Uncle Al Capone (2 page)

Then there were her children. Mafalda—or, to me, Aunt Maffie—was the youngest and the only daughter. Only five years older than my dad, she was more of a sister to him than an aunt. To me, she was a hero and I was her spitting image. Everyone in the family called me “Little Mafalda.”

The older children were six boys: Vincenzo, my grandfather Ralph and his younger brothers, Frank, Al, Mimi, Bites, and Matty. Frank, Ralph, and Al were all involved, to a greater or lesser extent, in earning the family’s keep—which meant operating the Outfit, the organization that distributed liquor illegally during Prohibition. But to me, they were as far from “criminals” as anyone could get. They were loving, funny, larger-than-life men and fiercely proud of me. I could never reconcile the frightening images the newspapers painted of them with the warm-hearted people who teased and joked with me at Sunday dinners.

Finally, there was my dad, Ralph Gabriel Capone. In his short life, he had been the star and the hope of the family. He was keenly intelligent and determined to set out on a different path than his father and uncles. He wanted to make a name for himself with a legitimate business, but the Capone name dogged him and dashed his hopes. Ultimately, he took his own life when I was only ten years old.

Sitting at the table with my children and sharing these memories, some painful and some brimming with joy, was a defining moment for me. For many years, I had delved privately into my family’s history, searching for the line between rumor and truth, and, very slowly, began shedding the thick blanket of shame that came with the Capone notoriety. But to offer this history to my children and to find that they were proud to call it their own was a new step for me. At the age of thirty-four, with the help of my children, I finally accepted myself as Deirdre Marie Capone.

Not only were my children happy to learn of their family ties to Al Capone, they loved to tell people about them. And today, I have fourteen grandchildren who all think of their heritage as a badge of honor. When my granddaughter, Abby, was in the second grade, her teacher made a book for the class in which each student wrote two things about themselves, something true and something untrue, so that the other children could guess which was which. Abby proudly wrote, “I don’t like mustard” and “I am Al Capone’s grand-grand-grand niece.”

Long before I told my children about my family—in fact, long before I even had children—I began to research the Capone history. The research I did—sometimes by reading secondhand historical accounts, but more often by tapping the memories of the family members who lived that history personally—forms the basis of this book. It was my children’s acceptance that gave me the courage to go ahead with the writing, but this book has been in the making for many years. In a sense, I have been writing this book all my life.

There was one episode in particular, when I was only seventeen, that set off my need to understand my family. In the fall of 1957, just after I graduated from high school, I got my first full-time job with an insurance company on LaSalle Street in Chicago. I was offered a full-ride scholarship to go to college, but my mother needed help supporting herself and my younger brother. The job was nothing glamorous; I earned $200 a month as a secretary in the Boiler and Machinery Division. Each week, I turned my entire check over to my mother.

At first, the job was not what I envisioned for myself, but over time, I began to adapt. I was proud of myself; I was never late, and I worked hard. My boss even suggested I take on stenographic work for him in addition to my regular duties. And I made friends there—in fact, it was at that company where I met Bob, my future husband.

So, when my boss called me into his office slightly more than six months into my stint there, I had no reason to believe he would have anything negative to say. I assumed he wanted to test my dictation skills, as he had done once before, so I brought my stenographic tablet with me into the office. He gestured at the chair across from his desk and asked me to have a seat. I, still suspecting nothing, sat down and got ready to take notes. But then he said something unexpected. “Deirdre, please tell me your name.”

As soon as the words left his mouth, I felt my face flush and my heart begin to pound. There is a trait that runs in the Capone family: intuition. My uncle Al survived countless attempts on his life because of it. In fact, he even had premonitions in dreams that saved his life. And in that moment, sitting across from my boss, I sensed what was going to happen.

“Deirdre,” I answered. “My name is Deirdre Gabriel.”

For years, I had been going by Gabriel, my great-grandfather’s first name and my father’s middle name. My mother had even legally changed my brother’s name from Ralph Capone to Ralph Gabriel, but she said it wasn’t worth all the paperwork to change mine because I would get married someday and it would change then.

But my legal name did matter. I applied for the job as Deirdre Gabriel, and that’s how everyone I worked with knew me. But because it was a life insurance company, I was eligible after six months for a free policy, and I had to use my legal name on the paperwork. As soon as that paperwork crossed his desk, the life insurance agent called my boss with the news.

“Tell me your real name,” my boss said.

I swallowed. There was no sense trying to pretend. “Capone…Deirdre Marie Capone.”

“Are you any relation to Al Capone?” He asked.

“Yes,” I admitted, “he was my uncle.”

For a moment, the words hung in the air between us. Then my boss sighed and shook his head. “I’m sorry,” he said, “but we can’t have you working here. I’m going to have to let you go. You’re fired.”

I don’t know how I managed to get out of his office and into the ladies’ room without breaking down, but somehow I found myself there, sobbing uncontrollably. By that time, Al Capone had been dead for ten years, and the Outfit was now run by Tony Accardo. But it was still associated with my family. It was just at that time in the 1950s that they began laundering money by investing it in legitimate businesses like insurance companies and car dealerships, then sitting on their boards. I realize in retrospect that the executives of the company I worked for worried that, by employing me, they might give law enforcement the false impression that the Outfit’s money was behind their operations.

That was why they let me go. But at the time, even if I understood their logic, it wouldn’t have offered consolation. As I cried in the ladies’ room, I was overcome with shame. My being fired had nothing to do with my performance—I knew I had done a good job. And I saw this same situation destroy my father. He was enormously gifted, brimming with potential, but time and again, the Capone name had shut him out of opportunities. No matter what his merits, no matter how hard he worked, he couldn’t get a leg up, and ultimately, those continual disappointments killed him.

