Al Capone

by Deirdre Bair

  Al loved Mae and demonstrated his affection with sweet talk and as many gifts as his limited financial circumstances permitted, but once Mae Coughlin became Mrs. Al Capone, there was a major change in their relationship: Al may have rejected an Italian girl as a possible wife, but he still held to the values Italian-American men expected from the women they married. For him, the vivacious and sexually active girl he fell in love with was expected to morph into what he believed should constitute respectable married behavior. The sexually attractive partner with whom he conceived a child somewhere within the darkened recesses of the box factory had to be treated as someone else entirely once they were married. The eager lover who had perhaps stopped just short of being a whore in his bed had to become a Madonna, and the fallen woman who bore her child out of wedlock became the revered angel in his house.

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  From mid-1918 to the end of 1919, Al’s whereabouts and activities are not entirely clear. This was the period when some biographers and historians of crime say that he lived alone and on his own, away from his mother’s home and Mae’s. He was supposed to have taken a job in Baltimore before he and Mae were married, but exactly if or when he was there and how long he stayed are uncertain. The only point on which his many biographers agree is that if he did indeed go to Baltimore, it was the only “honest” job he ever held, as a bookkeeper in the legitimate construction business owned by Peter Aiello. It was probably the reason why he did not move into the Coughlin house immediately after the marriage, when Mae and the baby stayed there while he went back to Baltimore.

  If he did go so far from home, some of his brothers’ descendants who are old enough to remember their fathers’ accounts believe it was because he took his responsibilities as a husband and father seriously and bookkeeping was a well-paying profession. Years later, long after Peter Aiello’s death, his elderly son said his father often praised Al as a good and well-liked worker, one who arrived every day in white shirt, tie, and suit. In the firm’s business office, he learned the intricacies of the double-entry system and polished the mathematical skills that he put to good use for the rest of his criminal career. Who knows how long he might have stayed there on the straight and narrow if his father had not died suddenly in 1919.

  Chapter 3

  THE NEED TO MAKE A LIVING

  Gabriel was one month short of his fifty-fifth birthday when he died in November 1919, and, in a term of the times, had been in poor to middling health for a number of years. His shop had become relatively prosperous, and he now employed two assistant barbers, which allowed him to take his time arriving in the late morning and to leave in the early afternoon. His main activity while in the shop was chatting with customers as his assistants cut their hair, and he also spent a lot of time at his social club next door. It was there on November 14 that he collapsed and died of a massive heart attack, said to be from “chronic myocarditis” on his death certificate. Although he had had minor attacks before the one that killed him, they had not been severe enough for him to be hospitalized, so his death, though not entirely unexpected, still came as a shock.

  Al rushed home from Baltimore as soon as he heard the news. Ralph came from Manhattan, where he was living with one of the succession of women he took up with after his first wife left him (five years had to pass before they were officially divorced). Frank was still technically living at home, although he spent most of his nights elsewhere; only Mafalda and the three younger boys, Erminio (Mimi or John), Umberto (Albert), and Amadoe (Matty), were still living under their mother’s care. Mimi had quit school and was drifting sporadically from one occasional odd job to another, while the three younger children still went to school. Albert attended until shortly after his father died, using the death as the excuse to quit and find work to help support the family. He was a timid boy and the only brother who was relegated to the fringe of the world of gangs and rackets and who spent his life plodding from one legitimate (or semi-legitimate) low-paying job to another. Matty and Mafalda did go on to become high school graduates, and Matty even attended Villanova University for a while, but both only stayed in school because their big brother Al set a high value on the education he never had and insisted that they had to finish.

  Teresa weathered her husband’s death with dignity and equanimity. She did not change her routine in any way, keeping to her usual rounds of churchgoing and food shopping, nor did she make any attempt to learn English. Like most Italian matriarchs, her approach to life was based on the security of knowing that her sons would take care of her. Al immediately recognized that he would have to take full responsibility because his two older brothers could not be counted on to bring home the regular paychecks that were needed to keep the household afloat.

