"Where's she live? I'll drop in on the way back."
"He didn't tell me." He spoke before he thought. Ralph turned his giant head, the Camel smoldering in the corner of his mouth. It bobbed up and down when he spoke.
"You don't get along? My Ralphie and me don't see eye-to-eye all the time, but I'd take a bullet for him."
This impression was precisely what Hoover had told him to avoid. He saw all the progress he'd made slipping away.
"We lost touch for a while when I was studying. Now he thinks I'll disapprove of him because he's living in sin. I'm hoping to convince him he's my father no matter what and I love him."
"Huh."
The Lincoln rolled on, the tires squishing now as the rain stepped up its pace. Danny put the wipers on high. They whumped and swished. The ball game was mostly static; they were driving out of range of the signal. He switched off the radio, and now there was just the sound of the wipers swamping.
"Al told me he told you our old man wanted him to be a priest in the worst way. They didn't talk for a long time. Me, I wanted to be a Rough Rider, only that war finished when I was five. He tried to get me to enlist when the boys went to France, but I cured myself of the soldier bug long before then. Jimmy run off when he was sixteen. We never did hear from him till he showed up at my fishing cabin in Wisconsin not long after Al got out of the pen, with a crock-a-shit story about being a two-gun sheriff out West."
"We're put on this earth to be a disappointment to our parents."
Ralph smiled for the first time, not a third as widely as Danny, or nearly half as widely as his brother. A purse-lipped expression and brief, as if he was afraid it might stick. "You got that from Al. He's all the time saying it. Sonny was a handful when he was a kid. Turned out all right, though. Mae saw to that. She thinks you're okay."
This was news. He'd thought her cool, distant, suspicious.
"Here's the thing." The fat man twisted in the seat, propping an elbow on the deep ledge under the back window and resting a massive thigh on the cushion. His trousers cuff rode up, exposing a dark blue silk sock with a white clock and a hint of garter. "She says you can come for cocktails tomorrow. Four o'clock, out by the pool. I said hold on, I ain't through checking him out. She says go ahead, check him out, just don't forget to invite him. Women."
"I'll have to ask Father Kyril. I'm supposed to be in the booth from two to four."
"I already asked. He says he'll cover for you."
"Did he know who the invitation was from?"
"Mr. and Mrs. Brown, of Miami Beach."
The Capones got a lot of mileage out of the nom de guerre. Hoover had been misinformed when he said Al hadn't used it since early days. "May I ask how Mr. Brown feels?"
"It's his idea. Al's the trusting type, always was. I spent most of my time way back when, protecting him from his friends. Mae thought maybe he'd forget in a day or two, but he kept saying. When he gets his mitts onto a notion you have to bust his fingers before he'll let go."
Vasco thought of "Red" Duffy, killed along with Assistant State's Attorney Bill McSwiggin, and how a morgue attendant had to break his fingers in order to open his fist. He should've fried for McSwiggin, Sergeant Fowler had said, meaning Capone. Was it a deliberate reference? If Ralph thought Vasco would recognize it, he was in trouble. Baseball bats and pistols. He asked Ralph if he'd be there.
"I go home tomorrow. Cleaners and Dyers are electing a new president next week." He rested his cheek on his hand. The weight of something in his inside breast pocket—not the pack of Camels—pulled his coat out of line. "I ain't figured you out yet, but I will. Meantime you don't say boo to Al with Mae not in the room. If she steps out to tinkle and he sneezes and you say 'Gesundheit,' I want to hear about it. I'll hear anyway, but if it don't come from you"—he raised his voice—"Danny, what's that song, Roy Rogers sings it, something about a empty saddle?"
"Gene Autry. 'Empty Saddles in the Old Corral.' " He sang it. He had a beautiful tenor voice, high and pure. It made the heart ache."
"That's it. There'll be one more empty saddle in the old corral at Our Lady of Redemption. Turn us around, Danny. We don't need to see Georgia today."
"That's more than three hundred miles."
"Listen to Christopher Columbus. Make with the wheel."
