Three Strikes You're Dead

Chapter 2

I knew Al Capone.

In March of ’34, the year Dillinger got killed, I was at my desk one morning in the County Building pressroom working the Examiner crossword puzzle when I got a call from Michael J. Ahern, who was in the café across the street and wanted me to join him. When I asked why I was being so honored, he cryptically replied, “I’ll tell you when you get here. And I promise you won’t find it a waste of your time.”

“Iron Mike” Ahern had been the lead defense attorney in Capone’s well-publicized federal tax trial three years earlier, and I was one of the Tribune team covering the trial. My assignment was to do color pieces — human-interest stuff, like describing the courtroom, the judge’s mood, how many jurors fell asleep (the record was three in one session), who of note was in the audience, and so forth.

One day the British actress, Beatrice Lillie, in Chicago to be in a stage play, showed up in court and stayed most of the afternoon. When she left, I caught up with her in the hall and was pleased with the quotes I got for the next day’s edition. Among them: “I thought the whole proceedings lacked passion” and “I was a bit put out that Judge Wilkerson didn’t have one of those powdered wigs like they do back home — I think he would have looked adorable in one.”

I was a damn sight less pleased when the American carried almost the same quotes, along with reproductions of sketches — good sketches — that Miss Lillie had drawn of Capone, the judge, and the state’s attorney. To quote my father, “Never trust a limey.”

I had of course gotten to know Mike Ahern during the weeks of the trial. He was natty, urbane, and always ready with good quotes and historical or literary references. He knew what made for good copy, and in the courtroom had once described Capone as “a modern mythical Robin Hood, a creation of the newspapers.” On another occasion, he used the name of the Roman soldier and statesman Cato to underscore a point he was driving home. Nevertheless, I always felt he and his partner, Albert Fink, had done a second-rate job of defending Capone.

I hadn’t seen Ahern since Capone got sentenced, but I recognized him through the haze when I entered the café, a favorite hangout of lawyers and politicians, even through he was in the booth farthest from the front. In his vested pinstripe, he was easily the best-dressed patron in the place, and possibly the most distinguished-looking, too. With his well-tended hair, rimless glasses, and benign expression, he could have passed for a Presbyterian minister at a very large and very prosperous North Shore church. But he was by no means a ministerial type.

“Mr. Malek, thank you so much for taking time out of your busy schedule,” he said amiably, rising to shake my hand. “And so good to see you again, you’re looking well. Sit down, sit down. Care for some breakfast? I’m about to order eggs and sausage. As I’m sure you know from working across the street, the link sausage here is absolutely the best in the Loop. Maybe in the whole city, for that matter.”

“Coffee is fine for me, thanks, Counselor. Haven’t been hearing much about you lately. You still making a career out of defending the indefensible, the vicious, and the venal?”

“Ah, Mr. Malek, you have not changed an iota since last we met. Still as tart-tongued and outspoken as ever. As to your question: Would you, a member in good standing of the Fourth Estate and as such a supposed defender of our Federal Constitution and the American system of jurisprudence, honestly deny legal representation for any citizen?”

“I’m all for giving everybody the opportunity of legal representation, Counselor. But here’s what interests me about your clientele: maybe it’s coincidence, but you often seem to have mobsters as clients.”

Ahern spread his arms, palms up, and looked at the ceiling. “It was George Barrow who said ‘Follow your calling, however various your talents may be.’ Mr. Malek, what humble talents have been bestowed upon me by the Almighty seem best suited to defending those whom society has chosen to damn as members of the underworld — often without reason or adequate evidence for making such a judgment. These men, many among the most earnest and hard-working members of the populace, are entitled to an adequate defense in our courts, which I try to provide to the best of my limited abilities.”

“You know, I could listen to you go on like that all day, even if at least eighty percent of it is bilge,” I told him, grinning. “You could charm the hard-earned shillings out of a Scotsman’s purse. But as you mentioned earlier yourself, I have a busy schedule. To what do I owe this summons?”

Ahern shot his cuffs, crossed his arms on the table, and leaned forward, looking at me intently. “It has to do with Alphonse,” he said, lowering his voice despite all the babel around us.

“One of your better-known cases,” I remarked dryly. “You still in touch with Capone? I thought he was pissed off at you and Fink after the way you handled — or mishandled — his tax trial.”