  Ralph had his own rent to pay, his son to provide for, and the grandiose expenses of high living he incurred from entertaining women and gambling. He did hold a series of daytime blue-collar jobs but depended on his illegal connections for much of his income, and the tasks they sent his way were often low paying and sometimes far between. Frank’s income came from the same sources, so it, too, often varied. Al had the only steady job, but besides his Baltimore expenses he had Mae and a sickly baby to support.

  Al was a typical Italian boy who loved his family and needed to be in their midst and did not like being away from home. The death of his father gave him the excuse he needed to return, so he went back to Brooklyn and to Johnny Torrio and Frankie Yale. Al Capone needed a steady and good-paying job in a hurry, and they became the immediate answer to his needs.

  He thought of moving Mae and Sonny into Teresa’s apartment, but Mae quickly disabused him of that idea, and their first home together was a bedroom on the second floor of the Coughlin house. From the very beginning, there had been constant friction between Mae and her mother-in-law, and it only increased as years passed. Teresa spoke Italian to Mae—when she spoke to her at all—and she and the very young Mafalda formed a phalanx of two who scowled at or ignored the attractive blond foreigner who had been plunked down in their midst by their beloved and revered Al. Mafalda especially resented the woman she thought had usurped her place as the “spoiled brat family princess.” All her brothers doted on her, but Al was the one she adored.

  Mae did make several attempts to learn to cook Italian dishes, but she soon gave up trying because it was clear she was not wanted whenever she attempted to enter Teresa’s kitchen. While they lived in her own mother’s house, all Mae’s attention was focused on Sonny, who was often cranky with colds and serious ear infections that required frequent (and expensive) doctor visits. Mae did not know it then, because she did not yet exhibit signs, but Al had infected her with syphilis, and she had passed it on to her child. It was not until they were living in Chicago that her symptoms erupted and she sought treatment at the Mayo Clinic.

  Once back in Brooklyn, Al worked full-time for Johnny Torrio, which meant that he was out every night, often staying away from Mae for several days if not whole weeks at a time. Both in Brooklyn and then in Chicago, Torrio religiously went home for dinner every night, and Al tried but usually did not succeed in doing the same, so he made sure to telephone both houses every day, as much out of respect for his mother as out of love for his wife. Mae knew that he always called Teresa first because he would tell her Teresa’s news of each member of the family, particularly of Mafalda, who liked to grab the phone as she approached her teen years.

  Mae festered in silence, but she was canny enough to allow such slights to pass without comment or retaliation, signs of weakness that might get back to her in-laws and give them pleasure. She was secure in her husband’s love and respect and knew how special she was, so she simply waited her turn. She also knew that one of Al’s jobs was to collect money from Torrio’s brothels and to make sure that the prostitutes did not get out of line, but if she knew that he routinely sampled their wares, she also kept that to herself. She made sure there were no arguments between them that he might inadvertently mention to Teresa f
or Mafalda to overhear. Even after they moved to Chicago and had separate phones installed in their house’s two apartments, Al always phoned Teresa first.

  Mae said nothing, and Al did not change his ways. They had overcome so many obstacles just to be able to marry that once they were man and wife, there were too many other, more serious issues they needed to resolve. The first was where, when, and how they would set up housekeeping, because the Coughlin house was bursting at the seams, but even more important was the question of how Al would support his little family on top of the larger extended one for which he had assumed major responsibility. He was just twenty-one, husband to a wife who wanted her own home and father of a sickly baby; Al Capone was a son, husband, and father who was looking for the best way to become a good provider for everyone. It was soon clear that the easiest route to financial stability was not through box factory or bookkeeping jobs, nor was it as Frankie Yale’s bouncer. That route would come through Johnny Torrio, who valued young Al Capone’s work and made it easy for him to go where he was wanted and appreciated.

