The Confessions of Al Capone

by Loren D. Estleman

  "I never thought I'd walk in on one," Danny said. "They sing when they're stabbed. I don't get it."

  "You might if you left that flask home once in a while."

  Vasco changed the subject. "It was good to see you there, anyway."

  "My idea," Capone said. "I like to watch a man at his work. If I knew all you were going to do was pass the cup, I'd've fired up the boat and went fishing."

  No one pointed out that the boat was long gone.

  "I was happy to have any part at all. The church wasn't exactly falling apart when I came,"

  "You look good in a dress, I'll say that. What's she doing, butchering the cow?" He had a diamond-and-platinum watch in his palm, attached to his vest by a heavy chain. The timepiece was as thin as a communion wafer.

  " 'Tis herself." Danny pointed his chin up the porch steps, leaning heavily on the brogue.

  Mae was descending, carrying a large picnic basket made of brown and tan interlaced strips, with bentwood handles. She wore a light green suit whose material rippled in the breeze toward shore and shoes and hat to match, the hat an upended felt basin that protected her fair skin from the sun. The skirt was split at the knee, showing a well-shaped leg sheathed in sheer nylon; no coconut oil and drawn-on seams for the First Lady of the Outfit.

  Rose followed her a step behind. The pretty maid was wearing a cream-colored jacket over a white blouse tucked into a brown pleated skirt, all of which complemented toffee skin, with brown-and-white saddle shoes and a broad-brimmed white straw hat with a brown swag band. She carried two purses, a large woven straw bag and a green clutch that obviously belonged to Mae, who carried the picnic basket in both hands. Rose looked very fresh, like the lemon-soap scent Vasco had come to associate with her whenever she appeared, and very young. She smiled shyly when she saw him. He must have made a good impression a week ago when he drove her home.

  A much more pungent odor issued from the basket when the wind shifted, one that reminded him of the community hall at St. Francis on other St. Patrick's Days, of garlic and grease and boiled cabbage.

  "Jesus." Capone pinched his nose between thumb and forefinger. "What's that, fertilizer?"

  "You know very well what it is, Al, and stop taking the Lord's name in vain." Mae was snappy. "Do we have to have this same conversation every year?"

  "Well, I ain't riding with that stink. Put it in the trunk."

  "I will not put food in that dirty trunk."

  "That's an insult to Danny. He keeps that car cleaner'n Miami General."

  Mae smiled tightly at Vasco. "Good morning, Father. Don't you look nice." He'd had his suit cleaned and pressed and his hat steamed and blocked. "Thank you. You look wonderful." The last time they'd spoken, she'd threatened his life in the confessional.

  "I mean it. That stuff goes in the car, I take a cab."

  "Well, we can't ask Brownie. We gave him the day off."

  Vasco said, "I'll be happy to take it in the Ford."

  "It's top-heavy. I'd hate to have it tip over and ruin Church property." She turned to the maid. "Rose? I'm sorry to ask. You're a guest."

  "I don't mind, Missus, if the Reverend's not tired of me riding with him."

  "And here I thought we could all go together." Mae exhaled. Her face was shiny despite makeup. She looked like a woman who'd been cooking all morning. "Father, I'm afraid we're the worst kind of Good Samaritan."

  He took the basket from her without another word. Rose gave Mae back her purse and Vasco helped the girl aboard the Model T. She set her bag on the floorboards at her feet, took the basket he handed her, and set it on her lap, folding down the handles and resting her hands on top.

  "There," Mae said. "Happy, Al?"

  "Peachy."

  "Let's get this show on the road. We may make it there by Easter." Danny opened the door of the Lincoln for Mae and Al.

  When Vasco got in beside Rose, she leaned over quickly, then back. The kiss was over so fast he only felt it as a moist memory on his cheek. He glanced up through the windshield apprehensively, but the Lincoln was already rolling. No one had seen.

  "That's for what you said to Mrs. Capone. She's done something nice for me every day this week. That's why I'm invited to dinner."

  He'd almost forgotten the penance he'd given Mae. "I'm sure she would have in any case, or she wouldn't have told you what I said. She said you didn't deserve such harsh words."

  "I did, though. I knocked Mr. Capone's favorite elephant off the mantel when I was dusting. I broke off the trunk." He wondered if it was the one Diamond Jim Colosimo had given him or the one Machine Gun Kelly had made for him in Alcatraz.

