"Did you know him?"
"Who?"
"The fisherman."
"No. I said it was my first week. What's that got to do with nothing?"
Paul could turn a conversation in a circle better than anyone his son had ever met. They'd had a late lunch in the small Italian restaurant Paul said Ralph Capone had an interest in, a place with red-and-white-checked tablecloths and empty green Chianti jugs hanging in baskets from the ceiling, noisy and boisterous, jabbering diners and fat waiters and waitresses shipping cargos of crockery through narrow twisting channels like battlewagons maneuvering in the bay. Paul joked with their waitress in English and Italian, twisted spaghetti onto his fork with winch-like precision, and washed it down with the wine he called dago red. The meatballs nearly measured up to his description ("size-a cantaloupes"); great reddish-brown mounds poking out of the pasta like earthworks in tall grass blown over by the wind. There was no opportunity for serious talk in all that din. Paul talked Peter into meeting Sharon when she came home from work in the shipyard. After his father paid the check with a wad of fishy-smelling bills, leaving a quarter tip, the two went out to walk off the sluggish effects of a very heavy lunch.
The wind was brisk, tipping the waves with white foam. It blew tantalizing glimpses of a woman's slender thighs under the dirndl she had wrapped around a green-and-white-striped bathing suit, walking on the boardwalk. She let it flap, concentrating on holding a wide-brimmed straw hat on her head. Peter wondered if indulging in the temptations of the flesh compounded the sin of a man posing as chaste.
"Think she needs spiritual counseling?" His father turned to lean his back against the railing and remove the live shell from the chamber. He grinned wickedly. The man missed nothing.
He didn't rise to the bait. "I've never seen a pistol like that before. I thought it was an air gun when you took it out."
"It used to be. I had it rechambered to fire a .410 shotgun shell. It meant installing a firing pin, too, and it cost more than the whole thing was worth. It's almost forty years old. I wanted it to still look like a kid's air pistol in case a cop pulled me over in the truck. They was all on the payroll, but you never knew when one of 'em might decide to up the ante. Gun rap's tough to beat if you don't provide what they are calling now an essential service." He pronounced essential with slow precision in his Calibrisian accent.
"You carried it in Chicago?"
"Sure. I wasn't-a peddling ice cream."
"Did you ever have to shoot anyone?"
"I like that you said 'have to.' That's an improvement over our last talk." He snapped shut the action and returned the pistol to his shorts, dropping his shirttail over the handle. The shirt was the same pale yellow one he'd put on during Peter's last visit, or one just like it; same shorts, same old deck shoes, a little dirtier than before. Either it was his daily work uniform or he just didn't have any other clothes. Back in Cicero he'd had a suit for church, dungarees for work, and alternated between two shirts during the week. "I never shot no one, but that don't mean anyone's life was spared. The shells are full of birdshot, with a half-load of powder. That's enough to blow a bird to hell but it just stings a man and raises welts, maybe enough to keep him occupied while I run for the hills. I like to live, but I try to keep the Sixth."
"Where'd you get it?"
"Sporting goods store on West Diversey, run by a guy named von Frantzius; fat little kraut with a lisp. I think he batted left. I bet he moved a ton and a half of ordnance to the North and South Side in four years. Made himself a nice little bundle Valentine's Day week."
"You knew some nice people."
"What can I say? It was Chicago."
"Everyone talks about Chicago like it's a foreign country."
"It isn't, though. It's one hundred percent American."
A seagull stuck out its feet and landed on the railing, not six feet away from where Paul was leaning. Peter stiffened, but his father only looked at the bird briefly and without interest, then returned his gaze to the string of arcades and saltwater taffy shops facing the ocean. Apparently, in Paul Vasco's war on avian scavengers, the railing represented Switzerland.
"So how you like Miami?"
"I like it. People are friendly and Father Kyril's a good man."
"He know what you're up to?"
Peter turned around and took up his father's pose, his back to the water with his elbows resting on the railing. He reminded himself that "up to" meant the plan to spare Al Capone from the Pit. "He guessed it. I'm not to get my hopes too high."
"I thought all you biscuit-pushers thought everybody can be saved."
"Everyone can. Some cases are a little more complicated."
