However, the Capones certainly feared crime. During their early years in New York, the most notorious type of Italian villainy was the Black Hand, La Mano Nera. This was a distinctly Old World version of extortion, courtly but deadly. It began with the victim receiving an anonymous, elaborately worded letter that began, often as not, with the greeting “Honored Sir,” and went on to demand ransom in exchange for the life of the recipient or members of his family. Illustrations of daggers and skulls accompanied the text. Black Hand threats to murder or kidnap helpless children were carried out just often enough to make victims sure to pay. Although American law enforcement agencies often referred to it as a society, the Black Hand consisted of freelancers. Furthermore, La Mano Nera preyed exclusively on Italians, who unanimously feared and despised this vestige of another era. As the Capone children were growing up, the Black Hand symbolized criminal behavior to them. Years later, when a Senate investigation committee asked Ralph Capone, Al’s older brother, if he had ever heard of the Mafia as a child in Brooklyn, he shook his head and replied, “No. I heard ‘Black Hand.’ I never heard the word ‘Mafia.’ ”
Although they lived a conventional life, and Gabriele practiced his harmless, legitimate trade, the Capone family was several layers removed from the mainstream of American society. First, their religion, Roman Catholicism, set them apart from most Americans; anti-Catholic prejudice ran high and would only increase until the time of the Great War. Their language isolated them culturally and economically from the hoped-for rewards that had lured them to America, and even among other Italian immigrants their Neapolitan dialect presented still another barrier. Perhaps it was better that they were so isolated, for at least they were shielded from their adopted country’s dislike and fear of immigrants like themselves.
Responding to the strain of relocating in a foreign land, Gabriel and Teresa Capone had no more children until 1899, five years after their arrival. When they did bring another child into the world, they prayed that God would grant them a daughter after three sons, but their fourth child proved to be another boy. He was born on January 17, 1899. To him, their first child conceived and born in America, they gave the name Alphonse Capone.
• • •
From the moment of his birth, the child was exposed to hazard. Italian immigrant communities were notorious for their high infant mortality rate. According to one survey, it was nearly double the amount in other areas of New York. Fatal cases of pneumonia, diarrhea, and diphtheria abounded. The incidence of polio was also the highest in the region, and the foul Gowanus Canal was suspected as the source of the disease.
The infant managed to survive these early perils, and twenty days later, on February 7, the Capone family appeared in St. Michael and St. Edward’s Church at 108 St. Edward’s Street in Brooklyn for a baptismal ceremony. In the lore that has grown up around Al Capone over the years, several sinister names have been put forward as Capone’s godfather, names of other, older Brooklyn gangsters, as if the child were being baptized into a life of crime, but in fact there was no godfather present that chilly day. Instead, a family friend named Sophia Milo assumed the role of the child’s godmother.
The ceremony began as the priest, Father Garofalo, met the family at the entrance of the church and asked for the name of the child. After murmuring an introductory prayer, the priest breathed softly three times on the child’s face, saying, “Depart from him, unclean spirit, and give place to the Holy Spirit, the Advocate.” He then traced the sign of the cross on the child, to symbolize Christ’s taking possession of him. “Sever all snares of Satan which heretofore bound him,” the priest intoned over the infant, who was not yet three weeks old. The priest placed a pinch of salt in the child’s mouth, saying, “I cast out the demon from you, in the name of God the Father almighty.” As the godmother held the child, the priest drew water from the baptismal font with a ladle and poured a few drops on him, declaring, “I baptize you in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.”
In the years that followed, St. Michael and St. Edward’s Church served as the principal place of worship for the Capone family—especially Teresa, who attended Mass as regularly as Gabriele and his sons avoided it. A modest place, this church offered one of the few legitimate refuges available to the Capones and other Italian immigrants from the dreary routine of their lives. Every year, on May 8, church members organized an extravagant street festival to glorify their patron saints. As many as 200 people marched in a parade through the neighborhood. An immense banner in honor of St. Michael, adorned with an archangel bearing a flaming sword standing above a cowering Spirit of Darkness, led the way, offering one of the few splashes of color and fantasy in the otherwise dismal neighborhood. The parade came to a halt in front of the church, where Attanasio’s Brass Band played beloved overtures and arias from the dark, magical operas by Verdi: Aïda, Rigoletto, and I Vespri Siciliani, with its romantic tale of a thirteenth-century rebellion leading to the creation of the secret society known as the Mafia. Opera was often an addiction for the Italians (as it would be for Capone), at once an escape from and a celebration of life, a portal into another, more exalted realm.
