Capone: The Life and World of Al Capone (47 page)

Armed with this affidavit, Capone's lawyers requested Federal Judge James H. Wilkerson to postpone the hearing for forty days. The judge allowed them only a week. The U.S. attorney had meanwhile discovered that during the time Capone was supposedly incapacitated he spent the better part of a morning in the Dade County solicitor's office, attended the races at Hialeah and the Sharkey- Stribling fight in Flamingo Park, flew to Bimini, and sailed to Nassau. Charged with contempt of court, he was left at liberty, pending trial, under a $5,000 bond.

The state was as yet no more prepared to try Scalise and Anselmi for the St. Valentine's Day massacre than they had been to try McGurn. But the need never arose. According to the account generally accepted,*
Capone learned of their disloyalty from Frankie Rio. With Giunta installed as president of the Unione Siciliane and Scalise and Anselmi as his vice executives, they were talking and acting as if they considered Capone superfluous. "I'm the big shot now," Scalise had been heard to brag. Rumor further attributed to the trio a move to wrest from Capone control of both bootlegging and business rackets.

At first Capone would not believe it, not of the men he had refused to sacrifice to Hymie Weiss' vengeance, to whose defense in the Olson-Walsh murder trials he had contributed so generously. To convince him, Rio contrived a test.

Early in May Capone invited the Sicilians to dinner at the Hawthorne Inn. During the meal he and Rio pretended to quarrel. Rio slapped him in the face and stalked out. The Sicilians took the bait. The next day they approached Rio, full of sympathy. Capone, they said, deserved a lesson. Rio agreed, cursing and uttering terrible threats against his leader. At this Scalise disclosed that the Aiellos had a standing offer of $50,000 for anybody who could get rid of Capone. Why not combine forces? For three days, at a lakeside hideaway, the four men explored ways and means. Then Rio reported to Capone.

The Sicilians' execution, following a banquet at the Hawthorne Inn, occurred on May 7. Their bodies were loaded into the back seat of their own car, which the driver abandoned near Hammond, Indiana. When the coroner examined the bodies, he found hardly a bone unbroken, hardly an area of flesh without bruises.

And so no one remained to stand trial for the St. Valentine's Day massacre.

Both Capone and Torrio attended the all-important conference held at the President Hotel in Atlantic City five months after the Cleveland meeting. Cutting across all the old ethnic and national divisions, there gathered around the table not only Italians and Sicilians, but also Jews, Irish and Slavs, more than thirty gangsters in all. From Chicago came Frank McErlane and Joe Saltis; the Caponeites, Jake Guzik, Frank Nitti and Frank Rio; from Philadelphia, Max "Boo Boo" Hoff, Sam Lazar and Charles Schwartz; from New York, Frank Costello, Lucky Luciano and Arthur Flegenheimer, alias Dutch Schultz; from Atlantic City itself, the political boss and numbers racketeer, Enoch J. "Nucky" Johnson. . . .

The conference lasted three days from May 13 through 16, 1929. The main subjects of discussion were disarmament, peace and amalgamation on a nationwide scale. "I told them," Capone disclosed later, "there was business enough to make us all rich and it was time to stop all the killings and look on our business as other men look on theirs, as something to work at and forget when we go home at night. It wasn't an easy matter for men who had been fighting for years to agree on a peaceful business program. But we finally decided to forget the past and begin all over again and we drew up a written agreement and each man signed on the dotted line."

Under this agreement all gangs were to renounce assassination and the use of firearms and to join in a defensive, nonviolent alliance against overzealous police and their informers. The country was divided into spheres of influence. Small gangs were to disband and their individual members to accept the jurisdiction of a single territorial organization; Chicago's North and South Side gangs were to merge under Capone's leadership; the Unione Siciliane was to reorganize from top to bottom with a new national president. An executive committee was formed to arbitrate all disputes and mete out punishment for violations of the agreement. Torrio served as chairman.

Bugs Moran did not attend the conference. With remnants of his gang he was still seeking an opportunity to kill Capone. Also, as Capone knew, a good many Chicago Sicilians had sworn to avenge Scalise, Anselmi and Giunta. Thus threatened, physically and nervously depleted, Capone adopted the same course as Torrio when the North Siders were tracking him. He had himself jailed.