"What did you think of Mr. Capone?" Not, "Did you have any luck?" Instead a question based on certainty that he'd succeeded in making contact. Paul Vasco and Sergei Kyril shared an abiding faith in their impressions. A common truck driver, connected and convinced of it.
"Damn it, Dad, how can you be so sure a call from you would get me past the gate?"
"I'm not, but you haven't brought up the subject since you got off the train. You was so hot to trot last time, you didn't get in, you'd-a been all over me to give you the name of somebody who could get you in. You always was a rat terrier when you got your teeth in something."
"And you always have an answer."
"Always tell the truth and you always will." He rubbed his stomach, pooched out a little from the pasta. A man could trace the progress of digestion through that tubular body like a pig through a python. "That sauce gave me indigestion. What say you buy me a beer on the Vatican and put out the fire?"
A lunch wagon was parked at the end of the little Coney Island, with an opening in the side and a counter that disappeared behind a canvas flap when it closed. An Eskimo painted on one side of the opening and a red devil with a pitchfork painted on the other both pointed to a sign above advertising cold beer and hot dogs. A smell of sauerkraut and molten grease lived deep inside the wagon.
The proprietor, a beefy man in a spattered BVD undershirt and a paper hat, a mermaid tattooed on one forearm, took Peter's money, opened two bottles of Goebel's from a zinc tub filled with ice, and set them on the counter. Beads of moisture prickled on the brown glass and vapor drifted out of the necks. They walked from there to a small oval park with picnic tables and a swing set and slide. It was Monday, a school day, and the equipment was deserted.
Seated opposite his son at one of the picnic tables, Paul clinked bottles. "I know what you get when you consecrate a cup of wine. What do you get from a bottle of beer?"
"A loud belch." He swigged. He'd never cared for the beverage, personal connotations aside, but it was Arctic cold and a sinful pleasure with the sun beating down on the crown of his hat.
"You loosened up some. I always heard Mr. Capone could put a guest at ease or scare him out of his pants with just a look."
"Well, I still have my pants."
"What happened?"
"Not much. I gave him your regards the first night, talked with his wife, and went home. They invited me back for a party Friday afternoon, where I met their son and we played cards. Mrs. Capone asked me to drive her maid home. I did that and came back and watched a movie with Capone in his living room."
Paul paused with his bottle halfway to his lips, then drank. "Sounds like you got in tight."
"Thanks to you. The collar wouldn't have been enough. He's entertained cardinals."
"He remembers me, huh."
"He also remembers how you met, and that you were married to an Irish girl, just like him."
"I'll be damned."
He wanted to press the point, but he sensed that Paul's defenses were going up. "I met Ralph, too."
"Bottles? Here in Florida?"
"In the confessional at Our Lady of Redemption."
"No shit. How long did that take?"
"He didn't come to confess. We went for a ride—not that kind, the other kind—and we went over the rules. The fam
ily's afraid Capone will slip up and say something he shouldn't. It's part of his illness. Danny Coughlin did the driving."
"Who's he?"
"Capone's brother-in-law. He runs errands when he's not running a union."
"I don't know him. You already know more about Mr. Capone and his family than I ever did."
"Ralph said if I didn't watch my step I'd be killed."
"Sounds like good advice, but I wouldn't lose much sleep over anything Bottles says. In Chicago they said he was all noise."
"What did they say about Frank Nitti?"
"He mention Nitti?"
"Capone's son did, at the house. According to him, Nitti's more than just noise."
"Jesus. You work fast."
"What do you know about Nitti?"
"I never laid eyes on him. I know Jack McGurn crossed himself every time his name came up. McGurn, that mowed guys down with machine guns and ate a big plate of spaghetti after. They say it was Nitti had McGurn killed in that bowling alley in '36, so maybe crossing himself was a good idea. It was February 14, can you believe it? They stuck a funny valentine in his hand after they plugged him. I think you better go find somebody else to save."
"Frankie Rio was there, too, with Ralph. He sends his regards."
Paul took a pull of beer. His hand was as brown as the bottle. He said nothing. "You told me last time you didn't know who Frankie Rio was."
"I had a buck for every Frankie I—"
"I said he was Al Capone's personal bodyguard. Now he's Ralph's. I told you about his funny lip. He hasn't forgotten you."
