by Deirdre Bair
Al Capone’s slate won the election after a day of bloodshed in which, besides Frank, several of his other men were killed. Two ordinary citizens were also killed in the rain of bullets, but their deaths were mostly ignored; the only debate was the one that raged over Frank’s death. He had been arrested some time earlier than the day of his death for carrying a concealed weapon, but a judge friendly to the Capones overruled the decision and permitted him to carry it for the euphemism of “his own protection.” Legal inquiries were begun, leading to the first time Al Capone was summoned to testify about a shooting.
He identified himself as Al Brown, the used-furniture dealer whose brother Frank was a law-abiding businessman who did carry a gun, but only for his own protection, and who was in Cicero that day not to influence the voting but to see about a real estate transaction. When a coroner’s jury was convened, the police insisted that Frank pulled his weapon while resisting arrest so they had no option but to shoot him. The final verdict was in their favor, as a justifiable homicide.
Al, always swift in retaliation against other gangs, bided his time after his brother’s death. Now he was the sole Capone brother fully responsible for the many different facets of his daily life, from supervising his entire family to running the ever-enlarging Torrio empire. Cunning became his weapon of choice. One of the earliest observers of gangland Chicago, Edward Dean Sullivan, was correct in calling Al Capone “an unusual ‘hood.’ He has concentration and executive ability beyond the ordinary. He is utterly fearless except when it is sensible to be afraid.”
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Torrio, who despite the ruthless way he earned money, still managed to live a life of discreet dignity, had nevertheless run afoul of other criminal outfits. After the horrific effect of the turf wars that raged among rival gangs throughout the early teen years and culminated in the murder of Dean O’Banion on November 10, 1924, Torrio knew there would be retaliation attempts against him by the Moran, Weiss, and Drucci factions, so he wisely left for Hot Springs, Arkansas, a congenial place where the local populace looked the other way as mobsters hid out until the heat was off. When word filtered down to Torrio that he was a target, he kept moving, from Florida to Cuba and the Bahamas. While he was gone, just to let him know they were not easing up on targeting his gang, there was an assassination attempt, but at Al Capone as he was entering a Chicago restaurant for lunch on January 12, 1925. He fell to the floor and escaped the fusillade of bullets that riddled his car parked outside. It was the first time the Thompson submachine gun, colloquially known as the tommy gun, was used in gang warfare, and Al wasted no time acquiring what became his weapon of choice.
After the attempt on Al Capone’s life, Torrio thought it meant the heat was off his and returned to Chicago several days later. On January 24, when he was coming home from a celebratory shopping expedition with his wife, their arms loaded with large and expensive packages, they did not pay attention to the big sedan that careened down the street in their direction. Hymie Weiss and Bugs Moran jumped out and wounded Torrio’s driver before shooting Torrio in several places on his upper torso. Always courteous to women, the shooters ignored Ann Torrio who was lying on the ground, covering her head and screaming. Moran stood over Torrio, preparing to shoot him in the head with a .45, but it either jammed or—even worse in this comedy of errors—ran out of ammunition. There was enough other traffic on the street to distract the two frazzled would-be killers, so they drove off, expecting that Torrio’s wounds were so severe he would die of them. But he did not die: he was rushed to a hospital where he spent a month recovering, all the time honoring the code of silence and not identifying the clumsy assassins.
This marked the second time Capone was called to testify before a committee convened to investigate a shooting. In an extremely sloppy and error-filled copy of his testimony, his name was recorded as Alphonse Caponi. When asked for his line of business, he said he sold antique furniture in a store that had no name, with a partner named Sol Van Praag, whose name was never heard again. Capone exaggerated when he said he had been in Chicago for five years, living before that at 18 Garfield Place in Brooklyn, where he had been a “paper and leather cutter.” He perjured himself when he said he had only known Torrio “for three years,” claiming they met “in Chicago at the race track” and did not see each other again until “the Bennie Leonard fight in East Chicago, about three years ago.” The interviewer asked if he knew various other gangsters: Of the Costello brothers in New York, Capone said, “Only Frank,” to whom he was introduced in a restaurant on Broadway; of Jake Guzik, who worked for Torrio and to whom he was close, he lied and said, “Not personally but I have seen him around.” Asked if he knew the Genna brothers, Mike Merlo, Louie Weiss, Vincent Drucci, and a host of his other gangland opponents, Capone replied no to each name.
As for himself, he painted the picture of a business and family man, claiming he was at home for Sunday’s midday family meal, and on Monday, when his furniture store was closed, he “went around the neighborhood and did some shopping.” He “heard about” the Torrio shooting, which happened on “Tuesday,” (he misspoke: it was a Saturday) when he was on his way to buy tickets for the movie White Cargo. He “just happened to pass” Al Bloom’s cigar store, where “everyone was talking about it.” He said he phoned the hospital and went to Torrio’s room, where he found him “getting along nicely,” but when the interviewer asked if they spoke in Italian, he contradicted himself and said no, because Torrio “was in no condition to talk.” The interviewer pressed to see if Torrio had told Capone the names of his assailants, and he said no, adding that he had no idea who had done it.
