Uncle Al Capone (21 page)

Our footsteps were smothered by the thick carpeting, and except for the murmuring of a few whispered conversations, the only sounds in the room belonged to the sleepy organ and the rhythmic counterpoint of sobs from a line of elderly women. They sat in a row, a black mass of dripping lace and rosary beads that bobbed and nodded, and softly beat their bony chests as they swayed in their seats.

I had lost track of my mother. I’m sure she was feeling overwhelmed. She was, after all, in enemy territory, the woman who had divorced the man who’d taken his own life with a mix of booze and pills. The only details I’d heard of my father’s death were on the ride over when Aunt Maffie said something to my mother about my father being found in bed on his side and how all the blood had pooled and distended his body. Aunt Maffie caught my eye in the rear view mirror and fell silent.

I followed the eyes of the other mourners as they swung away from mine to examine their own hands or to look straight ahead. My aunt Maffie had her hand on my shoulder, and she gently guided me toward the front of the room. There, on a raised dais was a casket. It seemed to be as large as a rowboat, though its surface gave off a polished sheen in the candlelight and the fittings seemed to glow like gold. My legs felt wooden, and it was if my feet continually snagged on the carpet as we moved toward the casket that held my father’s body. I could feel my aunt’s hand tremble on my shoulder. I looked up at her and saw her bring both hands to her mouth as she stifled a sob.

I was too numb to cry, too new to this neighborhood of grieving that my family lived with for so many years. I saw the kneeler in front of the casket and took my place in front of my father’s casket. I could barely see over the lip of the coffin and the velvet lining that pillowed around him.

His eyes were shut, of course, and I was struck by how much he seemed to be a wax facsimile of the man I adored. Yes, he had the same receding hairline and the prominent eyebrows, but the blandly dour expression was not one that I recognized. This was not my father, not the jovial animated face that lit up the last Fourth of July when he’d brought me sparklers and showed me how to trace the letters of the alphabet in fire against the night sky. These were not the same alert and attentive eyes that held my gaze as I told him about my latest adventures at school. These stilled, silent hands through which a rosary snaked against the bloodless powdery flesh, were not the ones that touched my face and smoothed my hair and told me that I was loved.

I knew enough to say a prayer and to cross myself before rising again. This time, I was the one who was trembling. If that man in the casket wasn’t my father, then where was he? When would I see him again?

As I made my way toward a seat in the front row, I saw my grandfather come into the room. A tall man, at 6 foot 2 inches, the tallest of the Capones, Ralph seemed to have been physically diminished by his grief. Seeing a face that seemed to have melted like wax released in me all the sadness, anger, and fear I’d kept pent up. It came out of me in a torrent of shrieks and tears.

The next thing I remember, I was seated in an unfamiliar apartment. A woman I didn’t know smiled at me, carrying a tray with a teapot and a platter of cannoli, biscotti, and other pastries. She set them down on the mahogany coffee table and took a seat in one of the chairs.

“My name is Mrs. Rago. Are you feeling any better?” She pushed a cup of tea toward me and tilted the tray to show all of the sweets arrayed there.

I took a few sips of tea and tried to figure out how I had gotten where I was. Mrs. Rago must have read my mind, “Your mother and aunt are downstairs. They said that you should wait for them here. It was awfully stuffy in there. I’m surprised more people aren’t feeling as faint as you.”

I focused on the food in front of me. I realized I hadn’t eaten a thing all day. In ways large and small, literally and figuratively, I would be hungry for the rest of my life.

The next day dawned clear, crisp, and cold. If it weren’t for the fact that we were burying my father, it would have been a nice November day for Chicago.

After the high funeral mass at Resurrection Church, I rode in the family car in the funeral procession to the graveside service at Mt. Carmel Cemetery. At one point, my mother leaned her head against the window, and drew the backs of her gloved fingertips across the cool glass. To herself, but loud enough for me to hear her, she said, “Maybe there was something I could have done to help him.”