They turned around on the rutted dirt lot of a half-finished hotel and headed back down the two-lane blacktop. Ralph faced forward again, took another drag on his cigarette, and squashed it in the tray. "Camel shit." He illustrated it with a long jet of smoke. Vasco touched his crucifix. The magic seemed to be wearing off. Their tires bumped over streetcar tracks and the rain stopped as abruptly as if for a red light. The pavement was dry. Vasco would never understand how the universe worked, how something as natural as rain observed jurisdictions as rigidly as a Cook County ward heeler. Danny, who'd tugged on his lights when the sky darkened, pushed in the switch, shutting them off. Somewhere west of Seventh Avenue the sun pried at a crack in the overcast.
Ralph said, "Danny's dropping me and Frankie off at the Ponce. I got a meeting. He'll take you back to church."
"Thanks, Mr. Capone."
"Bottles."
He knew he'd never be able to bring himself to call him that.
A four-foot wall covered with pink seashells held a plaque reading PONCE DE LEON hotel. They coasted through the open gate and the Irishman behind the wheel drew the brake in front of a set of revolving doors belonging to a Moroccan palace with balconies railed in curlicue wrought iron. A doorman dressed like a conquistador, in crested helmet and striped balloon pantaloons, beat Danny to the door on Ralph's side. Before he got out, Ralph reached over and took Vasco's leg above the knee in a steel grip. "Andate con Dio, Padre." His pursed smile flickered. Then both vanished. Vasco felt the pressure in his leg a moment longer.
Frankie Rio, outside the car, leaned back in to thrust his left hand at the passenger. He grinned through his badly joined lip. "Tell your old man Frankie said hello."
TEN
"Twenty-three!"
"One moment, please."
"Do I have all day?"
Vasco didn't answer. In the five minutes he'd been in the shop, no one had come in to claim the next number hanging on the peg.
It was a small block building with a flat roof, G. Rubenstein & son fine meats painted across its width. The forgotten carcass of the NRA blue eagle curled and faded on a cardboard placard in the front window.
The little man behind the counter shrugged and folded skinny red arms across the bib of his blood-flecked apron. He wore a paper hat and a fat yellow pencil behind one Dumbo ear. Whether he was the father or the son depended on how long the place had been in business.
Behind the glass, thick and distorted to make the cuts of meat look bigger, with pink bulbs installed to make them look more fresh, tiny picket signs advertised prices and points needed to satisfy the government that the customer wasn't cheating some soldier out of a square meal. If that customer had stamps and the points added up, he ate steak. If, as was more often the case, they didn't, he went home with hamburger or less. Vasco, gummed sheets clutched in hand, compared numbers like a man with a sweepstakes ticket. So far no winner.
A pound of prime rib was twelve points. Three pounds minimum were needed to impress Brownie, with three Capones to feed, but not even J. Edgar Hoover had the connections to put thirty-six points in the hands of an untried field agent.
Lamb chops were nine points per pound. Better, but some people didn't like lamb—something about the smell when it was cooking—and a lot of them happened to be Italian. Wiser to avoid embarrassment altogether.
Seven for hamburger. He pictured himself standing on the doorstep at 93 Palm Island holding a dripping sack of ground meat. Given the master of the house's background they might mistake it for someone's head.
"Father, I been on my feet since six in the ayem. My daughter-in-law's home sick and my son's in the merchant marines. I'm sorry as anything about Jesus, but
that wasn't my call. Please pick something so I can take my break."
Ham was seven. He straightened. "Three pounds of ham, please."
Rubenstein, a stickler, looked at the number Vasco gave him, then hung it on the peg and slid open the glass on his side. He weighed one of the smaller hams on his big white scale and turned to place it in the gliding stainless-steel bed of his slicer. "Run a little under. Over, more points. You want it exact, I'm not the butcher for you."
He said that would be fine. Food vendors were all just a little bit hostile since rationing. A few minutes later he put his purchase, wrapped snugly in shiny white paper and placed in a brown sack, on the floor of the Model T and worked the crank. It started on the first turn, with the motor still warm.