"Maybe he heard about me from Jack. He had a high opinion of me behind the wheel."
"I saw you drinking wine with Rio in the kitchen of our apartment when I was little. I remembered the lip. I wasn't sure it was him until he shook my hand last week and said, 'Tell your old man Frankie said hello.' "
Paul rubbed his stomach. "I gotta cut down on the red sauce. I think I'm getting-a ulcer."
"What about it, Dad? Don't tell me you knew Rio the same way you knew John Scalise and Albert Anselmi. There wasn't room in that truck cab for four."
"Next time you see a movie with your pal Mr. Capone, make sure it's a war picture. Bodyguards don't spend all their time sitting in lobbies reading the papers. They got lives like everybody else. We saw each other in a speak coupla times. I bragged on Mrs. Terrazzini's wine and he said he never had a glass of homemade didn't taste like Flit. It was a case of defending my landlady's good name."
"You expect me to believe that?"
"You don't, I got another." He finished his beer in one long gurgle, then shifted his grip to the neck and sent the bottle cartwheeling through the air toward a trash barrel with CITY OF FT. LAUDERDALE stenciled on it. It struck the inside of the barrel and shattered. "The only time you look me up is when you want something. 'Tell me about Scalise and Anselmi' 'Introduce me to Al Capone.' 'What about you and Frankie Rio?' What do I look like, a fucking Quiz Kid?" He got up and strode away in his stooping gait. Peter considered letting him go. He left his beer half-finished and went after him. "You invited me to meet Sharon."
"I'm uninviting you. You'd probably stick a flashlight in her face and ask her who killed McSwiggin."
"I'm sorry. There are just a lot of things I don't understand."
"Get used to it. Nobody's Einstein but Einstein."
His legs were nearly twice as long as his father's, but he had to scramble to keep up. "No more questions, I promise."
"That's like a seagull promising not to eat anything can't raise a hand to shoo it away."
"I swear."
Paul stopped so abruptly his son had to backpedal to face him. He was breathing hard, sweating. Paul noticed. "You're getting fat, boy. I told you lay off the potatoes."
He was right. Rich food on Palm Island, a daily diet of drugstore hamburgers, and now the big meal in the Italian restaurant had put him seriously out of shape. He had no mall to walk across twice a day. Cranking the Model T was the only exercise he got. "Father Kyril lifts weights. I'll ask if I can borrow his dumbbells."
"That gym stuffs for rich people that don't work. Come out with me on the boat sometime. I'll keep you so busy you'll look like Johnny Weissmuller in a day."
"I'd like that. Not the Tarzan part; going out with you on the boat."
Paul took off his long-billed cap, flicked a single drop of sweat from his hairline, and put the cap back on, angling it over one eye like a Chicago tough. "You swear no more questions, you said. Swear on what?"
"On my honor as a priest of the Roman Catholic Church."
Sharon wasn't at all what he expected.
She lived on one side of a duplex in an older neighborhood, far enough from the ocean to make the rents and mortgages affordable to the largely working-class people who lived there. A taxicab was parked in the driveway next door and during the short walk from the streetcar stop the Vascos passed a number of men and women carrying lunch pails; shifts were changing throughout the Eastern Time Zone. Paul let them in with his own key, and the first thing Peter noticed inside was a mezuzah attached to the doorpost.
"She's Jewish?" In his surprise he spoke without thinking.
His father grinned. "I guess Italian girls don't want nothing to do with me." A woman came trotting up a narrow hallway next to the staircase. She wore a red bandanna-print blouse tucked into a gray wool skirt, flat-heeled shoes, and a necklace made of metal trinkets that matched the charm bracelet on her left wrist. She made a sound like Christmas bells as she walked. She was plump and large-breasted, shorter than Paul by an inch, and wore her black hair in a shoulder-length bob. Peter could not picture a woman more different from his tall, slim, blond mother.
She kissed Paul on the cheek, leaving a red print. "You're early. I just put in the roast."
"Take it out. We ate late."
She kept smiling, showing a gum line. Paul's women made allowances for his brusque ways. "So this is Peter. Gosh, you don't look anything like your father."
"He was born out of luck."
