glossy, had come loose from its careful combing and hung over his forehead. He met Capone's gaze—a courageous feat, Vasco thought; but then he was accustomed to Frank Nitti's ice-water stare.

  "What's your name?" Capone's tone was polished steel. Vasco had heard it in jest, in pleasant conversation, and in rage, but never in controlled fury such as this. He imagined it had sounded that way just before he reached for his baseball bat.

  "Joe Verdi." The man tried to match his tone, with some success.

  "What you doing down here, Joe, taking in the beach?"

  "Something like that."

  "Not following my friends."

  Verdi said nothing.

  The guard from the gate took something from his side pocket and held it out. "He brought his luggage."

  Capone looked at the pistol, square and black and heavy-looking, its butt turned his way. It was identical to the weapon he'd used to shoot bottles earlier. Chicago gangdom, it appeared, subscribed to an unwritten Manual of Arms. Capone took it, and with the same series of movements Vasco had seen previously, popped out the magazine, looked at the brass cartridges stacked inside, snapped it back in, and worked the slide with a jerk and release. "Turn him the other way." He got up, his robe falling open to expose his hard heavy frame in the black swimsuit. His chest was heaving.

  "Mr. Capone," Otis said.

  "Shut up."

  The two men turned with their captive until their backs faced the bay. He struggled, but failed even to slow them down.

  "Hang on tight."

  Vasco gripped the arms of his chair. He was incapable of moving otherwise.

  Capone hefted the pistol in his right hand, as if trying to decide which end to use. Finally he grasped the handle and laid the barrel atop Verdi's left shoulder. The man made a mighty lunge, trying to shrug it off. Capone reached up with his left hand, grasped him brutally by the hair, making him wince, and raised the weapon level with Verdi's left ear. "You boys take measures," he said. "I don't want no deaf men on the payroll."

  The two guards stretched their free hands across their faces, sticking their index fingers into the ears nearest the pistol, and craned their necks as far to the side as they could.

  Verdi was shaking now, his knees buckled; but the two men held him upright with their bodies braced against his. Capone thumbed back the hammer and squeezed the trigger.

  The blam was full-throated, a shocking explosion in those close quarters; Vasco's own ears rang, and Verdi's mouth opened wide, but his scream was silent under the report. The spent casing made a glittering arc and landed on the ceramic tiles with a thin, glassy tinkle in the roaring echo.

  Capone took a step back, releasing his grasp and dandling the weapon again. Verdi's head fell forward, his chin on his chest. His mouth remained open, his eyes squeezed tight in a kind of pain Vasco could only imagine. Then Capone shifted hands on the gun and snatched the man's hair again, this time in his right hand. Verdi's head snapped back, a sobbing gasp escaping his throat now, the first human sound he'd managed to make since answering Capone's last question. The guards plugged their ears again and craned away. But instead of raising the pistol, Capone leaned close to Verdi's working ear and bellowed: "I'm leaving you one eardrum to take a message back to your boss. Next mug comes inside a thousand feet of one of my friends gets it between the eyes. Tra gli occhi, capisci?"

  "Yeah." It was a groan.

  "Che?" He was still bellowing.

  "Capisco!"

  Capone let go of his hair, but not before giving it a final twist that brought another gasp. "Take this piece of shit and dump him back in his can."

  The two guards half-carried the man back toward the house.

  On the way they passed Mae Capone and Rose, who had stopped halfway to the pool carrying trays of food and drink, and behind them Danny with a bottle of beer in each hand. All were staring at Capone.

  He made a backhand swipe with the hand holding the gun, a savage gesture that backed them up as before a hot wind. "Let's you and me take a walk, Padre. I got some trash to throw out." He turned in the direction of the bay.

  Vasco rose and trotted to catch up. "Was that necessary?"

  "I tried turning the other cheek once. You saw what it got me."

  "Did Sonny tell you Nitti was having me followed?"

  "Sonny's a good boy. He worries about his friends."

