Uncle Al Capone (6 page)

My grandfather Ralph had a two-flat in Cicero, where there would be space for his wife and son, as well as for Theresa and all of her children. Mae and Sonny would live with Al in the apartment he rented. But Florence threw a wrench in Ralph’s plan. An actress, one with a few appearances on Broadway, she refused to leave New York and her career behind. It did not come as a particular shock to anyone in the family. When Ralph and Florence married, she was very young, and she became a mother at seventeen. She was not ready for the job—and may never have wanted it in the first place. Theresa cared for the baby, who was called Ralphie at the time, more often than Florence did.

But at first, Florence was unwilling to let Ralphie go with the rest of the Capones to Chicago, keeping him in New York with her. Theresa’s heart was broken. She spent her first weeks in Chicago weeping constantly, pining for her grandson. She begged Ralph to go to New York, kidnap his own son, and bring him home.

Before Ralph had a chance to give this option any serious thought, a call came from Florence’s next-door neighbor, saying that Florence had dropped off Ralphie two days before and never reappeared. That was all the invitation Ralph needed. He went immediately to New York, picked up Ralphie, and brought him to Theresa, who would raise him as a son from that day forward. The matriarch won out in the end. To her, the thought of allowing a male descendent of the Capone line—and the first-born grandson at that—grow up away from the family was inconceivable. A book was recently published claiming that the author’s father was Al Capone’s illegitimate son. With God as my judge, that simply could not have happened. Theresa would have died first.

Theresa was a strict Catholic. Even though she knew firsthand that Florence had no interest in being a wife and mother, she was mortified when Ralph charged Florence with desertion and filed for divorce. Divorce was simply unheard of at that time—and divorce among Catholic Italians was unthinkable. I know Theresa shamed Ralph for it, and I wonder if that had something to do with his receding into the background while Al flourished.

But although parts of the move to Chicago were painful, this was the dawning of bright years for the Capones. By 1923, only a year after the family joined him in Chicago, Al had amassed enough wealth to purchase a large house at 7244 Prairie Avenue on the South Side of Chicago. My father grew up in that house and was living there the day I was born.

Suddenly, Theresa found herself transported from the cramped, unsanitary conditions of Brooklyn to a Garden of Eden setting near Lake Michigan. She had running water, a two-flat each with its own fireplace, and a basement. Everyone in the family had their own bedroom. Not only could Theresa afford to feed her growing family and keep them healthy, she could create feasts for them in the immense kitchen. There was a backyard with an apple tree and a cherry tree and a side yard where she grew fresh tomatoes and herbs for her homemade ragu—a rich tomato sauce that everyone dubbed “Theresa’s gravy.” Over and over again, I heard her say that she had achieved the American dream.

But all this came at a steep price for Theresa. There were people in Chicago who wanted to kill her sons. In fact, some wanted to kill her entire family.

Chicago, 1924 – 1926

The worst type is the Big Politician who gives about half his time to covering up so that no one will know he’s a thief. A hard-working crook can buy these birds by the dozens, but he hates them in his heart.

- Al Capone

W. C. Fields said, “Once, during Prohibition, I had to live on nothing but food and water.”

It’s funny that a law passed twenty years before I was born had such an impact on my life. But if it hadn’t been for the thirteen years of Prohibition from 1920 to 1933, Al Capone would not have been infamous, my family would not have been noteworthy, and I would have led a very different existence.

Prohibition was never an open and shut case, and it took not only the powerful and nationally active Temperance Movement to institute it, but also an amendment to the United States Constitution. Prohibition, which banned the sale, manufacture, and transportation of alcohol used for consumption, went into effect on January 16, 1920 by order of the Volstead Act, which Congress passed even though President Woodrow Wilson had vetoed it on October 28, 1919. The Eighteenth Amendment had to be ratified first to make the Volstead Act constitutional.

But Prohibition was extremely unpopular from its inception and quickly became vilified, especially in large cities like Chicago, when the Great Depression struck. Finally, on March 23, 1933, President Franklin Roosevelt signed into law the Cullen-Harrison Act, which nullified the Volstead Act. The Eighteenth Amendment was in turn repealed with the ratification of the Twenty-First Amendment on December 5, 1933.

