Al Capone

by Deirdre Bair

  When his bosses grilled him, Read insisted he was in his Havana hotel bedroom by 8:00 p.m. and had not participated in the carousing that brought the secret police to the hotel the next morning. Everyone in the Capone party, Read included, was taken to headquarters and questioned about the allegation that the Outfit intended to bomb a public building (or buildings) on May 1 in order to disrupt labor union celebrations. By becoming part of his story, Read had crossed the line, and when the American published an article giving the barest details of why he was fired, it still included the carefully constructed quotation from Al Capone that he was only in Cuba “to spend some money and drink some wine.” They also quoted the chief of the secret police, who said the government was glad to have him as a guest and hoped his stay would be pleasant. It seemed that once again he had managed to keep the public squarely on his side, but with Read gone, one of his major resources for getting his version out was lost.

  More and more, try as he might to woo and win the press, he was not succeeding, mainly because there were too many other burgeoning venues he could not control. Radio had become a popular pastime in even the most remote and isolated homes where there was electricity, and news programs and serials drew entire families who listened avidly. The movies were taking him up as a feature subject, and most moviegoers were taking these representations for the gospel truth of Al Capone’s life. And now there was the spate of books devoted entirely or in large part to his life and career, all purporting to be objective biographies and most of them painting him in a decidedly bad light. As books about him began to appear steadily in the United States and England and in French and German translations, it seemed the entire world had succumbed to what Damon Runyon portrayed as “gangster chic” and could not get enough of him; publications ranging from sleazy pulps to respected magazines and journals dedicated enormous amounts of print to the phenomenon he had become. There was no question that he was good for business when even the highly respected Time put him on its cover on March 24, 1930, because his face sold magazines.

  Some of these books and articles took many of their cues from what Capone managed to float into the public forum, but only a few fully accepted the positive self-portraits he created. He liked to call himself a businessman, so some authors obliged him even as they omitted what his business activities entailed; he described himself as the loving patriarch of a large extended family (which he actually was), and because this resonated nicely and positively with many ordinary working-class Americans, feature writers of every persuasion from respected columnists to sob sisters went along with it. Still there were the pulps, which sold more copies when they portrayed him as the ultimate big spender, lousy gambler, and womanizing playboy (which he also was). There were many American men who lived vicariously through his excesses and bought copies to celebrate behavior they would never be able to emulate or afford.

  Al Capone read the books about him as soon as they were published. He tended to disregard most of them, but Pasley’s really bothered him. He claimed that he could not recognize himself in any part of it, that it was not about him but “about somebody else.” The Pasley book stuck in his craw, and he decided that his only recourse was to commission an authorized biography that would paint him in the colors he wanted the public to see. He liked the stories that Howard Vincent O’Brien wrote for the Chicago Daily News, so he contacted him.

  O’Brien told the story of how he came to be involved with Capone in a curiously convoluted essay. In 1933, when Capone was gone from the Chicago scene, O’Brien wrote about the experience in a memoir replete with so many factual errors that it is difficult to sort out where his authentic memories of Capone drifted into fictional re-creations. The basic story begins with O’Brien’s claim that he became involved in the project when a detective he identified only as “Dudley” contacted him. This Dudley was allegedly employed by the Secret Six, a group of wealthy Chicago men who had formed a committee to try to end Capone’s domination of the city. That might have been why Dudley had investigated Capone so thoroughly, but it does not explain why he was charged by Capone to contact O’Brien and bring him to the Lexington Hotel for a serious look over. Unless, of course, Dudley was like so many others in Chicago and on the Outfit’s payroll as well as the Secret Six’s. O’Brien never addresses such possible double-dipping.

  The story becomes even more curious, for Capone specifically wanted O’Brien not to write an authorized biography, which might have guaranteed him some semblance of independence and objectivity, but to ghostwrite his “autobiography.” Whether Capone intended to pass it off as his own writing or whether he would have allowed O’Brien’s name to appear on it in an “as told to” form is not known, for O’Brien never published anything but the account he gave in the memoir that he did not publish until 1948, a year after Capone’s death.

  O’Brien described his first meeting with Capone in his private and heavily guarded headquarters on the twenty-third floor of the Lexington Hotel. He was particularly struck by the three portraits behind the desk, of Washington and Lincoln and, in his memory, of Al Capone between them wearing knickerbockers and holding a golf club (thus disputing that it was Big Bill Thompson between the two presidents). O’Brien noted that Capone greeted him “as starched and pressed as a fashion plate…heavily built with an obvious tendency to fat. His manner was suave, his voice gently modulated.”

  The conversation began with small talk about golf, but Capone wasted little time before getting down to business. He was a busy man, O’Brien wrote, letting his readers know the reach of the Outfit’s tentacles when he described Capone pausing in their conversation to take a call from an unnamed senator in Washington who needed a favor. Then it was back to the proposed “autobiography.”

