“Nonsense!” Ahern barked, slapping a palm on the tabletop. “He has been a model prisoner, no trouble for anybody. You must have figured out it’s that goddamn publicity-seeking warden, Johnston, who’s setting up Alcatraz; he wants to build a reputation for the place and for himself. To do that, he needs big-name inmates, stars you might call them, and what bigger star is there than one Alphonse Capone?”
“Interesting,” I said, sipping coffee. “And just why are you bothering to tell me all this?”
Ahern leaned forward and lowered his voice once more. “Alphonse, not surprisingly, doesn’t want to go to this Alcatraz. And for that matter, the warden down in Atlanta doesn’t particularly want to see him go.”
“Of course not. Having Capone there gives the place some status. The Atlanta turnkey doesn’t want to lose that cachet to some upstart hoosegow out on the West Coast. I think Al should be flattered — everybody wants him as a house guest.”
“Mr. Malek, Alphonse respects you, he trusts you,” Ahern said, shifting gears smoothly to his courtroom-earnest voice.
“What the hell are you talking about?” I shot back. “We don’t even know each other. We’ve never met, not even once.”
“He remembers you from his trial,” Ahern persisted. “He always thought you were fair to him, unlike the other reporters who went out of their way to be insulting and derogatory in their stories. You know what he said during the trial, he said ‘That Tribune kid is OK.’ And, Mr. Malek, he repeated those very words last week when I saw him in Atlanta, those very words.” The lawyer leaned back and folded his hands across his vested chest as if having just scored a major point in court. I was not impressed.
“In the first place, Counselor, I doubt very much that Capone ever knew who I was. Second, I find it hard to believe that he referred to me as ‘kid’ — I don’t believe he’s even three years older than I am. And third, he hated the Tribune and Colonel McCormick so much that I can’t believe he’d ever have anything good to say about anybody at the paper.”
“Wrong on all counts,” Ahern countered. “One, he read every word about the trial in all of the Chicago papers, and knew all the bylines — he can still name all of the reporters. Two, he calls a lot of people ‘kid,’ regardless of their age. And three, he may dislike the Tribune and its owner as you suggest, but he’s smart enough to know that it employs many good people.”
“All right, for the sake of moving this conversation along, I’ll stipulate those points. So?”
“Mr. Malek, I am about to offer you the journalistic coup of the decade, perhaps of the entire century. As I said, I was down in Atlanta last week visiting Alphonse. Although he bravely claims, to use his own words, that ‘the fix is in’ in his favor and that he’ll never be sent to Alcatraz, I know him well enough to realize he’s terrified of the possibility that he may land on that new Devil’s Island in California. And as I said, the warden down in Atlanta doesn’t much like the idea either. But both of them are willing to let you — and no one else — interview Alphonse face-to-face for up to two hours so that he can talk about what his life is like in the Atlanta penitentiary.”
I hadn’t seen that coming and it knocked me off balance, something that rarely happens. Capone was famous for his hatred of the press and for not sitting still for interviews. I lit a Lucky and studied Michael Ahern, saying nothing for a half-minute or more while I rearranged my thoughts.
“So I’m supposed to go down there and write this fairy tale about how Alphonse Capone has transmogrified into a choirboy who is an asset to the great Atlanta penitentiary, right? And the public, which of course adores Scarface, will be so delighted to learn of his rehabilitation in Georgia that they will rise up en masse and march on Washington and every other major city protesting any attempt to move him to this new hellhole in San Francisco Bay? A brilliant plan, Counselor. Absolutely brilliant.”
Ahern flashed a sardonic smile. “You have a way of placing the worst possible interpretation upon an opportunity.”
“Nah, I’m just a realist. I’ve been around people like you long enough to have developed what is commonly termed a healthy skepticism. You say Capone specifically asked for me on this so-called story? I don’t know whether to be flattered or insulted, but I’m leaning toward the latter. Why don’t you request a sob sister? Every paper in town has at least one on the staff, including us, and they’re perfect for this kind of thing. God, any one of them could wring so much emotion out of this assignment that there’d be a run on the handkerchief counter at the Boston Store.”
“If you weren’t so maddening, you would actually be quite entertaining,” Ahern said, undaunted by my reaction and maintaining his beatific smile. “Mr. Malek, it’s you or nobody on this story — I repeat that Alphonse specifically requested you. And I have to wonder how your editors up in Tribune Tower would respond if they learned that one of their veteran reporters turned down a chance to interview the most famous inmate in the world. I myself would not want to be on the receiving end of what most surely would be a strong reaction.”
The city editor’s eyes bored in on me through black-rimmed glasses. “Let me make sure I’ve got this straight, Malek,” Bob Lee snarled from behind the desk in his cluttered office just off the Tribune’s two-story local room. “Mike Ahern guarantees you an interview with Capone, and the warden actually goes along with the idea? Sounds wacky to me. Do they actually think any kind of a story, no matter how sympathetic, could keep that thug from becoming a charter member of Club Alcatraz?”
“Ahern seems to think so, although it sounds crazy to me, too.”
“Ahern!” Lee brushed him aside with a hand and a sneer. “He and Albert Fink couldn’t keep Capone out of jail. Besides, does he actually think you’d write the kind of piece that he and Capone want?”
“He couldn’t have gotten that idea from anything I said to him. What bothers me is that they both must think I’m inherently sympathetic to Capone.”
“Well, you’re a decent writer, I’ll give you that, and you’re balanced — at least you certainly were during the trial — so they probably feel that you’d give that scum a fair shake in print, which you would,” Lee commented in a rare burst of praise. “You know, what we’ve got here is one hell of an opportunity. And we’d be crazy to pass it up, right?”
“Right!” I echoed, heart pounding.
“Wait here,” Lee said, jangling the keys on his chain, which he always did when he was agitated. “I’m going to see Mr. Beck.” He went out to the square center desk in the midst of the local room’s pandemonium, where the top editors sat, one on each of its four sides, manning phones, reading galley proofs, shouting for copy boys, and otherwise directing the flow of news as it came in from reporters in Chicago, the Middle West, and around the world.
The city editor leaned down to talk to one of the four, a distinguished-looking gray-haired man in shirtsleeves and suspenders. This was Edward Scott Beck, the managing editor, who had ruled the Tribune’s news operations for twenty years and was a symbol, at least to most of the reporters I knew, of dignity, honor, and good, if conservative, news judgment. As I watched from Lee’s alcove of an office, Beck rose and the two men, their heads nearly touching, talked for several minutes, both occasionally glancing in my direction.
Finally, Lee nodded and returned to his office. “Mr. Beck gave his approval,” he said. “But he had several thoughts about this venture and so do I. Take notes.”