Al Capone Shines My Shoes (25 page)

“My brother!” Piper begs. She hangs on my father’s jacket. “Please, please,
the baby
.”

Janet Trixle still has the bullhorn and a look of stunned exhilaration on her face. She and Theresa are holding hands as they huddle together with Annie and Jimmy.

“I’m okay, Dad,” I tell him, “but Willy took the baby.”

“On the boat?”

“No, up top,” I say.

Piper’s face is just inches from my father’s. “You have to help me.”

My dad points to me. “Exactly where did you last see the baby?”

“Outside the warden’s house.”

“Willy One Arm took the baby,” Nat echoes, flicking her chin against her chest. “One baby. Willy One Arm. One.”

“Where?” My father’s eyes are riveted to me.

“We don’t know where!” Piper shouts.

My father nods a quick nod. “We’ll send someone up there. We’ll find him.” His voice is calm again, but his eyes dart toward the phone outside Mrs. Caconi’s door.

“I didn’t, I didn’t want him to,” Piper whispers.

“Of course you didn’t, honey. Of course not,” my father reassures her as he leaps outside to dial. “Officer Flanagan here. The Williamses’ baby is missing. Topside. Alcatraz #301. Willy One Arm took her during the escape attempt. Last seen outside the Williamses’ house.

“What direction did he go?” My father leans in the door to ask me.

“Toward the cell house,” I say through the dull throbbing of my head.

“North toward the cell house,” my father reports into the phone.

“Take me. I have to find him.” Piper lunges toward my father. She hangs on him as if her weight will sway him.

My father tries to unwind her hand from his arm. “Honey, I think it’s better if you—”

“NO,” Piper shouts. “HE’S NOT YOUR BROTHER.”

“Calm down,” my father barks.

“Moose and I will go.” Piper’s voice is as tough as my dad’s.

“We’ll all go,” Annie suggests.

“We on lockdown?” my father asks into the phone.

“Annie, you stay put, you understand me? You’re in charge down here,” my father orders. And then into the receiver he shouts: “Send the truck!”

A crowd has formed around us. “All residents, stay in your apartments please. All residents,” Bomini commands.

“Theresa, Jimmy, Annie, Janet, you stay right here, you understand me?” My father’s voice is so tough, I almost don’t recognize it.

He looks at Piper. “You’re going up top,” he tells her. “Moose, I want Ollie to see your head. Nat, you’re with me. We’re going to go find your mom.” He squeezes her hand—a quick squeeze, all that Nat can tolerate. “What a trooper you are,” he whispers to her, his voice breaking.

“Natalie is a trooper,” she repeats, her whole face glowing.

When the truck appears out of the smoky fog with Trixle in the driver’s seat, we pile into the cab. The door shuts and my dad hops on the running board.

“Got the whole island looking for him now. We’ll find him. Don’t you worry,” my dad tells Piper, who is seated by the window. The truck lurches forward straining as it heaves up the steep hill.

When we get to the top, the warden is there. He wobbles toward the truck door, opens it with trembling hands, and Piper falls into his arms. “Oh my girl. My little girl.” His voice is so choked, he can barely speak.

“The baby, Daddy,” Piper cries. “The baby.”

“Baby.” Nat digs her chin deep down in her collarbone.

The warden nods, his eyes dazed like he can’t quite figure out what is going on. “We’ll find him,” he says, but it doesn’t sound as if he believes this.

He keeps his arm around Piper, holding her, protecting her, keeping her safe, as guards fan out all around, spilling out of everywhere. Searching. More guards than I even knew we had.

In the hustle and chaos, the sweep of the big spotlights from the guard tower, the bullhorn commands, I shadow my dad, sticking close like I’m a kid again. Mr. Bomini directs foot traffic and relays the warden’s orders through his bullhorn. Doc Ollie is half running to the warden’s house.

My father turns to me. “There’s Ollie. Let’s get you two inside,” he says.

But when I look around, there is only me.

34.

THE BOSS

 

 

 

 

“Natalie! She was just here,” I tell my frantic father. My head is beginning to spin again.

“You go inside the warden’s house. I shouldn’t have had you out here in the first place.”

“No!” I shout at him. “I can help! I know where she’ll go.”

