But in his hotel bed thinking of Rose, he'd thought nothing of her color except the way the light played off her skin in the green-tinted interior of a tumbledown shack in the Wisconsin wood. He swung between burning shame and the heat of passion, and the gluey, stuffy, motionless atmosphere in a non-air-cooled room in Florida in summer only heaped fuel on the fire. Sex for him had always been an awkward, self-conscious thing, a fumbling in the dark, vaguely unsatisfying and dripping with self-loathing for his poor performance as much as for the violation of decency.
In Rose's arms it was a living, writhing, electrically charged thing, a sensation of sound and sight and touch and taste and smell. She was salty on the tongue and smelled of overripe citrus. His hands hydroplaned on the film of perspiration on her skin, her breath panted in his ear, hot and wet, with a whimper buried deep in the hyperventilation. Without realizing he'd slipped into unconsciousness, he'd awakened with the shock of his discharge, stained.
"How was the weather?" Father Kyril asked. "I'm told it snows as late as May up there."
He'd lingered in the church after Mass, collecting hymnals from the racks behind the pews as Thomas had climbed his ladder for the semiannual removal of soot and grit from the stained glass. Now in his study he removed his stole, kissed it, and hung it on its peg. He looked square and tanned and his pale eyes were searching. When Vasco hesitated, he said, "Mae Capone doesn't regularly attend Redemption, but I know about her brother-in-law's cabin. Where else would they vanish to when you could boil an egg in that huge swimming pool?"
"It was cool and restful. At night you huddle under blankets, if you can believe it."
"I can. God doesn't approve of His creations living in Paradise. That's why He sends palmetto bugs like grasshoppers and hurricanes for floods and heat from the Pit."
"I don't know about grasshoppers, but the mosquitoes are fierce."
"Welcome back. As you can see, nothing's changed. The war is there and I'm still here."
"I'm sorry. I know how much it means to you."
"It borders on envy. Perhaps this is my punishment. Or maybe He has plans for me here. I only wish I had some inkling."
"I hope you won't think I'm being patronizing when I say I know how you feel." Kyril, in short black shirtsleeves now, was back behind his desk. He met Vasco's gaze and it seemed his search had ended. "I believe you, Father. I take it progress is slow."
"Not really. But toward what end?"
"Do I sense a desire to confess?" But he shook his head before Vasco could think of a reply. "I withdraw that. I promised myself I'd never be one of those priests who attempt to pry a request for forgiveness out of the reluctant. It crooks the system."
"You're a good man, Father." It came out without planning.
Kyril's response was even less anticipated. "What about you, Father? Do you consider yourself a good man? Not a good priest; that judgment belongs to the Lord. The other is personal and altogether a thing much more complicated."
"It must be, because I have my doubts."
"If you didn't, the answer would be obvious, and not the one you'd hoped for."
Vasco considered. "When I was a boy, I thought priests had all the answers. In the beginning that was the appeal."
"You decided that early to be a priest?"
"It seemed the greatest thing a man could aspire to."
"I wanted to be a cowboy."
Vasco laughed.
"It was Tom Mix's fault. Did you ever see any of his pictures?"
"I think I saw all of them. I had a rocking horse with his autograph on it." He'd surprised himself again, letting such a thing slip out. He saw two men wrestling the horse up the last flight of stairs to his parents' apartment, struggling to avoid dislodging the satin bow with their killers' hands.
"Principally," Kyril said, "I think it was because his hat never fell off. He'd get in brawls in saloons and chase bad men on horseback at full gallop and throw his lasso around a rocky outcrop and swing himself up from the bottom of a canyon and his hat stayed on his head without any kind of strap showing to explain it. I thought it was a miracle."
"Come to think of it, you're right. I never noticed."
"Later I read in a movie magazine he had the wardrobe people glue the rubber ring from the lid of a pressure cooker inside the band so it wouldn't slip. But by then it was too late because I'd already entered the seminary. The miracle of Tom Mix's hat had convinced me of the power of faith."
"You weren't disillusioned?"
"Not nearly as much as the first time I tried to ride a horse when I was twelve. That experience convinced me of the force of gravity."
Vasco laughed again, but only dutifully. He wondered what was the secret of maintaining faith in the face of overwhelming indications to the contrary. Had he been weak to dismiss it as a lie without deeper consideration? "Thank you for that story, Father."
"Don't expect any others. I'm not the avuncular type. Will you be free to participate in Mass?"
He could think of nothing he wanted to do less. "Yes. Thank you for asking. And I'll hear confessions this afternoon."
"First, see Brother Thomas about that finger. It appears infected."
He glanced down at it. The skin was reddish around the gauze and the throbbing had contributed to his lack of sleep.
"I snagged it on a fishhook."
"An ideal vacation. I saw the glow the moment you walked in."
THOMAS SCRUBBED THE WOUND WITH DISINFECTANT SOAP, WHICH SET IT stinging, then painted it with mercurochrome and bound it snugly with fresh gauze and adhesive tape from a tin first-aid kit with a red cross painted on the lid. It looked to be of World War I vintage. He had surprisingly gentle hands and a deft touch. Peter thanked him.
