The Confessions of Al Capone

by Loren D. Estleman

  "What's the point of this conversation?"

  "It's like a bad cut. You can't leave it open. You don't stitch it up, it festers. It's a sin to leave a woman in that condition. And don't tell me I don't know nothing about sin. I had practice."

  Peter stood. "Good night, Dad. Thanks."

  Smoke shot out from the glider and drifted toward the bare bulb glowing above the door, swirling with moths and mosquitoes.

  "What the hell for?"

  "Whatever you like."

  "Well, you're welcome. Get to bed before I start crying in my beer."

  Paul Vasco was in the bathroom and Sharon was washing the breakfast dishes when the doorbell rang the next morning. Peter found a white-haired postman waiting with dark circles under the arms of his uniform shirt. "Special Delivery, sir."

  He tore open an envelope with a New York City postmark. The letter was typed without error on heavy rag paper; wartime shortages did not appear to apply to business stationery.

  CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS

  Peter Vasco, Esq.

  c/o Mrs. Sharon Baumgartner

  111 Calle de Nulidad

  Fort Lauderdale, Fla.

  Dear Mr. Vasco:

  Thank you for the opportunity to read and evaluate your novella The Confessions of Al Capone, which was delivered to me by Mr. Ernest Hemingway personally and without remark.

  Although the story is compelling and competently written, I fear there is not a large enough readership out there for a story that on first glance might seem too familiar. Material restrictions at this time would not justify our taking on such a project.

  If I may offer constructive criticism, I find the assertion that Al Capone was innocent of planning and executing the St. Valentine's Day Massacre implausible. Whatever your perceptions, it is always a mistake to swim against the tide of popular opinion.

  I am returning the manuscript under separate cover, and am

  Yours sincerely,

  (signed)

  Maxwell E. Perkins,

  Editor-in-Chief

  He held a conference with Paul and Sharon around the dining room table. When they'd finished discussing details, Peter announced that he was moving out.

  "I'd hoped the manuscript would come back with the rejection," he said when they protested. "It's my bargaining chip. But I can't wait for Hoover to find out on his own. I have to strike first and be ahead of him for once. I won't be responsible for putting you both in danger."

  "You should write scripts for The Shadow," Paul said, "cheesy stuff like that. I got out of Cicero with my skin. I guess I can take care of myself in Lauderdale, Sharon too."

  "That popgun you use on seagulls won't protect you. Maybe I am being melodramatic, but I can't do what I have to do and worry about you both at the same time."

  Sharon asked, "What would you have done if Perkins had accepted?"

  "I only thought of that after I met with Hemingway. You're looking at the only aspiring writer who ever prayed for failure."

  She asked where he would go. Paul laid a hand on hers.

  "Maybe he's better off not saying."

  Peter shook his head. "When Hoover's people come around asking, they won't believe you if you say you don't know. If you tell them, they'll go away and leave you alone. I'll check into the Sea Breeze. It's a motor court across the street from the ocean. I stayed there the first time I came down."

  "It's a dump," Paul said.

  "You're the one who said I need to hang onto my dough."

  "Stop trying to talk like me. You sound stupid."

  Peter packed quickly. At the door, Sharon handed him leftover brisket wrapped in waxed paper in a paper sack. She hugged him and kissed him on the cheek. She smelled of baking. His mother had smelled the same way when she saw him off to school. He held his hand out to his father, but Paul stepped past it, put his arms around him briefly, and separated himself with two hard slaps on Peter's back. Outside, Peter carried his valise to the streetcar stop without looking back.

  In the office of the Sea Breeze, with its odors of nickel, cigarettes, and chewing gum, he registered and asked the woman smoking behind the desk when the mail was picked up.

  "Search me. He ain't been in yet today. The geezer on this route belongs in a wheelchair."

  He'd put Perkins' letter in an envelope addressed to the Bureau-owned stationery supply store coded for Hoover and stamped it. Standing in front of the brass-faced chute embossed U.S. mail he hesitated, then let the letter slide through the slot. He glanced up and down the street before going to his room. He felt like a hunted gangster.