Before Peter could say anything, she went up on her toes and kissed his cheek. He reminded himself to wipe off the incriminating evidence before he went back out in public.
"I'm pleased to meet you, Mrs.—"
"Baumgartner; but that's the last time I want to hear it tonight."
"Sharon it is, then."
"Such a polite boy. He must have been raised by his mother."
She took his hat from his hand and hung it on a peg next to Paul's fishing cap. Then she inserted herself between father and son and steered them away from the door with an arm around each of their waists.
The living room was small, with doilies everywhere and a gypsy shawl draped at an angle on a towering Westinghouse radio cabinet, one glittery tassel hanging in front of the dial. There was a bookcase, last week's Life on a coffee table with Sharon Baumgartner's name and address mimeographed on the subscription label, and on top of the bookcase a sepia photograph in a standing wood frame of a man in the white cap and uniform of a chief petty officer in the U.S. Navy. A triangular frame on the wall behind the radio contained an American flag folded with only the blue field showing.
"Oliver," she said, noting the track of his gaze. "He fell off the Yorktown when the Japs hit it."
"I'm very sorry."
"I'm not," said Paul.
His son stared at him. He was still standing close to Sharon with his arm around her waist now. "Well, I can't stand here and cry no crocodile tears."
"I'm cried out." Her smile hadn't changed. "He was a career man. We were married twelve years and I doubt we were together a year in all that time. Not much chance for children, which was what I wanted."
"Don't look at me. I already done my damage in that department."
"I'd say you did just fine the first time out. Anyway, I've got my hands full taking care of you."
Peter did some quick arithmetic. Allowing for the nearly two years that had passed since the Battle
of Midway—would this war never end? Christmases piled up like casualty counts, reported by UPI like the stock market tally from week to week—she'd have been sixteen when they married, if she was thirty now as Paul claimed she'd told him. He seemed to think she was older. Peter agreed. He'd been afraid his father had turned into one of those old goats who preyed on leggy young widows. No, he hadn't expected Mrs. Oliver Baumgartner, with her hard g's and tinkling jewelry that screamed Queens, New York. He liked her. Such things you didn't analyze, just accepted them as the evidence of things unseen.
Came the inevitable offer of refreshment. It was Mass all over again: the Confiteor, the reading from the lectionary, the Prayer of the Eucharist: Iced tea would be wonderful, thanks. Iced tea and lemonade were the sacramental wine of the Florida laity. Beer for Paul. Sharon tinkled away, to return in moments with a bottle of Schlitz and cloudy brown liquid in a tall glass with ice cubes floating on top. Peter had never cared for tea in any form; it tasted like an idea only half-developed for hospitality's sake. But he drank it like holy water offered to a sinner beyond redemption. "So how did you two meet?" It rang as hollowly as the prayer of absolution; indulgence for the crime against faith, a plea to a lesser offense. An impossible request in the eyes of Mae Capone, mother confessor to the Florida branch of the Outfit.
"Supermarket," they said in unison; Sharon laughed brightly and squeezed Paul's hand, cuddling closer. They were sitting together on a mohair love seat facing Peter's overstuffed chair.
"A-and-P," Paul said. "I got one of them damn carts with a bum wheel, almost threw out my hip every time I turned a corner. I guess I wasn't quiet on the subject."
"I heard him cussing above the PA." She made her voice gruff. " 'Ladies and gentlemen, we're having a special on Campbell's tomato soup, twelve cents a—sonofabitch!' I started to laugh. He made this mean face, which made me laugh harder. Then he started in."
"Coupla hyenas howling by the Cream o' Wheat. It's a damn miracle they didn't throw us out and ban us from the whole chain."
"He said if it was a wheel on his old truck he'd know what to do, but they didn't give him a spare. Well, my father drove a vegetable truck in New York. He taught me to drive at the wheel of that truck. I was too short to reach the pedals, so he tied wooden blocks to them. That big steering wheel, it was mounted on top of the column, it took me around with it on every turn, with Papa laughing himself into a coughing fit and reaching out to steady it and put a foot on a pedal when mine slipped off. I had a brother, but he was at medical school, busing tables nights to pay his tuition. Papa needed me as a backup driver in case he got too sick to wrestle with that old White. He had TB."
The Confessions of Al Capone Page 21
