For Sale —American Paradise (42 page)

Only a handful of people in the United States could dole out cash like Capone. His income in 1927 alone has been estimated at $105 million—nearly $1.4 billion in twenty-first-century dollars. He did have a sizable overhead—everyone from truck drivers and warehouse workers to cops and judges were on his payroll—but his income was, after all, tax-free.

Capone boldly dropped his alias on the morning of January 10. Accompanied by a friend that the
Miami Daily News
couldn't or wouldn't identify, Capone walked into the lobby of the Miami Police Department and asked to see police chief Leslie Quigg. After he was shown into Quigg's office, word raced around the neighborhood that Al Capone was having a sit-down with the cops. When Capone came out of Quigg's office a few minutes later, he was surrounded by reporters and police officers.

Capone “stuffed his hands deep into the pockets of his neatly creased blue serge trousers and beamed affectionately at the welcoming committee of blue-coats and newspapermen,” the
Daily News
reported. He was at his genial best as he talked to the crowd.

He sidestepped questions about whether he'd left Chicago because gangland warfare had erupted in that city. “I'm down here for a rest and here I'm going to stay,” he said.

He was asked about a recent quick trip to—and hasty exit from—Los Angeles.

“When I got in, a bunch of the boys met me at the train,” Capone said. “Some of them must have had guns on their hips and the police didn't like that, so they thought I was a bad moral influence or something. They had me all wrong there, and I'm glad to say my reception here has been quite different.”

Noting that Miami's climate was “more healthful than Chicago's and warmer than California,” Capone said he'd sought a meeting with Quigg to assure the city's top cop that he was in town only for a vacation and had no intention of setting up shop.

He also threw a bouquet to the city's cash-starved real estate brokers.

“I like Miami so well that I'm going to vacation here all winter,” Capone said. “In fact, I expect my wife, mother, and child in on the train this afternoon, and we plan to buy a home either in Coral Gables or Miami Beach.”

Capone had been studying the Florida real estate market, and he let it be known that he intended to make a few investments.

“I believe now is the time to buy down here, and I'm thinking of going into the market rather heavily,” he said. “I don't believe there will be any sensational climb in values for five years, but I'm contented to wait that long.”

Police chief Quigg told reporters he saw no reason why Capone should not be treated the same as any other winter visitor, the
Daily News
said.

Eyeing the large crowd that had gathered outside the police station, Capone and his friend slipped quietly out a side door and left.

Capone made quite an impression on Miami. But his presence there stirred deeply mixed feelings among the city's business and tourism boosters.

His name had become a household word, and the fact that a man as famous as Al Capone was spending the winter in Miami would be an indicator that maybe things were getting a little better in Florida. And his declaration that he intended to invest heavily in Florida real estate undoubtedly sent a surge of joy through some of the city's businessmen.

But Capone also linked Miami with Chicago's notorious organized crime syndicate. In 1928, Chicago's gangsters—including those who worked for Capone—were getting mentioned in newspapers quite often because the lives of so many of them were being suddenly and violently ended in gangland warfare. And when the newspapers wrote about the violence in Chicago, they inevitably noted that Capone had left the city and was spending the winter in Miami.

To some readers, that may have added to Miami's mystique. To others, it only confirmed their conviction that Miami was the capital of sin and corruption.

There was, of course, obvious irony and no small amount of hypocrisy in Miami's indignity over Capone's winter residence. He was, hands down, the nation's most famous bootlegger. He had made his immense wealth by flaunting laws and tapping into the bottomless market for booze created by Prohibition.

Florida's tourism boosters made a selling point of the fact that the state's law enforcement officials—especially in Miami—didn't trouble themselves too much with enforcing Prohibition. That was the Coast Guard's worry. Coast Guard patrol boats made occasional arrests on the high seas, and occasionally a bootlegger trying to come ashore up the coast from Miami was unlucky enough to be spotted by a local sheriff who was eyeing the next election. And there had been the Coast Guard's spectacular sundown shoot-out with bootlegger Red Shannon during a Flamingo Hotel tea dance two years earlier.

But it was obvious that bootleggers making runs from the Bahamas to Florida almost always got through.

Capone's presence in Miami marked a turning point in South Florida's criminal element and was a milestone in its growth and the public image it was projecting. In the early days of the wild real estate speculation and remarkable population growth, when an unprecedented amount of money was flowing into South Florida, the criminals—such as the ill-fated Ashley Gang—were home-grown crackers who used their resourcefulness, skills, and knowledge of the local terrain to outwit and outrun local cops.

Those criminals were daring opportunists who often acted on the spur of the moment, robbing a bank, running a still, and selling moonshine whiskey, or
hijacking a bootlegger on the high seas making a run from the Bahamas back to Florida. When the cops chased them, they melted into the Everglades.

And while their crimes netted them impressive profits by the standards of the day, they were pickpockets compared to Al Capone and his ruthless, highly organized, and efficient criminal machine. Miami police undoubtedly realized that when Al Capone showed up, their days of chasing clever moonshiners and rowdy stickup artists were over. Now they were facing a shrewd, sophisticated, and tough opponent who had more resources, more weapons, and more manpower at his command than they could ever squeeze out of a harried city council always worried about property tax rates and the next election. And the new criminal also was represented by skillful, well-paid attorneys.