  Four days later he came back from a walk on the beach and asked the clerk again if he had any messages. She finished lighting a fresh Lucky off the butt of another and took a loose fold of paper out of the only pigeonhole that held anything. Instead of handing it to him she opened it and read it.

  "Some Sharon called ten minutes ago. Said to tell you to come on over."

  "Did she say anything else?"

  She turned the sheet over and looked at the other side. It was blank. "Nope."

  She'd been smart not to mention to a stranger that the package he'd expected had arrived. He waited a long ten minutes for a streetcar and swung aboard before it stopped rolling. A motorman with a face like a satchel scowled as he dropped in his nickel. "That's how you lose legs."

  At Sharon's house the door opened as he was about to ring. The man holding the knob was medium-built, with a face that was too young for him. His summer-weight blue suit fit him well, but there was nothing conspicuous about the tailoring. He wore a plain black tie on a white shirt. Before Peter could open his mouth, something hard dug into him low in the back and a narrow heavy-veined hand slid over his shoulder and under both arms and slid back around to pat all his pockets and grope inside each thigh. He smelled a sickly sweet odor; molassesy, only not so pleasant. The point of chewing snuff had always eluded him. The pressure went away from his back. "Okay, go ahead in and say hello to Ma and Pa." It was a tight, thin voice that vibrated like a banjo string.

  Inside, Peter turned around. The man's gun was out of sight. His gaunt frame was hung with cheap seersucker and a red bow tie on an elastic band moved up and down as he worked at the cud in his cheek. He was too old for field duty, with white stubble sprouting from his brown pleated cheeks and blue eyes faded into the whites under a straw skimmer worn at an insolent angle. For a brief terrible moment, Peter thought the Outfit had beat the Bureau to the punch. He didn't look official, but on the other hand nothing about him said Chicago. He belonged in westerns, but in different clothes, and the hat he wore would be black. Then came a voice he had never expected to hear in that house.

  "Shut the door. You're letting out all the cool air."

  J. Edgar Hoover sat in the overstuffed chair by the big cabinet radio, wearing gray gabardine and a Panama hat with a black silk band. The chair had a high back and he looked like a fat little boy in his father's seat with his highly polished shoes barely touching the floor. Paul and Sharon sat close to each other on the sofa.

  "I came in from the toilet when the bell rang and these two birds was telling Sharon they was wounded veterans selling magazine subscriptions," Paul said. "I looked at the skinny jasper and said, 'Who'd you fight for, North or South?' He put a rod on me and they shoved their way in. No warrant, no nothing."

  Peter asked Sharon if she was all right. She looked up at him blankly and nodded. Her face was colorless.

  "Desperate times call for desperate measures." Hoover's tone was unusually mild. "The local authorities can't be depended on in matters of national security.

  Your father neglected to mention he had this stuck down in his shorts. He just wasn't as quick on the draw." He dragged Paul's converted air pistol off the radio.

  "He only uses it on vermin. I don't think it would look very impressive in the display case outside your office."

  "Shut up, you. Nobody said you could talk." The gaunt man shifted his plug to the opposite c
heek.

  "I'm considering adding carrying a concealed weapon to the other charges we have against him."

  Paul said, "They searched Sharon too. When they was sure she didn't have a bowie knife in her garter, the bashful one went out to fetch the boss."

  "Yes. I've heard that's how they handle things when he's in the field."

  A light exploded inside his head. Sharon shrieked. He staggered, spread his feet, and caught his balance. The gaunt one had struck him on the temple with the flat of a horned hand.

  "Some folks just don't listen."

  "Special Agent Vasco, these are Special Agents John Craidlaw and Merle Farmer. Farmer fired the bullet that killed Pretty Boy Floyd."

  "I never laid claim to that. We all of us hit him and none to graze."