The lawyer colored slightly and cleared his throat. “I think Alphonse has come to the awareness that defending him was a more difficult task than he realized. Not long ago, he hired a supposedly high-powered Washington attorney named Leahy to get him out of prison, and Mr. Leahy failed. And now... well, he has rehired our firm.”

“For what? Does he want you to help him tunnel his way out of the big house down in Atlanta?”

“Oddly enough, he’s trying to do precisely the opposite,” the lawyer remarked, dropping his theatrical tone. “I assume that you’ve read about the new maximum-security prison the federal government is planning to open later this year out in San Francisco?”

“Out on that island?”

Ahern nodded gravely. “It’s called Alcatraz, which is Spanish for ‘the Isle of Pelicans.’ And I also assume you’ve heard via your very efficient grapevine that Alphonse may be headed for the new penitentiary.”

“You assume correctly, Counselor. I’ve also heard the feds are sore because ol’ Scarface has too damn much freedom down in Atlanta, which is embarrassing for them. They want to rein him in, or so the word is.”

“Nonsense!” Ahern barked, slapping a palm on the tabletop. “He has been a model prisoner, no trouble for anybody. You must have figured out it’s that goddamn publicity-seeking warden, Johnston, who’s setting up Alcatraz; he wants to build a reputation for the place and for himself. To do that, he needs big-name inmates, stars you might call them, and what bigger star is there than one Alphonse Capone?”

“Interesting,” I said, sipping coffee. “And just why are you bothering to tell me all this?”

Ahern leaned forward and lowered his voice once more. “Alphonse, not surprisingly, doesn’t want to go to this Alcatraz. And for that matter, the warden down in Atlanta doesn’t particularly want to see him go.”

“Of course not. Having Capone there gives the place some status. The Atlanta turnkey doesn’t want to lose that cachet to some upstart hoosegow out on the West Coast. I think Al should be flattered — everybody wants him as a house guest.”

“Mr. Malek, Alphonse respects you, he trusts you,” Ahern said, shifting gears smoothly to his courtroom-earnest voice.

“What the hell are you talking about?” I shot back. “We don’t even know each other. We’ve never met, not even once.”

“He remembers you from his trial,” Ahern persisted. “He always thought you were fair to him, unlike the other reporters who went out of their way to be insulting and derogatory in their stories. You know what he said during the trial, he said ‘That Tribune kid is OK.’ And, Mr. Malek, he repeated those very words last week when I saw him in Atlanta, those very words.” The lawyer leaned back and folded his hands across his vested chest as if having just scored a major point in court. I was not impressed.

“In the first place, Counselor, I doubt very much that Capone ever knew who I was. Second, I find it hard to believe that he referred to me as ‘kid’ — I don’t believe he’s even three years older than I am. And third, he hated the Tribune and Colonel McCormick so much that I can’t believe he’d ever have anything good to say about anybody at the paper.”

“Wrong on all counts,” Ahern countered. “One, he read every word about the trial in all of the Chicago papers, and knew all the bylines — he can still name all of the reporters. Two, he calls a lot of people ‘kid,’ regardless of their age. And three, he may dislike the Tribune and its owner as you suggest, but he’s smart enough to know that it employs many good people.”

“All right, for the sake of moving this conversation along, I’ll stipulate those points. So?”

“Mr. Malek, I am about to offer you the journalistic coup of the decade, perhaps of the entire century. As I said, I was down in Atlanta last week visiting Alphonse. Although he bravely claims, to use his own words, that ‘the fix is in’ in his favor and that he’ll never be sent to Alcatraz, I know him well enough to realize he’s terrified of the possibility that he may land on that new Devil’s Island in California. And as I said, the warden down in Atlanta doesn’t much like the idea either. But both of them are willing to let you — and no one else — interview Alphonse face-to-face for up to two hours so that he can talk about what his life is like in the Atlanta penitentiary.”

I hadn’t seen that coming and it knocked me off balance, something that rarely happens. Capone was famous for his hatred of the press and for not sitting still for interviews. I lit a Lucky and studied Michael Ahern, saying nothing for a half-minute or more while I rearranged my thoughts.