  "I can't help thinking you just made a bad situation worse."

  "That's what Johnny told me when Deanie got dusted."

  "He was right."

  "Right or wrong's got nothing to do with staying alive."

  They walked around the trestle bench, Capone stepping gingerly to avoid cutting his slippered feet on the carpet of broken glass. When they were a few yards away from the edge of the shore, he swung the pistol back over his shoulder and hurled it far out above the Atlantic. It turned over several times and made a white splash in the relentless blue. A gull swooped at it and wheeled away. "Maybe it'll wash up on Normandy with the rest of the artillery," Capone said.

  "Do you think that man will ever get the hearing back in that ear?"

  "Who gives a shit? Sonny wears a hearing aid and he does all right." He stuck his hands in his robe pockets, leaving it open to flap in the wind. "Don't waste your prayers on a Sicilian. A cockroach'll keep on crawling with its head cut clean off."

  "How do you know Verdi's Sicilian?"

  " 'Cause he was dumb enough to let himself get spotted by that college boy at the gate. Sicilians." He shook his head, watching a freighter waddling low in the water near the horizon.

  "Dumb as turds, tough as horsemeat, do anything for a buck: your buck; my buck, it don't matter. You got to keep outbidding the competition if you want to keep 'em in your pen. Miss one bid and it's addio, signor, see you in the obituaries. Take Scalise and Anselmi. Take the fucking Gennas." He worked his gum reflectively, almost ecstatical
ly, as if he were chewing flavor back into it....

  THE CONFESSIONS OF AL CAPONE

  1925-1929

  Compiled from Transcripts by Special Agent P. Vasco

  Division 5 FBI File #44/763

  THIRTY

  I'D been expecting trouble from the Gennas so long, when I got wind of what they were up to I thought it was old news.

  The papers called them the Terrible Gennas, and for once they were right. They liked the tag, I guess because the more people were scared of them, the less they had to buy off; they had press on the payroll, and somebody said Angelo himself suggested it. The reporters threw in "Bloody Angelo" as a kind of bonus, and Mike the Devil for one of his brothers. Pete, Sam, and Jim got no nicknames on account of they were run-of-the-mill killers, bullets and razors, no fancy stuff.

  Then there was Tony—the Aristocrat he was called, because he had his suits made and put on a fresh shirt every day. He lived apart from the others in a swanky hotel suite downtown, went to the opera, and put up housing for poor immigrants. That's where I got the idea for soup kitchens during the Depression; I always thought the goodwill was why Tony lasted as long as he did.

  You remember Frankie Yale put O'Banion on the spot while Deanie was fixing up the floral arrangements for Mike Merlo, who fooled everybody by dying of cancer. Mike was president of the Unione Siciliana—well, the Mafia—and he wasn't cold in the ground before Angelo took his place. That was a poor career decision, because between Bloody Angelo and Tony Lombardo and Patsy Lolordo and that poison-packing escremento Joe Aiello, nobody ever held the job long enough to make out his will. In May 1925, Angelo and his new wife, Lucille, found a house they liked in Oak Park, and he went off to the agent's in his swell new Marmon Speedster with eleven grand in his pocket to pay for it. Hymie Weiss, who was running the O'Banion mob then, spotted him on Ogden and took out after him in a seven-passenger Hupmobile with Frank Gusenberg driving. Vinnie Drucci—Schemer was his moniker because of all the big-time operations he always had going but only in his head, like putting the snatch on Man O' War and holding him for ransom—was with them, and that crackjob Bugs Moran. They opened up on the Speedster with shotguns.

  Well, Angelo took off like gooseshit, straight into a lamppost on the corner of Hudson. He hit his head on the steering column and was still seeing stars when Gusenberg pulled up alongside and Hymie and Schemer and Bugs let him have it. That was the official version, and whether Hymie or Schemer or Bugs sat it out or it was all three on the triggers or just two, I'm inclined to accept it in principle.