  "I admire your modesty, but I was making a point. Craidlaw broke up a Fifth Column cell in Cincinnati from inside. They are not men to play games with." Peter knew the story behind the overage man then, and considered him the more dangerous and unpredictable of the two. During the Depression, the freshly armed attorneys and CPAs who populated the FBI had proven no match for marauding bands of Midwestern outlaws. Without fanfare, the Director had recruited a number of former rural lawmen and Texas Rangers who'd been tested against an earlier breed of badman, but one every bit as ruthless. "Hoover's Cowboys" operated outside Justice Department regulations, vigilantes with badges who answered to no one but their employer. They were whispered of throughout the Bureau, but after ten years they had yet to draw a line of notice from the press.

  "They made me leave that message," Sharon said. "I'm sorry, Peter."

  "It was a request. Were any threats made?"

  "You don't need to with that goon on a leash," Paul said.

  Merle Farmer's long bony fingers rested on the yellow handle of a revolver stuck under his belt where his suit coat opened. He pursed his lips, caving in his cheeks, found no place to spit, and swallowed his plug. The red bow tie dipped down and up like a bobber.

  "It's all right, Sharon." Peter asked Hoover if he could sit.

  "I never said you had to stand."

  He lowered himself into a platform rocker upholstered in a tropical print. Craidlaw and Farmer remained on their feet.

  Hoover reached inside his coat and snapped open a letter Peter recognized. "Forgive me if I don't offer sympathy for your faltering literary career. It's difficult to break into print just now. My own book suffered because paper shortages couldn't keep up with the demand."

  He didn't respond to that. His superior in Division Four had grumbled that everyone in a clerical position had been forced to purchase a copy of Persons in Hiding in 1938. "I didn't expect you this early. You must have caught an express train."

  "Private aircraft. We stopped in Charleston to pick up Agent Farmer. He's police chief in a small town near there. I returned him to active duty."

  Paul said, "I guess we're real desperate characters."

  Hoover ignored him. He hadn't taken his eyes off Peter. "I warned you about the penalties of treason. This letter is evidence you've been sharing sensitive material with someone outside the Bureau."

  "All it says is I submitted a work of fiction for publication."

  "Capone's memories aren't fiction."

  "The major events of his life are in public domain. I fleshed them out with invented dialogue and description. It's called literary license."

  "You're stating for the record that none of the information you shared with this man Perkins is confidential to the FBI."

  "I am."

  "You're compounding your crime by giving a false statement to federal agents."

  "You'll have to prove that."

  "It says right here that Capone denies complicity in the St. Valentine's Day Massacre. You got that preposterous notion directly from him."

  "Perkins agrees it's preposterous. I should change it before I try another publisher."

  "Where is the manuscript?"

  "In a safe place."

  The red spots showed on the Director's cheeks, as bright as a rash. He fought them back with an effort of will. "Agent Vasco. Peter. You've drawn your father and his lady friend into a mess you made yourself. Even if you don't care what happens to you, have you given them any consideration at all? At the very least they'll lose their American citizenship. The result is deportation, and since we're at war, they will be placed in detention until the sea lanes are clear of enemy activity."

  "Deported where?" Sharon asked. "I was born in New Jersey."

  "There will be ample time to sort that out while you're in Leavenworth. I'm waiting for an answer to my question."

  Peter massaged the spot where Farmer had struck him. It wasn't hurting now, but he was afraid his head would start shaking uncontrollably if he didn't brace it somehow. "The assignment is dead. You said yourself you couldn't convict anyone important based on the material. All it ever meant was some sensational publicity and funding from Congress, but it's not even good for that. Capone isn't even entertainment anymore. His name won't sell books."

  "The assignment is dead," Hoover agreed. "You will be, too, if I have to hunt up that manuscript to compare to the version in the classified files. You'd be far better off surrendering it. Surely you know by now there is no place you can hide it, no one you can entrust it to, that I can't find out."

  The doorbell rang.

  From where Peter sat, he could see the outline of a man in a postman's cap through the curtains on the window in the front door. He was expecting the manuscript back from Perkins any time.

  Agent Craidlaw turned his head that direction, then back.

  "Just the mail, sir."

  Peter spoke up. "I'm not that important, but I will be if you charge me with treason. It will come out that an FBI clerk wrote a novel and you tried to present it as fact just to grab headlines. You'll be a joke and so will the FBI."