  Capone said Pasley had written “cruel and unkind things” that were “definitely libelous” about him, and he wanted O’Brien’s advice on taking legal action. They disagreed about how many copies Pasley had sold; Al insisted it was seventy thousand, and O’Brien said it was far fewer. Capone’s estimate was nearer the truth, which was why he was so upset; Pasley was a respected Tribune reporter, and many people believed that what he wrote was true. O’Brien managed to dissuade him from legal action, telling him that proving libel was so difficult it would be “easier to get blood out of a turnip than money out of an author.” Capone agreed to drop his pursuit of Pasley and concentrate on his own book.

  O’Brien described being excited by the prospect of writing it: “It seemed to me that if this book were what I thought it might be made into, it would be perhaps the most significant contribution to current history that could possibly be written.” He was entirely correct about such a book’s importance, but almost immediately as he began to conduct interviews with Al Capone, he began “to feel doubt about the outcome.” O’Brien asked everything, from soft questions such as the correct spelling of his name (Al didn’t know if i or e was the correct ending and said he preferred “Capone”) to hard ones such as if he really gave a banquet for Albert Anselmi and John Scalise before he beat them to death with a baseball bat. No matter what he asked, Capone’s answer was always the same: “I can’t tell you that. It wouldn’t be fair to my people.”

  Al Capone had constructed his version of his life, and he expected O’Brien to write it. He wanted O’Brien to find a publisher who would pay him (Capone) a $1 million advance, and when O’Brien discussed it with an editor in New York, he agreed that the story would merit such an amount but only if it were “true and unadorned” because it would probably be “the most startling story of modern times.” However, no publishing contract was ever signed because O’Brien knew early on what the project would become, that Capone would insist on “not a revelation but a monument.” He wanted a book that would focus on his good deeds, charitable gifts, and devotion to his mother. Nobody was going to pay $1 million for such recycled pap and O’Brien knew it. The problem was how to extricate himself from a tricky situation.

  “More and more I wan
ted to write the true and complete story of Al Capone and his world but more and more it became clear that it never could be done,” he concluded. He was growing increasingly nervous when Outfit men began to give him an eye that clearly indicated they suspected him of knowing too much, which was not the healthiest of circumstances. His trepidation was magnified one day during a casual conversation when Capone told O’Brien how carefully he had to speak to his men; sometimes when he lost his temper, he would say without thinking something like “gee, I wish somebody would bump that guy off.” He did not really mean it, but the problem was that “one of these young punks who wants to make a name for himself goes ahead and does it.” “Poor Al,” Capone said about himself as he continued to try to enlist sympathy, his hit men did the dastardly deed and then left him to clean up the mess and pick up the pieces. That was enough for O’Brien, who bided his time until he could drop the project, when Capone suddenly had a rash of far more “serious matters” to take care of, all of which began and ended in courtrooms. By that time, it was too late for publicity and public relations.

  Chapter 11

  LEGAL WOES

  Everything in Al Capone’s criminal empire began to fall apart as early as 1929 and from then until the teen years of the new millennium, hindsight has been a convenient tool with which to make pronouncements about what caused its disintegration and his downfall. Some say it started with the death of Frankie Yale in July 1928, calling it a totally unnecessary killing that Capone should not have ordered because it only focused unwanted attention on his penchant for irrational cruelty. Others said the same thing about the assassination two years later, in June 1930, of the reporter Jake Lingle, who allegedly knew too much and was ready to tell it to the world. It was one thing to knock off another mobster but quite another to silence a public figure whose articles were eagerly awaited by a large audience who received vicarious thrills from Lingle’s insider status with the mob.

  Others say no, the collapse of the Capone Empire really began with an event at which he was not even present, when twenty-seven men of Sicilian origin—criminals all—met in Cleveland in December 1928 to turn crime in the United States into a business both organized and national. Neither Capone nor Johnny Torrio (who kept his hand in from his suburban New York outpost) had been invited. The ostensible reason was that they were not Sicilian, but a more accurate interpretation was that unlike Capone, who courted publicity and basked in it, the Sicilians operated outside the limelight and wanted to stay quietly in the dark.

  Capone and Torrio might not have been in Cleveland in person, but their influence was huge, and their ideas were clearly the foundation for the corporate structure that the other gang bosses voted to adopt and implement. Historians of crime generally agree that this meeting was the first attempt to divide the country up into the criminal fiefdoms that eventually resulted in regional control by “families,” as the organizations came to be called. It was also the first time that Al Capone’s primacy in the criminal world was disregarded by his fellow gang leaders; his absence was a snub and a marginalization. Whatever he thought about such a meeting taking place without him is not known, for despite the attendees who came from many parts of the nation, it was so low-key that the few reporters who filed stories never asked anyone why Al Capone was not there.

  ___

  Al was busy enjoying life in Florida during the holiday season of 1928, but shortly after it ended, he had other concerns to worry about. Sonny had another of his recurring bouts of mastoiditis, this one so severe that he needed a second operation. Dr. Kenneth Phillips, the young Miami physician who had become the Capone family’s primary doctor and who continued to serve them into his own old age long after Al’s death, took care of the boy. Once the operation was successfully completed, he recommended that “Albert” (as he called the boy in his medical records) be tested for syphilis along with Mae, who was about to undergo another of her periodic examinations. Dr. Phillips did not say whether his recommendation for Sonny’s testing was prompted by an examination of Al, but his suggestion that everyone have immediate tests came shortly after he learned from Al’s Chicago physician that he was treating one of Al’s mistresses for the genital sores that were manifestations of the early stages of the disease.

