Capone

by Laurence Bergreen

  For the moment, “Bigbillism” flourished in Chicago, and Capone emerged from his self-imposed retirement to exploit it. The entire political system with its patronage and rigged elections became the ultimate racket. Of course from the racketeers’ perspective, the whole country was a series of overlapping rackets. What was the insurance business but a giant racket, and a legal one at that? What was John D. Rockefeller’s Standard Oil monopoly but the most lucrative racket in the country, and Rockefeller himself the biggest racketeer of them all? And in Chicago, the financier Samuel Insull—“Emperor” Insull, they called him—had over the years built up a vast web of power and utility companies, in the process appearing on the cover of Time magazine not once but twice, becoming a hero to businessmen and the common man alike. Insull was the president of eleven companies, a director of eighty-five more, and the chairman of another sixty-five. He employed as many as fifty thousand people, and from his office high above Wacker Drive he controlled an empire worth $3 billion, all of it arranged in a complex pyramid requiring the economic boom to sustain it.

  For all his immense wealth and Establishment credentials, Insull’s life contained a number of parallels to Capone’s. Capone’s constituents bet on fixed fights; Insull’s invested in rigged stocks. Capone’s gambling empire became a pseudoeconomy for diversion and entertainment, what he called the “light pleasures,” a shadow of the stock market, but not necessarily more sinister. Both men possessed a perverse genius for exploiting the tenor of the times, which blurred the distinction between legitimate and illegitimate. They lived in constant dread of assassination; both traveled about the city in armored cars equipped with bulletproof glass and gun ports. On several occasions, while driving through the streets of Chicago in his sixteen-cylinder Cadillac, Insull was fired on. His chauffeur was shot in one instance; in another, he and his wife were nearly kidnapped by gunmen as they drove home. After several brushes with would-be assassins, Insull turned to the man most capable of providing security. Glad to be of service, Al Capone offered Insull the use of several of the organization’s bodyguards, but Insull, who was as stingy as he was wealthy, refused to pay their salaries. Insull also had concerns about appearances. It wouldn’t do to be seen with a phalanx of Sicilian gunmen, and Insull instead raised a small army of security guards drawn from the ranks of his employees. Beyond the need for security, the modus operandi of both men had much in common, for Insull and Capone were determined to build monopolies to control their product. Insull contributed $100,000 to Thompson’s campaign, almost as much as Capone had, but few bothered to criticize Insull for doing so or to divine sinister motives. As Capone knew, people outdid themselves to worship the wealthy, as long as they did not have Italian surnames.

  Determined to purchase and flaunt whatever status he could attain, Capone expanded his Chicago headquarters at the Metropole; he and his men—and the women they kept—now occupied more than fifty rooms, virtually the entire hotel. Liquor flowed, and prostitutes came and went undisturbed. Gambling flourished around the clock. In this topsy-turvy reflection of conventional life, weekdays at the Metropole were devoted to the pursuit of pleasure and Sundays to business. On Sunday mornings, the lobby teemed with the lawyers, judges, and politicians who came to deal with Capone; they traversed hallways staked out with armed security guards until they reached rooms 409 and 410, where he held court. The petitioners ushered into his presence were invariably impressed by the patriotic portraits of three great Americans displayed on the walls: George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, and William Hale Thompson. Thus Capone publicly aligned himself with the new mayor, even while he continued to disparage him in private.

  With little to fear from the police and with the tacit cooperation of City Hall, Capone became more of a man about town than he had ever been, a public figure who regularly appeared at major civic functions symbolic of the day. It was the age of dashing, daring aviators, and on May 15, days before Charles Lindbergh completed his transatlantic flight, an Italian pilot, Commander Francesco de Pinedo, hopscotching the globe on behalf of Mussolini, landed his hydroplane on Lake Michigan, where he was besieged by a party of official greeters and well-wishers including the Italian consul, the chief of Chicago’s fascists, Air Corps officers, a judge, and Al Capone, who leaped forward to shake Pinedo’s hand. Capone’s presence was duly noted by the press, which occasioned some grumbling about the propriety of a gangster representing Chicago, but the police promptly explained that they had invited Capone in case they needed to call on him to help quell an antifascist riot.

