Capone: The Life and World of Al Capone (59 page)

He deplored America's loss of ideals, or so Vanderbilt quoted him. "People respect nothing nowadays. Once we put honor, truth, and the law on a pedestal. Our children were brought up to respect these things. The war ended. We have had nearly twelve years to straighten ourselves out, and look what a mess we've made of our life!"

A week before the trial Wilson heard again from O'Hare. Capone, he reported, had procured the list of veniremen from which the jury would be chosen and his men were busy trying to bribe some of them with prizefight tickets, cash and job offers, and threatening to kill or maim others. O'Hare had copied ten names from the list Nos. 30 through 39. Wilson showed them to Johnson, and together they took them to Wilkerson, who sent for the complete veniremen's list. The names of Nos. 30 through 39 tallied with those O'Hare had jotted down. "Bring your case into court as planned, gentlemen," said the judge. "Leave the rest to me."

O'Hare's activity as an undercover agent did not end with the Capone case. He developed a taste for the work. Despite his long, profitable association with gangsters, he had detested them from the first, and he went on informing against them to both county and state police, undaunted by Wilson's warning that some policeman in the pay of gangsters would betray him. At the same time, as president of the Sportsman's Park racetrack in Stickney, developer of legal dog tracks in Illinois, Massachusetts and Florida, manager of the Chicago Cardinals' pro football team, real estate investor, owner of an insurance company and two advertising agencies, he became a rich and respected business leader, the sins of his past forgotten.

Ensign Edward Henry O'Hare graduated from Annapolis in 1937. Five years later President Roosevelt awarded Lieutenant O'Hare the Congressional Medal of Honor for "one of the most daring single combat flights in the history of aviation." On February 20, 1942, piloting his Grumman Wildcat over the Pacific, he had brought down five Japanese medium bombers. The following year Lieutenant Commander O'Hare died in aerial combat. In 1949 Chicago's International Airport was renamed O'Hare Airport.

The hero's father lived to see none of these honors conferred. On November 8, 1939, while driving along Chicago's Ogden Avenue, he was killed by two men firing shotguns from a passing car. They were never identified. The objects the police removed from O'Hare's pockets included a rosary, a crucifix, a religious medallion, a note he had written in Italian and a doggerel verse clipped from a magazine. "Margy, Oh, Margy," the note read, "Quanto tempo io penso per te. Fammi passar una notte insieme con to [How often I think of you. Let me spend a night with you]." The verse went:

The clock of life is wound but once And no man has the power To tell just when the hands will stop At late or early hour. Now is the only time you own. Live, love, toil with a will. Place no faith in time. For the clock may soon be still.

On the eve of the trial Damon Runyon, who was reporting it for Hearst's Universal Service, wandered into Colosimo's Cafe, saw Capone at a table with a group of gangsters, politicians and lawyers, and, having known him in Florida, joined the party. How did Capone estimate his chances? he asked. "I believe I've got at least an even break," replied the resilient gang lord.

He upbraided the press for its exaggerations. "It would have been utterly impossible for me to have done some of the things charged to me. Physically impossible. . . . Racketeer! Why, the real racketeers are the banks."

Runyon noted in his dispatch next day: "It is impossible to talk to Capone without conceding that he has that intangible attribute known as personality, or, as we say in the world of sport, `color.' "

Tuesday, October 6

Squad cars carrying fourteen detectives convoy Capone the three miles from the Lexington Hotel north to the Federal Court Building. The lead car pauses at each intersection while its occupants survey the side streets for signs of friends or foes who might attempt to rescue or kill Capone. "Nobody's going to zuta anybody around here if we can help it," says the chief of detectives. Approaching the Federal Building, the motorcade turns into a tunnel, normally used only by delivery trucks, that ends at a basement entrance. The detectives guide Capone through an underground labyrinth to a freight elevator. The sixth-floor corridor is kept clear until he has entered the courtroom.

When the first venireman's name is called, Capone's face clouds. The name does not appear on the copy of the list he had obtained. At the last minute Wilkerson has nullified any possible subornation by the simple expedient of switching panels with a fellow judge.