There was a detective on the Philadelphia police force, James "Shooey" Malone, with whom Capone had been friendly ever since they had met at the Hialeah racetrack the year before. As soon as the conference ended on May 16, Capone telephoned a Philadelphia ally, asking him to deliver a message to Malone. With Rio he then drove to the city, arriving toward 7 P.M. They went to a movie on Market Street. When they came out two hours later, Malone and another detective, John Creedon, were waiting for them.

"You're Al Capone, aren't you?" said Malone for the record.

"My name's Al Brown," Capone replied. "Call me Capone if you want to. Who are you?" The detectives flashed their badges. "Oh, bulls, eh? All right, then here's my gun," and he handed over a .38caliber revolver, thereby establishing grounds on which to convict him for carrying a concealed weapon. He prodded Rio, who likewise surrendered a revolver. What greater loyalty could a bodyguard show than to follow his master into prison?

The police magistrate before whom they were arraigned shortly after midnight fixed bail at $35,000 each. They had only a few thousand between them, and the two lawyers Capone had sent for, Bernard L. Lemisch and Cornelius Haggerty, Jr., accused the police of railroading their clients into jail. But Capone was content.

Philadelphia's director of public safety, Major Lemuel B. Schofield, hailed the arrest as a triumph of police vigilance and proudly accepted the felicitations that poured into his office. Burning with curiosity, he had the two prisoners brought to him that very night. Capone was subdued, polite, responsive, but Rio, who had begun to chafe under restraint, shouted that he was being robbed of his rights. "Listen, boy," Capone told him. "You're my friend, and you've been a faithful pal, but I'll do the talking." The bodyguard gave no more trouble.

"Did you know that assistant state's attorney who was knocked off a couple of years ago?" Schofield asked Capone.

"Yes," said Capone. "Little Mac was a fine fellow. He was a great friend of mine, always trying to help everybody. I was talking to him just before he was shot."

The conversation turned to the Atlantic City conference. The major lent an eager ear, and Capone poured bathos into it. "I'm tired of gang murders and gang shootings," he said. "I'm willing to live and let live. I have a wife and eleven-year-old kid, a boy, whom I idolize, and a beautiful home in Florida. If I could go there and forget it all, I'd be the happiest man in the world. It was with the idea of making peace amongst the gangsters that I spent the week in Atlantic City and got the word of each leader that there will be no more shooting."

"What are you doing now?" Schofield asked.

"I'm living on my money. I'm trying to retire."

"You should get out of the racket and forget it."

"I've been trying to, but I can't do it. Once you're in, you're always in. The parasites trail you, begging you for favors and dough. You fear death and worse than death; you fear the rats who would run to the cops, if you didn't constantly satisfy them with money."

"How can you have peace of mind?" Schofield wanted to know.

"Well, I'm like any other man. I've been in the, racket long enough to realize that I must take the breaks, the fortunes of war. Three of my friends were killed in Chicago last week [Scalise, Anselmi and Giunta]. That certainly doesn't get you peace of mind. I haven't had peace of mind in years. Every minute I was in danger of death. Even on a peace errand you're taking a chance on the light suddenly going out. I have to hide from the rest of the racketeers, even to the point of concealing my identity under assumed names in hotels and elsewhere when I'm traveling. Why, when I went to Atlantic City, I registered under a fictitious name."

The deluded director of public safety announced afterward: "I had a most interesting discussion with Capone on the racket in the United States. He was in a reminiscent mood and seemed to be at the point where he was anxious to be at peace, not only with gang sters but the law. In a quiet, gentlemanly manner he told me he was on an errand of peace when Detectives Creedon and Malone grabbed him."

In the morning the chief of detectives confronted Capone. "You are charged with being a suspicious character and carrying concealed deadly weapons. What have you to say?"

Capone had nothing to say. He laughed. Had he ever been arrested before? Once, he allowed, in Joliet for the same offense, but he was not held. In fact, he had never seen the inside of a prison. What about New York? Wasn't he arrested in New York? "Yes, eighteen years ago. Pardon me, I'm a little twisted. I guess I'm not fully awake. I was arrested in New York about three or four years ago. I was picked up on suspicion of murder [Pegleg Lonergan], but I was discharged. I was also arrested in Olean, New York, on a disorderly charge...."