  • • •

  Secure in the knowledge that he had earned his place in Chicago’s public life, Capone overcame his fear of assassination and began to appear regularly in public, especially at sporting events of every type. He had much to choose from, for it was an era of legendary athletes: Babe Ruth in baseball, Bill Tilden in tennis, Red Grange in football, and Jack Dempsey and Gene Tunney in boxing. Capone became a regular at Chicago Cubs home games, always in the company of several bodyguards, and occasionally a young boy that everyone, including the newspapers, assumed was his son. But Capone was not so foolish as to display his only child before 30,000 members of the public. Sonny Capone remained secluded in the safety of the family house on South Prairie Avenue, and this boy was a stand-in. He was Sam Pontarelli, another of Capone’s surrogate sons.

  Not everyone considered the gangster welcome. When Tony Berardi photographed Gabby Hartnett, the Cubs’ catcher and later a member of the Hall of Fame, autographing a baseball for Capone, the fleeting incident caused respectable voices in Chicago to insist that Capone by his mere presence was dishonoring the great American pastime. In response, the commissioner of baseball, Kenesaw Mountain Landis, forbade the players from fraternizing with the fans.

  Although he adored the company of sports figures and frequented gyms almost as much as he did brothels, Capone was no athlete. He had excelled at pool in his youth, but since much of his life consisted of eluding his enemies and hiding indoors, he had little interest in exercise. He made an exception when it came to golf, another sport winning new devotees in the 1920s; indeed, golf became something of a craze among the racketeers of Chicago, and Capone was especially devoted to it. As his experience with the sport demonstrated, even golf could be hazardous.

  Capone’s preferred links naturally belonged to his syndicate. The course was located in suburban Burnham, home of the “Boy Mayor,” Johnny Patton, who ran a country club inevitably known as Burnham Wood. Its nine-hole course opened in 1925 and soon began attracting a following among Capone’s gunmen, including “Machine Gun” Jack McGurn and another tommy gun virtuoso called Fred “Killer” Burke, who was as coarse and ugly as McGurn was sleek and handsome. They were later joined by Capone, who played there as often as twice a week. There he became friendly with his twelve-year-old caddie, Timothy Sullivan, who fell under the sway of Capone’s charm and generosity. Much later, Sullivan recalled the first time he saw Capone: “He was wearing a white silk shirt with his monogram, no tie, gray plus fours and a belt with a diamond buckle, and he was surrounded by his gangsters,” including McGurn; Jack Guzik, who was even less athletic than Capone; and a grim little toad of a bodyguard known as “Banjo Eyes.”

  The foursome one day consisted of Capone and McGurn against Guzik and Burke, playing for $500 a hole. “Capone teed off first. He fetched the ball a whack that would have sent it down the fairway, only he hooked it, and it curved way off to the left into a clump of trees. I scrambled around on all fours for about 10 minutes trying to find it, scared to death Al would lose his temper and hit me or maybe shoot me, but all he did was grin, pat me on the head and call me Kid.” Relieved, Sullivan decided that Al Capone was nothing like his reputation; he seemed gentle and patient, though he played deplorable golf. “I don’t think he broke 60 for the nine holes. He could drive the ball half a mile, but he always hooked it, and he couldn’t putt for beans.” At the end of the afternoon, Capone lost almost every hole, including side
bets. Sullivan calculated that the gangster foursome exchanged about $10,000 during that game, and then, to complete his astonishment, Capone tipped him what seemed an incredible sum: $20.

  Sullivan, Al’s constant caddie, subsequently learned that gangsters played golf like no other people played the game. All the boys wore hip flasks, which clinked with every step they took, and they drank as they went, so by the time they approached the ninth hole they were in an uproarious mood. Drunk, they dug divots the size of trenches, especially “Killer” Burke, who wielded a golf club as if it were a lethal weapon. Without warning they fell into playful wrestling matches. The agile McGurn would turn somersaults or walk on his hands, or the four of them would line up to play leapfrog, McGurn hurtling over the back of Burke, who would in turn jump over Capone, and so on toward the tee, where they would play a game called Blind Robin—Al’s contribution to the game of golf. In Blind Robin one of the men reclined on the grass, stuck his face in the air, balanced the golf ball on his chin, shut his eyes, and prayed as the others teed off. When it was Al’s turn to serve as a human golf tee, the boys put away their drivers and used a putter, swinging softly—very softly, lest they leave a mark on his round face.