"Try not to bend it, Father. Penicillin's a tough priority. Dying of a cut finger will never get you martyrdom."
He didn't expect such insight. The brother, he suspected, didn't approve of him. The man was insular; he couldn't tell if he doubted Vasco's ordination or thought him a dilettante for his casual approach toward his responsibilities to the Church. He didn't know the young man well enough to determine if he was capable of sarcasm. "Are you interested in medicine?"
"I was a hospital orderly when I received the Call."
"Had you planned to become a doctor?"
"My family didn't have the money to send me to medical school. I was going to become a male nurse and earn the tuition."
"That was a serious commitment. How could you be sure the Call was genuine?"
"How could you?"
He'd stepped into a trap he'd set himself. "I'm told it comes in many voices."
"I only heard the one. Please remember not to bend your finger, and let me know if it begins to swell." He snapped shut the latch on the kit and left Vasco's room. Vasco walked about the small space. The bed was neatly made. There was no sign that Thomas had slept in the room during his absence. He seemed to move around in a sort of personal vacuum, leaving no trace of his passage. After three months all Vasco knew about him was that he was from Ohio and had worked in a hospital. Such men were more suited to the life that had been forced upon Vasco than he was himself.
He moved aside the muslin curtain that covered his narrow window. Through the bars he saw a gray Plymouth sedan parked on the street on the other side of the spiked iron fence. The window was down on the driver's side and as he watched a hand resting on the sill raised a cigarette and Frank Nitti's man took a puff. Vasco wondered if anyone ever relieved him or if he slept at all.
"FORGIVE ME, FATHER, FOR I HAVE SINNED. IT'S BEEN THREE WEEKS SINCE my last confession."
With a bump of the heart he recognized Sonny Capone's voice on the other side of the partition. He couldn't have summoned any of its qualities to his memory all the time they'd been apart, but there was no doubt who it was the moment he spoke.
"What sins have you committed, my son?" That address never felt comfortable in most company, but in Sonny's it came out naturally. They were pract
ically the same age, yet Al's son seemed less—developed was the word that occurred to him. He'd spent his life sheltered by his mother from his father's occupation and by his father's bodyguards from its consequences; a convent sort of existence that had left him ill-prepared for the world of men. He said what was on his mind, without a thought of adjusting content to the character of the listener, and Vasco envied and liked him for it. It was difficult to think of him as a husband and father.
"That's it, actually. Mother made me promise to go to confession while she was away and I didn't get around to it. I guess that means you can add failing to honor her to that side of the ledger. "
"For your penance, say Five Hail Marys."
"That's all?"
"It seems appropriate under the circumstances."
"Gee, I've been fretting. When I told Mother and she read me out I expected an Act of Contrition at least."
"You spoke to her?"
"She called yesterday to tell me she and Dad were coming home. I'm meeting them at the station later. She said you were already on your way back."
"I thought Blessed Sacrament was your usual place of worship."
"It's not on the way to the station. I guess I'm slothful, too."
"Let's call it practical. Our boys need the shoe leather."
"1 like the way you think, Pe—Father."
It pleased him that in the formal confines of the booth Sonny had erred toward the familiar. In social discourse it had been the other way around. He realized Sonny had missed him, and he Sonny. Vasco had never had a friend his own age: had never had a friend in the common interpretation of the word. Mentors, companions, but no equals who inspired affection. He pronounced the prayer of absolution in Latin.
Sonny crossed himself behind the screen. "How'd you like Ralph's place?"
"I liked it. I'll be through in a few minutes if you'd care to wait."
"Sure."
There were no more penitents. Vasco excused himself to change out of his vestments and they walked to the Rexall store. No one appeared to follow them, but the entire block was visible from the corner where the gray Plymouth was parked. They sat at the counter and ordered Cokes.
The skeletal druggist set them before them. "Haven't seen you in here in a while, Father."
"I've been away."
"Well, welcome back." He wiped the gleaming chromium of the soda fountain with a white rag and mounted the raised platform behind the prescription counter.
Nothing had changed dramatically about the place: The same magazines occupied the same pockets in the rack, only with different faces on the covers, and the painted couple kissing on True Romance might have been the same from last month presented from a slightly altered perspective. The racetrack investor, whom Vasco had begun to suspect lived in the back room among the unclaimed newspapers and empty deposit bottles, had traded his tweed cap for a straw skimmer tipped at an angle that reminded him of the conical cover atop the stovepipe belonging to what Vasco now thought of as Rose's shack, but it might have been the same cigarette bobbing between his lips as he read his picks over the telephone in the booth. Miami was as he'd left it; an odd situation, considering time passed and miles covered, like returning to one's childhood home in the fullness of adult life to find his spinning top just where he'd left it.
Sonny slurped at his straw. He wore a silk shirt of a metallic shade—his hearing aid clipped to the pocket—tucked into white flannels, black-and-white spectators on his feet, no hat. He'd no sooner wear one and spoil the collegiate effect than his father would venture out without his, the brim turned up on one side and down on the other. Apart from that they resembled each other very much, Sonny's inclination toward stockiness promising to broaden into Al's heavy frame quilted with fat. He released his pinky from the bottle to point at Vasco's injury.