He nods hesitantly. “Where?”

I try to pretend I’m Natalie. She wouldn’t like the commotion. She’d go somewhere out of the noise.

My mind flashes on Nat in Piper’s room. How gentle and careful she was with the baby. “Maybe she went to look for the baby?” I suggest.

“Where would she look?” my father asks.

“Around by the back of the cell house.”

I head in the direction I saw Willy One Arm take the baby. I have no idea beyond this, but I don’t want my dad to send me inside. I run as fast as I can, my father’s thundering footsteps behind me.

I’m running like I know where I’m going, when all of a sudden out of the corner of my eye I think I see the flash of Nat’s blue dress disappearing inside the hospital entrance of the cell house. Was that her? This seems unlikely. My legs slow down.

“No way she could get in there.” My father is sure about this.

I keep going.

“Moose!” My father’s voice.

I’m running now up the back stairs. “I think I saw her.”

“Moose!” my father shouts. “Stop!”

The door is open. Down the corridor, past where a guard is conked out on the floor, I’m running all out, my feet pounding the floor. I can see Nat in her blue dress standing in the corridor.

“Natalie!” my father shouts.

Piper’s little brother—the tiny baby—he’s here. Capone has him in his arms.

“Baby,” Nat says, looking toward Capone’s cell. Oh my God, the baby’s neck is broken, snapped in two by the raw power of Al Capone.

But the baby is sleeping. He has his eyes closed, snuggled up in the crook of Al Capone’s arm. He is rocking him gently, ever so gently.

Nat is outside Capone’s hospital cell. Capone is inside with the baby. The door is locked. How did the baby get in there?

My father stops. His eyes dart between Capone, the baby, and Natalie, taking it all in.

“Lost something, boss?” Capone whispers.

“Don’t hurt him.” My father’s voice shakes with quiet power. He could command the entire Western Hemisphere with that voice.

“I’m not gonna hurt him. Been rocking him for close to an hour now.”

“How’d he get in there?” my father asks.

“Molly,” Nat whispers, pointing to the tiny mouse sitting on Capone’s bed.

“Natalie followed the mouse.” Capone smiles. “Smart girl you have there, boss. The mouse took off—went to find some food, I guess. But she came back. Took a liking to me. Everybody likes Uncle Al.”

“The baby,” my father says. “How’d the baby get in there?”

Capone smiles, a sly smile. “Moose, pull that bar. That one there.” Capone directs me to the bar with his chin. “Slip it out real gentle and the next one over too.”

I grab hold of the bar he means. As soon as I do I feel the give as a two-foot section pulls out in my hand. My father pulls out the next bar over and I get the last one. A neat square appears: just chest size—big enough for a man to crawl through.

Capone nods. “You got it, boss.” He stands up, still rocking the tiny baby. Carefully he hands the little bundle through the opening to my father, tucking in his blanket under my father’s arm.

“What in the H.?” my father mutters, cuddling the baby more awkwardly than Capone. The baby begins to cry.

“Just doing a bit of baby-sittin’ is all.”

Little Walt is starting to fuss now, twisting his small head.

“Rock him a little, why don’t you?” Al suggests, eyeing the tiny baby, whose face is growing redder in the half-light.

My father ignores this. “How’d the bars get cut?”

“Ain’t tool-proof up here. You know that.”

“Who did this?”

“I didn’t do nothing. But I might have seen somebody working on ’em with dental floss and cleanser. Dental floss and cleanser cut anything. Did you know that?”

“
Might have seen?
” my father asks as the baby continues to fuss.

“Been a lot of activity here tonight. Case you missed it. Hard to know where to focus your eyes is all.”

“You’ll have to do better than that.”

Capone coughs. He looks my father straight in the eye. “Only got three more years. And I got my own son. What’s his mama gonna tell him—I pull a stupid stunt, get myself locked up for the rest of my life. I know a cockamamie plan when I hear one, but I’m no rat.”

“That’s not going to cut it, Al.”

Capone looks down at the baby my dad is holding. “He was sleepin’ with me. He’s squallin’ with you, boss.”

“Who was involved?”

“Didn’t see no one up close. My eyesight ain’t so good anymore,” Capone tells my dad.