  Being racketeers, they constantly cheated on each other, which led to bitter fights. When McGurn caught Burke moving the ball to a better lie, the two men had it out. Burke was much bigger, but McGurn, younger and stronger, knocked down his antagonist a dozen times as a crowd of golfers paused to watch the spectacle. The brawl lasted half an hour, and when it was done, McGurn, bloody but upright, stood in triumph over Burke, who lay on the ground in defeat. “The boys made a stretcher of their hands and carried him to the clubhouse,” Sullivan recalled.

  During another outing, Guzik vented his wrath on his young caddie. The blowup occurred on the sixth hole, when his ball landed in a sand trap. Using a club suggested by Sullivan, Guzik swung at the ball, only to watch in disgust as it rolled back into the trap. On the third unsuccessful attempt to escape the trap, Guzik suddenly lost his temper. “He grabbed the driver like a bat and went for me, yelling every dirty name you could think of,” Sullivan remembered. “I ran zigzagging across the fairway. Luckily, he was too fat and slow to catch me or I think he would have killed me. He stopped finally, out of breath, broke the club across his knees and threw the pieces at me.” And so another afternoon on the links with the boys came to an end. The following day, Capone made himself a hero in Sullivan’s eyes by humiliating Guzik. “What do you mean treating the Kid here like that?” he shouted at “Greasy Thumb,” who mumbled his feeble excuses. He then insisted that Guzik tip the caddie, and when Guzik proffered a measly dollar bill, Al snatched the wallet, extracted twenty dollars, handed the money to the Kid, and threw the wallet at the feet of Guzik, “who picked it up and waddled away without a word.”

  Becoming wise to the ways of racketeers, Sullivan began cheating to help his friend Al. “I would keep a couple of extra balls in my pants pocket, drop one near the spot where his disappeared, and pretend I’d found it. He caught on pretty quick, but he just laughed and said, ‘You’re okay, Kid.’ ” For Capone, betting existed to be fixed, but when “Banjo Eyes” discovered the sleight of hand, he became enraged, called Capone a liar to his face, and the men got into a shouting match on the course. Finally, Al roared: “On your knees and start praying!” He suddenly plunged his hand into his golf bag and pulled out a revolver, at which point Sullivan burst into tears, pleading with the man he had come to admire so deeply not to execute “Banjo Eyes” on the Burnham Wood golf course. Softened by the young caddie’s plea, Capone’s rage dissipated as quickly as it had come, and the game continued without loss of life or injury.

  Although this episode concluded peacefully, Capone’s habit of bringing a weapon onto the links continued to present a hazard. During a game with Johnny Patton, the “Boy Mayor,” Capone casually picked up his golf bag, and the .45-caliber revolver concealed within went off. Wounded, Al shrieked in agony. “The bullet plowed down through the fleshy part of his right leg,” the Tribune reported, “narrowly missed the abdomen and then embedded itself in his left leg.” Although he had narrowly escaped inflicting permanent damage on himself, Capone urgently required medical assistance. Patton rushed him to St. Margaret’s Hospital in Hammond, where a medical examination disclosed a serious wound in Capone’s groin. The hospital’s chief physician refused to allow him to remain overnight out of fear that the presence of “Scarface” Al Capone would attract other gangsters, who would use the patients for target practice. In the end Capone was allowed to register under the name of Geary. He took a suite consisting of five rooms, one reserved for his use, the others devoted to sheltering his round-the-clock bodyguards, including Tony “Little New York” Campagna. “Pistols are not flashed around the corridors,” said a reporter of the scene, “but the sentinels remain at all times ready to care for unwelcome visitors.” Within a week Capone was discharged, and he immediately returned to the golf course. “After that,” his caddie, Tim Sullivan, observed, “the boys double-checked to make sure the safety catch was on before they deposited any gun in a golf bag.”