• • •
In June 1900, when Alphonse was about eighteen months old, a U.S. census taker found the entire Capone family living at 69 Park Avenue in Brooklyn, in the building that housed Gabriele’s barbershop: a decided improvement over their previous apartment on Navy Street. The information Gabriele gave the census taker provided a concise portrait of the Capone family at the turn of the century:
Capone, Gabriele: head of household; male; 34 years old; married for 9 years. Born in Italy; immigrated in 1894; in US 6 years; citizenship status: Declaration of Intention. Occupation: barber (shop); no unemployment in the previous year. Can read, write, and speak English. Rents home.
Capone, Terresa [sic]: wife; female; 30 years old; married 9 years; mother of 4 children; 4 now living. Born in Italy, immigrated in 1894, in US for 6 years. Can read and write, unable to speak English.
The census also revealed that Gabriele had already taken the crucial step toward becoming an American citizen and attaining his goal to remain permanently in his new home. “Declaration of Intention” meant that he had filed for citizenship, usually known as taking “first papers.” He would finally complete this protracted process, formally renouncing his allegiance to the king of Italy and becoming a full-fledged American, six years later, on May 25, 1906.
The crowded Capone household eventually included two boarders, both Italian immigrants. One was a middle-aged musician named Andrea Callabrea, who had recently arrived in the United States, and the other was a young barber by the name of Michael Martino; he was, in all probability, Gabriele’s apprentice, working in the barbershop in return for room and board. There was nothing, on the face of it, to suggest that this household was nurturing the most notorious criminal in American history; it was utterly typical of other Italian immigrant families throughout the neighborhood: the men working at trades or crafts, usually self-employed or in small businesses, the women tending the children who swarmed through apartments and would soon choke the schools and streets of Brooklyn.
• • •
In 1904, when he was five years old, Al began attending Public School 7, located on Adams Street, close to the cramped Capone apartment. P.S. 7 was an old, dreary place, assaulted by the constant rumbling of the nearby elevated railroad, and its student body consisted largely of children from families as poor as his. For many children of immigrants, the public school system became a rite of passage from the old, confining ways into the mainstream of American life. It was in the public schools that many of the children first heard English spoken constantly and met other boys and girls of different backgrounds. It was where they first began to learn about America, to pledge allegiance to the flag, and to eat strange American foods they had never tasted at home. The children in turn passed on some of the knowledge of American customs they had acquired in school to
their parents, who, if they did not speak English and had no cause to travel, would not have learned of them. Thus education trickled upward through the immigrant communities, as casual as a rumor. However, the notion of continuing education was a novelty. New York City had begun administering high schools only in 1897, and at the time Capone was working his way through the dregs of the city’s public school system, most Italian immigrant families expected their children to leave school as soon as they were old enough to work, usually before reaching the ninth grade. Italian immigrants, especially, were discouraged from seeking higher education. Their Irish Catholic or American-born teachers often viewed them as a nuisance at best, a menace to the American way of life at worst. Even the Catholic Church fostered this attitude. “The Italians are not a sensitive people like our own,” an Irish priest advised the archbishop of New York. “When they are told they are about the worst Catholics that ever came to this country they don’t resent it or deny it. If they were a little more sensitive to such remarks, they would improve faster.”