Prohibition’s relatively brief existence proved more than long enough to make a deep imprint on the history of this country. And as far as my family’s history was concerned, those thirteen years were an epoch.

It was because of the backlash against Prohibition that the 1920s became known as the “Roaring Twenties.” Speakeasies—dubbed for their bartenders’ advice to patrons to “speak easy” when they ordered booze—were the birthplace of every kind of expression of freedom, from jazz music to short skirts and bobbed hair.

But, unfortunately, the Roaring Twenties didn’t just roar with fun and freedom. Distributing alcohol was a big money business, where fortunes were always at stake. To a bootlegger, there was little difference between a business competitor and a blood rival. Chicago became a hotbed of violence. It is estimated that 250 gangsters were killed between 1922 and 1926, with over half of them shot by the police. Another 2,500 people died in domestic disputes, bar room fights, lovers’ triangles, and robberies.

In 1924, the famous case where Leopold and Loeb kidnapped and killed their neighbor and, as would be immortalized many decades later in the stage and film musical
Chicago
, Roxie and Velma got drunk and killed their boyfriends. Chicago’s homicide rate was 24 percent higher than the national average—while New York City’s was 31 percent below the national average.

In 1924, the
Chicago Tribune
began printing a clock face in its weekly edition. The clock had three hands called the “Hands of Death.” The first was labeled “Moonshine,” the second “Guns,” and the third “Autos.” Drunk driving had made its debut.

The Capone family was far from immune to the death toll. In 1923, Johnny Torrio and Al moved the operation of their gang, which they were now calling the Chicago Outfit, from Chicago to the western suburb of Cicero. Even their deep pockets had no influence on Chicago’s reform mayor, William Dever, and so they figured Cicero would be better for business.

At that time, my uncle Frank joined Al and Ralph in running the Outfit. Al did not yet have the stature he would gain in the following years, and so it was at first the charismatic Frank who served as the Outfit’s front man. But Frank’s charisma had a flip side. Al was famously prone to violence, but my grandfather Ralph told me that Frank was infinitely worse. Johnny Torrio had taught Al to cool off and negotiate, and Al took that training well. Frank, on the other hand, saw no cause for talk. If someone crossed him, he reacted instantly—and crazily. Ralph quoted Frank as saying, “You never get no back-talk from a corpse.”

Frank was, in Ralph’s opinion, the best looking of all the brothers. He was tall and lean with thick, dark hair. Unfortunately, I was born many years after his violent death, and so I never saw him personally. The only photo of him I know of is the one that was taken at the morgue. In it, he bears a frightening resemblance to my dad.

When the Outfit moved to Cicero, Frank took on the task of dealing with the town council. He had perfected the appearance of a successful businessman and always dressed in well-tailored suits. He would first approach candidates for office and get them to promise to allow the Outfit to operate their illegal gambling dens and brothels without interference from the police. Once they agreed to play ball, he would make sure they won come Election Day.

But Frank was not always even-keeled enough to think through his actions carefully. Ralph told me a story about how a Capone-endorsed candidate started complaining that he was not making as much money as some of the lower-ranked guys in the Outfit. He demanded a percentage of the Outfit’s income. Al was more than nettled, and he said to Frank, “Why the hell did you choose such a stupid candidate?”

Frank’s violent tendencies ultimately cornered him. When the Cicero city manager, Joseph Z. Klenha, was up for re-election in the 1924 primary, the Outfit positioned themselves outside the voting locations with sawed-off shotguns and Tommy guns. They asked each voter who they were going to vote for, and if the answer wasn’t, “Klenha,” they made sure that voter left the premises without casting a ballot. But Frank decided to take things a step further, just for good measure. It was reported that he ransacked Klenha’s opponent’s office, injuring several campaign employees.

When reports of election fraud reached the Cook County judge, Edmund J. Jareki, he deputized about seventy Chicago policemen and sent them to Cicero to restore order. The group of policemen that went to the polling place near the Western Electric Company in Cicero dressed in plain clothes and arrived in large black touring sedans like those used by the Outfit and its rival gangs.