Despite Miami's pride in its reputation as a city untroubled by the annoying rules that restricted the rest of the country, much of Miami's officialdom was piqued that Al Capone was enjoying their wonderful winter weather. And Parker Henderson Jr., educated in old-
fashioned morals and manners at Georgia Military Academy, was enthralled by the dapper gangster's blend of magnetic personal charm and ice-cold calculation. He loved being on the periphery of Capone's dark, violent world and perhaps being allowed to call Capone by the nickname “Snorky,” a reference to his stylish, expensive wardrobe and a privilege reserved for only his closest friends. Since Capone wanted to maintain a low profile in Miami, Henderson was glad to help him avoid public scrutiny by doing small favors, such as running errands and some occasional shopping.

When Capone's associates in Chicago wired money to him, Henderson went to the Western Union office in Miami Beach. There, he would accept a money transfer for “Albert Costa,” disguising his handwriting to sign for the telegram.

Henderson made a lot of trips to the Western Union office in the winter of 1927–28. During Capone's six-month stay, he received wire transfers from Chicago totaling $73,800, or just under $1 million in twenty-first-century dollars. Henderson duly collected Capone's walking-around money and delivered it to him.

Around mid-January, Capone called Henderson to his room and asked him to do a favor. He handed him a wad of cash and asked him to buy a dozen guns and bring them to his room. Henderson dutifully trotted off to a hardware store, bought a dozen pistols, and brought them back to Capone's room. But the room was empty.

Henderson put the guns on the bed and left. When he checked back a little later, the guns were gone. Concerned, he mentioned it to Capone later, but Capone told him not to worry about it.

Capone's presence in the Ponce de Leon turned into a financial bonanza for Henderson and his staff. Every night, Capone would order the hotel dining room to prepare enough food for a banquet.

“He would order food for about fifty people, and probably there would be only about seven or eight at the table,” Henderson said later. “When we would
present the check, Capone would refuse to pay it unless we doubled it. When we would abide by his wishes, he would pull out a large bill and the waiters would keep the change.”

The dining room had been losing money until Capone moved in. During his stay, it became highly profitable.

There were other benefits for Henderson. The
New York Times
later noted that Henderson had “a liking for the company of celebrities and . . . was keen for racing or other sports with a percentage of uncertainty in them.” His new friendship with Capone gave him plenty of opportunities to indulge in those interests.

Capone showed his appreciation for Henderson's friendship with lavish presents, including a diamond-studded belt buckle.

Henderson was also occasionally called upon to host Capone's friends from Chicago and show them the town.

Around the same time of Capone's lavish spending at the Ponce de Leon, the US Coast Guard began assembling patrol craft at nearby Fort Lauderdale and tightened its blockade of bootleggers trying to slip into Miami with whiskey from the Bahamas. The enforcement was so effective that no booze entered Miami during the week of January 9 through January 13, and prices of bootlegged whiskey skyrocketed.

“Since the first patrol craft of the coast guard forces departed from the concentration base at Fort Lauderdale for duty along the coast, no rum runners have been able to slip by the line of the dry navy, according to information,” the
Miami Daily News
reported. “Six liquor boats were known to have started away from Bimini in the Bahamas Tuesday night with cargoes for delivery in and around Biscayne Bay. Five of those craft are said to have been captured.”

But the crackdown had nothing to do with any renewed, long-
term commitment to stopping the flow of alcohol into Miami. The Coast Guard was cracking the whip because President Calvin Coolidge's train was going to stop in Miami for an hour or so on Friday, January 14. The president was en route to Key West, where he would board a US warship to sail to Cuba for the Pan-American Conference in Havana. The Coast Guard didn't want any rumrunners dashing across Biscayne Bay while the president of the United States was watching.

About one hundred thousand spectators had gathered along the eight-mile route followed by Coolidge's motorcade. For a taciturn man sometimes called “Silent Cal,” Coolidge was effusive in his praise of Miami.

A reporter duly jotted down the president's comments as Coolidge noted that Miami's skyline “greatly resembles the Battery of New York.” The president was impressed by the city's many fine hotels, and amazed that the luxuriant foliage in Bayfront Park had been grown in less than eighteen months since the 1926 hurricane had denuded the park. He also commented on the many steamships and speedboats in Biscayne Bay.

“And Miami is only thirty-one years old!” he exclaimed near the end of his brief tour. “I understand why you call it the ‘Magic City.' I cannot imagine a more beautiful climate than we have enjoyed this afternoon.”

Not long after Coolidge's train headed south for Key West, the bootleggers' business was back to normal.

On January 17, Al Capone moved from the Ponce de Leon Hotel to a rented villa on North Pine Tree Drive in Miami Beach. About that same time, Hearst columnist Arthur Brisbane was on an eastbound train that had just left Chicago. Brisbane had learned of the gangland war in that city.

As the train rattled through rain near Elkhart, Indiana, Brisbane worked on his “Today” column.

“This morning attention turns to the Chicago gangster war, going on while ‘Scarface Al' Capone is resting in Florida,” Brisbane wrote.

Brisbane told the story of Harry Fuller, a foolish young man who tried to take advantage of Capone's absence by organizing a robbery of one of Capone's trucks carrying illegal booze. Capone's crew retaliated by kidnapping and killing Fuller and two of his assistants.