"Bottles, it's just a moth," Al said after the third time. "It ain't the O'Donnells."
"Ixnay, Al, ixnay." Ralph struck a match off a thumbnail and set fire to one of his Melachrinos. He shook the flame out with a vicious snatch and tossed it into a fire bucket. Vasco had seen fire marshal's warnings posted on buildings and telephone poles since his first pine sighting.
"I know about the O'Donnells," he said. "My father complained about them all the time."
Ralph squinted at him in the dim light. The Capones bore a close resemblance, except Ralph's head was bigger and his lips were more functional and less decorative. He was heavier, too, by at least fifty pounds of pasta and cannolis. "You look more comfortable out of the rig. I never knew they let you fellows go around out of uniform."
Al said, "Leave him be. Even the pope takes off his hat to scratch his head."
"Boys, you're bordering on blasphemy." Mae tried not to sound prim. It was vacation, and they had a guest.
"Mea culpa." Al and Ralph said it together, and crossed themselves in unison. Vasco said, "Not blasphemy. I'm only a servant of the Lord."
"Well, you don't look like one in that getup," Ralph said. "I don't know what it is you look like, but that ain't it."
So much for making people feel comfortable around him.
The conversation went from there to the day's fishing. It had gone well, and Rose was busy in the kitchen helping Brownie clean a string of walleyes, whatever those might be. When Vasco had joined them, the men rose to shake his hand— all but Frankie Rio, who was back on duty now and not social, and Jim, who had exchanged his pulp magazine for a flask encased in leather with stitching that looked like a canteen in a western movie. It must have held at least a quart, and the sharp smell of the liquid when he tipped it up stung Vasco's eyes. It might have come from the stores of first-pass corn liquor the FBI file had said he'd confiscated from moonshiners on the reservation for his own use. The old reprobate sat with his chins on his chest and metaphorical bubbles floating around his head, like a drunken character in a comic strip. He was as easy to dislike as Al was to like, despite all Vasco and the world knew about Al Capone. Vasco could not understand why Jim mattered, except the teachings he'd almost forgotten until Hoover's memo that had landed on his tin desk had conditioned him to believe that everyone did. Had it been only three months?
Al and Ralph wore identical outfits, fishing vests with batteries of button-down pockets, coarse cotton shirts, trousers of duck canvas, and bucket hats with fishhooks glinting on them. They made Vasco think of Paul Vasco's neophyte fisherman, with his artillery of expensive rods and early convert's faith that one could catch fish with greenbacks for bait. All that was missing were the hip boots. The brothers wore shoes that laced to the ankles, with blue-green algae dried on them like burned-out moss. You couldn't find such gear in the Loop, and not even in Miami, where fishermen's footwear ran toward deck shoes and bare feet. You had to order it from Abercrombie & Fitch, and pay the shipping and handling. The fashion was as far from Chicago gangland as one could get, short of the silver-lame jumpsuits Buck Rogers wore. It was all very surreal, Capone life in northern Wisconsin.
Rose appeared, smelling slightly of fish despite her lemon soap, with a tray piled high with sandwiches and a blue-enamel coffeepot as big as a gasoline can. Everything was big in that company: furniture, fireplaces, even the sandwiches were triple-decked and stapled together with toothpicks. Grilled cheese, the bread toasted by Brownie in an iron skillet with bacon grease left over from breakfast; Vasco, who'd had nothing since egg salad and a glass of milk at noon on the train, ate greedily and drank coffee that had boiled all day but, as always, lacked the bitter wartime intrusion of chicory. He knew he was getting fat on drugstore hamburgers and Cokes, and reminded himself to ask to borrow Kyril's dumbbells. The combination of hot sandwiches and the smell of coffee and pines and lake water was famishing.
A loon fluted out on the lake, saying good-bye to the last rusty traces of sunlight. Tiny bugs popped like corn and made sparks when they hurled themselves against the contraption hanging from the roof. Another bird called in the forest—a whippoorwill, he decided, based on travelogues he'd seen before the main feature. Something heavy crunched brush nearby. He wondered if it was bear country and doubted the firepower under Frankie Rio's arm was equal to six hundred pounds of charging muscle with claws and fangs. It would be an incongruous end for them all to be eaten by a bear. He was a city slicker, he confessed to himself, only without the slick.