As the selection of jurors proceeds, Capone bleakly studies the decor. A white marble dado, trimmed with gilt, rises halfway up the walls. Above them are murals depicting scenes from American colonial history. Behind the judge's bench Benjamin Franklin addresses the Continental Congress, his right hand outstretched toward George Washington. The windows are too high and narrow to admit enough light, and electric bulbs in the chandeliers and sconces burn all day. Phil D'Andrea fusses over Capone, when not glowering at the jurors, flicking a piece of lint from his master's mustard-brown suit, adjusting his chair closer to the counsel table.

Judge Wilkerson wears no robes over his dark-blue business suit. His iron-gray hair is tousled. As he questions each venireman at length, he sits on the extreme edge of his swivel chair. In striking contrast with his colleagues, U.S. Attorney George E. Q. Johnson (he adopted the "Q" to distinguish himself from innumerable George Johnsons) has the look of an esthete. His silken gray hair, parted straight as a ruler down the middle, lies on his high-domed head like birds' wings. His complexion is rosy, his mouth thin and sensitive. Four assistant U.S. attorneys sit at his table-William J. Froelich, Samuel G. Clawson, Jacob I. Grossman and Dwight H. Green (the last a future governor of Illinois) -and Johnson entrusts the examination of witnesses to them, content to remain the silent strategist.

By 4 P.M. the jury has been empaneled. It consists chiefly of smalltown tradesmen, mechanics and farmers, who have sworn that they harbor no prejudice against the defendant, no wish to see him imprisoned.

Wednesday, October 7

The government's first witness, an Internal Revenue clerk, testifies that Capone filed no returns for the years 1924-1929. Chester Bragg follows him to the stand to repeat Capone's admission of ownership during the Smoke Shop raid. A pale, nervous Shumway then tabulates the Smoke Shop profits during his two years as its cashier. They exceeded $550,000.

Thursday, October 8

Assistant U.S. Attorney Clawson submits in evidence Lawyer Mat- tingly's foot-in-mouth letter to Agent Herrick. "A lawyer cannot confess for his client," objects the portly Fink. "When my client conferred power of attorney in this case to enable him to keep out of the penitentiary, it did not imply the power or authority to make statements that may get him into the penitentiary."

"It might have that effect ultimately," remarked the judge.

Oh, my conscience! In his dismay Fink mingles wrestling and Biblical allusions. "This is the last toe. They have got him nailed to the cross now. This is putting the last toe on him."

Ahern interjects: "The Supreme Court has often held that it is human nature to avoid tax. We had a Boston tea party-"

"I suppose," says the judge, "this is a Boston tea party."

But Capone's hopes still burn bright. How can lawyers who charge such fees, who have saved him time and again, fail him now? In the evening, at the Lexington, a tailor measures him for two lightweight suits. "You don't need to be ordering fancy duds," says Frankie Rio. "You're going to prison. Why don't you have a suit made with stripes on it?"

"The hell I am!" Capone retorts. "I'm going to Florida for a nice, long rest, and I need some new clothes before I go."

Friday, October 9

The wholesale price of alcohol has jumped from $30 to $32 per five-gallon can. The Chicago Herald-Examiner ascribes the rise to the cost of Capone's defense.

The public relations council for the Protestant Churches drops a hint to its clergymen: The reason they receive less publicity than Al Capone is because they are so much less picturesque.

A spectator advances to the counsel table and grasps Capone's hand. "I'm Benjamin Bachrach, public defender," he says.

An athlete from Kiel, Germany, pausing in Chicago on a roundthe-world walking tour, asks Capone, through an obliging court attendant, if he will sign his "memory book." "I've signed too many things," says Capone. "Tell him no."

D'Andrea takes his customary seat behind Capone and fixes his dark, piercing eyes on the witness stand.

Dwight Green calls the government's first Florida witness, Parker Henderson. Squirming under D'Andrea's gaze, he testifies to the Western Union money orders he picked up for Capone, to the purchase of the Palm Island house and the addition of shrubbery, a boat dock and swimming pool. The small chalk-white man who mounts the stand next betrays intense anxiety. He is John Fotre, manager of the Western Union office in the Lexington Hotel, from which many of the money orders were telegraphed. Though cooperative in pretrial examination, he now claims he doesn't know who sent them. Judge Wilkerson speaks to him sharply: "You better think this over."

