Anything Goes_ A Biography of the Roaring Twenties - Lucy Moore [2]
The worst of it was the suffering that his work—which he implied was practically charity—caused his family. “I could bear it all if it weren’t for the hurt it brings to my mother and my family. They hear so much about what a terrible criminal I am. It’s getting too much for them and I’m just sick of it all myself.” Although several of his brothers worked with him, Capone idealized his mother and his wife and son and kept his family life rigidly separate from his professional activities and the late-night perks that went with them of drinking, drugs and girls. It was as if maintaining his family’s innocence allowed him to hope that he was not entirely the monster he knew himself to be.
After the press conference Capone headed for Florida. “I almost feel like sending him and his boys a basket of roses,” said the Chief of Police when he heard the news. The Chicago papers screamed, “‘YOU CAN ALL GO THIRSTY’ IS AL CAPONE’S ADIEU.”
When Capone made these announcements in 1927 he was at the peak of his power. Just twenty-eight, growing into his role as Chicago’s leading gangster, he was becoming ever more confident about engaging with the legitimate world—albeit on his own terms. While on the one hand he was cautious of his safety after the attack of 1925 that had nearly killed his partner, Johnny Torrio, on the other he was increasingly willing to reveal his personality in an effort to win over the public whose approval he craved—and on whose approval, he believed, his continued success depended. This desire for appreciation and attention was what lifted him out of the everyday ranks of mobsters into a class of his own.
His car, a custom-built, steel-plated Cadillac, which weighed seven tons and had bullet-proof window glass and a hidden gun compartment, encapsulated the dichotomy between Capone’s need for protection and his love of display. Although it was undoubtedly secure it was also instantly recognizable, and became a defining element of the Capone mystique. Another element of Capone’s public image was his distinctive appearance. Even in his twenties Al Capone was a broad man—he stood five foot seven and weighed 255 pounds—but he was capable of grace as well as power. He was softly spoken but immensely charismatic, his air of authority enhanced by an undercurrent of menace. As he was reportedly fond of saying, “You get a lot further with a smile and a gun than you can with just a smile.”
Capone may have been known for his facial scars (while still in his teens he had complimented a girl in a Coney Island dance-hall on her “nice ass” and in the fight that ensued her brother had slashed his cheek and neck three times), but he covered his face with thick powder to try to hide them and hated being called Scarface. Among friends the nickname he preferred was Snorky, slang for “elegant.” His hand-made suits came in ice-cream colors, tangerine, violet, apple-green and primrose, with the righthand pockets reinforced to hide the bulge of his gun; he wore a marquise-cut diamond pin in his tie to match his cuff-links and an eleven-carat blue-white diamond on the little finger of his left hand, the hand he didn’t use for firing a gun. Off duty, he favored gold-piped royal blue silk pajamas embroidered with his initials.
Capone wanted to present himself as the acceptable face of crime—a modern entrepreneur rather than a crook. He began playing the role of benevolent public figure, watching baseball games and boxing matches with friends, greeting the aviator Charles Lindbergh when he landed his hydroplane on Lake Michigan in the summer of 1927 following his heroic solo flight from New York to Paris. Celebrities who passed