26.
AL CAPONE IS THE WAITER
Sunday, September 8, 1935
The warden is out this morning making sure everything looks just so. He had the Black Mariah polished up shiny as patent leather. It’s sitting ready to drive J. Edgar Hoover and Eliot Ness up the hill to tour the place. The dock itself was scoured, the underside scrubbed with bristle brushes. The stink of moss and rotting algae has been replaced with the good smell of clean laundry and Ivory Soap. You’d think Hoover and Ness were royalty, the way the warden is acting.
My dad spends half an hour polishing the badge on his hat with special cream my mother bought in San Francisco. And then he starts on his shoes.
“Lookin’ good,” I tell him. “But not as good as when Capone does ’em.”
My father snorts.
“Any idea what his trick is?”
“Couldn’t venture a guess,” my father says.
My mother is going to wear a brand-new rose-colored dress that the cons made for her in the tailor shop.
“Did a nice job, didn’t they, Moose? Though I guess I should have given you a chance at it. Cam, did you know Moose likes to sew?”
“I do not, Mom, cut it out.”
“That’s not what I hear. According to Annie’s mom, he’s got a knack with a needle and thread.”
“She did not say that.”
“Oh yes she did. Thinks you have a hidden talent you’re afraid to show.”
Mothers are so embarrassing sometimes. The whole lot of them, I swear. Even so, before Natalie got accepted at the Esther P. Marinoff, my mother never would have kidded me this way. Things are changing. They really are.
After my mom is done ribbing me, she heads for Bea Trixle’s, where she spends half the day getting her hair done. I know because I knocked on the door at least three times looking for Janet, who still isn’t back. I have to get the bar spreader off the island, for good. But I can’t figure out how to do that until Janet gets home.
Only Natalie seems oblivious to all the fuss being made. Her big concern is who she can get to play button checkers with her. I don’t know how Theresa knew Nat would love this game, but she did. She beats everybody every time. She’s clearly a better match for herself than any of us are for her, but she likes to play with us and she gets angry if we don’t give the game our all. It can’t be too easy for her to win.
By nightfall, the brand-spanking clean Black Mariah sits waiting to take Hoover and Ness up to the Officers’ Club and there’s a hum of excitement from one end of the island to the other.
“As soon as Piper and Annie are done singing, you need to come straight back here because Mrs. Caconi will have her hands full. You understand?” my father asks as he straightens his hat.
“Yes,” I say, watching my dad, wishing I could tell him what’s going on.
When Nat and I get to the Mattamans’, I pretend everything is fine between Jimmy and me. He’s been touchy lately. And I always seem to be on his bad side. I hope getting Mr. Mattaman off probation will make up for whatever else Jimmy thinks I’ve done wrong.
I do trust Jimmy though, and he definitely knows what he’s supposed to do. We talked it all out this afternoon. He and Theresa will help Mrs. Caconi watch Natalie while I stick by Piper.
“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.”