Uncle Al Capone (22 page)

Chicago and Las Vegas, 1950 – 1963

People who respect nothing dread fear. It is upon fear, therefore, that I have built up my organization. But understand me correctly, please. Those who work with me are afraid of nothing. Those who work for me are kept faithful, not so much because of their pay as because they know what might be done with them if they broke faith.”

- Al Capone

My father’s suicide changed my life in the most negative way possible. I hated myself. I hated God. I was deeply depressed and wanted to die. I tried to a couple of times by taking too many aspirins, but then I forced myself to throw them up. I also walked out into Lake Michigan one night, wanting to walk until I could not touch the bottom and then sink, but I wasn’t brave enough. I am happy today that I didn’t, but my adolescence was miserable.

I responded to the depression by gaining weight and lots of it. By the time I was thirteen, I was 4 foot 10 inches tall and weighed close to 200 pounds.

Kids in elementary school can be cruel, and I was the brunt of some pretty cruel remarks. I was once told by a girlfriend, “I like having you around because next to you, I look good.”

Before being admitted into the high school I wanted to attend, Aquinas Dominican, I had to be examined by a doctor. He was appalled by my weight gain—I remember him yelling at me. His solution was to prescribe Dexedrine. Sure enough, it worked. After taking the Dexedrine for a while, I looked great. I was slim, could eat anything I wanted, and I had tons of energy. When I began high school I wore a size 18; by senior year I wore a size 5 and had to hold my uniform skirt up with safety pins.

When I was sixteen years old, my aunt Maffie invited my mom, my brother Dennis, and me for Easter, along with Uncle Matty, his wife Annette, and their son Gabey. Maffie made lamb stew with boiled beets and, most importantly, her Easter bread. I always wanted to learn how to make it. She put whole eggs on top of the dough, braided additional dough on top of them, and then baked it. The eggs never split open or cracked. She asked me to arrive by 10 a.m. to learn how to braid the bread. While it was baking, she showed me how to make the lamb stew—and shared memories of Easter at Theresa’s house with the Capone boys.

On the Easter table at Grandma’s house was always a baked sheep’s head in the middle of the table. My dad and his uncles fought because each one wanted the eyes, their favorite part. They shared the brain and tongue, but the eyes were heaven to them.

Grandma, too, would make an enormous loaf of Easter bread. She said the eggs baked in the dough represented a new life, which is what Jesus had attained by dying for our sins, and she taught me that Easter bread could only be made at Easter time. She believed that at other times of the year, the dough would not rise.

I had a great Easter dinner that year with Maffie, but I remember that the subject of the Dexedrine I was taking came up. Gabey got on my case about it and insisted I get off the stuff. Maffie agreed with him. But their argument fell on deaf ears because I was afraid of going back to being obese. It was a result of that drug use that I can remember very little of my teenage years.

After I graduated from high school, I received a full ride scholarship to the University of Miami, where my mother had briefly moved our family. But two weeks before I was to leave for school, my mother decided we should go back to Chicago and told me that I had to get a job, not go to school, and help pay for my brother’s education. “Only boys should be educated,” my mother said. “Girls get married.” I realize today that she was imposing her own regrets about dropping out of high school on me.

We lived in a small, one-bedroom, one-bathroom apartment on the South Side of Chicago. My brother, who was fourteen, had to sleep in the living room on a sofa, and I had to share our one bed with my mother, but she loved that apartment because it was right on the beach and she could lay out in the sun and meet guys.

It was at this time in my life that the effects of my difficult childhood, the loss of my father, and the shame at being a Capone finally caught up with me—and nearly drowned me. I found a job at the insurance company, only to lose it six months later when my boss discovered my real name. In the wake of that painful experience, I began dating the man who would become my first husband. Though I told him I was Deirdre Gabriel, he discovered my real name through mutual friends of ours. The family connection suited him just fine—he wanted to be part of the mob, and that’s why he was interested in me in the first place. But he also knew I was a good girl. He needed to find a way to control me—and he found it.