I can recite for you the events that likely lead to my father’s decision to kill himself, though I could never adequately describe what he felt. I do know a few things about my father’s activities in the days between our last meeting at Sunday dinner and his death. He went to see Don Freund, his best friend, who had once introduced him to my mother. He was away, but he did get to visit briefly with his good friend’s parents.

I also know that in the aftermath of my father’s death, the neighbors in his apartment building made the usual statements about someone who fell victim to tragedy. He was a quiet man. Kept mostly to himself. He ate most of his meals in his apartment, heating up beans on the stove. Nothing revelatory or unique in that—simply the sad facts of a broken life.

He was clearly in love with Jeannie Kieran, a singer at a Rush Street club where my father worked part-time as a bartender. The management knew about my father’s family associations, maybe even reveled in the knowledge of having a colorful character on staff, but they didn’t like their girl singer hanging around a bartender. They told young Jeannie—she was twenty-one and my father thirty-three—that if she continued to insist on seeing my father, she’d lose her job. She was out of town the night my father drank himself to death. I don’t know if she came to the wake or the funeral, or if she ever set foot on the grounds of Mt. Carmel cemetery where his body was interred.

I do know this. In the weeks preceding my father’s suicide, a lawyer in Chicago by the name of Marvin Bas was murdered. Marvin Bas was dating Jeannie Kerin and he was upset with Jeannie after seeing her in a bar with my father. He was quoted as telling her “You’d better stick to the boys with the crew haircuts.” A few days before his death, Mr. Bas had been approached by Bill Drury, an informant on the mob who offered his services to Senator Estes Kefauvers’ who headed a special Senate committee investigating organized crime. Drury arranged a meeting with one of Kefauver’s investigators promising to offer him entry into Chicago’s scheming underworld. Word had it that Drury was also getting ready to channel embarrassing information about Police Captain Daniel A. “Tubbo” Gilbert, the Democratic candidate for Cook County sheriff, to Tubbo’s Republican opponent. In his eighteen years as chief investigator for the state’s attorney, Gilbert’s investigators had never contributed any evidence that lead to the conviction of a single Chicago mobster.

Subsequently, Drury contacted his own lawyer, claiming he needed protection. They petitioned Senator Kefauver’s office for assistance in the securing of bodyguards. The request came too late. Drury was gunned down as he backed his new Cadillac into his garage. A few hours later, Bas was gunned down in the streets beneath an L platform.

My father was hauled in for questioning in the murder investigation. That’s how he discovered that Mr. Bas was also dating Jeanne Kieran. My father had fallen from grace and was now considered by some in the Chicago Police Department to be just one of the usual suspects to be rounded up as a matter of course. But he was never a part of the Outfit. He was destined for greater things until the sins of the fathers caught up to him.

I can’t help but wonder if, in those last agonizing conscious moments of his life, as he gagged on the last of the Seconal and washed them down with Johnny Walker, he knew as I do, that those weren’t the bitterest of the pills he’d been forced to swallow in his brief life.

The following story was published in the
American Weekly
following my father’s funeral. It was written by W. T. Brennon:

There are minor variations, but everywhere he tried to find work the story was almost the same.

“Name?”

“Ralph Capone.”

Always the quizzical look. “Any relation of Al Capone?”

“Yes, a nephew.”

“Sorry. There’s nothing open.”

After a while young Capone – Risky, his friends called him – gave up and changed his name. It was obvious that no Capone was going to find a legitimate job easily anywhere around Chicago.

His Father, Ralph Sr. proprietor of a resort at Mercer, Wis, had kept him in private schools since he was a boy and had carefully shielded him from any contacts with the underworld empire that his uncle Al had organized. Risky graduated from a prep school in Collegeville, Minn; attended Notre Dame two years and won a B.S. degree at De Paul University, later enrolling in Loyola Law School. Apparently he passed the bar but did not obtain his license.

There were all sorts of jobs where the name of Capone might have been an asset – jobs that were shady in spots, to be sure, but within the law and promising an alluring income for a young fellow just out of school. Risky didn’t try for any of those. He was proud of his engineering degree and wanted to put it to use.

When no engineering firm displayed any interest in his services, he took the name of Ralph Gabriel and opened a plant in South Chicago to manufacture prefabricated homes. The business did well. He married, became the father of a girl and a boy and thought he was set for life.