Schools such as Capone’s P.S. 7 offered nothing in the way of assistance to children from Italian backgrounds to enter the mainstream of American life; they were rigid, dogmatic, strict institutions, where physical force often prevailed over reason in maintaining discipline. The teachers—usually female, Irish Catholic, and trained by nuns—were extremely young. A sixteen-year-old, earning $600 a year, would often teach boys and girls only a few years younger than she. The teachers kept order any way they could, usually by shouting and throwing erasers and chalk at recalcitrant students. They resorted to corporal punishment when necessary, often striking a child with a ruler. The teachers also lived with the threat of violence and retaliation from their pupils and rarely went anywhere alone, inside or out of the school building. Still, fistfights between students and teachers were common, even between male students and female teachers. “They were a fighting tribe, those teachers,” wrote a veteran of the Gowanus public school system, “and they needed to be to survive.” While children such as Al Capone found school a place of constant discipline relieved by sudden outbreaks of violence, their parents could only imagine what was taking place behind the institution’s big red doors. There was almost no contact between families and schools.
• • •
When Al became a little older, around ten, he was drawn to the Brooklyn docks, where the action was. There he could study a 100-ton floating crane used by the Navy and watch the changing of the military guard at the gate of the Navy Yard. The soldiers’ marching fascinated the boy, who enjoyed hooting at the men who fell out of step. He was hardly alone in this practice and was usually ignored, except for one revealing instance. Observing a particularly inept guard bungle the drill, Al called out, “Hey, you long-legged number three there! Get in step! You’re holding ’em up.”
After he was dismissed, the errant soldier charged the Navy Yard gate, preparing to spit at his heckler. Instead of running away, Al held his ground and dared him to fight: a brave and foolhardy thing to do. But just before the boy and the man came to blows, the corporal in charge of the recruits called the soldier off. As he left, the corporal confided to Al, “You got his goat for sure, but if he really spits on you, I’ll put him on report.”
Instead of being grateful for the gesture, Capone remained defiant. “Don’t do any reporting,” he said. “Just let the big sonofabitch outside the gate. I’ll take care of him.”
Capone’s bravado impressed the corporal, who later told his sergeant, “If this kid had a good officer to get hold of him and steer him right, he’d make a good man. But if nothing like this will happen, the kid may drift for a few years until some wise guy picks him up and steers him around and then he’ll be heard from one day.”
The young Al Capone was heard from again, at least in the neighborhood. On this occasion, he chose to vent his youthful fury at the Italians’ traditional rivals, the Irish. A neighbor, Angela Pitaro,1 says, “When Al Capone lived on Navy Street, all the paisani, the Italian fellahs, got together, and went to this Irish bar. In fact, every corner had a bar, all of them Irish. Women off the boat from Italy used to wear two or three skirts, and the Irish fellahs would go behind them and pick up the dresses.” When the harassment hit closer to home, Angela recalls that Al became involved. “One day, my mother goes out to the hall. She’s looking for her tub. She has to wash clothes. ‘Angela,’ she says, ‘they stole my tub. How am I gonna wash my clothes for my kids? Who took it?’ My brother said to my mother, ‘Ma, don’t worry, we’ll buy you a new one.’ But they couldn’t take it no more, the Italian boys. So Al Capone formed a gang. They were young—fourteen years old.
“Then, one day, we heard a noise, biddi-bum-bum-bum, biddi-bum-bum-bum, and then we heard, ‘And we are the boys of Navy Street, and touch us if you dare!’ The Irish fellahs came out of the bar. The Italian fellahs, Al Capone, my brothers, the whole gang, they gave those Irish fellahs such a beating. In those days the cops were short and fat, and by the time they came all the boys disappeared. They were on top of the roofs.”
In this incident a few outlines of the mature Capone are visible. The vengeance he wreaked on the “Irish fellahs” was not an act of vandalism or desecration; it was surely violent and probably unnecessary, but it was, in its misguided, exuberant way, a gallant and generous gesture designed to secure the return of the missing washtub. It showed that Al, even in early adolescence, acted as a leader, playing the hero, wanting to be seen as a righter of wrongs, even while he perpetrated his own mischief. It also demonstrated his protective instincts, especially where his own kind, especially the women, were concerned. Above all, Al liked to create a spectacle in which he cast himself as the champion of the oppressed and aggrieved. “We are the boys of Navy Street, and touch us if you dare!”