  "Anyone can have an accident."

  "We're all supposed to keep from upsetting him. He was taking his nap, and Brownie did a good job fixing it with airplane glue, so maybe he won't notice, but I felt bad anyway. I'd've been just as mad."

  He let out the clutch and accelerated. Danny was halfway down the driveway, overlooking the fact that Vasco didn't have directions to Sonny's house. "Hail Marys and Acts of Contrition are appropriate for most things, but they don't always address the injured party. That's just common sense. There's no need to thank me."

  "Wanted to, though."

  The Lincoln waited at the first stop sign while he caught up. Mae must have said something. But he'd been grateful for the distraction of pushing to keep it in sight. That friendly peck lingered longer than Sharon Baumgartner's lipstick.

  "I shouldn't have done that, I guess."

  "It didn't do any harm, but as I said, it was unnecessary." They were moving again now.

  "My mother says things are the way they are and a person shouldn't try to change them. But if nobody ever tries, they'll go on being the way they are forever."

  "What did she say to that?"

  "I didn't say it, I just think it. She'd smack me if I said it. She'd say it's for my own good. They lynch folks down here for less."

  "What does your mother do?"

  "She don't do nothing. Doesn't do anything, I mean. She used to clean a doctor's office, but then some drugs went missing from a locked cabinet and now she can't get work. I pay the rent and my uncle Zack sends money when he can. He makes tracer bullets up in Detroit. Detroit," she corrected herself. "I'm taking a correspondence course in grammar. I'll be in service the rest of my life I don't quit talking like a plantation nigger."

  "I've never liked that word."

  "It helps if you say it before somebody else does."

  They turned onto the causeway, tires singing. A fisherman stood on the pedestrian walkway on the other side of the steel rail, casting his line far out over the water, the thin nylon filament catching the sun briefly, a thread of molten silver, before the lure at the end splashed down. He was shirtless in baggy shorts like Paul Vasco wore, but thickset, with hair graying on his brown back and a long-billed cap worn at a rakish tilt. In a general way he resembled Ernest Hemingway, who at last report was in Europe covering the war. Vasco remembered Paul's story about taking the writer out on his boat, Hemingway hurling streams of .45-caliber bullets at sharks. A tommy pulls to the left and up. Paul had credited Jack McGurn with this wisdom. If his son didn't believe that story, he had another. In his wildest imaginings he'd never have thought Al Capone would be easier to crack than Paul Vasco.

  The sunburned and silver-haired toll man—Mae had said his name was Henry—recognized him and smiled, tipping his head toward the departing Lincoln. "He said it again. I'll never get to be mayor being honest. You get that new spare, Father?"

  "Not yet." He held out a dime.

  Henry shook his head. "Al paid. You better get that spare. Florida just looks like Paradise."

  "I will." He pocketed the coin.

  "My sister says thanks for the ham."

  "Does she still think I'm a minister and not a priest?"

  "When it came down to it I couldn't lie. You know what? She didn't care. 'Meat's meat,' that's what she said. I think it wouldn't matter to her if it came from
an atheist. She's changed. This war." He shook his head and waved him through. He hadn't lowered the gate behind the Lincoln.

  "Didn't look over at me once," Rose said as it descended behind them. "You really gave him a ham?"

  "I bought it to give to Brownie, but then the meat express came steaming along headed for the house. I thought Henry would appreciate it more. He changed a tire for me on my way to the party."

  "Two things rednecks know how to do is change tires and gripe about a war they're not even fighting in."

  The Lincoln turned right, heading north. A window in back opened and part of the Capone profile leaned out under the yellow hat brim. Something small, pale, and shapeless made an arc and landed in weeds. The chewing schedule seemed to be Dentyne during the day, Sen-Sen at night. "What are your plans after you graduate?"

  "Graduate? Oh, the correspondence course. They mail a diploma, I don't get to wear a cap and gown. I'm saving up for secretarial school. There should be plenty of openings after the men get back and the women go home."

  "You seem to have your life all mapped out."

  "It isn't hard. It's type and take dictation or scrub floors or marry some good-for-nothing that stays out all night and then comes home and slaps me around."