Was it slick, or was it slick? Mae had asked, knowing it was slick. No, he was neither slick nor rustic, and felt distinctly out of place dressed like a man of the North Country. But then he felt no less uncomfortable disguised as clergy. It occurred to him that he had not been comfortable in his skin for a very long time.
"Mae tell you how we got shut of the whiskers?"
He was aware suddenly that Al was looking at him, the whites of his eyes glistening in lantern light; that he had been watching him for a long time while he plowed his way through the bounty Rose had brought. He felt a rush of guilt, as when, at ten, he'd stuffed his cheeks like a chipmunk at the family table, hoping his father wouldn't notice and give him hell for being greedy. Paul Vasco had cared little for food, despite piles of spaghetti and steaks as big around as phonograph records. He ate swiftly, paying no attention to taste or satiation, and burned it off in his wiry frame.
"Whiskers?" He'd had to chew industriously and swallow in order to get the word out without spitting food. Gluttony was the ugliest of all the deadly sins.
"Uncle Sam." Al stroked a set of billy goat whiskers that didn't exist on his blue chin. "The feds."
"She told me all about it." He made no attempt to keep the admiration from his tone. The thing had been so complicated—water, land, air—and yet so simple, in this age of miraculous means of getting around—that he knew Hoover would have an apoplectic fit when he learned how it had been accomplished. The beehive in the District would be buzzing furiously, and the queen would be awash in resignations before the episode was over. "I could hardly believe it, and yet here you are."
Once again, Capone seemed to have read his mind. "It doesn't take a genius to pull the wool over the eyes of a dumb cluck like Hoover. He's all flap and no guts, like them walleyes when Brownie gets through with 'em. I had a lot of good talks with Al Karpis in Alcatraz. You know how it was Hoover came to arrest him, Alvin Karpis, brains of the Barker Gang?"
He flashed back to a newspaper picture on his bedroom wall in an apartment someone else was living in now: the Director climbing the steps of the federal building in St. Paul with Public Enemy Number One in tow, manacled like a common pickpocket in his sporty straw boater. "It was in all the papers."
"Sure it was. Hoover won't take a shit without an army of reporters and photographers to cover every movement. Some mug in Congress asked him in public if he ever arrested anyone personal. He could've said, 'Congressman, I run the show. I hire guys with experience to do the arresting.' Only he didn't. He had to go out and prove himself. What he did, acting on tips, he sent a mob of G-men to surround Karpis in his car, which they did without no trouble, Karpis being a smart cookie who knew when the jig was up, and when they were sure he wasn't carrying, they said, 'All clear, Chief,' and Hoover came out from behind a tree where he'd been pissing his pants and said, 'You're under arrest.' None of the stupid fuckers even thought to bring along handcuffs. Finally they tied his hands with a necktie and that was it, the end of the manhunt of the century. Say what you like about me—everybody else has—I never took any glory for something I didn't do personal. Just another four-flusher, Hoover, and yellow to boot." Vasco knew Capone's version for a lie. The incident was chiseled in legend. A career crook like Karpis would say anything to smear the reputation of the man who'd outsmarted him in the end. The story was what kept Vasco going.
Ralph said, "All them independents was dopes. Go around pushing in banks and knocking off cops in broad day
light, stir up the feds and locals, you wind up running in smaller and smaller circles till you got yourself surrounded. You want to get along you need to get into a steady racket."
"Like me?"
"Sure, Al, like you. You showed the rest of us the way."
"So how come Karpis and me ended up in the same yard?"
Ralph paused in the midst of lighting a fresh Egyptian off the butt of the last, then shook his big head and flipped the stub into the bucket. "All the same it's different."
Al laughed, whether at his brother's phraseology or his particular worldview wasn't clear. The laughter had an edge, nasal and unpleasant. He took a stick of gum out of a pocket of his fishing vest and started chewing.
"Enough shop talk," Mae said, rising. "It's bedtime, Snorky."