The entire testimony from start to finish was a pack of lies except for the last exchange, when the interviewer asked, “Would you tell us if you did know?” “No,” Al Capone replied. “I value my life too much to tell if I did know.”
For the next month, Capone showed his muscle by stationing round-the-clock armed guards outside Torrio’s hospital room and by sleeping there every night on a cot shielding Torrio’s bed, facing the door with guns in full display. Hospital staff were terrified to enter the room but apparently too cowed to suggest the mobsters leave the weapons elsewhere or at least put them away. Capone was still in charge when the fully recovered Torrio left the hospital and was taken not to his home but to the courtroom. There, he was sentenced to spend the next nine months in the Lake County jail at Waukegan for an earlier arrest for operating a brewery. He passed the time in a cell his wife furnished with luxuries and came and went as he pleased to the sheriff’s house, where he dined well and which he made his own while entertaining visitors. Capone took careful notice of Torrio’s luxurious prison life and copied it fully when his own jail time came some years later.
He was there when Torrio was released at the end of 1925, first to escort him back to Chicago and then to see him on his way to a discreet and exceedingly comfortable retirement (so called) in the Westchester suburbs of New York. And then he took charge of the Outfit, as the Torrio organization was called. Al Capone was almost twenty-six when Torrio decided to step out of the limelight and put him in charge of a multimillion-dollar enterprise. It was not clear and easy sailing, for Capone had become a natural target, busily fending off everything from rumors of or actual assassination attempts on himself.
Al was still stunned by the senseless situation that led to Frank being gunned down in broad daylight and on turf he supposedly controlled. He was enraged with everyone who played a part in his brother’s murder but could not help but blame himself for the circumstances that caused it: the clumsy attempts to take over Cicero’s city government. After Frank’s spectacular funeral, where all of gangland competed to send the most elaborate flower arrangements, Al took careful note of who paid homage and how visibly (and expensively) they displayed it, even as he was already bent on a revenge far greater than simple retaliation. His revenge would come in the form of absolute power, first in Cicero and then throughout much of Chicago, in everyth
ing from criminal activity to political authority. During the next six years, he would get that power and wield it, turning himself into the best-known and most flamboyant citizen of his adopted city. How he did it made him a legend far beyond his actual lifetime.
Chapter 5
THE OTHER CAPONES
There was already a family named Capone in Chicago several decades before Al and his clan arrived, and he, alone of all his brothers, became exceedingly close to them. These Capones came from the neighboring village of Acerra and were among the dozen or so young, single, and possibly indentured men who boarded the Trojan Prince in Naples in 1903. They gave “laborer” as their profession and said they were going to Chicago to live with a “cousin on Taylor Street.” Subsequent generations joke that “every Italian who came to Chicago had the same cousin on Taylor Street,” and no one really knows how they might all have conjured up the same fictitious address.
Two other men from Acerra who were related to that branch of Capones by marriage were directly responsible for how they came to choose Chicago as their final destination. Vincenzo Tufano was different from the others with whom he sailed: a single man who, like Gabriel Capone, could read and write and whose family was well enough off that he could book passage on the simple whim of wanting to see the New World; he had enough money that if he didn’t like it, he could book return passage to go home at the earliest opportunity. It was different for his friend Vincenzo Piccolo, who arrived with him on March 11, 1903. Piccolo was also single and had no relatives in Chicago but was simply following his friend and fellow villagers in search of the glorious opportunities that earlier immigrants exaggerated in their letters to those they left behind. His initial reality soon became a life the same as theirs, of the same backbreaking day labor whenever he could find it, a series of exhausting days ending with miserable nights in a crowded boardinghouse in a dangerous part of town. One year later, his life had stabilized, and although the work was still hard, at least it was steady. Vincenzo was able to write truthfully when he urged his cousin Gennaro Capone to join him and to be assured that he would help him to find both work and a home.
Gennaro Capone arrived from Acerra on March 4, 1904, on the Napolitan Prince, was cleared at Ellis Island, and immediately boarded a train for Chicago. One year later, on May 8, 1905, his brother Raffaele sailed on the Italia and also made his way from Ellis Island to Chicago. Although they came from a large family and had numerous other brothers, they were the two oldest and the only two who immigrated. Eventually, they brought their widowed father to Chicago, but after that, except for an occasional sporadic letter, they soon lost touch with the family members who stayed behind. The other men who came from Acerra between the years 1903 and 1905 were all in search of steady work and a better life, but that was not Raffaele’s reason, for, according to some family legends, he had the distinction of being the first Capone to settle in Chicago as a way to avoid going to jail.
Raffaele had the most dramatic immigration story of this branch of the Capone family. To begin with, it was unusual for him to be living in the same house as Vincenzo Tufano, for according to the traditions of the old country Raffaele had dishonored the Tufano family. Raffaele’s father was Gennaro Capone, and his brother, the eldest son who preceded him, had the same name. The father Gennaro was a poor landless peasant who alternated working in the fields of others or doing odd jobs in the village. All his sons seemed destined for the same station in life, but Raffaele was ambitious on two separate fronts and wanted more. His descendants all agree that he had worked his way up in the world of that small village by sheer persistence and determination, but beyond that there is no agreement on why he had to leave.