This was the polling place where Frank, Al, and several other men were soliciting votes with their guns. When they saw men show up in plain clothes, they hesitated for a moment, thinking they might have members of the North Side Mob on their hands. But they quickly realized that the men were in fact police officers, and they ran into the street in different directions. My uncle Frank was shot in the back in the middle of the street. My grandfather Ralph swore that, contrary to the police reports, Frank never drew his weapon on the officers.

Now here is the part of the story that has never been told before. According to my grandfather, Frank was very involved with a girl who had been dating a Chicago police captain. She fell in love with Frank and broke things off with the cop—who then made it known that he was out to kill Frank. I think he ultimately did.

Ralph told me about how he warned Frank that his relationship with the girl was risky, but Frank waved him off. He was sure the Outfit’s boys would protect him, and for laughs, he goaded the cop. He would buy the girl expensive, flashy jewelry, and take her out to all the right places where he knew they would be seen. My grandfather believed—and I believe him—that Frank tragically underestimated that police captain.

Frank was dead, and my grandmother Theresa’s life was shattered. She was a superstitious woman, and she believed deeply that a curse had been placed on her boys. After Uncle Frank’s funeral, she asked Uncle Al to send her back to Italy. She went back to Angri, to the convent where her sisters lived, where she prayed for forgiveness for more than half a year. My aunt Mae took care of my father, who was seven years old, and Sonny in her absence. Theresa returned to Chicago in November of 1924.

By 1926, the Outfit’s activities had gotten so hot that most of the members began sending their children to boarding school. Aunt Maffie and Uncle Matty, both still teenagers, were sent away, along with Sonny and my father, who were eight and nine years old respectively.

My father had been living with his “mamacita” Theresa at the Prairie Avenue house, while his father Ralph lived in his own apartment. Al, on the other hand, lived with Mae and Sonny on the second floor. Although Al was seldom home, my father noticed that Ralph interacted with him far less than Al interacted with Sonny, and he resented him for it. I’m not sure that my father was sorry to go when he was sent to St. John’s Prep School in St. Cloud, Minnesota. He liked school and excelled at it, and he also loved to act in school plays—a talent he probably inherited from his mother.

I do know, however, that my grandfather was furious that his family had been threatened. There was an unspoken code that families were off limits. As Ralph put it many years later, “Those stupid assholes didn’t play by the rules.”

Though the Outfit’s operations were always dangerous, 1926 marked the start of wild, unpredictable times. Uncle Al had the house on Prairie Avenue fortified, installing iron bars on the basement windows. Theresa shut all the drapes that hung on the first floor windows and never opened them again. I can still remember how dark the first floor was and how bright and sunny the upstairs was. And in addition to fortifying the family home, the brothers fortified themselves. They wore body armor and hired bodyguards who constantly shadowed them and became fixtures at the Prairie Avenue house doors.

But Al and Ralph weren’t running risks for free. The U. S. Attorney’s Office in Chicago estimated that the Outfit grossed over $105 million in 1926. You’d have to multiply that amount by at least ten to find its worth in today’s dollars. The money came from hundreds of bars in Cicero and, later, thousands in Chicago, almost every one of them operated without fear of reprisal from politicians, judges, or policemen, many of whom were on Al’s payroll. Moreover, the populace was on the Outfit’s side. Law-abiding Chicagoans thought nothing of walking into an illegal bar and ordering a beer. Al was providing people with what they wanted—booze, booze, and more booze. (For the record, my grandfather ran all this without the use of a fax machine or a cell phone.) The family enjoyed the fruits of its labor immensely. My father, Sonny, and their friends got to ride to the movies in a black touring sedan with an armed driver, each carrying a hundred-dollar bill in his pocket. They had the best seats at every major event that came through the city, like the circus or touring stage shows. They had front row seats at both Cubs and White Sox games.

I have never come across a historical account of those years that mentions how Al and Ralph handled the stress of operating a high-yield business in the face of constant threats to their lives. I know, however, from my own experience of them that they did take time to relax.