Capone: The Life and World of Al Capone Read online

  While the impressionist Georgie Price was playing a Chicago vaudeville engagement, the jewelry and cash he left in his hotel room vanished. After Jessel spoke to Capone, that loot, too, was returned.

  But the most dramatic recovery of stolen goods Capone ever brought about followed the appeal of a woman who had done him a small service, a Miss Mary Lindsay, the manager of a Washington, D.C., hotel. Driving through the Midwest on vacation, she had come upon a Chicago-bound train stalled just outside the city. Among the passengers pacing the track was Al Capone, whom she failed to recognize when he asked her for a lift. She drove him to the Lexington. Not until she glanced at the card he gave her, as he urged her to call on him for any help she might need while in Chicago, did she realize who the hitchhiker was. A few days later her purse, containing all her cash and traveler's checks, was snatched. She turned to Capone. That night, following his instructions, Miss Lindsay dined in a West Side cafe, taking the table facing the first of a line of stone columns. Midway through the meal, her purse suddenly appeared on the chair next to the column. Not a penny was missing.

  On December 14, 1930, John Maritote, a twenty-three-year-old motion-picture operator and the younger brother of Frank Maritote, alias Diamond, whose wife was Rose Capone, married Mafalda Capone, age nineteen. It appears to have been a marriage of convenience for which neither bride nor groom could summon much enthusiasm. According to his friends, Maritote, who had hardly ever spoken to Mafalda, loved another girl, while Mafalda's heart was supposedly set on a boy she met in Miami. The internal politics of the Capone organization dictated the union. Frank Diamond, having risen to the top echelon, was demanding a bigger voice, especially when it came to the division of profits from bootlegging. By this second union between the two families Capone hoped to prevent dissension. He promised the couple $50,000 and a house as wedding presents.

  Not since Angelo Genna was joined to Lucille Spingola had gangland witnessed such glittering nuptials. Three thousand guests, including Alderman William V. Pacelli, City Sealer Daniel Serritella, Jack McGurn, Frank Rio and the three Guzik brothers, packed St. Mary's Church in Cicero, and despite heavy snow and sleet, a thousand onlookers waited outside. Al Capone did not attend. With a vagrancy warrant issued by judge Lyle hanging over him, he had decided to return to Florida.

  The matrons of honor, in pink duvetyn hats and pink chiffon gowns, were Mmes. Al and Ralph Capone. The bride, wearing a Lanvin model of ivory satin with a 25-foot train, walked down the aisle on the arm of brother Ralph. After the Reverend Crajkowski pronounced the couple man and wife, they adjourned with their families and guests to the Cotton Club, a Cicero nightclub that Ralph ran. The wedding cake, shaped like an ocean liner, measured 9 feet long, 4 feet high and 3 feet wide, and the prow bore the name in red icing of the newlyweds' honeymoon destination-Honolulu.

  Only one slight contretemps had marred the proceedings. Detectives Mike Casey and Louis Capparelli from the state's attorney's office arrested five Caponeites claiming to be ushers. "Not ushers," said Casey, as they marched them off to the station house. "Shushers. They had guns in their pockets."

  From Florida Capone submitted, through George Barker of the Teamsters' Union, a proposal to Chief Justice McGoorty, which the latter described, with signal restraint, as "cool effrontery." He offered to surrender on the vagrancy warrant, quit labor racketeering, leave Chicago, and operate his other enterprises by remote control. His conditions: dismissal of the vagrancy charge the moment he surrendered; no interference with his liquor business.

  What the chief justice said to Barker is not recorded, but he told the grand jury: "[Capone's] most formidable competitors have been ruthlessly exterminated and his only apparent obstacle towards undisputed sway is the law. Such a trade is unthinkable. The time has come when the public must choose between the rule of the gangster and the rule of law."

  THE office space allocated to Wilson in the old Federal Building was a windowless cubicle so cramped that he could hardly stir without brushing against the filing cabinet or another agent. For weeks, during the summer of 1930, he had closeted himself there, combing through mountains of papers seized by the police in raids on various Capone establishments as far back as 1924, through bank records, through the memoranda of his assistant agents, in quest of evidence linking Capone to the source of his profits. Wilson, Tessem and Hodgins between them had examined close to 1,700,000 separate items.