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  Torrio was a gentleman, and although he was never a father, he was a model husband. He was an excellent role model, even a mentor, for an unformed, uneducated boy who wanted to become a good man, and Al Capone was soon working for him full-time. It was a symbiotic relationship that prospered from the start: Al needed someone to look up to, and Torrio needed someone he could trust. Torrio was branching out, and that meant more and greater responsibility for Al. Mae went along for the ride, and so did all the other Capones.

  Torrio’s frequent trips to Chicago had begun around 1909, when his reputation as a mediator and facilitator reached his cousin Victoria Moresco, and her husband, Giacomo “Big Jim” Colosimo. She was “the premier madam” of the crime- and racket-ridden area of Chicago known as the Levee, where she owned around one hundred (or somewhat fewer) brothels, and he, a much younger man about half her age, owned a restaurant that was a front for the rest of the graft and corruption that made them rich. But they were only one of the many gangs in the Chicago underworld, and what they controlled they wanted to keep. They contacted the Fox (as Torrio was nicknamed) after other gangs had the temerity to try to extort them, and he soon became everything they needed to keep their particular gangland empire secure. After Torrio had masterminded several murders and other less drastic forms of persuasion, Colosimo put him in charge of all his operations.

  Realizing that Chicago provided a much larger arena than Brooklyn, Torrio decided to make a permanent move. However, when Big Jim balked at Johnny the Fox’s plans for expansion, Torrio continued his usual pattern of keeping himself above the fray and quietly imported Frankie Yale from Coney Island to ensure his takeover. On May 11, 1920, Big Jim was murdered in his restaurant in broad daylight while his staff bustled about its business before the opening hour. There were so many workers rushing back and forth, and yet—what a surprise—no witnesses were found who dared to testify against Yale. He went back to his Harvard Club in Brooklyn, and Torrio got busy taking control of Chicago, from the highest levels of city government to the lowest of the mom-and-pop rackets.

  The saga of how Torrio insinuated himself into Chicago gangland and how Al Capone became his successor has been told in fairly straightforward fashion by a multitude of biographers, historians of crime, and sociologists. They have all used the same public information, that is, newspaper stories, public records, government documents, and legal testimony taken from depositions and transcripts of court trials. All these accounts differ in some of the details, and arriving at the truths of what happened, and when and how, has never been absolute, but a good deal of truth can be found in the broad strokes.

  At the start of his Chicago years, Torrio left Capone behind in Brooklyn to work primarily for Frankie Yale. Soon Capone was being entrusted with more and different responsibilities because he never hesitated to bash heads on Yale’s behalf. From the prostitutes and other employees in the brothels to the bartenders at his pool halls and saloons, anyone who dared once to try to short Yale on money owed or protection paid knew better than to try it a second time while Al Capone was on the scene. His mere presence was enough to frighten people, especially after he was implicated in at least one murder with rumors of his complicity in several others, none of which could be pinned on him—again because no witnesses dared to identify him.

  He was seemingly impervious, until he made the mistake of beating Arthur Finnegan, a low-level worker in Yale’s rival gang, the Irish White Handers. Capone was making his rounds to collect money when he encountered Finnegan, who made insulting remarks about Irish girls who married Italians. Capone lost control and beat him so severely that he was hospitalized and close to death. A higher-up in the gang, Wild Bill Lovett, let it be known he was out for revenge and would kill Al Capone on sight. Lovett was a sharpshooter decorated for bravery in World War I, a psychotic who would murder without the least provocation, so this was a threat to take seriously. Yale was at war with the White Handers, and he knew retaliation was a certainty. He did not want to lose Capone, so he insisted that for the young brawler’s own good he relocate to Chicago to work for Torrio and hide out until things cooled off. Both men thus ensured Al Capone’s complete loyalty by saving him from certain assassination.