That reminded him of the garage owner who'd supervised the tune-up and what he'd said about the left front tire. The tread was worn smooth, but the cord wasn't showing. The spare mounted on the back of the car looked sound, a little weather-checked. It made a solid sound when he slapped it, like an unripe melon. He didn't want to be late. If he got back before dark he'd see about buying that new tire.
Father Kyril had excused him for the day. He looked up from his notes on Sunday Mass and said, "It's always when you have to be someplace that someone plops himself down in the booth two minutes before you have to leave and says it's been fifteen years since his last confession."
"Thank you, Father."
"You're becoming a regular country preacher, invited home for fried chicken. Just remember to load up on mashed potatoes. It's Friday."
Ralph Capone had made an understatement when he said Kyril wasn't the curious type. Pastor and church were barely in the same latitude.
It was one of those days the Chamber of Commerce chose to take the postcard picture. Everything was pink and blue and sea green. Women in spaghetti straps and picture hats strolled the sidewalks holding the hands of children in sailor suits. A leathery old man dressed like a bird watcher, in khakis and a dimpled campaign hat, prowled the shoreline poking at the sand with something that looked like a minesweeper. Long-legged birds scampered around him in and out of the tide, more concerned with crabs than explosions. Vasco kept to the edge of the pavement to make room for bright-colored open-top roadsters to pass carrying girls and young men waiting for their orders. You wouldn't know there was a war on if you weren't being reminded constantly by posters selling liberty bonds and the radio selling blood drives and headlines on newsstands selling the names of medieval walled cities, current for the first time since crossbows.
The toll man on the causeway, burned dark as a cherry under his postman's cap, silver at the temples, took his dime and frowned down at something from the window of the booth. "Father, you got a flat."
He opened his door and leaned out, aware as he did so that the car was listing several degrees toward the left front corner, a queasy sensation with the ocean at his elbow. That tire lay on its rim with black rubber pooled around it like melted wax. "I didn't hear it blow."
"Sometimes they just sit down and don't get back up, like a sick old man. How's your spare?"
He smiled. "Would you believe I checked it twenty minutes ago?"
But the toll man wasn't amused. "Another year this whole country'll be up on blocks. Try and pull er over up ahead." He worked the controls inside the booth. The striped barricade lifted on squeaking pulleys.
The tire slap-slapped as he crept forward. Steering to the side was like pulling himself up a rope hand over hand, but he got the car out of the traffic lane, killed the motor, and stepped down. As he unlatched the battered tin toolbox attached to the running board, he had the horrible feeling there would be no jack inside. He'd inspected the spare, but it hadn't occurred to him to make sure he had the equipment he needed to make the change.
He crossed himself. It was there, a stout screw glistening with brown grease lying in a jumble of crescents, wooden-handled screwdrivers, pliers, greasy rags, and a mallet. There was even a vulcanizing kit complete with air pump and rubber patches, but when he went to move the can of adhesive to get to the jack handle, it was stuck fast to the bottom of the toolbox. He had to use both hands to tear the handle loose and barked his knuckles on the base of the pump.
"You okay, Father?"
He sucked his knuckles, looking sheepishly at the toll man standing next to him. An old cavalry revolver with a saddle ring sagged in a flap holster on his hip. "I'm a little rusty."
The toll man took the jack handle from him. "My first car was a Ford. Brass radiator, sport red. That's before Henry found out black's cheaper. It went through tires like my nephew went through diapers. Stand back, please, and give me room."
Before Vasco could protest, he had the jack under the front axle and the tire off the ground. Loosening the bolts that held the rim on the wheel he said, "Going back out to see Al?"
There was no reason to be surprised, except by his candor. He was the Capones' first line of defense whenever anyone drove out to the island, and he'd have been told to expect Vasco both times. "Yes. Do you know him very well?"
"I been on the job a long time. Saw him when he first came out to look at the house. He tried to tip me five bucks, but I said I couldn't accept gratuities. He grinned wide as a barn door, leaned over from the back of this big black Cadillac he was riding in then and shook my hand. 'That's the first time anybody ever refused to take something from me.' See, I didn't know who he was until that moment."
"Were you afraid?"
