Al Capone Does My Homework (17 page)

Author’s Note

“On the Island there is a man who keeps the outside in touch.”

In researching Alcatraz Island in the 1930s, I came across a letter addressed to the
first warden on Alcatraz, James A. Johnston. The letter contained this sentence: “On
the Island there is a man who keeps the outside in touch.” There was nothing in the
files that revealed what exactly this letter was referring to, who this mysterious
person might be, or if there was any truth to this allegation, but I could not get
that unsettling phrase out of my mind. As a novelist, I know that obsession is a blessing,
and four years later the phrase that burned a hole in my head became the book you
have in your hands.

That one sentence may have triggered the writing, but many ideas and more than ten
years of background research have come together to create this story. The second idea
came from a comment I heard on Alcatraz Alumni Day, which is held every year on the
second weekend of August. I have attended almost every Alcatraz Alumni Day since 1998,
the year I worked on the island to research the book. I’ve had the good fortune to
speak to many former guards, convicts, and kids who grew up on the island. During
one Alumni Day, I heard that in the thirties, fire escapes did not exist in 64 building,
where many of the families of guards lived. Though there were no serious fires on
the island, it made me wonder what could have happened if there had been.

Another idea came while researching a convict named Robert Miller, Alcatraz #300,
who arrived on the island in 1936. Robert Miller, one of the world’s most infamous
con men, had some forty-five aliases, the best-known of which was Count Victor Lustig.
Most of the facts about his long and preposterous criminal history that Annie and
Theresa placed on the convict card are true to the best of my knowledge. By posing
as a French government official, he was able to sell the Eiffel Tower “repeatedly.”
¹
After stealing money from bankers, he did convince them that it was not in their
best interest to press charges. And then he “insisted that they should give him $1,000
for the inconvenience the arrest had caused him.”
²

One of the Count’s favorite cons involved the sale of his money box. He had many of
these wooden boxes made, complete with a false bottom and multiple impressive-looking
dials. The box, he claimed, could reproduce money for you.
³

Lustig would turn the cranks that would feed a real twenty-dollar bill and a piece
of good paper into the box. He then claimed the bill would need to soak in a chemical
bath for six hours in order to be imprinted with the correct image. At the end of
that time, he would crank out two perfect twenty-dollar bills, both of which were
real. One was the original bill, the other was a bill the Count had placed in the
fake bottom. The Count then sold his money box for $4,000 to $46,000.
⁴
By the time his victim had waited the requisite six hours and realized the box was
a hoax, the Count had vanished.

What interests me most about this scheme is the fact that the mark was complicit.
Of course, duplicating money in any form is against the law. That idea found its way
into the fictional laundry caper. Piper knew it was wrong. Neither Annie Bomini nor
Moose Flanagan would have fallen for this con. The best protection against being conned
is common sense.

The Count was known to keep his counterfeiting materials in lockers.
⁵
Prior to his time on Alcatraz, the Count was even successful at conning Al Capone,
by using a double-your-money scam. Even though Capone knew Count Lustig was a con
man, when the Count came to him offering to double his money, Capone took the offer
and handed the Count $50,000. A few months later the Count returned to tell Capone
he had been unsuccessful at doubling Capone’s money. Capone was furious. He was about
to set his gorillas loose on the Count, sure he had run off with his $50,000, when
the Count calmly returned all of his money. Capone was so relieved to see his beloved
$50,000 that when the Count asked for $5,000 for his trouble, Capone was happy to
hand it over. This was the Count’s plan all along.
⁶

That’s a classic Count Lustig con. He would do an apparently nice thing, thus ingratiating
himself to his victim. And then once he had secured the victim’s trust, he would ask
for money.Count Lustig did not, to my knowledge, pull any cons on Alcatraz. According
to his file at the National Archives in San Bruno, he spent his time on Alcatraz working
in the laundry, taking correspondence courses, and writing a plan for world peace.
It is true, however, that his real-life daughter, Mrs. Betty Jean Miller, was in desperate
need of money
⁷
and the Count was unable to provide her with the cash she needed. Lustig was broke.
He died in prison in 1947.

One of the most intriguing parts of researching Alcatraz is just when you think you’ve
heard it all, some new story surfaces. A new nonfiction book on Alcatraz totally makes
my day. In former Alcatraz guard Jim Albright’s book he says that after lockdown at
night some prisoners used cockroach messengers to trade cigarettes. “An inmate in
one cell would catch a cockroach and tie a cigarette to its back with a piece of thread.
The inmate a few cells down would place a piece of bread outside his cell knowing
the cockroach would run for it.”
⁸

Though the character Donny Caconi is entirely fictional, his cons were inspired by
the handiwork of Titanic Thompson—a con man working during the 1930s. Titanic’s exploits
included marking cards with his pinkie nail, using “dirty” dice, dealing from the
bottom while misdirecting attention with a coughing attack. He often worked in tandem
with supposed strangers “planted” in a situation but dressed to look like country
bumpkins. During one con, he tried to hustle Al Capone by filling a lemon with buckshot
and planting it in a vendor’s fruit cart. He then bet Capone $500 he could fling the
lemon onto a nearby roof. But Capone was wise to him. He bought his own lemon, squashed
it flat, then asked Ti to throw that one. Titanic was never on Alcatraz, but he probably
should have been.

And of course it’s true the kids lived on Alcatraz because their fathers were guards
or electricians or wardens on the island. The warden preferred having his guards live
on Alcatraz, as a quick response to an escape or uprising would not have been possible
had his guards lived across the bay. It’s also true that many people in San Francisco
didn’t believe kids or teens lived on the island. The stories abound of reactions
people had to this information. Certainly a driver’s license or a check with the address
Alcatraz Island would get the attention of whoever saw it.