  It was past midnight. Exhausted, discouraged, his vision blurred, he began gathering up the material strewn over the desk, chairs and floor to return it to the filing cabinet. Bending over to retrieve a bundle of checks, he bumped into the cabinet, and the drawer flew shut, locking automatically. He couldn't find the key. In the corridor stood a row of dusty old filing cabinets and seeing an open drawer, he decided to store the material there temporarily. The drawer was partly filled by a large package tied up in brown paper, one of many turned over to him by the state's attorney, which he had somehow overlooked. He broke the string. Out tumbled three black ledgers with red corners. They were dated 1924-26. Leafing through them, he stopped, electrified, at a page in the second ledger. The columns were headed BIRD CAGE, 21, CRAPS, FARO, ROULETTE, HORSE BETS.

  He was no longer exhausted. He carried the ledgers to his desk and began analyzing them entry by entry. They showed net profits totaling, in an eighteen-month period, more than $500,000. Every few pages a balance had been taken and divided among "A" (for Al, Wilson surmised), "R" (Ralph Capone), "J" (Jake Guzik), etc. A balance of $36,687 on December 2, 1924, had been divided as follows:

  Wilson took "Town" to mean Cicero officials; "Pete," probably Pete Penovich, the first Smoke Shop manager; "Frank," Frankie Pope; "J & A," Jake and Al; "Lou," perhaps Louis La Cava; "D"? A notation at the foot of the page read: "Frank paid $17,500 for Al."

  From the state's attorney's office, to which Wilson hastened in the morning, he learned that the ledgers were among those seized during the Smoke Shop raid after the McSwiggin murder in 1926. They were written in three different hands. Wilson and his teammates undertook the enormous task of comparing them with every specimen of gangsters' handwriting--they could collect from such sources as the motor vehicle bureau and other licensing agencies, banks, bail bondsmen, the criminal courts. Eventually a bank deposit slip turned up with a signature that matched the writing in numerous ledger entries between 1924 and 1926. It belonged to Leslie Adelbert Shumway, familiarly called Lou, who had preceded Fred Ries as cashier at the Ship.

  While Wilson was trying to track down Shumway, a tipster repeated to him the comment of a Capone lieutenant: "The big fellow's eating aspirin like it was peanuts so's he can get some sleep."

  Mattingly and Wilson conferred several more times. The lawyer conceded that his client's enterprises had produced income, though a relatively modest one. Wilson asked him to specify just how much in writing. To his amazement and joy, Mattingly submitted this statement "Re Alphonse Capone":

  Taxpayer became active as a principal with three associates at about the end of the year 1925. Because of the fact he had no capital to invest in their various undertakings, his participation during the entire year 1926 and the greater part of 1927 was limited. During the years 1928 and 1929, the profits of the organization of which he was a member were divided as follows: one-third to a group of regular employes and one-sixth to the taxpayer and three associates... .

  I am of the opinion that his taxable income for the years 1926 and 1927 might be fairly fixed at not to exceed $26,000 and $40,000, respectively, and for the years 1928 and 1929, not to exceed $100,000 per year.

  As Wilson knew, Capone spent more than $100,000 a year on high living alone. But however remote from the truth, here was a written admission of tax delinquency. Mattingly made it "without prejudice to the rights of the above named taxpayer in any proceedings that might be instituted against him. The facts stated are upon information and belief only." He miscalculated. No such stipulation was legally binding, and Wilson gleefully added t
he statement to Case Jacket SI-7085-F.

  Harking back to the investigation many years later, Wilson revealed the identity of a man he considered to have been his single most valuable secret ally. This was the St. Louis lawyer and dog track operator Edward O'Hare. Their mutual friend, John Rogers of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, brought them together at lunch in the Missouri Athletic Club. "He wanted to look you over," he told Wilson afterward. "He's satisfied," and he explained that O'Hare had decided to inform against Capone. His motive was paternal. With his son's heart set on Annapolis he hoped to smooth the way for him by helping the government topple Capone. Did he understand the risk? Wilson asked. If O'Hare had ten lives, Rogers replied, he would gladly risk them all for the boy.