In 1958 he date-raped me. Then he told me that I was “damaged goods,” and no other man would want me. A combination of my naivety, poor self image and Catholic education led me to believe him. Thinking I had no other recourse, and against my family’s wishes, I started making plans to marry in July of 1959.

On April 20, my aunt Maffie phoned me at my new job. She said Aunt Mae was in town and they wanted me to come over after work. I went there expecting a lecture, especially from Aunt Mae, but instead after dinner Aunt Maffie handed me a spiral notebook. April 20, 1959 was the television debut of
The Untouchables.

I found out that night that my aunts were suing Desilu Productions for $1 million—though I think the suit was more from heartbreak than financial gain.

Desi Arnaz’s father had been a friend of Al and Ralph’s. His father, Desi, was Mayor of Santiago and then served in the Cuban House of Representatives. My grandfather Ralph helped secure his release from prison when he was jailed after the 1933 Cuban revolution. Desi and his parents then fled to Miami early in 1934, where my aunt Mae helped them find a home and got Desi enrolled in Saint Patrick’s Catholic High School, where Sonny was a student.

Ralph Capone and Desi Arnez Sr.

Desi and Sonny became very close friends and they got together every day at Al’s house to sing and play the bongos together.

Sonny would also confide in Desi. They became close friends just when Al was being transferred to Alcatraz, and Sonny openly shared all his fears and pain. Aunt Mae told me that she thought their relationship was good for both of them. They both were only children, boys, and had fathers that had been in prison.

And now, in 1959, Desi was preparing to premier a television show that was surely based on the secrets Sonny had confided in him. Mae was hurt and furious, but Sonny was married with four children, owned a restaurant in Miami, and did not want the publicity. He told Mae that if she wanted to fight it, she and Maffie would have to do so on their own—and they did. She begged Desi not to go forward with the show, but by that time, it was no longer in his hands. The choice belonged to Lucy—Lucille Ball, his wife and partner.

That evening at Maffie’s house, my aunts asked me to write down the number of times I heard my uncle’s name mentioned—as a record for their case. It was not mentioned once.

The second episode was on April 27, 1959. I again had to write down the number of times I heard the Capone name. Again, none. Lucy changed the focus from Capone to Nitti in those first two episodes. Maffie and Mae dropped the suit, but the hurt never went away. Sonny divorced and moved into hiding after that series.

Aunt Mae did try to talk me out of getting married, but I was afraid that if I told her the truth about why I had to marry, my whole family would disown me. So, I went ahead with it in July 1959. It wasn’t until June 1961 that I was able to escape the control of my first husband, leaving with my daughter, only a year old, and my son in my belly. I cannot tell you how many times during those brief but endless two years the police were called because he literally tried to kill me.

I moved into my mother’s studio apartment on the North Side of Chicago. In November of 1961, a Christmas card addressed to me at my mother’s old address arrived in her mailbox. It was from Bob, a man whom I’d met at the life insurance company and with whom I’d had to break off my relationship fearing his rejection if he knew of my relations with my first husband. I called him, and—a miracle—we picked up our romance where we left it.

My marriage with Bob marked a new era in my life. I was still a Capone, but I was finally able to begin to feel centered and at peace with my identity. In a sense, being a Capone became secondary as I began to raise a family of my own—but over the years, there were still reminders of just how notorious my family was.

In 1963, Bob and I eloped and went to Las Vegas for our honeymoon. The day after our wedding I called Aunt Maffie with the news. She was very excited and happy for me. When I told her that we were going to a show that night to see Ella Fitzgerald and Joe E. Lewis, she said, “Joe E. Lewis? I knew him many years ago when he was working for Al in Chicago. I think he liked me. God, I haven’t seen him in ages. Listen, give your waiter a note to give to him. Say that you’re my niece. Include my phone number and ask him to call me the next time he’s in Chicago.”