The first bad break came when an employee of a construction firm stopped him on the street.

“Remember me?”

“No,” Risky said. “I don’t think I do.”

“Well, I remember you.” The man said. “We used to go to school together and your name isn’t Gabriel.”

The word got around. Before long a rumor spread that Capone, using another alias, was operating a gambling joint on the side. The police investigated and discovered the report was unfounded but by that time numerous customers had withdrawn their business. The plant had to close.

Risky changes his name again and opened a used-car lot. It flourished for a while – until his name caught up with him. “Did you ever know a Capone that wasn’t running some kind of a racket?” people said. That was enough. The lot failed.

His wife lost confidence in him and divorced him, winning custody of the two children.

He tried many ventures after that, among them a briefly successful company for the manufacture of cigarette lighters. He tried many aliases too, but they didn’t last long and neither did the businesses. Finally, almost broke, he became a bartender in a Chicago nightclub reverting once more to the name of Ralph Gabriel. Some of his customers knew who he was, but they didn’t mind. It was hardly the job for which his education had prepared him, but he was happy t have achieved a comparative anonymity.

One of the attractions at the club was Jeanne Kerin, a 21 – year - old comedienne. She and Risky fell in love. Marvin J. Bass, an attorney who knew Jeanne, saw them together. Calling her to one side he said: “You’d better stick to the boys with the crew haircuts, Jeanne. That fellow is Al Capone’s nephew.”

“Thanks, pal,” Jeanne said. “It’s sweet of you to advise me, but Risky told me who he was the second time we were out together. I’m happy and I don’t think it’s anybody else’s concern.”

It became the concern of a number of people, however, because of two murders.

Risky who had never been of a much of a drinker, began to drink heavily. When he failed to leave his apartment for 24 hours, the superintendent knocked and receiving and, receiving no response, called the police.

They found the 33 year old college graduate sprawled on the bed, dead. On the table was a half – empty bottle of whiskey beside an empty medicine vial, the label of which said the contents would be fatal if consumed with alcohol.

A scrawled unfinished note on the desk said: “Jeannie (sic), my sweetheart, I love you. I love you. Jeannie,(sic) only you I love. Only you. I’m gone…”

There was a difference of opinion as to what ended Ralph Capone’s life. The official report said alcoholism. The police said, off the record, that he poisoned himself. One of the detectives may have come even closer to the truth.

“There lies a kid,” he said, “who was destroyed by a name.”

My grandfather was not sure that my father took his own life so he asked for an autopsy and an inquest. I have that inquest verbatim in the back of this book.

The following are two death notices from the
Chicago Tribune
.

1950-11-12

Chicago Tribune (IL) CAPONE

Edition: Chicago Tribune Ralph Gabriel Capone, son of Ralph J. Capone, loving father of Deirdre and Dennis, beloved grandson of Theresa Capone, dear nephew of Mafalda. Funeral Monday, 8:15 a.m. at chapel, 624 N. Western avenue. Interment local cemetery. ARmitage 6-7800. Copyright 1950, Chicago Tribune. For permission to reprint, contact Chicago Tribune. Record Number: 19501112dn082

1950-11-14

Chicago Tribune (IL) ONLY HIS FAMILY AT SERVICES FOR CAPONE NEPHEW

Edition: Chicago Tribune Ralph Gabriel Capone Jr. was buried yesterday. Only family members attended services in Resurrection church, 5072 Jackson blvd. Burial was in Mount Carmel cemetery.

Capone, 33, was found dead in bed in his apartment at 656 Wrightwood av. last Thursday. Cause of death reportedly was alcoholism. An inquest was continued to Dec. 1 pending an examination of his vital organs.

Capone, the son of Ralph [Bottles] Capone, ex-gangland lieutenant, and nephew of Al [Scarface] Capone, tried to escape their notoriety. However, in March, 1948, he was placed on probation in Minneapolis for attempted burglary. Copyright 1950, Chicago Tribune. For permission to reprint, contact Chicago Tribune. Record Number: 19501114ob021