Free Uncle Al Capone by Deirdre Marie Capone

through my head as the bus pulled out of Chicago—the fresh air, the starry nights, the winter-time rides in a reindeer-pulled sleigh, fishing and swimming in the lake in the summer, and being with my dad. I felt a tear roll down my cheek, but wiped it away quickly, saying to myself, “Snap out of it, Deirdre. You can’t bring him back, but he lives in your heart. And you’ll feel closer to him at the lodge.”
    I could hardly wait to get there and be with my grandfather. I not only wanted to see him, I wanted to ask him a lot of questions. I had already embarked on my project of unearthing all the information I could about my family, and I kept running up against a persistent question, the darkest of the blots on the Capone name: the Saint Valentine’s Day Massacre. I knew that if anyone could help me understand how my uncle Al could possibly have been involved in such a senseless crime, it would be my grandfather Ralph.
    Late one night at Recap Lodge I sat with my grandfather in his kitchen. He ate a salami sandwich, had a couple of drinks, and I guessed that meant he would be more willing than usual to talk about the old days.
    Without my prompting, he suddenly murmured that he was sorry he had not been a better father to my father, and that I had born the consequences of it after my dad’s suicide. He told me that since his son didn’t have a mother, he thought it would be better for him to let his grandmother Theresa raise him. And he also thought it would be safer.
    “Al and I had to work hard all the time not to get ourselves killed,” Ralph said, “we had a business to run, and the whole family—including your dad—depended on the money from that business. There were many people who were trying to take our business away from us, and there were many people who wanted to see us dead.”
    I took a deep breath. “Ralph,” I said—he insisted that I call him Ralph and not grandpa—“was that what happened at the Saint Valentine’s Day Massacre? Was Al trying to protect the family?”
    The story I knew was this: The St. Valentine’s Day Massacre happened on the morning of February 14, 1929. Seven men sat in a garage at 2122 N. Clark Street waiting for George “Bugs” Moran, chief of the North Side gang. They also waited for a delivery of booze “hijacked off a boat,” and, later that afternoon, they all planned to go to Detroit to pick up some whisky.
    Ralph shook his head pointedly. “Al did not plan it,” he said firmly. “In fact, that’s the last thing he would have wanted. He was furious when he heard about it. He phoned me and was really steaming. He said, ‘That crazy bastard McGurn! What’s he trying to do, crucify me?’” Al was in Florida at the time of the Saint Valentine’s Day Massacre and left one of his partners, Jack “machine gun” McGurn, in charge.
    Ralph explained to me that before he left, Al had been particularly worried about the activities of a rival bootlegger and head of the North Side gang, Bugs Moran. McGurn had told Al he could handle Moran.
    “OK, then handle him,” Al had said. “Put the fear of God in him. Run him out of town…whatever. Just do it in a way that won’t bring us a lot of heat. I’ve got enough problems as it is.”
    And McGurn came back with, “Nothing to worry, boss. Leave it to me. I’ll take care of him.”
    Then, after the massacre hit the papers, Al exploded to Ralph over the phone. “So what does the asshole do?” He ranted. “He mows down seven people at once! This kind of thing can ruin us. The Tribune and the rest of the press will never get off this. Sure as hell they’re already blaming me for it, even though I’m over a thousand miles away in Florida. And the guys back east aren’t gonna be happy about this either. They’ll never believe I didn’t plan the whole fuckin’ mess. And to top it off, he didn’t even get Moran. That son of a bitch is still walkin’ around Chicago. Ralph, this a fuckin’ nightmare. Wake