“So I’m supposed to go down there and write this fairy tale about how Alphonse Capone has transmogrified into a choirboy who is an asset to the great Atlanta penitentiary, right? And the public, which of course adores Scarface, will be so delighted to learn of his rehabilitation in Georgia that they will rise up en masse and march on Washington and every other major city protesting any attempt to move him to this new hellhole in San Francisco Bay? A brilliant plan, Counselor. Absolutely brilliant.”

Ahern flashed a sardonic smile. “You have a way of placing the worst possible interpretation upon an opportunity.”

“Nah, I’m just a realist. I’ve been around people like you long enough to have developed what is commonly termed a healthy skepticism. You say Capone specifically asked for me on this so-called story? I don’t know whether to be flattered or insulted, but I’m leaning toward the latter. Why don’t you request a sob sister? Every paper in town has at least one on the staff, including us, and they’re perfect for this kind of thing. God, any one of them could wring so much emotion out of this assignment that there’d be a run on the handkerchief counter at the Boston Store.”

“If you weren’t so maddening, you would actually be quite entertaining,” Ahern said, undaunted by my reaction and maintaining his beatific smile. “Mr. Malek, it’s you or nobody on this story — I repeat that Alphonse specifically requested you. And I have to wonder how your editors up in Tribune Tower would respond if they learned that one of their veteran reporters turned down a chance to interview the most famous inmate in the world. I myself would not want to be on the receiving end of what most surely would be a strong reaction.”

The city editor’s eyes bored in on me through black-rimmed glasses. “Let me make sure I’ve got this straight, Malek,” Bob Lee snarled from behind the desk in his cluttered office just off the Tribune’s two-story local room. “Mike Ahern guarantees you an interview with Capone, and the warden actually goes along with the idea? Sounds wacky to me. Do they actually think any kind of a story, no matter how sympathetic, could keep that thug from becoming a charter member of Club Alcatraz?”

“Ahern seems to think so, although it sounds crazy to me, too.”

“Ahern!” Lee brushed him aside with a hand and a sneer. “He and Albert Fink couldn’t keep Capone out of jail. Besides, does he actually think you’d write the kind of piece that he and Capone want?”

“He couldn’t have gotten that idea from anything I said to him. What bothers me is that they both must think I’m inherently sympathetic to Capone.”

“Well, you’re a decent writer, I’ll give you that, and you’re balanced — at least you certainly were during the trial — so they probably feel that you’d give that scum a fair shake in print, which you would,” Lee commented in a rare burst of praise. “You know, what we’ve got here is one hell of an opportunity. And we’d be crazy to pass it up, right?”

“Right!” I echoed, heart pounding.

“Wait here,” Lee said, jangling the keys on his chain, which he always did when he was agitated. “I’m going to see Mr. Beck.” He went out to the square center desk in the midst of the local room’s pandemonium, where the top editors sat, one on each of its four sides, manning phones, reading galley proofs, shouting for copy boys, and otherwise directing the flow of news as it came in from reporters in Chicago, the Middle West, and around the world.

The city editor leaned down to talk to one of the four, a distinguished-looking gray-haired man in shirtsleeves and suspenders. This was Edward Scott Beck, the managing editor, who had ruled the Tribune’s news operations for twenty years and was a symbol, at least to most of the reporters I knew, of dignity, honor, and good, if conservative, news judgment. As I watched from Lee’s alcove of an office, Beck rose and the two men, their heads nearly touching, talked for several minutes, both occasionally glancing in my direction.

Finally, Lee nodded and returned to his office. “Mr. Beck gave his approval,” he said. “But he had several thoughts about this venture and so do I. Take notes.”

And that is how I came to occupy a bedroom on the Dixie Flyer as it pulled out of Dearborn Station for Atlanta a little before midnight on the first Wednesday of April in 1934, with Mike Ahern occupying an adjoining bedroom. My instructions from Beck, as relayed by Bob Lee, had been simple and basic: Talk to Capone for as long as I was allowed and learn as much as I could about his existence as an inmate for the last two years, as well as asking about his overall reflections on his life. Lee was diplomatic enough not to lecture me about being taken in by the man’s supposed charm — not that I would have been anyway. And although neither he nor Beck were happy about Ahern’s insistence that he go along to pave the way, they accepted the condition as long as the Tribune paid all the expenses, Ahern’s as well as mine.