"Scared sh—" He remembered his audience. The rim came free. "Afraid? Sure. When he came back the other way I expected guns blazin', like in City Streets. But he just sat back while his driver paid the toll. Next time, he had somebody with him in the car. He pointed to me, said, 'There's the man wouldn't take a fin from Al Capone. He'll never get to be mayor being honest.' I bet I heard him say the same thing a dozen times after, even when the other person in the car heard it before." He got up, carried the damaged tire around to the back, took down the spare, and rolled it up to the front, smacking it with the heel of his hand like a boy driving a hoop with a stick.
"That's an interesting—"
"Not long after, my brother-in-law lost his job. He was out of work a year. I don't know how Al found out, but Miami was a small town then, word got around. His car comes up, I put out my hand for the toll—it was a nickel then—he reaches up from the backseat again and shoves a fistful of bills into it, closes my fingers around 'em. His hands look soft, but let me tell you, they could squeeze juice out of a cue ball. 'Tell your brother-in-law I'm renting his garage. I'm thinking of getting back in the furniture business and I'll need the storage. Forty bucks a month, there's two months in advance. He can go on parking in it till I need it.' " He fitted the rim of the spare to the wheel and threaded the lugs onto the bolts, talking the whole time.
"My sister was plenty scared. She reads all the detective magazines, thinks she knows all about the Capone mob, how it works. She's sure he'll fill the place with liquor or guns, maybe even a couple dozen stiffs. You know what he put in there, that garage?"
"Furniture?"
"Nothing, that's what. He never even saw the place. But come the first of every month somebody shows up at the booth with forty bucks cash, right up to the day Al went to the pen. He never figured to put anything there. It was just his way of helping out without it looked like charity. Public Enemy, my foot. John D. Rockefeller never did nothing for the working man but hand out his stinking dimes, and they called him a philanthropist." He tightened each lug with a savage jerk of the wrench. It would take a powder charge to get them loose. Vasco shook his head. Was there anyone outside Washington who didn't think Al Capone's head belonged on Mt. Rushmore? Even policemen thought he got the short end, him with his hands bathed in blood to the elbows.
"There you go, Father. I'd see about a new spare right away. You were lucky you didn't blow out on South Beach. It ain't the same place since the air depot and the defense plants. Payrolls bring in trash."
He returned the tools to the box. Vasco started to thank him, but the toll man cocked his head and hurried back into the booth. He heard rumbling then and saw a green panel truck slowing for the turn. The name of a pool-cleaning service was lettered on the side. Hoover had said something about concealing surveillance crews in pool-cleaning and kosher food delivery trucks. Curious, Vasco strolled alongside it, just another tourist stretching his legs in the sea air.
Just as he reached the rear of the truck, one of the doors in back popped open. Smoke rolled out. He thought it was on fire. Then a curl of vapor touched his face with the sting of dry ice. A cigarette butt sailed out of the back, nearly grazing his shoulder before it struck the ground almost at his feet. For an instant he locked gazes with the smoker before he pulled the door shut. The man stood in a half-crouch, raising himself from his seat on one of a dozen or more cardboard packing cases. He wore a red-and-black-checked mackinaw over bib overalls and a matching hunting cap pulled low on his swarthy forehead. One hand held a sawed-off pump shotgun across his thighs. The truck contained no pool maintenance equipment and the man bore no resemblance to the clean-cut types Hoover selected to place in the field. Neither legitimate service nor undercover work explained the presence of dry ice. The gate lifted, the light truck shifted into gear, and Vasco was alone once again with the toll man, who smiled at him crookedly through his window. "Meat. Steaks, chops, short ribs. Grain-fed Black Angus, not them broke-down milk cows stuffed with grass you get in stores, when you got the points. Sweetmeats, that's Al's favorite. Calf's stomach. They're early this month, but I hear he's throwing a wingding. Guess you'd know all about that." His smile became a smirk. So now Vasco was part of the circle, along with the cardinal who drank with Scarface.
"Black market?"
"I don't ask, Father. My job's just to see the toll gets paid."
He thanked the man for his help and reached into the Ford to turn on the ignition. He spotted the sack on the floor, made a swift decision, and carried it back to the booth.
The Confessions of Al Capone Page 13