  She sounded matter-of-fact. He wondered about her childhood—there had been no mention, during this ride or the one before, of a father—and if it was as bad as or worse than his, and if so how she managed not to sound bitter about her choices.

  It was a plain saltbox house, not at all palatial even by Hoover's standards of measuring the homes of gangsters and their spawn, in a well-kept residential neighborhood on Tenth Avenue in the city's Northeast section. A shiny red tricycle stood on a lawn shaggy with clippings that smelled as if it had been cut that morning. Vasco eased into the curb and stopped. The Lincoln took up most of the driveway behind a white Nash sedan. He got out and took the basket from Rose before helping her down.

  "You're a guest," she protested.

  "So are you, don't forget."

  Capone was out of the car before Danny had the door open on Mae's side. Vasco thanked him for paying his toll. Capone looked surprised. "Forget it, Padre. I skip dimes across the bay."

  Inside there were overlapping greetings and hugs and cooking smells; apparently Mae's monopoly didn't extend to side dishes. A little girl about two years old in a blue dress and matching ribbon in her dark hair took Vasco's hat and carried it away, dragging the brim on the floor. Another girl in a pink jumpsuit stood gripping the bars of a playpen, gravely watching the proceedings. She was a strawberry blonde, what hair she'd managed to grow in her first year, with an enormous forehead.

  "Sorry we're late." Capone embraced Sonny and broke off with two slaps on his back. "Your mother thinks she's feeding every Mick in Florida."

  "You mean there are others?" His son grinned the Snorky grin. He wore a light cardigan, pleated slacks, loafers, and a green tie on a white shirt with his hearing aid clipped to the pocket. "Hello, Father. Welcome, Rose."

  "Thank you, Mr. Albert. Can I help in the kitchen?"

  "Certainly not." Mae's voice came from a room down the hall. She'd relieved Vasco of the basket and bustled off.

  "Albert, I'll disown you if you let her anywhere near this room."

  "Father, this is my wife, Ruth."

  He accepted a slender hand belonging to a wiry woman in her early twenties, an authentic redhead freckled even more severely than Danny. Diana Ruth Capone (so she was identified in her father-in-law's file) looked tomboyish with her hair cut short in the style that had begun to take over since women reported to work in defense plants among machinery that reached out and snatched at anything long and loose. She had a firm grip, a tight smile, and cynical eyes. "Albert's told me so much about you. You half-Irish are thick as thieves."

  He couldn't tell if there was irony in the statement.

  "The Italians have much to answer for," he said. "Where do Irishmen go to marry?"

  Her voice slid into a brogue. "Back to Ireland, and it serves them right for waiting till they're thirty." She turned to Mae's brother. "Uncle Dan, we've got a surprise."

  "Hello, Daniel."

  Danny turned toward the new speaker, standing in the doorway to a small living room off the entry. His smile broke wide; Vasco hadn't thought there was any room for expansion. "Winnie!" He lumbered forward to throw his arms around a tall woman in a mannish-looking blouse and tweed skirt cut for a traveling suit inappropriate to the climate. Winifred Coughlin, Danny's wife, away visiting a relative until today.

  "The streetcar dropped her off an hour ago," Ruth said.

  "She went right to work in the kitchen. I couldn't stop her."

  "I'm married to a man in the restaurant business." Winnie kissed him and pulled back to hold his face with a hand on each cheek. "There wasn't any point going to Palm Island—I knew you'd all be here soon. How much have you been drinking?"

  "Not a drop today."

  "And not a drop more until sundown. You can celebrate then."

  "Aye-aye, sir." The smile flickered.

  "Pleased to meet you, Father. I hope you can put up with this zoo." Her handshake was mannish, like her fashion choice and long square jaw; one pump, then release. An athletic type. He could picture her in riding habit on some English green.

  "It's refreshing. I come from a small family myself."

  "What can I get you to drink, Peter: We have wine, beer, lemonade, and iced tea."

  He surprised Sonny by choosing wine. It was all very dizzying and he'd welcome the calming effect.

  "This bunch would drive Billy Sunday to drink." Winnie's smile fell short of her eyes.