To my surprise, I was glad for the velvet-tongued lawyer’s company on the long ride into the Deep South. Both in the lounge car and the diner, he played the raconteur with flair and relish, describing cases he had tried and characters — underworld and otherwise — he had come to know and represent in court. But he didn’t want to talk about Capone. “You don’t need me prejudicing you one way or the other about Alphonse,” was his reply to my queries.

The train pulled into Atlanta in the evening, and we went straight to the Dinkler Plaza Hotel downtown. The next morning after breakfast, a chauffeured black LaSalle that Ahern had hired — and that I insisted having the Tribune pay for — took us through a steady rain to the great gray federal penitentiary southeast of town.

Once inside, we passed through several sets of barred or solid steel barriers, at least two of which slid open by electricity, and after being patted down for weapons, we were ushered into the office of a deputy warden whose name I almost immediately forgot. I learned that the warden himself, probably not wanting to be directly associated with my visit, had traveled to Washington on what his assistant termed “official prison business.”

The deputy warden, a prim-looking specimen with a bald head and a pince-nez, sat behind his desk and favored Ahern and me with a dour expression. After we sat, he cleared his throat, cleared it again, and pulled some sheets from his center drawer, then began reading from one: “I, Steven Malek, an employee of The Chicago Tribune, have been allowed precisely two hours with inmate number four-zero-eight-eight-six. I understand that said inmate and I will be in one of the private visitation rooms, with a guard present throughout. I also understand that the guard is not there to eavesdrop on our conversation, but that he has express instructions to prevent the passage of any object between said inmate and me. I also understand that if I attempt to pass to, or receive from, said inmate any object whatever, my visit shall at that moment be terminated.”

The deputy warden gingerly placed the sheets on his blotter and cleared his throat again. “Mr. Malek, do you fully comprehend what I have read, and do you agree to the conditions?”

“I do.”

“Then please sign both the original and the two carbon copies and date them where indicated,” he droned, pushing the three sheets across the desk along with a pen. “One of the carbons will be given to you for your files upon your departure from the premises.”

After I had signed all three, the turnkey checked my John Hancocks, slid the sheets back into the drawer, and rose. More throat-clearing. “You may see the inmate now. And Mr. Ahern, you may wait in the visitors’ lounge down the hall, where there are newspapers and magazines. The guard just outside the door will direct you.”

Ahern gave me a thumbs-up, and I followed the deputy warden through a labyrinth of gray-walled and shadowy corridors. After making several right-angle turns, we came to a steel door, next to which a uniformed guard stood, hands behind his back. “He’s inside now?” the turnkey asked, and when the guard said yes, the bald man nodded curtly.

The guard turned a handle, pulled the door open, and curtly gestured for me to enter. The room’s walls were as gray and blank as those in the corridors, and the only pieces of furniture on the concrete floor — also gray — were a square wooden table, maple and about five feet on a side, and two straight-backed wooden chairs that looked like they had descended from the same tree as the table. In one of these chairs, facing me, sat Alphonse Capone.

He gave me a half smile as I walked toward the table, then nodded as I took the chair opposite him. “Yeah, kid... you’re the one all right,” he said in that husky voice. “I told Ahern I remembered you from the courtroom, even your name. How ya doin’?”

He was as I remembered him in the courtroom — arrogant, round-faced, thick-lipped, balding, flat-nosed, and with those probing gray eyes hooded by dark, thick brows. And, of course, the feature that gave him his moniker, that famous scar on his left cheek running from ear to jaw. His body, however, seemed shrunken within the blue prison denims, although maybe that was because I had previously seen him only at the defense table, and then wearing perfectly fitted suits that covered the color spectrum, including purple, light green, and even yellow.

“Y’know, kid, having you come down here was Ahern’s idea,” Capone rasped, lowering his eyes and throwing a glance in the direction of the guard, who had silently entered the room behind me and was standing, back to the door, some fifteen feet away. “Says the word’s out they’re gonna send me to that new island pen out in California, but I’m tellin’ you now, it ain’t gonna happen. Besides, he’s tryin’ to get in good with me after the way he and Fink screwed up my trial.”

