Al Capone Shines My Shoes

  “You won’t let her throw a tantrum or anything, right?” I ask Jimmy. There’s no way to prevent Natalie from throwing a fit. We both know that, but I ask anyway.

  “Theresa plays with her all the time. And if we start having problems I brought a bunch of rocks up and I’ll let her sort them for my rock machine. You know she loves that,” Jimmy tells me.

  “Okay, then, I’m gonna go. You’re all right, right?” I ask again.

  Natalie jolts upright, her body suddenly rigid.

  “Not you, Nat. You’re going to stay here with Theresa.”

  Nat seems to take this in; a tiny darting smile flashes across her mouth. Theresa’s whole face bursts with joy. “Did you see that, Moose? Did you? She wants to stay here with me.”

  When I close the Mattamans’ door, Mrs. Mattaman is already gone. She went to the Officers’ Club with my parents. Mr. Mattaman is on duty in the dock guard tower. Mrs. Caconi has settled in, knitting booties for the warden’s new baby, Natalie is twirling a globe, and Theresa is lying on the floor, pencil in hand, ready to draw the country Nat calls. This is a new game Theresa just made up and they are having a lot of fun with it.

  Everyone is content. I don’t need to worry anymore.

  By the time I get to the Officers’ Club the place is almost completely transformed. Chairs are set up facing a main concert stage draped in blue. Piper and Annie are dressed in long velvet skirts with frilly white blouses and high heels. Piper looks elegant and grown-up. Annie looks silly, like a dressed-up domino. Her face is even more square underneath the hairdo Bea Trixle has given her.

  Annie sits at the piano, waiting for her cue. She is an able piano player and she can sing okay. But when Piper opens her mouth, it’s scary. Pretty as she is, her singing sounds like the noise the can opener makes. My mom grinds her teeth and pinches her hand every time Piper tries for a note. It isn’t just the high notes she misses either.

  When Annie and Piper are finished and they’ve taken their bows to resounding applause by everyone except my mother, I head outside the front door to wait for them. All I’m thinking about right now is how to pretend I really liked their performance.

  “How were we?” Piper asks when she and Annie finally make it outside, giddy and flushed from all the attention.

  “Great,” I tell them, trying hard to smile sincerely, “just great.”

  “Who dressed you tonight, Moose?” Annie asks, eyeing my suit coat and tie.

  My mom got down the soap and water to wash my mouth out when she discovered all the buttons were cut off my jacket. But then she saw them in Natalie’s button box and she put the soap away.

  “Doesn’t look like his usual self, does he?” Piper comments.

  “Not a bit,” Annie agrees.

  Inside, we hear the tables being moved into place and the hustle of activity as the Officers’ Club is transformed from a piano hall to a restaurant.

  “C’mon, we need to get going,” I tell Piper, and the two of us head down the stairs.

  Annie lingers. “Be careful, okay?” she whispers, standing at the stairs, her back bathed in light.

  The main entrance to the Officers’ Club is on the second story. Downstairs is the “kids’ door,” as we call it. The door is locked, but Piper has the key. She pulls it out of her pocket and unlocks the door. Annie’s shadow is still on the stairs as we head inside.

  No one is downstairs in the Officers’ Club, but the bustle of the kitchen is right above us; dishes click, an officer gives instructions, urgent footsteps scurry across the floor.

  Piper opens a cupboard in the dark back of the room. Inside is a stairwell. The Officers’ Club used to be the post exchange (the PX) when Alcatraz was a military prison, so there are leftover parts from that time. The kitchen is still where it was, but this back route has been boarded off at the top.

  The boards were hastily nailed, leaving gaps through which we can see the pantry—and through the open pantry door to the kitchen where a man in a starched white cook’s uniform whisks past carrying a plate of stuffed mushroom caps.

  Was that Capone? I crane my neck to catch sight of him, but I can’t see much from here. Now a man in a black jacket and white trousers brings in an empty tray. “What’s next?” he asks.

  “Cocktail meatballs,” Willy One Arm’s squeaky voice calls as he rebalances a shiny silver tray in his one good hand.

  “Get the cherries!” someone yells, and the dark closet floods with light. Piper grips my hand, her fingernails dig into my palm. Officer Bomini bends down in front of us searching the shelves.