  Young Tim Sullivan’s initiation into the racketeers’ life eventually comprised matters extending far beyond the game of golf. “One afternoon on the links they kept talking about some kind of party they were going to throw at the clubhouse that night. An orgy, they called it. I’d never heard the word before,” Sullivan wrote, “and I was burning with curiosity. So after supper I went back to the clubhouse. The bouncer at the door laughed fit to bust when I asked to join Al’s party. ‘Better go home and get your diapers changed,’ he said. I pretended to go but instead sneaked around to the back of the building.” He climbed to a second-story window, through which he “saw about 20 couples, most of them naked. Not Al, though. He just stood on the sidelines, watching and laughing.”

  After that incident, Sullivan not unexpectedly announced that he wanted to join the Capone gang when he was older. What better life than tearing across a golf course, veering recklessly between leapfrog and murder? Al just smiled and tousled the Kid’s hair. “You’re part of it now, aren’t you? You’re my caddie,” he told the Kid.

  “I mean for real,” Sullivan said, “and carry a gun like the other guys.”

  This time Capone spoke more directly. “Nothing doing, Kid. I want you around a long time all in one piece. You might get hurt. Most guys in my line of business do.”

  Although the Kid never did join the gang, his older sister, Babe, got even closer to Al. Babe was hardly more than a kid herself, only sixteen years old, with dark eyes and dark hair: an Irish beauty. The two met in the clubhouse, where she worked as a waitress. Serving a cup of coffee to the famous Al Capone, she became so nervous that she spilled it over his suit. Capone jumped to his feet, hollering at the poor dumb waitress, but when he saw how young and sweet-looking she was, he immediately regained his composure, apologized, and tenderly put his arm around her. “I didn’t mean to scare you,” he said softly, “but that coffee is pretty hot.” He gave Babe a $10 tip and never stopped thinking about her. Soon he started seeing her regularly, showering her with jewelry, diamonds, gaudy bracelets, necklaces, and other sparkling trinkets of doubtful provenance. Afraid of being identified as a gangster’s moll, Babe carefully hid the treasures from her mother, but Al proved to be a persistent suitor who saw in the youthful Babe all the innocence he had irrevocably lost. Whenever he was in Burnham he stopped by the Sullivan house, home of his best caddie and his best girl. He ingratiated himself with Mom and Pop Sullivan, who cast aside their reservations and found him absolutely charming, not at all the way the newspapers described him. He had the twin scars, they could see, but his manners were perfect. Eventually Babe stopped trying to conceal their affair. “He kept telling Babe how much he loved her,” her brother recalled, “that he’d get a divorce if she’d marry him.” Divorce Mae? None of the Sullivans took Al’s talk seriously, but under the circumstances it sounded rath
er gallant. In the end Babe refused him, politely but firmly. “She said she was satisfied with the way things were.”

  As the affair continued, Al often took Babe and her kid brother for drives, casual excursions to nowhere. It was so luxurious, so peaceful inside Al’s limousine, except for the machine gun installed beside the driver’s seat. “Nothing to worry about,” Al said airily when he saw his passengers gaping. “Just a little insurance. Look out the windows.” On another occasion, he took a small party consisting of Al, Babe, the Kid, and two bodyguards to see Al Jolson in his latest movie, The Singing Fool. It was here, at the movies, that Capone could finally relax and briefly forget the danger with which he lived. When the lights came up, Sullivan was surprised to see tears coursing down the gangster’s broad cheeks.

  As the Kid discovered, Capone reserved his real passion not for women but for boxing, a sport that ran deep in gangster culture. For years he had spent his idle moments in gyms, encountering old pals, winking, shaking hands, but mainly watching the mesmerizing display of muscle crashing against bone. No other sport was as direct and violent as boxing, so close to actual combat; it was a metaphor, an extension, of the gangster’s life: short, brutal, occasionally glorious, but not really glamorous. Nor was it a mainstream sport; it was too sweaty and primitive to earn the acceptance accorded baseball; furthermore, it was illegal in many areas. McGurn and other Capone gunmen had been professional boxers at one time, and many of the fight promoters and managers were closely aligned with racketeers or were racketeers themselves. “Throughout my career,” wrote Barney Ross, a Chicago pugilist whom Capone befriended, “I was to find that the most rabid fans in the fight business were the gangsters on the one hand, and the society crowd on the other. And whenever they met at parties honoring this champ or that one, they got along like brothers under the skin. However, the society people sometimes got drunk and nasty, but the gangsters were always gentlemen.”