"Fishing wound. I got the same one first time Ralph took me out on the boat. Same finger. Did Dad patch it up?"
"The first time, yes." Sharon and Brother Thomas had followed. What a disparate set of nurses for one small laceration.
"He was always the one who took care of my scrapes and bruises, when he was around. Mother said he'd have made a fine doctor if he had the education." All his life, it seemed, Vasco had heard that Capone would have made a successful businessman, a great general, President of the United States, if things had been different: if he hadn't been Al Capone. A doctor struck Vasco as the diametrical opposite of what he'd become.
"I wish I could've gone. I couldn't get away from the air depot."
"Also you couldn't risk tipping off the FBI by having the whole family disappear at the same time."
"Oh, he told you about that?"
"Your mother did."
Sonny grinned his father's grin. "I guess Dad still has a trick or two up his sleeve."
"He's full of surprises, that's for sure."
"I bet Frankie Rio bitched about the loons the whole time."
"Just once."
"Didn't you enjoy yourself?"
He knew then he had a friend. It took one to interpret his noncommittal answers as something other than casual conversation. He turned to glance at the druggist, busy funneling powder from one container to another with a paper slip, the man in the booth in earnest discussion with his bookie, and turned his stool back toward the counter. He lowered his voice. "I was having a wonderful time until Frank Nitti showed up."
"Nitti."
"You were right about his eyes. They're like stones."
Sonny raised and plunged his straw as if he were trying to impale a fly floating in his bottle. "I can't picture him in that country. If they ever put him in his natural habitat in the zoo, his cage would be made of brick and asphalt."
"He had a meeting with Ralph in Milwaukee and followed him up there by car. Your mother said he wanted to get a look at me."
"She's mistaken. Nitti's got his hands full just staying out of jail without worrying about a priest in the family."
"I'm not in the family, Sonny."
"You're as much family as my Aunt Winifred. She's the main reason Uncle Danny drinks. At least in your case we got to choose."
"I doubt Nitti sees things that way. All he knows is a stranger is suddenly spending a lot of time with your father. I think it would be a good idea if I stopped coming around so often." He was betraying Hoover, he knew. Maybe he was a coward after all. But he couldn't help thinking it was Sonny he was concerned about.
"Bullshit. Drop by Saturday. Danny's sure to be there; we've hardly seen each other since Mother and Dad left. It will be like old times. A family reunion."
"Sonny, Nitti's having me followed. It wouldn't be a good idea."
"Staying away would be worse. You'll look guilty."
The man in the straw hat came out of the booth and left the store, pausing out front to light a fresh cigarette off the butt of the last before he turned left and went down the street with his hands thrust in his pockets. He seemed always to move with jerky urgency. Playing the sport of kings had brought him anything but peace. Vasco didn't understand the gambling impulse. The one he was involved in had given him a chronic lump of hard cold wax in his stomach.
He decided not to argue further with Sonny. Mae, he thought, would be more pragmatic about the situation. "What makes you think Nitti's worried about going to jail?" This was new information to him, and possibly to the Bureau.
"After the government put Dad away they went after Nitti for tax evasion. He got eighteen months, and the word is he didn't do the time well. Now he's facing indictment for some scheme to shake down the movie people in Hollywood for protection; they say one of his gorillas threatened to throw acid in Mae West's face in '33 if the studio didn't pay off. Come to think of it, that may be why he's seeing spies under his bed. He'll do anything to stay out of the clink."
Vasco drew thoughtfully on his straw until it buzzed. Let me worry about Nitti, Hoover had said. He's through. He just doesn't realize it yet.
He wasn't comforted. Hoove
r was in Washington and Nitti was in Chicago and Nitti's man was parked around the corner, well inside pistol range.
TWENTY-NINE
Saturday brunch, 11 a.m. Please come.
Just the family; and Rose, of course.
M.
Mae's tidy turquoise script took up a tiny fraction of the already small square sheet of linen stock in the blue envelope, identical to the one that had contained his summons to Wisconsin. He found it Friday after Mass, which he'd attended purely as a member of the congregation, atop his freshly made bed. It had been placed there presumably by the same hands that had smoothed the sheets. Brother Thomas, in addition to serving as Redemption's majordomo, housekeeper, and cleaning staff, performed the duties of a footman. Vasco's name was block printed on the outside as before, but there was no postmark. Evidently the invitation had been delivered by messenger.
It was inconceivable that so practical a person would ignore the danger in continuing the relationship. Risk, he knew, was nothing new in the Capones' world, but surely Mae knew that he was more in jeopardy than any of them. It wasn't like her to be so cavalier about the safety of one to whom she'd grown close.
Why Rose, of course? Would Brownie not be present, or had Mae made special mention of her to persuade him to accept despite his doubts? He could not imagine that Rose had told her what had happened that last day in Mercer. She seemed not the confiding type, and in any case her mistress's devotion would never allow her to encourage romance with a priest. If she was using Rose as a lever to apply pressure, it would be because she'd noted some affection between them and trusted his vows to bind him from committing heresy.
The Confessions of Al Capone Page 42