  I hold my breath, but Bomini’s only concern is locating the jar of maraschino cherries, which he finds easily. When he leaves, he shuts the pantry door tightly and everything goes black.

  “We need two,” somebody else yells, and just as suddenly the pantry door swings open again. Now we see the whole array of servers waiting to carry food. None of them look like convicts, dressed as they are in white cook’s uniforms or black dinner jackets like the waitstaff of a fancy restaurant. Something is making my nose itch. Dust or maybe it’s the smell of garlic. The urge to cough tickles the back of my mouth. I grind my teeth, catching the cough in the cage of my throat. I swallow it down just as Bomini’s hands find the cherries and grab the jar. He’s in a rush and doesn’t really look. This time he leaves the door wide open.

  “Number 85 you’re on. This is your moment!” Officer Trixle’s voice belts out. Piper squeezes my hand and for a second it seems nice to be standing so close to her as we strain to spot Capone in the bustle of waiters. He looks dapper in the black and white waiter outfit, though his starched shirt pulls across his belly. His dark black hair curls slightly around his ear as if the barber missed a strand. I can see his scar as he gathers up the plates.

  “One at a time,” Trixle orders. “Let’s do this up good.”

  “The warden first?” somebody asks.

  “Hoover first. Then Ness. Why not carry those two together,” Officer Bomini suggests.

  It’s then that we see him full on—almost as if he’s coming toward us. He spins, and there is his jagged scar in perfect line sight of our dark pantry. Quick as a flash he hawks up a good bit of phlegm and aims it straight for the potatoes on one plate, then the other. Smoothly, as if he’s done this a hundred times before, he switches both plates to one hand and with his index finger swirls over the top of the mashed potatoes with a finishing twist.

  “Got a problem, 85?” Associate Warden Chudley asks.

  “No problem, sir. Just getting a good hold,” Capone reports as he balances one plate on the flat of each palm and carries them out with the confidence of a man who has been waiting tables his whole life.

  “C’mon,” Piper whispers, tugging my hand.

  Back we go down the stairwell as quietly as we can to the deserted first-floor bowling alley. I head for the door. Piper pulls me the other way.

  “Twenty minutes, remember?” I whisper.

  “It hasn’t been that long.”

  “It has.”

  “We’ve got to see this,” Piper insists.

  “No.” Everything inside me rises up. I won’t let Piper manipulate me this way. “No,” I say.

  “We can’t argue here.” She yanks me past the single bowling lanes, the bag of boxing gloves, the pool cues, and up to the open front stairwell.

  “Piper.” I pull my arm back. “I said no.”

  “You don’t understand how much this means to me,” she whispers. “My life is over. This is all I have.” I can’t tell if this is real or a performance, but either way I’m in trouble.

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” I tell her.

  “It’s true. You don’t know.” She grabs my wrist so tightly she gives me a rope burn. “Come . . . with . . . me or I’ll scream right here.”

  I stand my ground.

  She takes a big breath. The scream starts low like a whisper—

  “Wait,” I tell her.

  We stare at each other,
just inches apart but from different sides of the universe.

  “Okay, all right,” I concede. What else can I do?

  The main stairs are strangely quiet, like the movie theater aisle once the movie begins. At the top, she pulls us into the large formal coat closet that is full now with everyone’s best coats. My stomach clenches when I see Mrs. Bomini’s sweater with a needlepoint flower sewn on, Bea Trixle’s beaver-collared jacket, and my mother’s best white coat.

  No, I won’t be caught here. I spin around, but when I look back at Piper she has her mouth wide open in a silent scream and I follow her obediently again. I can’t stand how Piper manipulates me, and I would never do this if I wasn’t being forced, but I have to admit there’s a certain thrill to being here too.

  This closet is where the post office used to be when Alcatraz was an army post. Under the coats are mail slots that give us a glittering view of the whole Officers’ Club clear across to the tall windows that look out on the black water and the sparkling lights of Berkeley in the distance.