  Al immediately recognized that Chicago offered a step up in the Torrio organization as well as the opportunity to live at last as a married man in his own household. But the domestic benefits didn’t enhance his tough image, so he conveniently elided them when, in later years, he created the saga of how and why he left Brooklyn. Al claimed to reporters that he took all his worldly possessions: a change of clothes and $40. He did not add that he also took his wife and infant son. Once he got to Chicago, he did find a small apartment on Wabash Avenue, where he was not so lonely (as he claimed) that he had to send for Ralph and Frank. Quite soon after he and Mae were settled, he did send for Ralph, but only because he found it difficult to carry out all his duties for Torrio and needed help. Ralph came at once and moved into the tiny apartment with Al, Mae, and Sonny. After Ralph and Frank moved out, Al found a larger apartment for himself, Mae, and Sonny, where they lived for the better part of a year. Mae claimed it was one of the happiest periods of her life; it was small and not grand, but it was hers. Al was already looking for a house that would hold his entire family, which he found in 1922, the one on South Prairie Avenue that would hold them for the rest of their lives. By late 1921, Frank had come with two of the three Fischetti cousins, Rocco and Charlie, and they all went to work for Torrio; Al wanted his mother and the rest of her brood to come also, and by 1923, all the Capones were living there.

  Many years later, when Al Capone was at the pinnacle of his criminal career, an interviewer asked him what impelled him to leave everything he had known all his life to go halfway across the continent and to a city he then regarded as the equivalent of a foreign country. He began his explanation by speaking first of Sonny and Mae, telling how he “loved [them] dearly,” before inventing the story of how hard it had been to leave them behind in Brooklyn. He claimed that he knew he had to do it because if he disobeyed Torrio by refusing to go, he might have lost his job and would have had no means to support his family. He did not speak of how Torrio gave him enough money to bring his family with him, nor did he speak of his role in the Finnegan beating as the actual reason why he had to leave town. He did not even hint that this assault might have gotten him killed, in which case Mae would truly have been left with nothing. Thus, he was able to create a myth as he claimed one simple reason for going to Chicago: the need “to make a living.” He told the truth, however, when he added that he was very young and filled with the brash self-confidence of youth, and “I thought I needed more.”

  Once he got to Chicago, his rise was spectacular: “Capone would go from a $15 a week mop boy (and occasional whore beater) to one of the most powerful and wealthy men in the world in a mere six years.” His ascent in mobdom was phenomena
l, his time at the top sensational, and his downfall meteoric. Indeed, his reign did last only six short years, but everything that happened in that brief time still commands worldwide attention, interest, and speculation.

  What was there about Al Capone that captured so many different kinds of imagination? Some lives contain multitudes, and Al Capone’s would seem to be one of them.

  Chapter 4

  AL COMES TO CHICAGO

  Al Capone began his life in Chicago, the “land of bilk and money,” managing some of the brothels Johnny Torrio inherited after he arranged for Frankie Yale to get rid of Big Jim Colosimo. He was still several years away from (as a longtime Capone watcher put it) the “maneuver of the fates that made [him] the most influential man in Chicago…with the vast ramifications of business and industry paying tribute to him.” In the beginning, his chores were much the same as they had been in Brooklyn; he collected the prostitutes’ earnings, kept the books, and ensured that the premises stayed clean and ran smoothly, which meant he was often a combination of janitor, bouncer, and busker—the guy who stood out front and hustled the johns to come in and sample the wares.

  He worked alone until Ralph arrived and Frank followed with the two Fischetti cousins. Only Al ran the brothels, with Ralph as his chief assistant. Among the girls he managed, Al was alleged to single out certain prostitutes who were not required to meet the same quotas as the girls he did not fancy. Some were as young as fifteen, and one in particular was his favorite. She was said to be dark and of Greek descent, and he allegedly made her dye her hair platinum blonde because he had indulged in several brief affairs before her, all of them with blondes. Mae found out, and in one of her most angry retaliations, she embarrassed him in front of his entire family; when he came home for Teresa’s Sunday dinner, Mae met him in the dining room with her lovely brown hair dyed the same shade of blond as his new mistress. She kept it that color until she was old and it turned white, and his only comment, ever, was to say she looked lovely.