As he acquired a taste for the distractions and dangers of street life, Capone’s school record, which had once showed promise, gradually deteriorated. From P.S. 7 he moved to a larger school, P.S. 133. Located half a dozen blocks from his home, the new school was a hideous Gothic monstrosity, as impersonal and forbidding as its name, a massive building that bore more resemblance to a prison than to a place of learning. There he consistently received Bs on his report card, until the sixth grade, when his grades began to disintegrate. He was often truant, missing school more than half the time, and as his absences took their toll on his studies, he was forced to undergo the humiliation of repeating sixth grade. By the time he was ready to go on to the seventh grade, Al Capone was fourteen years old. That year his adolescent frustration and impatience with school finally exploded. After being scolded by his teacher one time too often, Al lashed out at her. She struck him, and he hit back. Since hitting was common in these schools, the incident might have ended there, but then the teacher took him to the principal, who administered a sound beating to Al. Afterward, the boy vowed never to return to P.S. 133, and he never did.
So ended the school career of Al Capone, as did the schooling of many other children in the Gowanus section of Brooklyn. Although the image of the large and glowering young student striking his young female teacher seems brutal, it is worth noting that such altercations were daily events at P.S. 133. Still, the expulsion was a decisive event in his young life, for it marked his first formal rebuff from an American institution, and by extension, from the mainstream of American life. The overriding message that the educational system sent to Al and to his classmates from Red Hook and Gowanus was that they were insignificant, had nothing to offer, and existed solely on the grudging largesse of the state. For these youths, school was more a tool of confinement than a method of advancement; it was an institutionalized form of punishment, a dead end. At the time of his expulsion, Capone had, at any rate, pretty well run his course in school. He was fourteen, able-bodied, and there was virtually no chance that he would go on to high school, even if he had been a model student.
• • •
By the time Al quit school, the Capone family had aban
doned their quarters on Park Avenue for a succession of better equipped apartments on nearby Garfield Place. They lived first at number 38, then moved to slightly larger quarters a few doors up at number 46, and finally settled at number 21, on the other side of the street. Although it was only a ten-minute walk from Navy Street, Garfield Place was in every way superior: a pleasant, quiet, residential street lined with row houses and trees. There was a pool hall at number 20, close to the Capone home, and it was here that Gabriele spent considerable time, and where his son Al, in preference to attending school, learned to play the game, at which he quickly excelled.
The move from Navy Street to Garfield Place was a small one, at most a step or two up the social scale for the Capones, but to Al the relocation would have enormous significance, for his new surroundings placed him in proximity to the most important influences of his life as a young adult. Just up the hill from Garfield Place was a stable Irish neighborhood; here, only blocks from Al, lived the girl whom he would marry. Another local landmark of equal significance for Al was a small, second-story establishment at Fourth Avenue and Union Street, identified by its unprepossessing sign: THE JOHN TORRIO ASSOCIATION. It was here, in these utterly ordinary surroundings, that the first modern racketeer held court.
Everybody in the neighborhood knew Johnny; he was small, shy, precise, almost dainty, and generous—especially with youngsters willing to run errands for him. His wife adored him; years later, when he hovered near death after an assassination attempt, she declared he had always been the “best and dearest of husbands” and described their domestic life as “one long, unclouded honeymoon.” To the locals, Torrio appeared to be a fairly successful numbers racketeer, quietly tending his part of the so-called Italian lottery. They would have been disappointed but not really surprised to know that this well-dressed man with the tiny hands and feet also managed a number of local brothels. But they would have been astounded to learn that their Johnny, more than any other individual, was responsible for the development of modern corporate crime—that is, casting traditional Italian racketeering in the American corporate mold, making its vices available to all, not just Italians, and eventually extending its turf far beyond the streets of Brooklyn to the entire nation. “As an organizer and administrator of underworld affairs Johnny Torrio is unsurpassed in the annals of American crime,” one of its ablest chroniclers, Herbert Asbury, has written. “He was probably the nearest thing to a real master mind that this country has yet produced. He conducted his evil enterprises as if they were legitimate businesses.” If the Black Hand represented the past of Italian crime, Johnny Torrio incarnated its future. But for now that corporate, mainstream type of crime, which so closely resembled legitimate American business, existed in embryonic form in the John Torrio Association. Al Capone walked beneath the sign several times a day.
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