I told her I would, but I forgot to do it at the show—probably because it was so terrific that I got absorbed. Mr. Lewis was a riot. He did his act with a glass of whiskey in his hand and most of his jokes had to do with drinking. I still remember some of his one-liners, the same jokes Frank Sinatra told when he played Joe E. in the movie
The Joker Is Wild
. My favorite was, “You’re never too drunk if you can lie on the floor without holdin’ on.”

The next day, Bob and I walked into the Flamingo Hotel coffee shop for breakfast about 2 p.m.—remember, it was our honeymoon. As we were being seated, I accidentally bumped the hand of a man at the next table as he extended it to turn the page of his newspaper.

I quickly apologized—and realized the man was Mr. Lewis. When I saw who it was, without thinking, I said, “Oh, my aunt Maffie said to say hello.”

With a puzzled look he said, “Your aunt, Maffie?”

I said, “Yes. Mafalda Capone.”

“Mafalda?” He repeated, a look of surprise coming over his face. “Is she here?”

I said, “No, she’s in Chicago, but she wants you to call her whenever you’re in town.”

“Hell, I haven’t seen her in over twenty years. How is she? And you’re her niece?”

“Yes, my maiden name is Deirdre Capone, but I just got married yesterday. This is my husband, Bob.”

They shook hands, and Mr. Lewis insisted that we join him for breakfast. I guess he had stayed in bed late, too.

During our conversation, he revealed that he and Maffie once had a little flirtation going on, but nothing ever came of it. “For one thing, she was married, and I sure as hell didn’t want to mess with Al’s sister,” he explained.

But he told us that though he feared Al, he came to regard him as a good friend. He pointed to the scars on his face and neck and said, “Most people think Al did this to me, but he didn’t even know what happened ’til he read about it in the paper. Later he told me that if I had come to him with my problem with McGurn, he could have prevented it. And you know what? I’m sure he would have. But I didn’t know it at the time. You live and learn.”

Mr. Lewis explained the problem he had with Jack McGurn. Al had set McGurn up as part owner of the Green Mill, a very popular speakeasy on the North Side of Chicago. Joe E. Lewis, singer and comedian, was the Green Mill’s biggest draw.

But they were only paying him $650 a week and a competing club, the Rendezvous, offered him $1,000 a week, so he decided to take the offer and leave the Green Mill when his contract was up.

But when he told McGurn he was leaving, McGurn said, “The hell you are. You’ll stay at the Green Mill until I tell you to leave.”

“It’s a free country,” Mr. Lewis answered.

“Not for you it isn’t. You won’t live to open at the Rendezvous.”

Mr. Lewis told Bob and me, “I was scared, but I was also stubborn as hell…always have been. So I hired a bodyguard and started performing at the Rendezvous. After a week or so, everything seemed cool. So I fired the bodyguard, and a couple of days later McGurn and a couple of other guys I didn’t recognize broke into my hotel room, cut me up, and left me for dead. But like I said, I’m stubborn, too stubborn to die. And here I am over thirty years later, still kickin’.

Actually, your uncle paid my medical expenses, and later gave me work and money whenever I needed it. He was unique. He had a big heart. He was a good guy to have as a friend, but a bad ass to have as an enemy.

As I got to know him better, I realized that he was an especially good friend to entertainers. He liked to associate with talented people, and entertainers were attracted to him. Not only was he more well-known than any performer on Broadway or in the movies, if you were his friend you were protected. Performers were routinely robbed and had money extorted from them. But the thugs would leave you alone if it became known that you were Al’s friend.”

After breakfast, Mr. Lewis picked up our tab, saying, “This one’s on me. A little wedding gift from Joe E. And you tell your Aunt Mafalda I will call her the next time I’m in Chicago.” His last words to us were, “Now you kids get on with your honeymoon and don’t waste it talkin’ to old farts like me.”