  The room was a still life. In the silence the mail slot in the front door creaked open and something substantial scraped the edges and thumped to the floor.

  "You're absolutely certain of your course? I dislike seeing anyone discharging all his options because of misguided principle. Even a traitor."

  "I'm no traitor. You of all people should know one when you see one." Hoover sat motionless for thirty seconds. Then he rose and looked down at Peter. "This will follow you. Good luck finding employment with a black mark against you in your file."

  Peter said nothing. Craidlaw went ahead of the Director to open the door. It bumped against the pile of mail on the floor and Farmer stooped to pick up the bundle. He sorted through letters and circulars and looked at the thick brown envelope big enough to contain a hundred typed pages.

  "Sears, Roebuck fall catalogue," he said, placing the pile on the table beside the door. "We're still sweatin' like pigs and they're peddling wool drawers."

  The three left without another word. After a moment Peter got up and opened the door to make sure they were gone.

  "I'm terribly sorry." He closed the door. "I should've known he'd use you to apply the most pressure."

  Paul stayed seated. He got a pack of cigarettes from his shirt pocket. "Everybody makes mistakes. Mr. Capone shoulda paid his taxes. But you got off a damn sight easier. They came here measuring you for a rope and left giving you a F in deportment and behavior."

  Sharon said, "It's much worse than that. What will he do to live?"

  "I can use a partner at Sunrise Charters." He struck a match.

  "You've barely got business enough for one," Peter said. "I'm enlisting in the army."

  She said, "You can't. Your file."

  "Pietro Bascana doesn't have one. That's the real family name, right? You didn't lie about that."

  Paul lit the cigarette and smiled. "I only lie about the little things."

  "But won't you need some sort of proof? A birth certificate or something?"

  "A warm body, that's all he needs."

  "She might be right." Peter felt a grin coming
on. It had just begun to sink in that it was over. "What about it, Dad?"

  "I got connections. Don't you worry about that."

  When the package arrived from New York the next day, Sharon spoke directly to Peter at the Sea Breeze and he came to get it. Paul was at the marina. She watched his son light the little gas fireplace in the parlor.

  "I'm surprised it works," she said. "I haven't used it since I moved in. Are you sure this is what you want to do?"

  "I'm not doing anything Hoover hasn't already done. You should see the size of the incinerator behind the Justice Department Building." He opened the envelope and drew out the manuscript. There was no communication inside. "He won't stop looking for the only copy until he finds it. This way he'll stay too busy to focus on me." He burned the envelope first. A bright yellow streamer seized it and closed it into a black fist.

  "Do you believe that?"

  "No. But I'll enjoy picturing the look on his face every time a promising lead blows up in it." He fed Al Capone's confessions to the flames page by page.

  THIRTY-SIX

  The summer of 1944 was always there, like the war and rationing. The sun was stationary, the sea stale, the merchants who took numbers and sacked groceries moved slowly and doled out pleasantries as if they needed to be conserved, like tires and fresh eggs. Paul and Sharon fought over little things, their tempers in short supply also, and some nights Paul slept at the marina, but neither held a grudge long and they always made up without saying anything about the argument that had led to their separation. Peter had never known a long-term relationship between a man and woman to be any different.

  Autumn came without leaves changing, without a snap in the air, without raking or hayrides or apple cider or the smell of burning foliage; without any notice at all, until gradually the heat subsided to an even seventy. Rain came frequently but without the suddenness of summer downpours. The first of the upper-middle-class tourists arrived in late-model Packards and Oldsmobiles (the latest being 1942, before Detroit retooled for defense), launched speedboats, and stretched out on blankets on the beach. The St. Louis Cardinals defeated the St. Louis Browns in what radio announcers called the Streetcar Series, four games to two. Stan Musial hit successfully three times in Game 4, propelling the Cardinals to a 5-0 lead. A Browns rally came smash up against a spectacular double play by Marty Marion, playing shortstop. Paul won forty dollars off the proprietor of a bait-and-tackle shop, disappeared for three days, and showed up at Sharon's house drunk, with a double armload of canned beef. She forgave him over the feast that followed.