  Dr. Phillips used discreet language when he wrote about the disease in his medical histories of the principals, which leads to the assumption that he learned about the girl from someone other than Al, for despite his treatment of Mae and their open conversations about her condition and Sonny’s the doctor never described having any direct discussion with Al.

  Besides the Chicago physician, Dr. Phillips’s sources about Al or his mistresses might also have been one or more of the brothers, who had begun to consult him when they were in Miami. Ralph was almost always there when Al was, and so too was Mimi (now calling himself John Martin); Albert (“Bites,” who was now using a variant of Teresa’s maiden name, Rayola) was there less frequently, particularly after he deliberately tried (unsuccessfully) to distance himself from both the family and the Outfit.

  Mae probably never knew that Al’s mistress’s symptoms were what prompted Dr. Phillips to insist that she and Sonny have the tests, but they took them and were both found disease-free. Al allegedly refused even to let the doctor examine, let alone treat, him, which gave rise to the rumor that has since evolved into an accepted fact: that he refused to be tested or treated because he was pathologically afraid of needles. The doctors who took care of him in his heyday were the same ones who took care of him until he died, and they make no mention of such a fear in the extensive medical records and voluminous correspondence they exchanged. None of the government’s physicians who treated him in prison refer to a fear of needles either. Such allegations only come from the reporters and the writers whose books were based on newspaper accounts and were written after his death, when the cause became public knowledge and speculation swirled that Al Capone had a needle phobia and refused to be treated until it was too late to do him any good.

  As for the young blond prostitute in Chicago who exhibited symptoms of the disease, perhaps “mistress” is too strong a term, as she was just another in the series of ongoing sexual liaisons he had there. Who she was or what became of her has never been verified except to say that she quietly disappeared and was never heard from again in connection with Al Capone, most likely because (as several of his brothers’ now-elderly grandchildren put it) he “paid for her to get out of the game.” They all insist, however, that whether or not Al enjoyed the pleasures of the many prostitutes who worked for him, he was known for his kindness to those who became infected with disease, and he always saw that they received the best medical treatment available at the time before he sent them on their way. But there was another far more important reason why this particular girl and all the others like her faded into obscurity: he had become so infatuated with a woman he met in Miami that from that time on, with the exception of the occasional one-night stand when he was in Cuba or the Bahamas, he had little interest in taking any other mistresses.

  Mae continued to play her part as the docile wife who stayed obediently at home; she kept her mouth shut, but her eyes and ears were always open, and she knew everything that was happening in her husband’s life, no matter where he was or with whom. The men who lounged around the gatehouse, the guardhouse, and her kitchen talked quietly among themselves, but her hearing was acute, and she heard everything they said. She knew about Al’s new infatuation, the young brunette he met at the racetrack whose hair was soon dyed the same blond shade as hers because Al wanted it that way, but she was not worried. She was his legal wife whose marriage had been sanctified in the Catholic Church, and she was the mother of his only child and beloved son; as such, her status was both permanent and privileged.

  Al did love Mae deeply, but she was the Madonna of his house, and he looked for his whores elsewhere. All his life, he treated her with the utmost respect, consideration, and discretion; he was never phot
ographed with any of his female playmates, and although everyone who covered his activities during his lifetime knew of his mistresses, no one dared to write about them directly, first because the times were different and it was not seemly to put such information in print, and second because no one had the nerve to inspire Al Capone’s wrath by embarrassing his wife (and by extension, his mother and sister).

  Al elevated Mae to sainthood, and she stood upon her pedestal with dignity and grace. She might have stayed contentedly at home, but she kept attuned to every one of her husband’s peccadilloes. She played her role well, always perfectly groomed and ready to be the gracious hostess at the ever-more-elaborate parties Al gave nonstop, frenziedly inventing reasons to hold them when he had none. A local prizefight or a visiting celebrity he had not yet met was all he needed to fill Palm Island with everyone from the staid WASP pillars of the local community to the seedier element who had moved into the area and were suspected of being his newest cohorts in rum-running and other rackets. Invitations to his parties were command performances, and no one dared refuse them.

  When not at home, Al socialized frenetically and was seen everywhere from racetracks to nightclubs, fishing off his boat or chartering planes to fly off to the Bahamas. He threw vast sums of money around as he had some of the best times of his life, and more and more this included the young woman (now blond) whom he met at Hialeah, the one who was never seen at Palm Island but who frequented many of the other parties and places that he did, and always with her protective brother along as chaperone. Her name was Jeanette DeMarco, and her brother was Vincent, called Vinny. Interestingly, none of the Capone descendants were aware of her presence in Al’s life, particularly of the assertion that he took such good care of her financially during his lifetime that she never had to worry about money until she died at a very old age in the new millennium.