And yes, Al Capone was a prisoner and Warden Johnston did call him his “star boarder.”
⁹
People thought Capone had his hand in everything. On Alcatraz “Capone retained star
quality. The director of the Bureau of Prisons James Bennett called him ‘the most
prominent gangster of all time.’”
¹⁰
Capone loved the attention and fanned the flames of his celebrity. It’s also true
that when Al got mad at another con on Alcatraz, his only recourse was to scratch
his name off his magazine subscription circulation sheet.

As always, there are differing accounts of what happened on the island depending on
who you talk to. I have heard numerous versions of the rules for the kids who lived
in 64 building when the cons were working on the dock. There were,no doubt, different
rules at different times in the twenty-nine years that Alcatraz was a working penitentiary.
Each resident’s experience was also a little different. Some residents, for example,
had more contact with the cons than others. “Although it was uncommon, there were
some unavoidable instances when a resident would come in contact with an inmate. One
former resident recalled an occasion when he had thrown a ball over a link fence,
and an inmate passed it back a few days later. Another remembered an incident when
an inmate was tending a garden, and left a small flower bouquet with a perfectly tied
ribbon made from a vine on a cement step.”
¹¹
Other things seemed to be consistent. There is widespread agreement that there was
just one phone for all of 64 building, for example. The fact that the cons did the
laundry for everyone on the island is also settled history.

I do try to stick to the facts about Alcatraz as much as possible. That said, the
books are clearly fiction. The Flanagans, the Mattamans, the Bominis are all made
up. And though Al Capone and Count Lustig were on the island in 1936, the date of
the Count’s arrival on Alcatraz is actually a few months later in 1936 than I have
accounted for in this novel. And of course the Count and Capone could hardly have
had conversations with fictional characters. Most of the other cons are also made
up, although I did hear a story about a convict who ate a lizard, so that part may
be true. The points game is fictional; however, the idea came from a convict named
Jimmy Lucas, Alcatraz #224, who stabbed Al Capone in the basement of the cell house.
¹²
Many think Jimmy’s goal was to earn bragging rights. He wanted to be known as the
toughest guy on Alcatraz, the man who downed Al Capone.

The title
Al Capone Does My Homework
came from a student at Tenakill Middle School in Closter, New Jersey. His School
Media Specialist, Brenda Kahn, sent me the title a number of years ago. I loved the
title but had no intention of using it. The original title for this book was
Al Capone Is My Librarian
. After his stint in the laundry, Al worked as a janitor, mopping up the cell house,
and then as the cell house librarian.
¹³
Though I loved the idea of Librarian Capone, I could not get it to work in the book.
Little did I know this student’s homework title idea would become a big part of the
novel. I wish I could thank him or her in person!

In early revisions of this manuscript, Moose’s homework assignment was a throwaway
line. But one day I happened to be reading a biography of FDR when I came upon this
paragraph: “In the end, he was so successful in shouldering aside his handicap and
leading an active life, he gave the impression that he had no disability. Years later,
when he became president, many Americans did not fully realize that Franklin Roosevelt
could not use his legs. As Roosevelt struggled to walk, his wife and his mother were
battling over his future. Sara [FDR’s mother] was sure she knew what was best for
Franklin. She believed that his career was finished, that he should retire to the
comfortable privacy of Hyde Park.”
¹⁴
Those words resonated, as it seemed to me that FDR’s mother was trying to protect
her son, just as Mrs. Flanagan tried to protect Natalie. And though FDR’s disability
was not the least bit like Natalie’s, the battle to overcome was wholly the same.

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank my two favorite Alcatraz researchers: Chuck Stucker and Michael
Esslinger. Both men have spent years carefully and lovingly preserving the history
of the island. And both have been extraordinarily generous sharing their findings
with me. Chuck has a unique perspective on Alcatraz, as he grew up on the island.
Michael brings top-drawer research skills to bear on everything he does. A special
thanks to Phyllis Twinney, a former resident of Alcatraz, who has been so encouraging
to me in my work. Thanks goes to John Cantwell and Lori Brosnan and the many Alcatraz
rangers who have dedicated their professional lives to researching the island and
sharing that history with its visitors. Especially, I would like to thank Lori, who
invited me to volunteer on the island in 1998 and 1999. I would also like to thank
the Alcatraz Alumni Association and the Alcatraz Island Family group for welcoming
me into the fold and sharing their many insights into life on the island.

This book owes a debt of gratitude to George DeVincenzi and Jim Albright, former Alcatraz
guards, for sharing their experiences on the island, and Robert Luke, for speaking
so eloquently on his time as a prisoner on Alcatraz.

I would also like to thank the National Archives in San Bruno for allowing me access
to the files of Al Capone and Count Lustig. And Tim Wilson and the team of dedicated
librarians at the San Francisco History Center, who have helped me find all kinds
of arcane information, including whether or not the San Francisco Hospital of 1936
had an elevator. (I moved the scene to the stairwell. I wasn’t convinced they did.)

Thank you to the team at Penguin who have helped me craft a trilogy of books from
years of research and a billion wild ideas.

Most of the credit should go to my editor, Kathy Dawson, who is both talented and
tenacious. Thank you for all the time and energy you’ve put into helping me improve
my work. Thank you for believing in me and in these books.

A special shout-out to the Penguin book reps. They are the reason you are holding
this book in your hand. Specifically I would like to thank: Ev, Biff, Sheila, John,
Colleen, Steve, Alex, Todd, Jill, Doni, Nicole D., Dawn, and Nicole W.

Special appreciation goes to my daughter, Kai, who shared her belly button storage
technique with me, and my son, Ian, who reminds me that I can be altogether too helpful.
And, most of all, I would like to thank my husband, Jacob, who supported my writing
when it made absolutely no sense to do so.