  THE DINING ROOM WAS THE LARGEST ON THE GROUND FLOOR, AND PROBABLY in the house, but it was barely large enough to contain a table with all its leaves in place and six people seated around it, the little girl in a high chair between her mother and grandmother, who took turns helping her eat and mopping her off. Sonny had dragged the playpen to the door opening onto the entry, where the younger daughter sat with a baby bottle and rubber blocks. Ruth sat to Vasco's left, with Al and Sonny at either end, Al with his napkin tucked in his collar. Dennis Day sang ballads in his silver tenor on a phonograph in the living room; Sonny got up only once to change records.

  "Automatic changer," he told Vasco when he returned to his chair. "Anniversary gift from Mother and Dad. Great tone. I never got all the good out of one before."

  Capone said, "Come a long way from a crank-up Victrola. In the old days we had to work at resting. I bet all you do at that air depot is push buttons all day."

  "That's right, Dad. I sprain a finger, we don't eat."

  He asked Vasco to say grace.

  "Thank you, dear Lord, for these Thy blessings which we are about to receive. ..."

  "Amen."

  "Sonny, pass the wine."

  Mae said, "Al, you still have some in your glass."

  "I need to kill the taste of this Irish lasagna."

  "Once a year, Al, corned beef and cabbage. I've put up with spaghetti three times a week for twenty-five years."

  "Well, you can wash it down with all the wine you want."

  "Dr. Phillips¯"

  "Phillips is full of shit."

  The girl in the high chair looked up, cabbage on her bib. "Gamps said shit. Get the Bible."

  "The children, Al."

  "Yeah. Sorry."

  Gamps Capone, apologizing for saying a bad word. Vasco poked at his corned beef, sympathizing. His mother had served it every St. Patrick's Day until she got too ill to cook. He'd never developed a taste for it, although he didn't mind cabbage. Mae had boiled it short of turning it into mush, a blessing. There were boiled potatoes and green beans and biscuits from Ruth's kitchen and, for dessert, pistachio ice cream.

  Sonny smiled at Vasco, winked. "Ask me who made the ice cream."

  "Who made the ice cream?"

  "Sealtest, I think."

  "I make ice cream!" shouted the li
ttle girl in the high chair. The Capone quick burn darkened her features.

  "Shush!" Ruth's finger flew to her lips, eyes flashing danger.

  "I finished up, but those first three cranks were the hard part," Sonny said, reaching across his wife to chuck the girl under the chin.

  Capone said, "Swear to God, I eat one more green thing I'll sprout leaves."

  "The Lord's name, Al."

  "Mea culpa."

  Danny looked longingly at the decanter of red wine and sipped his coffee. Who's up for cribbage?"

  It was another game Vasco didn't know how to play, but as the four women cleared the table, Sonny drew a pack of cards and a square pegboard from the top drawer of a small bureau used as a sideboard and volunteered to partner him, teaching him the rules as the game progressed. He kept their score on the board while Danny kept score for himself and Capone, his partner. Capone played with concentration, showing no trace of the confusion he'd shown over pinochle and poker the week before. (Was the penicillin reversing the symptoms of the disease after all? Vasco couldn't credit Mae's theory that his presence in the gangster's life had had any positive effect: that would be the betrayal of all betrayals, second only to Judas'.) When he disapproved of Danny's strategy he cursed softly under his breath, out of earshot of the two-year-old, who had joined her sister in the playpen, rebuilding the world with rubber blocks.

  "You miss Chicago, Padre?" He placed two cards in the end of the board nearest Sonny, who was dealing.

  He thought, staring at his hand. "I miss the noise, especially at night. I have trouble sleeping when it's quiet." He spoke the truth. The relative peace of the District at end of day, as compared to Chicago and Cicero, all those brawny flexations day and night, steel shrieking against steel, Klaxons braying, had not prepared him for a city that seemed to shut down at sunset, at least in wartime. Redemption was too far from the waterfront for the sound of surf to reach his monk's cell, and in any case that sound was too organic, a half-human exhalation of pent-up breath: and when the streetcars stopped ringing their bells for the evening, the silence thundered.

  "Me, too. I hear that damn foghorn, I sit up in a cold sweat. I think I'm back in Alcatraz and just dreamed I was out. I thought Brooklyn was noisy, but Chicago's like one of them artillery bombardments you hear about in Europe: boom, boom, boom, hour after hour, till you think one more boom, you crack to pieces. Then it stops, and then, boy, you crack. Only in Chicago it never does. First time I met Diamond Jim I said—"