And that is how I came to occupy a bedroom on the Dixie Flyer as it pulled out of Dearborn Station for Atlanta a little before midnight on the first Wednesday of April in 1934, with Mike Ahern occupying an adjoining bedroom. My instructions from Beck, as relayed by Bob Lee, had been simple and basic: Talk to Capone for as long as I was allowed and learn as much as I could about his existence as an inmate for the last two years, as well as asking about his overall reflections on his life. Lee was diplomatic enough not to lecture me about being taken in by the man’s supposed charm — not that I would have been anyway. And although neither he nor Beck were happy about Ahern’s insistence that he go along to pave the way, they accepted the condition as long as the Tribune paid all the expenses, Ahern’s as well as mine.
To my surprise, I was glad for the velvet-tongued lawyer’s company on the long ride into the Deep South. Both in the lounge car and the diner, he played the raconteur with flair and relish, describing cases he had tried and characters — underworld and otherwise — he had come to know and represent in court. But he didn’t want to talk about Capone. “You don’t need me prejudicing you one way or the other about Alphonse,” was his reply to my queries.
The train pulled into Atlanta in the evening, and we went straight to the Dinkler Plaza Hotel downtown. The next morning after breakfast, a chauffeured black LaSalle that Ahern had hired — and that I insisted having the Tribune pay for — took us through a steady rain to the great gray federal penitentiary southeast of town.
Once inside, we passed through several sets of barred or solid steel barriers, at least two of which slid open by electricity, and after being patted down for weapons, we were ushered into the office of a deputy warden whose name I almost immediately forgot. I learned that the warden himself, probably not wanting to be directly associated with my visit, had traveled to Washington on what his assistant termed “official prison business.”
The deputy warden, a prim-looking specimen with a bald head and a pince-nez, sat behind his desk and favored Ahern and me with a dour expression. After we sat, he cleared his throat, cleared it again, and pulled some sheets from his center drawer, then began reading from one: “I, Steven Malek, an employee of The Chicago Tribune, have been allowed precisely two hours with inmate number four-zero-eight-eight-six. I understand that said inmate and I will be in one of the private visitation rooms, with a guard present throughout. I also understand that the guard is not there to eavesdrop on our conversation, but that he has express instructions to prevent the passage of any object between said inmate and me. I also understand that if I attempt to pass to, or receive from, said inmate any object whatever, my visit shall at that moment be terminated.”
The deputy warden gingerly placed the sheets on his blotter and cleared his throat again. “Mr. Malek, do you fully comprehend what I have read, and do you agree to the conditions?”
“I do.”
“Then please sign both the original and the two carbon copies and date them where indicated,” he droned, pushing the three sheets across the desk along with a pen. “One of the carbons will be given to you for your files upon your departure from the premises.”
After I had signed all three, the turnkey checked my John Hancocks, slid the sheets back into the drawer, and rose. More throat-clearing. “You may see the inmate now. And Mr. Ahern, you may wait in the visitors’ lounge down the hall, where there are newspapers and magazines. The guard just outside the door will direct you.”
Ahern gave me a thumbs-up, and I followed the deputy warden through a labyrinth of gray-walled and shadowy corridors. After making several right-angle turns, we came to a steel door, next to which a uniformed guard stood, hands behind his back. “He’s inside now?” the turnkey asked, and when the guard said yes, the bald man nodded curtly.
The guard turned a handle, pulled the door open, and curtly gestured for me to enter. The room’s walls were as gray and blank as those in the corridors, and the only pieces of furniture on the concrete floor — also gray — were a square wooden table, maple and about five feet on a side, and two straight-backed wooden chairs that looked like they had descended from the same tree as the table. In one of these chairs, facing me, sat Alphonse Capone.
He gave me a half smile as I walked toward the table, then nodded as I took the chair opposite him. “Yeah, kid... you’re the one all right,” he said in that husky voice. “I told Ahern I remembered you from the courtroom, even your name. How ya doin’?”
He was as I remembered him in the courtroom — arrogant, round-faced, thick-lipped, balding, flat-nosed, and with those probing gray eyes hooded by dark, thick brows. And, of course, the feature that gave him his moniker, that famous scar on his left cheek running from ear to jaw. His body, however, seemed shrunken within the blue prison denims, although maybe that was because I had previously seen him only at the defense table, and then wearing perfectly fitted suits that covered the color spectrum, including purple, light green, and even yellow.
“Y’know, kid, having you come down here was Ahern’s idea,” Capone rasped, lowering his eyes and throwing a glance in the direction of the guard, who had silently entered the room behind me and was standing, back to the door, some fifteen feet away. “Says the word’s out they’re gonna send me to that new island pen out in California, but I’m tellin’ you now, it ain’t gonna happen. Besides, he’s tryin’ to get in good with me after the way he and Fink screwed up my trial.”
He leaned his thick arms on the table. “I shouldn’t even be in here, y’know. But what can ya expect when a whole community’s prejudiced against ya? I’ve given the public what it wants. I’ve spent my best years as a public benefactor. Y’see, ninety percent of the people of Chicago and Cook County drink and gamble, right? And my offense is that I gave them amusements. So how do I get repaid? Shit, I’ll tell ya; I get blamed for everything bad that happens anyplace near Chicago, that’s how. I been blamed for crimes that happened as far back as the Chicago Fire. The reason I’m in here — the rotten bastards set me up, including your goddamn Colonel McCormick at the Trib, never mind that I helped him when his circulation drivers was gonna strike back in ’28. I got those guys back in line, and McCormick thanked me personally, told me I was famous — like Babe Ruth, he said.” Capone seemed to puff up as he recalled the incident.
“I got nothin’ against your paper now, or even against that mush-mouthed old colonel of yours. And by the way, kid, I was clean on the Lingle rubout, too. I liked the guy.” He was referring to a Tribune reporter, Jake Lingle, who supposedly had ties to the syndicate and who got shot dead in a downtown pedestrian tunnel in 1930.
I didn’t believe him about Lingle, but I didn’t give a damn whether what he said was true or not. I felt strangely, eerily, detached, as if I were hovering somewhere outside looking in at this cubicle and its three figures: cop, crook, and snoop.
“Ah, hell, that’s enough history,” Capone said when I didn’t respond to his Lingle pronouncement. “Hey, how’s things in Chicago, kid? How are the Cubs gonna do this year?”
“So-so, maybe third place. Giants and Cardinals both look too good for them,” I said.
“Yeah, those damn Cards with them hillbilly Dean brothers they got. How the hell did they learn to pitch like that down in the backwoods?” Capone gave a chuckle and slapped a beefy paw on the table. “Aw, you didn’t come down here to talk about baseball, didja? Okay, maybe Ahern’s not so dumb after all. Like I said, it’s a sure bet that I ain’t goin’ to that Alcatraz place, but maybe it’s not such a bad idea to hedge the bet anyway. You were okay at the trial, didn’t insult me like that other guy the Trib had there or those bastards from the Hearst rags, they were the worst. So Ahern says maybe a story on me, on how I’m doin’ down here, might be a good thing right now.”