  Wilson heard frequently from O'Hare thereafter, either directly or through Rogers. It was O'Hare who told him where to look for Fred Ries, who exposed to him the structure of the Capone dog track management, who verified the true percentage of the gambling profits that went into Capone's pockets-not one-sixth, but more than half.

  You be sure to take good care of yourself. The veiled warning echoed in Wilson's mind when O'Hare called him one morning toward the end of November. Fantastic as it sounded, Capone, he said, acting against the judgment of cooler heads, had imported five gunmen from New York with a contract to kill not only Wilson, but also Arthur Madden, the chief of the Chicago tax intelligence unit, Pat Roche and U.S. Attorney Johnson. Mike Malone confirmed the report. The contract called for payment of $25,000. The gunmen had arrived in a blue Chevrolet sedan with New York license plates.

  Wilson took O'Hare's advice to move himself and his wife to another hotel immediately. "They know where you keep your automobile and what time you get home at night and what time you leave in the morning." Telling the Sheridan Plaza desk they were going to Kansas, the couple drove to the Union Station, then circled back and took a room at the Palmer House. A twenty-four-hour guard was assigned to them and to each intended victim.

  Pat Roche ordered his detectives to bring in Capone, but forewarned by the Cook County police, he eluded them. Then Arthur Madden, hearing that Johnny Torrio was in Chicago, gave him a message for Capone: "If those hoodlums aren't out of town by tonight, I'm going after them myself with two guns." With the murder plot known to the authorities, the members of Capone's cabinet prevailed upon him to call it off. Torrio telephoned Madden. "They left an hour ago," he said.

  Having abandoned wholesale murder as a solution of his tax problems, Capone tried bribery. In New York Joseph H. Callan, former special assistant to the Commissioner of Internal Revenue and now an executive of the Crucible Steel Company, received a visit from an emissary calling himself "Smith." He bore an offer from Capone for Elmer Irey and asked Callan to transmit it-$1,500,000 in cash if there was no conviction. Callan showed him the door.

  In February, 1931, four months after Shumway had been identified as the keeper of the Ship books, John Rogers relayed a message from O'Hare that sent Wilson dashing off to Miami. Lou Shumway was working there as a cashier at either a horse or dog track. While looking for him, Wilson saw Capone at Hialeah, "a jeweled moll on either side of him [he wrote later] . . . occasionally raising huge binoculars to his eyes, greeting a parade of fawning sycophants who came to shake his hand-a veritable Shah of Persia. . . . Good God, I thought. When a country constable wants a man, he just walks up and says, 'You're pinched.' Here I am with the whole U.S. Government behind me, as powerless as a canary."

  He found Shumway, a pole-thin man, his hands unsteady, at the Biscayne Kennel Club. When, green with terror, he disclaimed any knowledge of the Ship ledgers, Wilson presented two alternatives. He could go on pretending ignorance, in which case a deputy sheriff would publicly and noisily hand him a subpoena, thereby letting the Capone gang know that he had been found. To ensure his permanent silence, Wilson added, they would probably kill him. Or he could cooperate with the government and rest assured of the same protection as Ries. Shumway chose the second alternative.

  "Orders and directives relating to my work were issued to me by Frank Pope and Pete Penovich," he deposed. ". . . the only other person whom I recognized as an owner of the business was Mr. Alphonse Capone." He also described the raid that the West Suburban Citizens' Association forced the county police to stage against the Smoke Shop in 1925. This led Wilson to interview the Reverend Henry Hoover and Chester Bragg, the vigilante who had guarded the entrance to the gambling dive during the raid. Bragg swore to the self-incriminating words Capone let slip in his rage-"I own the place."

  Two years had elapsed since the government charged Capone with contempt of court for failing to answer a subpoena summoning him to Chicago from Miami. Now at last, on the morning of February 25, he entered the Federal Court Building once again. His arrival caused a work stoppage. Hundreds of clerks and stenographers deserted their posts to steal up to the sixth-floor courtroom for a glimpse of him. "No, I'm not going into the movies," they heard him tell the reporters. He wore a bright-blue suit woven of material soft as cat's fur, a blue-and-white-striped tie and gray spats. His girth had swollen to 250 pounds. Phil D'Andrea stood warily at his side, clenched fists thrust into the pockets of his chesterfield. "Neither am I going to write my autobiography. I've been offered as high as two million dollars, but I'm not going into the literary business."