Some insist he was an apprentice to the local police; others say he was learning to be a baker or pasta maker (as Gabriel Capone had been); still others are unsure of what he actually did but swear that whatever it was, it paid a steady income. It was not, however, enough money to convey sufficient social status for him to have looked once, let alone twice, at Adeline Clotilde Tufano, a beautiful young woman from a higher social class. That didn’t stop him, for as soon as he saw her, he knew he wanted to marry her.
The story goes that she noticed him noticing her but never let on, for she was already betrothed to a young man whose station matched hers and far exceeded Raffaele’s. Clotilde (as she was known) was the pampered daughter of a father who had “something to do with the legal professions,” either as a courtroom lawyer or as a senior magistrate, perhaps even as a senior regional commander in the police. Here again, different family stories abound, and there are no Italian records to substantiate any of them. Her parents intended that Clotilde would enhance their status by making an excellent marriage, and they kept her in school beyond the elementary level. To ensure that she would become an ornament to her husband, she learned how to keep a fine home and had been trained in the arts of playing the piano and singing. She had a beautiful soprano voice, and all her life boasted that she took lessons from the famous opera singer Enrico Caruso’s teacher, who encouraged her to make a career in the opera. She liked to tell her grandchildren that she met Caruso once and he encouraged her, too. These grandchildren, all elderly now, agree that she was indeed beautiful, particularly noted for the thick dark hair that became white in her old age, when her two daughters and several granddaughters competed for the privilege of brushing it every day. As she walked carefully chaperoned through the streets of Acerra, the graces of her upbringing were evident, and in such a closed society most men of Raffaele’s background would never have tried to court her. But their attraction was mutual, and he and Clotilde were soon finding ways to meet. A secret courtship progressed until someone eventually tattled to her father, who forbade the lovers ever to meet again.
Family legend has it that when Clotilde’s official suitor learned about Raffaele, he felt it necessary to defend her honor and challenged him to a duel. Here the legend is spotty: Raffaele either wounded the man severely or else beat him to death with his bare hands, so he had to flee Acerra and hide out in Naples until he could arrange passage to America. There is another legend as well, and his descendants tell this one with wonder in their eyes and voices, that Raffaele did indeed beat the suitor quite badly but had to flee for another reason: In this version, another man figures, an ordinary customer of the bakery who so enraged Raffaele by refusing to pay his bill that he picked the man up and threw him into the bakery oven, burning him alive. In that story, he left the village in darkest night and got on the first boat leaving Naples. His grandchildren like this version best because it fits so well with the personality they grew up hearing about, of a man who could turn thunderous and violent when provoked, whom everyone respected and no one dared to cross, not even Al Capone. But there is another, simpler story that the family laughingly shrugs off, probably because it is the one most likely true: there were no beatings or murders; Raffaele merely came with the other men from Acerra, lured by the dream of making a fortune so he could return home and claim Clotilde, who had promised to wait for him.
Meanwhile, Clotilde, bereft at his leaving and angry with her father for whatever part he played in Raffaele’s departure, took to her room and refused all the ministrations designed to make her marry the proper suitor and rejoin the life of her family. Whether the man to whom she was officially betrothed had been involved in these attempts differs according to which version of the family history is being told, but what is verifiable is that less than a year after Raffaele’s departure, on April 18, 1906, the ship Prinz Oskar arrived at Ellis Island from Naples and Clotilde Tufano was on board. She, too, traveled directly to Chicago, giving as her destination the mythical address on Taylor Street and the name of her real sponsor, Vincenzo Piccolo, in whose house her brother Vincenzo Tufano was now living. Raphael (as he was now spelling his name) was living there as well, and on December 18, 1906, she married him.
Several months after their marriage, Raphael and Clotilde Capone were living in their own hou
se at 727 Morgan Street, where he had set himself up as a “storekeeper.” The store, such as it was, consisted of a small collection of dusty olive oil cans on some shelves in the house’s living room. His grandsons remember their fathers telling stories of how puzzled they were as small children whenever some men or an occasional woman wandered in, for there was nothing for them to buy. Nevertheless, this was Raphael’s declared profession, and it was how he supported his growing family, and comfortably at that.
All Raphael’s stores in Chicago were set up as legitimate businesses that had the requisite permits and paid the proper taxes, but they were also places where large sums of money could move swiftly and easily from one conduit to another. It was during the early months of 1920, just before the start of Prohibition, that he met Al Capone and began the association that forged a deep friendship and a bond that was perhaps based on something closer than sharing the same name or having mutual business interests, one that Al Capone honored and made use of for the next several decades. Men would arrive in Raphael’s stores carrying heavy suitcases and packages and leave without them; others would arrive empty-handed and leave with them. When Prohibition went into effect, the store had a steady traffic in brown paper and cloth duffel bags, as well as a steady stream of Italian housewives who came to buy the increasing variety of so-called imported foods that were really supplies used to make illegal alcoholic beverages.