And I had to wonder if the same thing would happen to me. I felt like the door to my true identity had suddenly flung open for all the world to see. A sinking feeling in my heart told me that if I was a Capone, I didn’t deserve a nice job. I came from a bad family, and I was a bad person by association. I didn’t deserve to sit across from an important man in a corner office with the sun shining through enormous windows. My real self finally caught up to me, and I understood that no matter what I did, I would always be doomed.

Somehow, I managed to regain my composure, clean out my desk, and leave the building. I got on the Illinois Central to go home, and the train’s rhythmic chugging sounded like, “You’re fired. You’re fired. You’re fired.” I was sure everyone else in the train car could hear the same words. I felt like they were staring at me, the poor unemployed girl, punished for the sins of her family. I don’t think the term “self-image” had been coined yet, but mine had taken a mighty blow.

The moment I got home, I knew exactly who to turn to. I called the woman who had always been my role model and confessor, my aunt, Maffie.

When I told her what happened, she answered without hesitating. “Come over and we’ll talk about it,” she said. “Uncle Johnny’s working, and I could use the company. I’ll fix us a good dinner of gravy and meatballs.”

Though Maffie was technically my great-aunt, that label didn’t hold much meaning in our family. The Capone generations were unusually blurred and interwoven. Because my father and Maffie were so close in age, they were much more like brother and sister than nephew and aunt. So, I considered Maffie my aunt and not my great-aunt.

This blurring of generations is partly why Maffie and I became so close. Add that to the fact that I, just like her, was the only Capone girl of my generation, and she treated me like someone special. Growing up, I spent a lot of time with her—often more than with my own mother. After my father died, she took me to my grandfather Ralph’s place and we spent the whole summer there together, healing and reconnecting to family. When I became a teenager, she took me shopping, fixed my hair, and, along with my grandmother Theresa, taught me to cook all the intoxicating, authentic Capone family recipes.

Whenever I felt blue or had a personal problem, I’d turn to Maffie. I knew she would take my side—the Capone side. In fact, after I left my first husband, an abusive man who threatened our infant daughter, Maffie asked me if I wanted to have him killed. I politely declined, but I’ve always believed she would have arranged it if I had just said the word.

And so, naturally, I went to her when I got fired. She had the grit to deal with any blow to the family honor. When she was born in Brooklyn in 1912, her parents Gabriel and Theresa Capone named her after the ten-year-old princess of Italy, the second child of King Emmanuel III. It was the right choice. As the only living girl of nine children, Aunt Maffie was the princess of the Capone family, and she had no trouble handling the role. Her brothers spoiled her, and she in turn developed a sense of entitlement and a ferocious tongue that she didn’t hesitate to use against anyone who crossed her or the people she loved. Everyone, myself included, was a little afraid of Maffie. She was the only member of the family I ever heard talk back to her mother, the matriarch Theresa.

Maffie was the female Al Capone. She had the dark, curly Capone hair that framed her wide-set eyes. But even with large hands, full eyebrows that almost met in the middle, and a habit of speaking through her teeth, there was something very feminine and attractive about her. She had both Al’s courage and his temper, along with the “Al Capone stare.” He was famous for it. All of a sudden, if he was threatened or in a tense situation, his face would just go stoic, and he would stare right through whatever hapless person crossed him. Aunt Maffie had the same focused, piercing stare.

She was fiercely proud of the Capone family name, and she was quick to defend her brother Al, even after he was sent to prison. Most of us, including Al’s own son, took on other identities to escape the burden of the family name. But not Maffie. I still remember visiting her in a nursing home shortly before she died. She leaned into me and whispered, “Tell them who we are. Tell them we’re Capones. They’ll treat me better.” She was one of the very few in our family who insisted that her real last name be marked on her headstone.

But Maffie’s grit didn’t only come from carrying Capone stock. It was also something she had to develop by necessity. She didn’t have an easy life, something I witnessed firsthand. She was barely eighteen years old when she married Johnny Maritote, a creepy, charmless man who could never hope to match her. It was an arranged marriage, designed by Al to secure relations between members of the Outfit. Johnny was the younger brother of Frank Maritote (alias Frank Diamond), a ruthless, out-of-control member of Al’s organization who was later killed by a shotgun blast.

Maffie told me that, as a little girl, she always dreamed of a big wedding but never had many suitors, much less proposals. As she put it, “Who would want to date Al Capone’s little sister? You’d have to be crazy!” So, Johnny was Maffie’s only chance. But while the marriage was good for business, and gave the Outfit reason to hope Frank Diamond would be held in check, Uncle Al was never happy about it. He knew both Maritote brothers were thugs. And that was the real reason he didn’t attend Maffie’s wedding—not, as was reported, because he was afraid of being arrested or attacked at such a public event.

Al, however, did agree to pay for the wedding. How could he deny his baby sister the day of her dreams? He spent extravagantly, inviting four-thousand guests, including most of the Raiola family in Italy. Maffie loved to describe the occasion to me. In fact, in her house, she kept a photograph on the wall of the wedding cake. It was nine feet long and four feet high and baked in the shape of a ship—just like the cruise ship that Al would send them on for their honeymoon. The cost of the cake alone was $2,100—in 1930 dollars! And the cake paled in comparison to the wedding gown. Maffie wore an ivory satin dress with a twenty-five-foot train. It took four women to hold the train up as she walked down the church aisle.