  Having waived jury trial, Capone pleaded guilty before judge Wilkerson. A short, bristle-browed, testy man, the judge listened to seven prosecution witnesses give the lie to the deposition signed by Capone's Miami doctor to the effect that bronchial pneumonia prevented his patient from traveling. There was the airplane pilot who flew Capone to Bimini when he was supposedly confined to bed, the policeman who helped him park his car at the Hialeah racetrack, the steamboat officer who talked to him aboard a Nassau-bound pleasure craft. . . .

  As Capone left the courtroom at the noon recess, two police sergeants arrested him on the vagrancy warrant issued by judge Lyle. Taking him to the detective bureau, they gave him a sandwich and coffee, then fingerprinted him, photographed him, and asked him his occupation. "Real estate," said Capone. The hearing was set for March 2.

  In Judge Wilkerson's court on February 27 Capone was approached by a blushing girl reporter. "I wanted to ask you a question," she said, "but I'm so flustered I can't remember what it was." Capone smiled encouragingly. "Oh, I remember, I wanted to ask you what you think of the American girl."

  "Why, I think you're beautiful," said Capone.

  The judge's secretary, equally flustered, rushed out of his chambers to tell the defendant, "London is on the wire."

  "I'm sorry, lady," Capone said, "but there's nobody in London that would be calling me, not even King George."

  Wilkerson found him guilty and later fixed the penalty at six months in the Cook County jail, releasing him on a bond, pending appeal. "I ain't worrying about a cell," said Capone. "I'm not there yet. There are other courts."

  In the vagrancy case he proved to be right. Judge Lyle recalled bitterly: "Waiting until I was on temporary assignment in another court, Capone . . . appeared before a judge who had been a severe critic of my high bond policy. The mobster maintained his perfect batting average in Chicago courts. After three continuances the case was dismissed."

  Before Wilson transferred Shumway to a safe hiding place, a federal grand jury quickly and secretly convened to hear the cashier's testimony. There was good reason for haste. The preponderance of his disclosures about Capone's income referred to the year 1924. Together with figures supplied by Ries and O'Hare, they showed a tax liability, not counting penalties, of $32,488.81 on a net income of $123,102.89, but under a six-year statute of limitations tax offenses committed in 1924 would be barred from prosecution after March 15, 1931. The grand jury returned an indictment on March 13. At the request of U.S. Attorney Johnson it agreed not to make its verdict public until the investigation had been completed for the years 1925 to 1929.

  The April mayoral elections brought final defeat to Capon
e's political idol, Big Bill Thompson. In the Republican primary he had won over judge Lyle, a victory which moved Capone to exult: "Lyle tried to make me an issue and the public has given its answer." But Thompson lost to Anton J. Cermak, who modeled his Democratic machine on Tammany Hall, by 194,267 votes, the biggest majority in the history of the Chicago mayoralty. Cermak never attempted to purge Chicago of gangsterism, only of the Capone gang in favor of others who had supported his campaign. On February 15, 1933, immediately after greeting President Roosevelt in Miami, he was fatally shot by Giuseppe Zangara. Some historians have dismissed the general assumption that Zangara intended to assassinate Roosevelt but hit Cermak by accident. Disenfranchised Caponeites, they contend, guided Zangara's hand. It is a belief the victim himself expressed on his hospital deathbed.

  The federal grand jury convened again on June 5, this time openly, and to its earlier indictment against Capone it added another with twenty-two counts covering the years 1925-1929. That fraction of his income for those years which Internal Revenue had been able to compute totaled $1,038,655.84. The tax assessment came to $219,- 260.12, and the penalties to $164,445.09.

  A week later the grand jury returned yet a third indictment. Based on the evidence assembled by Eliot Ness and his raiders, it charged Capone and sixty-eight members of his gang with conspiring to violate the Volstead Act. Five thousand separate offenses were cited, 4,000 of them consisting of beer truck deliveries, 32 barrels to the truck. They went all the way back to 1922, when Capone bought a used truck for Torrio. The income-tax case, however, took precedence.