"Jesus, Mae, he's on vacation. Let him stay up."
Her eyes caught fire, but she didn't point out the profanity. "You should be turning in, too, Ralph. You can't stay up half the night and get up at dawn to fish."
"I can't anyway. I got to be in Milwaukee by tomorrow night."
"What's in Milwaukee?" Al asked.
"Brewery business." Vasco felt Ralph watching him out of the corner of his eye. "You might've said something before."
"I did, this morning in the boat."
"What about me? I didn't come up here to go fishing all by myself."
The querulous note drove all the tranquility from the scene. It was the prelude to a tantrum, as when Capone had threatened to have the president of the Dade County Realtors Association killed for cheating at cards at the pool. Nothing stirred. Even the bugs had stopped committing suicide.
"Take Brownie." Ralph sounded conciliatory.
"I'd rather take a hunk of driftwood. The conversation's better."
"Don't look at me," Mae said. "I don't like fishing any more than Frankie does." Vasco sat very quiet. He knew what was coming.
Al's gaze settled on him. That broad grin split his features. "Father, you handle a rod as good as you do a chalice?"
"I've never held one in my hand, but I come from a long line of fishermen."
"I don't give a shit about the fish. They're just an excuse to get out there and float."
"Frankie, you go out with 'em," Ralph said.
Al's grin evaporated. The white of his scars showed against his face. "I don't need Frankie. I'm retired."
"Al—"
"You think the Padre's gonna slip me the shiv, poison my sandwiches like that sonofabitch Aiello?"
"See, Al, that's just what I'm talking—"
Al spat something in Italian, too rapidly for Vasco to follow.
Ralph paled. "Mae, talk to him."
Mae was the peacemaker. "Snorky, you haven't really asked the Father if he wants to go fishing with you."
"Who don't want to go fishing? Why the hell'd he come up here if he don't like to fish?"
Jim Capone was alert now, his single eye glittering in Ralph's direction. "I'll ride along with you to the station. I got to git."
Ralph's big head swung around on a swivel. Here was someone he could unload on. "I bet them C-notes are burning a hole in your britches. Every slot and whorehouse between here and Kansas is saying, 'Where's Jimmy? We ain't seen him around lately.' "
"Nebraska."
"Nebraska, Texas, Mexico. Ain't a bim or a one-arm bandit in any of 'em you ain't hit, and when they strip you down to your long-handles you come crawling back here and hold out that pisspot of a ten-gallon hat and say, 'Fill 'er up.' "
"I got a fambly to support." The drawl climbed to a high-pitched whine.
"We all do, Jimmy. Family's the thing we do best. That's why I'm saying you can ride along, but when we get to the station, stay out of my car. I don't want to see you this side of Milwaukee."
Vasco kept silent, hoping the digression would spare him an invitation and knowing it wouldn't. Whatever answer he gave would bring disaster from one direction or the other. He should have anticipated just such a situation: Ralph did not want to leave his brother alone with a stranger. All Vasco had had to do was let Mae's note go unanswered and stay in Miami. Hoover wouldn't have known he'd ever heard from her, and he wouldn't have risked losing the ground he'd gained.
But then he hadn't known Ralph would be a component. "Mercer, Wisconsin," the letter had said. It might as well have been Sao Paolo for all it had seemed to do with Miami and Chicago.
Rescue came from Frankie Rio, of all people. He was standing next to Ralph's chair now. He leaned over, his pistol sagging through the opening in his mackinaw, and whispered in Ralph's ear.
"Yeah, I forgot he was gonna be there." Ralph spoke in a murmur, more to himself than to anyone present. He inhaled deeply, burning off the rest of the cigarette between his lips, and blew out smoke, like a boiler letting off steam through a valve. "Okay, I can't go in there bare-ass. You better come along."
The air had changed. Mae smiled at Vasco. "What do you think, Father? There isn't much to do around here but fish and chop wood. Forgive me, but I can't picture those hands wrapped around the handle of an axe."
A pile of firewood was stacked against the end of the house almost as high as the roof. That would be Brownie's responsibility; Ralph was too fat and Al hadn't the stamina.