He leaned his thick arms on the table. “I shouldn’t even be in here, y’know. But what can ya expect when a whole community’s prejudiced against ya? I’ve given the public what it wants. I’ve spent my best years as a public benefactor. Y’see, ninety percent of the people of Chicago and Cook County drink and gamble, right? And my offense is that I gave them amusements. So how do I get repaid? Shit, I’ll tell ya; I get blamed for everything bad that happens anyplace near Chicago, that’s how. I been blamed for crimes that happened as far back as the Chicago Fire. The reason I’m in here — the rotten bastards set me up, including your goddamn Colonel McCormick at the Trib, never mind that I helped him when his circulation drivers was gonna strike back in ’28. I got those guys back in line, and McCormick thanked me personally, told me I was famous — like Babe Ruth, he said.” Capone seemed to puff up as he recalled the incident.

“I got nothin’ against your paper now, or even against that mush-mouthed old colonel of yours. And by the way, kid, I was clean on the Lingle rubout, too. I liked the guy.” He was referring to a Tribune reporter, Jake Lingle, who supposedly had ties to the syndicate and who got shot dead in a downtown pedestrian tunnel in 1930.

I didn’t believe him about Lingle, but I didn’t give a damn whether what he said was true or not. I felt strangely, eerily, detached, as if I were hovering somewhere outside looking in at this cubicle and its three figures: cop, crook, and snoop.

“Ah, hell, that’s enough history,” Capone said when I didn’t respond to his Lingle pronouncement. “Hey, how’s things in Chicago, kid? How are the Cubs gonna do this year?”

“So-so, maybe third place. Giants and Cardinals both look too good for them,” I said.

“Yeah, those damn Cards with them hillbilly Dean brothers they got. How the hell did they learn to pitch like that down in the backwoods?” Capone gave a chuckle and slapped a beefy paw on the table. “Aw, you didn’t come down here to talk about baseball, didja? Okay, maybe Ahern’s not so dumb after all. Like I said, it’s a sure bet that I ain’t goin’ to that Alcatraz place, but maybe it’s not such a bad idea to hedge the bet anyway. You were okay at the trial, didn’t insult me like that other guy the Trib had there or those bastards from the Hearst rags, they were the worst. So Ahern says maybe a story on me, on how I’m doin’ down here, might be a good thing right now.”

He leaned forward on his hairy arms, eyes fastened on me. “What do you think, kid?” The words were more than a question, less than a threat.

I met his gaze. “I think a good feature story on you would get more readership than a Presidential assassination or another Lindbergh flight,” I said evenly. “You’re still big news in Chicago, and across the country for that matter. Even around the world. Everybody wants to know about you.”

“That right?” He was puffing himself up again, but struggling to not show his pleasure.

I decided to lay it on even thicker, as it seemed to be working. “Absolutely. I get asked about you all the time, damn near every day, because I spent all that time at the trial. People really want to know what life is like for you here.”

“Okay, then, let’s tell ’em, dammit,” he said with relish, shifting in his chair and leaning on the table with one elbow. “Start askin’ me stuff.”

I flipped open my reporter’s notebook and took out a pencil. “First off, do other inmates ever try to get tough with you?”

He guffawed and thumped his chest with a fist. “If they do, kid, it’s only once — Alphonse here can still take care of himself.”

“So this means fights? And if so, with knuckles, or knives? And...”

For almost two hours, I posed questions about every aspect of prison life that I could think of, including Capone’s work as a cobbler of shoes and his new-found interest in tennis, a sport he had taken up in prison. Capone answered most of them directly, except when I asked about special privileges. At least twice, he paused and either shook his head or tried to change the subject by giving me a colorful anecdote about some other inmate, such as Lefty Scaldo, the one-armed bank robber and former minor-league baseball player who pitched for the prison team and once hit a home run, so Capone claimed, that cleared the outer wall of the prison yard, a blast reckoned at 400 feet. “His only arm’s bigger’n a goddamn tree trunk,” he said, holding up his palm as if to give an oath.

Halfway through the session, lunch was brought in for both of us on metal trays — beef brisket, boiled potatoes, green peas, apple pie wedge, coffee. It was passable, although Capone muttered something about “lousy stir grub.” That attitude didn’t keep him from finishing everything, however.

Near the end of my allotted time, I got more pointed — and daring — with my queries. “So, do you keep in touch with any of your old associates?” I asked.

“What old associates?” Capone’s tone hardened.