  The room is set up to look like a fancy restaurant with short starched white tablecloths over black floor-length cloths. Each table is set with crystal wineglasses, water glasses, dessert and bread plates, plus three forks and three spoons for each person. Warden Williams is seated right next to J. Edgar Hoover. Hoover is a mean-looking man with busy eyebrows. On the warden’s other side is a young dark-haired man with a smooth face and hair parted in the middle. That’s got to be Ness.

  My mom and dad, Bea and Darby Trixle, and the Chudleys are also at this table. “Where’s your mom?” I suddenly ask, realizing there is no seat for Mrs. Williams.

  “Shhh,” Piper warns.

  Everyone is talking in breathy, animated party voices. Though I can’t hear what they’re saying, I can see from their gestures that they are all cozying up to Hoover and Ness. Bea Trixle, her hair platinum blond today, the exact color of Mae Capone’s, is watching Hoover. Even my dad is nodding to Ness as if he’s just said something incredibly clever.

  “Capone will serve Ness first. You’ll see,” Piper whispers.

  Capone walks slowly but purposefully, as if he’s testing out new shoes. His face is the picture of submission as he follows Officer Trixle. His hand twitches for a second in front of Ness and I wonder if he’ll turn over the dinner plate and grind it into Ness’s hair, but he does not. He smoothes out the tablecloth and puts down the plate with a flourish. Capone does it up; everything short of a curtsy. Then he stands at attention, his heels clicked together, watching Eliot Ness dig his fork into the spit-filled mashed potatoes.

  The warden smiles his approval. His prize pig has shown well.

  “Okay, we saw it. Let’s get out of here,” I whisper.

  Piper doesn’t move. “The show’s not over,” she says.

  “You said you wanted to see Capone. You saw him. Let’s go.”

  “No,” Piper insists as Officer Trixle escorts Capone back into the kitchen and Willy One Arm appears at the head table, holding a wine bottle with a white bib tied around it. He fills each glass, finishing with a showy twist. All of which he does despite the fact that he’s missing one arm and his black jacket sleeve hangs down empty, flapping as he moves.

  Willy catches Officer Trixle’s eye. Trixle nods. Willy One Arm’s good hand tosses something invisible over his shoulder as he follows Trixle into the kitchen.

  “That’s salt,” Piper whispers. “He throws it over his shoulder after everything he does.”

  “Why?”

  “For luck. He forgot to do it the night he lost his arm.”

  Trixle’s lips are twitching as if there’s a laugh he can’t quite contain. He goes to the front podium and calls the room to attention by clinking a wineglass. “Excuse me, but we seem to have found a wallet.” He opens the wallet with a flourish and takes the license out. “Says here: J. Edgar Hoover.”

  Hoover isn’t paying attention. He’s absorbed in a whispered conversation with my father.

  “Lose something, Mr. Hoover?” Warden Williams asks, leaning toward J. Edgar, not a trace of humor on his face.

  “Pardon me?” Hoover says.

  “I said, missing something?” the warden asks.

  Hoover pats at his vest, his suit coat, his trousers pockets. His dark eyebrows slide together.

  Willy One Arm returns with an empty tray. Officer Trixle sweeps a folded napkin through the air and places it carefully on the tray. Then he sets the wallet right in the center and Willy One Arm scurries over to J. Edgar Hoover, whose mouth is even more dour than it was before. Hoover snatches his wallet back, checks the contents, and slips it into his vest pocket in one swift motion like a rodent who has found his cheese.

  “Guess you got your pocket picked on Alcatraz, sir,” Warden Williams says as he spreads a thick coat of butter on his bread, careful not to look Mr. Hoover in the face. “Like I said this afternoon, Mr. Hoover, we have the cleverest criminals in the whole country here on Alcatraz. I think it would be a bad idea to cut back our guard forces . . . a bad idea indeed.”

  27.

  THROW, CATCH, THROW, CATCH

  Same day—Sunday, September 8, 1935

  I finally get Piper out of there, back down the stairs and into the bowling alley basement again. “Can you believe that?” she whispers.

  “Ness ate Capone’s spit. You know how he shines Trixle’s shoes? Bet that’s the trick.”

  “A spit shine?” she asks with a whispery laugh.

  “Willy was amazing. I didn’t even see his hand move. Did you?” I whisper as we let ourselves out into the dark night, lit by a full moon and the bright entrance light.