After the court recesses for the day, Wilson reproves the frightened witness. "What can you expect," says Fotre, "when they let one of Capone's hoodlums sit there with his hand on his gun?"

He has no need to name the hoodlum. Wilson details Sullivan and Mike Malone, who has finally dropped his disguise, to verify the charge.

Saturday, October 10

The two agents enter the crowded elevator behind D'Andrea. Malone brushes against him and nods to Sullivan. He has felt the contours of a revolver.

When the agents report to Wilkerson, he enjoins them from any action that might affect the witnesses yet to testify. They must handle D'Andrea outside the courtroom, and he will adjourn the trial for a few minutes during the morning session while they do so.

At a prearranged signal a bailiff notifies D'Andrea that a messenger is waiting in the corridor with a telegram for him. As the bodyguard leaves the courtroom, the agents, hard on his heels, hustle him into an antechamber, seize his revolver, and turn him over to the police. Claiming the right to carry concealed weapons, he flourishes deputy sheriff's credentials, such as those several Capone lieutenants carry.

"Your Honor," Ahern pleads later, trying to mollify judge Wilkerson, "this defendant has taken care of his mother and sisters. To me, he is a high class boy. I like him. . . . If Your Honor understood D'Andrea's mind and his heart, you would know that he did not mean any affront to the Court."

Wilkerson finds D'Andrea guilty of contempt of court and sends him to jail for six months.

The procession of witnesses who have sold things to Capone and can contribute to the picture of his net worth and net expenditure is a long one, and their testimony consumes two all-day sessions. There are the butchers and bakers, the real estate agents, the decorators, furniture dealers, building contractors, tailors, jewelers. . . .

One of the Miami contractors, Curt Otto Koenitzer, settles himself into the witness chair, smoking a cigar. A deputy marshal takes it from him (laughter). After his brief testimony-Mrs. Capone paid him $6,000 for his work on the bathhouse and a garage-Koenitzer retrieves his cigar to the huge amusement of the audience and exits grinning.

In the corridor a pretty brunette witness from the Miami Western Union office expresses disenchantment with Chicago. She hardly considers the trip worth her time even at government expense. "What do y'all do for excitement up here?" she asks.

Tuesday, October 13

"When counsel speaks of Al," says judge Wilkerson to Fink, "I assume he means the defendant."

"Yes. Is Your Honor affronted?"

"I think I should prefer the term defendant."

Fink feigns shock when the next witness, a former Internal Revenue agent, admits that in the course of investigating Capone he drank beer with him in a Cicero speakeasy. "Beer," he repeats without shame. "Good beer, too."

Wednesday, October 14

The Anglo-Italian historical novelist Rafael Sabatini, about to embark on an American lecture tour, concedes Capone to be "a center of that atmosphere of treachery, intrigue, shots in the dark and raw power in which historical romance best grows," but disqualifies him as a proper subject for the genre because "he seems really to have no ideals." The future writer of historical romances, Sabatini predicts, will probably find Mussolini the most inspiring personality of his day for "the power and the intrigue are there, and the ideal with them."

The last important prosecution witness is Fred Ries, who implicates Pete Penovich, Jimmy Mondi, Frank Pope, Jake Guzik and Ralph Capone, as well as the defendant, in the affairs of the Smoke Shop.

Thursday, October 15

A nonagenarian veteran of the Civil War, wearing his old blue uniform and medals, totters up to the bench with a bouquet of faded flowers for the judge. He is ushered to a front-row seat, where he soon falls asleep, not to awake until the adjournment.

The principal defense argument centers on Capone's misfortunes at the racetracks. As Fink tells it, no unluckier gambler ever placed a bet. He nearly always lost. Eight bookmakers estimate the increasingly large sums Capone paid them year after year, ranging from $12,000 in 1924 to $110,000 in 1929. It seems that practically all the money the government claims he made out of his gambling houses the bookies took away.

Oscar Gutter, a Chicago bookie, who keeps his derby on until the judge tells him to remove it, testifies to a $60,000 loss by Capone in 1927. Asked under cross-examination how he remembers, he replies: "My ledger showed that at the end of the season."

"I thought you didn't keep any books," says Green.,

"Well, I kept them from month to month so I could pay my income tax." (Laughter)