  The Gennas spent more on Angelo's sendoff than the Irish did on O'Banion, which was predictable under the circumstances; they even towed that Speedster of his behind the hearse, all hung with crepe and looking like a Swiss cheese with holes in it big as your fist. Marmons were made of aluminum, you see. One of the happiest days in my life was when I took delivery on that armor-plated Cadillac.

  It was a North Side job, everybody knew it. O'Banion got his head handed to him for telling the Sicilians to go to hell, so his boys sent the first Sicilian they laid eyes on to keep him company. The Gennas all seemed to go along with that. Three weeks later, Mike the Devil rounded up Scalise and Anselmi and caught Bugs and Schemer in crossfire when they pulled that Hupmobile out of an alley onto Congress, but the car got the worst of it. I think Schemer took some stitches.

  Mike wasn't so lucky. As they were driving away, he, Scalise, and Anselmi picked up a police tail, and thinking it was Weiss's boys they floored it. But Mike wasn't any handier behind the wheel than Angelo: A truck shot across Congress on Sixtieth, and he had to stand on the brakes to keep from plowing into it. The truck stopped, too, and then the cops swung their big touring car across both lanes to hem him in. When they got out to make the arrest, Scalise and Anselmi opened fire with the same shotguns they'd used on the Hupmobile. Two cops died, one was wounded, and Mike died in an alley, though not before he kicked an ambulance attendant in the face and said, "Take that, you son of a bitch!" I bet he spit in the devil's eye when he got to hell, fighting over the name.

  It was just the kind of mess that happened sometimes, especially in Chicago. The cops were all plainclothes detectives, they were responding to shots fired— that's what they told the papers, the ones that survived—and nobody knew who the hell they were shooting at and who was shooting back. Only Tony the Aristocrat saw it different. Somehow he got it into his head I fixed everything up, starting with Angelo, so I could step in and grab that licensing agreement the Gennas had with Washington to distribute denatured alcohol, which renatured slick as spit if you knew what you were doing. (If you didn't, God help you, because that stuff would strip the skin off a streetcar.) I heard it was Drucci sold Tony that bill of goods, but if so it was the only one of his schemes that ever came to anything. Personally I think it was the cops from the Maxwell Street station put him onto it.

  They were into the Gennas for thousands, from the precinct captain on down to the parking detail, and when word got around I was taking over for Johnny Torrio they were afraid I wouldn't be as generous. I lean that way because that part was true. You've got to distribute the grease evenly; too much in one spot just gums up the works.

  That joke on Congress cinched it for me. It was Maxwell Street dicks involved, and coincidences like that just don't happen. If it had gone off the way they planned, I'd get the blame for Mike, and there'd be war. The Aristocrat was already predisposed against me for having to borrow back Scalise and Anselmi for the Hupmobile fiasco—I told you I liked their work too much to return them permanent—and he don't stop to consider it was cops all along. Understand, all this came around while we're fighting the O'Donnells and O'Banion's boys. I'm running out of directions to turn where bullets aren't coming from. Meanwhile, Tony, Pete, Sam, and Jim are undermining the whole South Side: hijacking trucks, pushing our own stuff in our speaks and pocketing the take, kidnapping our people for ransom. You can't make war on three fronts and remain profitable. The Gennas had to go, and high time.

  I used one of their own guys, which is what I call street poetry. Joe Nerone started out teaching arithmetic in Sicily, but when he finished adding two and two he decided teaching didn't pay, so he went to sticking up people and when the authorities objected to that he came here and threw in with the brothers. But a man who can tote up a column of numbers can never know satisfaction. He didn't take a lot of persuading; Jake Lingle said I told him you get a lot farther with a kind word and a gun than just a kind word, but he was being dramatic. What I said was a kind word and a C-note. In this case it was a bit more, but when it came to staying alive I never counted pennies.