In his Prairie Avenue home Capone's mother, an austere figure in black silk, intermingling a few words of broken English with Italian, presided over a living room full of puzzled, overwrought Italians. Her daughter Mafalda, who had just graduated from Lucy Flower High School at the age of eighteen, said: "Of course, Al would carry a gun. Would anyone expect him to walk the streets anywhere without protection?" Her black hair hung loose to her shoulders, and she wore an apple-green silk negligee, having gotten out of bed with a severe cold to help her mother entertain the sympathizers. "Probably the Philadelphia police and the judge, too, wanted some publicity. After it quiets down a little they will let him go, because they could not expect him to go unarmed."

Mama Teresa passed a tray laden with soft drinks and snacks. Mae Capone and Sonny, Mafalda explained, had gone to the Florida house for the winter, Matt was in his second year at Villanova, and Bert (Albert John) in a boys' prep school. "If people only know Al as I know-him," she said, "they wouldn't say the things about him they do. I adore him. And he's mother's life. He's so very good, so kind to us. People who only know him from newspaper stories will never realize the real man he is."

With his parting words to Major Schofield Capone had asked him to notify Mae Capone at once "in case I get a bad break." He got a very bad break. Taken before judge John E. Walsh in the criminal division of the Municipal Court, he pleaded guilty, assum ing he would draw a light sentence, perhaps three months, time enough to plan his next moves in safety, while his associates reduced the dangers threatening him on the outside through diplomacy or warfare. Judge Walsh imposed the maximum sentence of one year. As Capone, incredulous, was led off with the hapless Rio to Philadelphia's Holmesburg County Prison, he tore a diamond ring from his finger and handed it to Attorney Lemisch, instructing him to forward it to his brother Ralph. Between arrest and imprisonment barely sixteen hours had elapsed.

Holmesburg, with more than 1,700 prisoners jammed into cell blocks built to hold 600, was one of the country's worst jails. A few weeks before Capone entered it, the prisoners, rioting in protest against the foul food and brutal guards, set fire to their mattresses. The word went out from Chicago that a $50,000 fee awaited any lawyer able to procure Capone's release. None succeeded. Nor did an attempt to bribe the district attorney of Philadelphia, John Mono- ghan, with an offer of $50,000. But in August Capone was transferred to the city's larger and better-equipped Eastern Penitentiary. There Warden Herbert B. Smith made him more comfortable, giving him a cell to himself and letting him furnish it with rugs, pictures, a chest of drawers, desk, bookshelf, lamps and a $500 radio console. As his work, assignment, he drew the untiring one of library file clerk. For ordinary inmates visiting hours were limited to Sundays, but Capone's friends and family could come any day. From the warden's office he was allowed to telephone whomever he chose, and he spoke often to his lawyers, his underworld colleagues and various politicians, including Pennsylvania Congressman Benjamin M. Golder. He continued to direct his organization chiefly through Jake Guzik and Ralph Capone, with whom he remained in constant communication.

The reporters Capone was willing to talk to had little difficulty getting to him either and they filled column after column with the minutiae of his daily existence. CAPONE GAINS ELEVEN POUNDS . . . CAPONE DOESN'T GO TO CHURCH ON SUNDAYS . . . CAPONE PICKS CUBS TO WIN 1930 FLAG . . . CAPONE READS LIFE OF NAPOLEON. . . . Concerning Napoleon, the following sentiments were ascribed to him: "I'll have to hand it to Napoleon as the world's greatest racketeer, but I could have wised him up on some things. The trouble with that guy was he got the swelled head. He overplayed his hand and they made a bum out of him. He should have had sense enough after that Elba jolt to kiss himself out of the game. But he was just like the rest of us. He didn't know when to quit and had to get back in the racket. He simply put himself on the spot. That made it easy for the other gangs to take him and they were no dumbbells. If he had lived in Chicago, it would have been a sawed-off shotgun Waterloo for him. He didn't wind up in a ditch as a coroner's case, but they took him for a one-way ride to St. Helena, which was about as tough a break."

His views on a wide range of weighty issues were accorded equally serious attention. The modern woman, for example. "The trouble with women today is their excitement over too many things outside the home. A woman's home and her children are her real happiness. If she would stay there, the world would have less to worry about the modern woman."

Though he looked forward ardently to his wife's visits, he could not, he told one interviewer, bear to have his son see him in prison. "My boy thinks I'm in Europe. Whenever he sees a picture of a big boat, he asks his mother if it's bringing Daddy home."