“What in the name of Peter and Paul!” Trixle’s boots pound down the aisle.

“Beats the life out of me, Darby,” my father tells him.

“A trooper. I am a trooper,” Nat tells Trixle proudly.

Trixle squints. “What’s she saying?”

“
She
found the baby,” I tell Trixle.

“Ain’t possible.”

“She sure did, Darby,” my father murmurs, glowing at Nat.

“I’ll be gar darned. She’s the one told me they didn’t have guns too.” Trixle looks at Nat, a flash of surprise in his eyes before he turns his attention to Capone. “Bars cut?” Trixle asks.

“Yep,” my father says.

“Baby’s okay?”

“Seems fine,” my father answers.

“Rock him a little, will ya?” Al says. “Don’t like to hear him squallin’ that way.”

“What happened, 85?” Trixle asks.

“Didn’t see much, Officer. Busy as I was baby-sittin’ and all.”

Trixle eyes the opening. “I’ll get the key. Can’t stay in that cell.”

“Don’t see why not. If I was gonna leave, don’t you think I’d have hightailed it out of here already?” Capone asks.

My father ignores him.

“Isn’t that right, Moose?” Capone nods to me.

“Don’t talk to him!” my father barks.

“Ahh, boss. He’s a good boy, your Moose. I wouldn’t go getting in the way of that, now would I?” Capone’s eyes are hard, challenging my dad.

Trixle comes back with the key. The door clanks clean open again. “Had enough of your shenanigans tonight, 85. Put you in the Hole. That ought to help your eyesight. Gonna be twenty-twenty when I’m done with you.”

“The Hole?” Capone raises his hands. “That ain’t fair. I been baby-sittin’ the warden’s baby. Should be gettin’ good time for this,” he shouts as we walk out.

My father shakes his head. “Not sure what you do with a guy like that. He does good things. But then he goes and does bad things right over the top of them,” my father says as he tucks the blanket around Piper’s little brother. “Now come on, let’s get you home where you belong.”

35.

THE PIXIE JAILER PLAYGROUND

 

 

 

 

Right after the escape attempt, there is a euphoria that envelops the island. Everyone from Warden Williams to Darby Trixle is amazed by what seven kids were able to do all on our own. No one can get enough of the story, demanding we tell our version of events again and again.

My parents are practically bursting with pride because of what I did and because of Natalie. Not only did Natalie understand exactly what was going on, but she figured out something I hadn’t. This very fact has given us hope we didn’t have before. Natalie is getting better. Maybe not in the dramatic way my mom thinks she is . . . but better for Natalie.

How did it happen that three convicts came so close to escaping from the world’s most secure prison? Slowly some of the pieces begin to fall in place. Mae delivered the boat keys to the island wrapped in her handkerchief. A convict swept them up with his push broom and slipped them in his pocket. The keys probably came from an officer on Angel Island. Our boat, the
Coxe,
is owned by the army, and someone on Angel Island has a key.

Capone helped out his hospital cellmate Seven Fingers, but he did not try to escape. He was smart enough to know the escape was ill conceived. He wanted no trouble with the guards who have the power to extend his sentence or with the cons who would kill him if he didn’t contribute to the escape. He got Mae to bring in the keys to the boat. He played his banjo every night to mask the sound of Seven Fingers sawing the bars with his floss. And he conveniently got behind in his guard shoe-shine service, so he had two pairs of guard shoes in his cell: one for Buddy and one for Seven Fingers. One Arm stole a pair of the warden’s shoes, which were three sizes too large.

Each morning we wake up and find out something else. We still don’t know how Seven Fingers got out of the cell house. No one knows how he got that key. My dad says we may never know.

It all seems so exciting and then one day . . . it isn’t.

That’s the day we find out the warden thinks the cons had help from the inside. The escape, he says, could not have happened without the aid of one of us.

Then my father, Associate Warden Chudley, Trixle, Mattaman, Bomini, and every other officer not on duty is called to the warden’s office for a meeting that lasts all day and on until the wee hours of the night. One by one and in groups every man on the island is personally grilled by the warden. More meetings go on for days, and when my dad comes home each night, his toothpick box is empty and the deep furrows down the sides of his mouth are back.