I shrugged with what I hoped was nonchalance. “Oh, the guys you were in business with over the years — Nitti, Torrio, Luciano, Schultz.”

“Don’t know anything about ’em anymore, not a thing,” he snarled.

“You mean you don’t ever...”

“Goddamn it, I said I don’t know ’em anymore, are you deaf? That’s not what this interview was supposed to be about.” He rose, flexing his big shoulders, and nodded at the guard. “I’m done, got to get back to the cobbler shop,” he barked. “So long, kid.”

“So long. And good luck,” I told him, although a wall had formed between us, and he gave no indication that he had heard me. And at this point, I didn’t care.

I was escorted back to the deputy warden’s office. He looked up from his desk when I entered. “Ah, yes, Mr. Malek, how did your visit go?” he asked, expressionless.

“Okay. Before I go, I’d like to see Capone’s cell.”

He pursed his lips. “I’m afraid that’s impossible. Against regulations, you understand. Sorry.”

“Yeah, well at least I’d like to get a quote from you about what kind of prisoner he’s been.”

The deputy warden raised his eyebrows, which for him was an animated gesture. “Ah, now that I can help you with, yes I can, yes sir. The warden anticipated your desire in this matter, and he has prepared a statement solely for you. Yes he has.” He reached into a drawer and pulled out a sheet, handing it across. Typewritten and double-spaced on Atlanta Penitentiary letterhead, it was a single paragraph: “Since he has been in the Atlanta facility, Alphonse Capone has shown himself to be respectful and peaceable. He works diligently in the cobbler shop and gets along well with his fellow inmates. He obeys every order when it is given.”

Beneath the statement was the warden’s signature. “Do you have anything you want to add to this?” I asked his underling.

“Oh, no, no, the warden has very nicely summarized the situation,” he said, handing me a carbon copy of the agreement I had signed earlier. He rose to bid me goodbye.

On the way back into Atlanta in the chauffeured car, Mike Ahern tried to pump me about the interview, but my responses were noncommittal. He kept at me on the train home as well, until I finally closeted myself in my bedroom. Actually, I had planned to stay in my room on the trip north, anyway. I took out the portable Royal I’d brought, and as the train steamed north through the Appalachian night toward Chicago, I wrote the first draft of my article, then a second, and finally a third. When we pulled into Dearborn Station in the morning, I’d gotten only two hours’ sleep but had wrestled the article into the shape I wanted it.

The editors apparently agreed, because the piece ran at the bottom of Page One three days later under the headline EXCLUSIVE — OUR REPORTER VISITS CAPONE IN PRISON! And nobody messed much with what I wrote, either. My lead was a single sentence: “I had lunch with Al Capone last Friday.”

I went on from there to describe his physical condition and mannerisms, and to quote him on his daily routine (“I’m just an ordinary guy here”), his living conditions (“Hell, I’ve got seven cellmates, nothin’ special about me”), his fears (“I’m nobody’s prisoner when I’m asleep, sleeping is like escaping”), and his claims on unjust imprisonment.

Jack Stewart, another Tribune police reporter, had located a guy who’d just gotten out of Atlanta, and he wrote a sidebar to my piece anonymously quoting this ex-con, who painted a different picture of Capone’s life behind bars. “Ah, he’s livin’ like a king down there, and don’t let nobody tell you otherwise. Sure, he’s in an eight-man cell, that’s true enough, but he’s got everything there — two rugs, mirror, typewriter, tennis gear, alarm clock, and even a whole set of that Encyclopaedia Britannica. Let me tell you about the privileges he gets...”

Together, the articles got plenty of reaction — lots of letters to the paper, most of them angry that Capone was living so well, but others from people who actually felt sorry for him. About a week after the pieces ran, I got a call at my desk in the County Building pressroom from Bob Lee, telling me to come over to the office immediately.

“What for?” I asked. I set foot in Tribune Tower as little as possible — too much internal politics.

“Never mind what for!” Lee barked. “Just get over here now. Take a taxi and expense it.”

I was in Lee’s office fifteen minutes later. “I told you before that was a helluva job you did on the Capone thing,” the crusty city editor snarled. “Mr. Beck thought so too — called it the single best piece of writing the paper’s had all year. Don’t know that I’d go that far myself, but anyway the Colonel wants to see you right now.”

“Geez, why?”