The prison cook who'd taken an inmate's head nearly off his shoulders with a meat cleaver would set up a chunk on the block, grasp the hickory handle with all eight fingers, and swing a long beautiful arc beginning at his heels, striking the dense wood with a report that rang clear across the lake and splitting it like an apple. In the midnight murk when his exposure seemed inevitable, Vasco feared Brownie more than the Outfit, more than Frank Nitti with his eyes like black stones.
"It looks like my mind has been made up for me," he said. "I'd love to go fishing."
Al sat back, chewing his gum and cracking it. "All that fuss over nothing. It's the damn Pineapple Primary all over again."
Ralph's face darkened suddenly. Vasco thought he was preparing to put up another argument, but then he saw Ralph's hands gripping the sides of his chair, the knuckles whitening, and knew he was just making the necessary arrangements to put himself on his feet. When that feat of engineering was completed, he looked at Vasco and jerked his head.
Vasco rose and accompanied him to the edge of the lighted oval, where he laid a big quilted hand on Vasco's shoulder. There was iron beneath all that flesh. Mae was helping Al out of his chair and Frankie Rio stood on his own edge of the light, observing everything and interested in nothing. He'd said a man got tired of sitting around hotel lobbies watching people come and go, but he didn't look tired, just there.
Ralph's wheezy voice dropped to a wheezy whisper. His breath was hot and moist and heavy with garlic. There had been no garlic in the cheese sandwiches. It flowed sluggishly through his circulatory system from years of injections and escaped out the nearest aperture.
"You remember what we talked about in Miami?"
Vasco nodded. "I'm to tell Mrs. Capone everything Mr. Capone and I talk about."
"You remember the rest?"
When he hesitated, choosing his words, Ralph started humming. "Empty Saddles (in the Old Corral)" sounded nothing like Gene Autry coming from that throat filled with phlegm.
"I remember."
The hand relented, only to collide with his back with hurricane force. "I can see you're one Holy Joe has his head on straight. Be sure and spit on the lure before you cast your line. You'll catch your limit in no time."
THE WOODS WERE NOT PEACEFUL. ROBERT FROST GOT IT WRONG. CRICKETS stitched, owls hooted, something made an angry high-pitched gargling noise and jumped out of a tree onto a bass drum. Those sudden unpredictable explosions were what made sleep impossible. In the city, traffic hummed, horns honked at almost regular intervals, trains chuckled, sirens rose and fell and trailed off in a growl. A man could put up with the stitching and the hooting and the wind moaning anguish in the boughs, but there was no telling when something would jump out of a tree ont
o a bass drum except that it would be just when he was sinking into unconsciousness; then his heart would bump and he would lay there with his eyes wide open and a single mosquito drawing a bow against the strings of a tiny violin right in his ear.
Dawn came blue and cold and much too early. Ralph, Jim, and Rio were still sleeping; the first train wouldn't run for two more hours. Capone, dressed as he had been the previous night, but without the hat and vest, sat at an oilcloth-covered table in a large kitchen that doubled as a dining room, shoveling in fried potatoes and onions and link sausages the size of bottle rockets and washing them down with coffee. Mae, seated across from him in a quilted blue housecoat, her hair in a braid, ate slowly and drank orange juice, wrinkling her nose every time she took a sip. "Concentrated. Florida's spoiled me. How did you sleep, Father?"
"Like a baby," he lied. He'd put on the same shirt and slacks and hadn't shaved. Brownie, as big as the woodstove he was cooking on, wore his chef's toque and long apron. Rose, fresh-looking in another simple blouse and skirt, smiled at Vasco and poured coffee into a thick white mug set in front of his place, between his hosts.
"I'll just keep this coming," she said. "City folk don't sleep like babies up here."
There was a cast-iron sink, a Frigidaire that kicked in with a thump and purred, and a full set of iron skillets hanging behind the stove. A window with plain curtains looked out on the lake, turning coppery as the sun rose.
Conversation was spare, consisting mainly of requests to pass things. Capone, it appeared, was not garrulous at that hour. His silence set the tone. Vasco ate sparingly. Ralph's girth was a cautionary tale.
The Confessions of Al Capone Page 34