  As the cold air hits me, I suddenly stare stupidly at Piper. How are we going to get back to 64 without the guard in the dock tower spotting us? Why didn’t I think this through? Piper can make these kinds of mistakes. I can’t.

  “How are we going to get back?” I ask.

  “We could shimmy down the wall and walk in the water,” Piper suggests.

  “Mattaman will shoot us. He’ll think we’re escaping cons.”

  “Maybe. Maybe not,” Piper says.

  I roll my eyes. How can she be so blasé about this. It’s almost as if she wants to be caught. “We could throw a rock over in the wrong direction. Mattaman will point his guns on that spot and we’ll run,” I offer.

  “Throwing stuff . . . that’s your solution to everything, isn’t it?” Piper whispers.

  “Got a better idea?”

  She shakes her head. “Nope.”

  A sheet of sweat forms on my forehead. I can’t just stand here and wait until my father comes out. I have to get back to Natalie.

  We stare at the guard tower. We can probably get behind my dad’s electrical shop without Mattaman seeing us, but once we get close to 64, there’s almost no way to get back without being spotted . . . or is there?

  The first rock makes no sound. The second rock is big and soft—more of a dirt clod, it hits with a thud and splits apart, unloading a pile of dirt on the newly washed road.

  We don’t have time to worry about this, we just run. My legs rip across the road and up behind my dad’s electrical shop. Now we’re safely out of sight of the tower, but then I see where we have to go.

  To get to 64 now, we have to run within clear sight of Mattaman; there’s no way he won’t see us. I’d hoped we’d be able to scoot across in the shadows, but now I’m pretty certain we’re dead meat.

  “We got to pretend we’re supposed to be here,” Piper says, still breathing hard from the run. “Let me handle it.” She darts across before I can stop her.

  Within seconds, Mattaman’s high-powered searchlight finds her, and I scuttle out to where she’s standing.

  “Piper? Moose?” he calls through the bullhorn. “What’s going on down there?”

  “Just coming back from playing for Mr. Hoover, Mr. Mattaman,” Piper calls back.

  “Thought you were done earlier,” Mattaman bellows.


  “No, sir,” Piper answers.

  “That right, Moose?” Mattaman calls down.

  My heart beats loudly in my ears, flushing me with guilt. “Yes, sir,” I say weakly.

  “Okay then.” Mattaman gives us the nod.

  When we arrive at the Mattamans’, Piper cracks a big smile. “I’m so good,” she says.

  Doesn’t she ever feel ashamed, I wonder as Mrs. Caconi pounces on us, her face red and shiny with sweat. “Do you have her?” she cries.

  “Who? Have who?” I ask, but I already know the answer. I can feel it in the tightening of my belly and the dizziness in my head.

  “I don’t know what happened, Moose.” Mrs. Caconi’s lip begins trembling. “One minute Natalie was here. The next minute she was gone. Jimmy and Theresa are out looking for her. But you’d know where she’d have got to. Course you would!” She mops her forehead with her handkerchief.

  “I better go get my parents,” I say.

  “Oh now, Moose . . . you don’t need to go and do that, do ya? Go on. You’ll find her. I know you will.” Mrs. Caconi’s big pink hand is on my back, pushing me out the door.

  “She doesn’t want us to tell,” Piper blurts out as we run down the balcony. “She doesn’t want to get in trouble either.”

  I try to figure out where Natalie would go.

  “Let’s try the swings,” I say as we head up the stairs to the parade grounds, though I wonder again if I should get my parents. I don’t want to tell them I wasn’t with Natalie, but this is serious.

  We round the corner of 64 building and slam into Jimmy and Theresa. They’re panting like they’ve just run a few miles.

  “Natalie?” my voice croaks.

  Jimmy is doubled over with a side ache. “We checked behind 64 building, Chinatown, the parade grounds. Nothing.”

  “I was in the bathroom,” Theresa explains in a high voice. “Jimmy was supposed to be watching her.”

  Jimmy puts his head in his hands. “Two minutes I was gone. I just went to get the ball. It went over the railing,” he mutters miserably.

  “That’s all you ever do. Throw and catch. Throw and catch,” Theresa practically shouts at him.