  I had my hands full like I said, so rather than take the time to come up with a new plan I borrowed Frankie Yale's. Joe called the Aristocrat and set up a meet at Cutaia's grocery store at Grand and Curtis. Tony, the dumb cluck, takes his hand just like Deanie took Frankie's, and while they're pumping away saying howjado, hot enough for you, that kind of bullshit, Scalise and Anselmi walked in and aerated him. Five in the back, the easy way, like they say in pool.

  So that was it for the Gennas. Tony got forty-two days from the time Angelo went down, which was the same as dying in your bed of old age by Chicago standards. Pete, Sam, and Jim took ship to Sicily right after the funeral. When Jim came back in '30, he went into the import business, cheese and olive oil. I put some money in that concern. What the hell, I never had any complaint with doing business on the legit, and I sort of liked Jim. A man can't help being born into a family of lunatics.

  Nineteen twenty-six was a bitch, turbulent twenty-six, the newspapers tagged it; scratch a reporter and you'll find a rotten poet. Thirty died in just the first three months, including Bill McSwiggin, who I liked as much as you can like an assistant state's attorney; he did what he was told and didn't hit me up for any more than he was worth, but he got in with a bad crowd and was gunned. His old man was a police sergeant, so that situation was a long time going away, and of course I had to answer
questions, having become a celebrated local character by then. I didn't mind that so much as watching a couple dozen of my joints getting busted up and shut down by cops out for blood. When they can't hit you anywhere else they hit you in the pocketbook.

  Say what you like about O'Banion's boys, they went straight for the throat. First they snatched Tommy Ross, my driver, beat him and burned him with cigarettes to get all the dope on me they could, then plugged him in the head and dumped him in a cistern out in the country. Couple of farm boys found him when their horses wouldn't drink from the crock. He was a good boy, Tommy, gave half his pay to his mother every week, and they tied him up with wire and tortured him and shot him like a dog. That was in August. In September, I'm enjoying a cup of coffee and a kaiser roll in the Hawthorne Inn restaurant in Cicero when Hymie Weiss leads a parade of cars down Twenty-Second Street and stitches up the joint with more tommy guns than was ever in one place until our boys hit Omaha Beach.

  The guns were new then. I'd seen one or two, but I hadn't heard 'em in action. When the first volley started I thought it was a truck loaded with plumbing fixtures or something barreling past, its brakes went out. I wouldn't be here telling you about it if Frankie Rio didn't pull me down to the floor. That first pass was just to get my attention—they was aiming high—and like a sap I popped up for a better look just before the second came in at waist level. Frankie made his future in that moment. I was trying him out in poor Tommy Ross's place, my mind not yet made up about keeping him around: With that messy lip of his and me all carved up on one side we looked like a bad circus act, and I didn't want to give the newspaper cartoonists any more ammunition than they had already. But hooking up with a new bodyguard is like breaking in a pair of shoes; they might look swell, but if you're hurting at the end of the day the fit's no good. Well, the fit was good.

  To this day I don't know how many cars were involved. I heard it was as much as a dozen and as few as three, which plays way low. You don't keep count under those circumstances. It seemed like a hundred. The room was packed—it was the start of the racing season at Hawthorne Park, all the owners and jockeys and trainers and sportsmen and working girls were in town, you couldn't get a room in a hotel or a stool at a bar—and when the real McCoy came along about a half a minute later, busting windows and exploding china and chewing up woodwork, men and women piled every which way to get out of the line of fire, diving under tables, ducking behind the lunch counter, making for the kitchen in back, where the slugs are plinging and planging off pans and pots like tambourines in a hurricane. A bunch of customers and hired help tripped over me and Frankie, or threw themselves down on top of us, I don't know which. For a minute I was sure I'd suffocate. Meanwhile the bullets keep coming, yakity-yak, raking the place right to left, one car coming on the bumper of the one in front of it with another chopper yakity-yaking behind the last. The air's hazy with smoke and plaster dust, you can't breathe, which don't make any difference to me because my face is stuck in a fat waiter's crotch.