“Malek, I don’t know why. I’m just the damned messenger here. But I do know that when the Colonel wants to see someone, he wants to see him right then. Better get your ass upstairs.”

I had never met Colonel Robert R. McCormick, only seen him at a distance once or twice when he came down to the local room to talk to Beck. As I rode the elevator to the rarified altitude of the 24th floor, I turned over the possibilities: He was going to reward me for the story. He was going to can me for being too easy on someone he detested. He was going to have me demoted to working nights. He was going to...

The elevator doors opened onto a paneled, carpeted reception area bigger than most living rooms, and some ballrooms. I gave my name to a pleasant-looking woman with blonde, marcelled hair who was sitting behind a mahogany desk. She spoke a few words into a phone, then smiled at me and gestured toward a paneled door. “Go right on in, he’s expecting you,” she said, her voice barely above a whisper, apparently in keeping with the sedate surroundings.

I felt as if I’d wandered into somebody’s castle, and I suppose in a sense I had. The office had high, coffered ceilings, dark paneling, a chandelier, and a fireplace, and it could have held six pool tables with room to spare. On the window sill were several sculptures, including a bust of Lincoln. At the far end, working at an oversized desk with a polished marble or granite top, and with a German shepherd dozing on the carpet beside him, was Colonel Robert Rutherford McCormick, editor, publisher, and, so I always assumed, sole owner of The Chicago Tribune. As I approached, he looked up from his paperwork and nodded off-handedly. He had a full head of white hair and, in his tweed, vested suit, he looked like my conception of an English nobleman, although I was aware that he detested almost everything about the English, their country, and their culture.

“Mr. Malek,” he said, and I immediately understood why Capone had called him mush-mouthed. “Sit down, sit down.” He indicated a chair facing his desk. I sat.

“Read your article on Al Capone last week. Most interesting.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“Never liked the fellow, you know. Bad for the city, very bad. He tried to muscle in when we were negotiating with the circulation drivers years ago. I ordered him out of the room and told him to take his plug-uglies with him. I also suggested later to the federal law enforcement people that the way to get Capone into jail was through his failure to pay income taxes. And they listened to me.”

I tried to swallow, but my mouth was too dry. “So I understand, sir.” Actually, I understood the story somewhat differently, but this did not seem like the time or the place to refute the McCormick version.

“But whether I like the man or not is totally beside the point,” the Colonel continued, reaching down to stroke the German shepherd. “The Tribune always deals fairly with everyone.”

“Yes, sir,” I responded, curious as to where we were heading.

“And you, Mr. Malek, have proven to be a paragon in that regard. Your interview with Capone was sensitive and even-handed, not to mention extremely well-written. You brought out the human side of the man and made no judgments about him. I like that. Further, Mr. Beck tells me that almost no rewriting was necessary. He also says this high caliber typifies much of your work.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“Mr. Malek, it is I who thank you on behalf of the Tribune and its readership, and please accept this as a token of the newspaper’s gratitude.” He handed me and envelope with my name typed on it. It was unsealed, so I reached in and pulled out a company check for $200, made out and signed by R.R. McCormick.

“I’m... I really appreciate this,” I sputtered, standing and trying to string together the words to thank him. Two hundred was more than I made in a month. The Colonel had turned his attention back to the papers on his desk, clearly dismissing me, so I rose and pivoted to leave. But I could see no door — the entire wall surface of the big room was paneled in wood. I went to two of them and pushed, but they were solid. I turned back to the Colonel, but his head was down; he was signing papers.

I looked around the room again, baffled. Without looking up, he spoke. “Kick the plate.”

“What?”

“Kick the plate.”

I finally spotted it. One panel had an unobtrusive metal plate at floor level. I nudged the plate with my toe, and the panel swung silently open. As I turned to look back at the man, who was still concentrating on his paper, I thought that I heard a low chuckle.

However well done my interview with Capone may have been — and it was damn well done if I do say so — it didn’t let him avoid the dreaded Isle of Pelicans. According to James Bennett, director of the U.S. Bureau of Prisons, he had become “too big a problem for our officers in Atlanta to handle.” Late in the summer of 1934, Alphonse Capone became one of the 53 “incorrigibles” given the signal honor of becoming the first inmates in the new federal penitentiary in San Francisco Bay known as Alcatraz.