Al Capone Does My Homework (16 page)

Saturday, February 8, 1936

Standing outside the hospital is torture. Anything could be happening in there. I
realize too late that I should have had Natalie come back and tell me the room number.
Then I could walk on by when the gray-haired lady wasn’t looking. If I go and ask
now, I’m afraid she’ll stop me. I’m tall, but I can’t pass for sixteen. If I were
to get by the reception lady, I might be able to slip inside. I’m just thinking about
this, when I see my mom walking through the lobby and out the front door, her eyes
bleary, her face puffy and red.

“Mom!” I pounce on her. “How is he?”

“Moose?” She wraps her arms around me. “He’s better, honey,” she whispers in my ear.
“The doctor said he was too tough to die.”

The news hits me hard. It takes me a full minute before I can even take in what she
said. And then slowly the relief seeps in. My legs wobble from the sheer force of
it. My mom is still holding on to me as if she can’t let go.

“Mom,” I whisper, “Natalie’s up there.”

My mom blinks. “Up where?” she asks.

“Don’t get mad. She went in by herself.”

“No.” She shakes her head hard as if it hasn’t happened yet, and she’s telling me
no.

“It’s already done. She’s in there,” I whisper. “She asked for help at the counter
and then she went up.”

“You sent her in there alone.”

“Yeah,” I say, “I did.”

“I didn’t have enough problems?” she asks as she whirls me by the information desk.
The gray-haired lady stands up. She opens her mouth to object. She can tell I’m not
sixteen. But my mom yanks me up the stairs.

The gray-haired woman follows us, waving her cane. “Stop! No children in the hospital,”
she commands.

A wizened old man in a doctor’s tunic with a stethoscope around his neck sees us coming
up.

“Doctor! Stop them,” the gray-haired lady shouts.

The doctor gives us an elfin smile. “Stupid rule,” he mutters.

“What? Mrs. Dubussy? What? You know I’m hard of hearing. What do you need?” He winks
at us.

My mom and I keep going. When we get to my dad’s room, there is Natalie sitting by
his bed. She has his toothpick box out and she’s counting all the toothpicks, placing
them carefully around one familiar four-hole button.

“You brought it for Dad,” I say.

“Brought it for Dad,” she whispers. “It’s special.”

“Natalie,” my mom sighs.

“I am sixteen now,” Natalie says, her words like a wall keeping my mom at bay.

“Yes,” my mom tells her, a sob hiccupping out of her throat. She dabs at her eyes,
trying to recover. “You are.”

Nat nods, but keeps counting toothpicks.

“Good job, Nat,” I tell her.

“Good job, Nat,” she says.

My father is asleep and my mother won’t let us wake him. He looks like crap, his cheeks
sunken in, his skin the color of fog. But I have never been so happy to see anyone.
I don’t want to leave here ever. I flat out refuse when my mother tries to hustle
us from the room.

“Your dad needs his rest,” she says.

“We’re just sitting here,” I plead, but she’ll have none of it.

She lets us each kiss him and then she bustles us out the door.

The pounding inside my head is easing. I didn’t even realize my head hurt so much,
until now when it’s going away. My father is going to be fine.

I don’t know if Natalie feels better or not, but I sure do. “Four, four, four,” she
mutters under her breath.

“Four,” I tell her proudly.

Each time we pass someone, she fixes her green eyes on them and calls out a new number.
We’re getting some strange looks, but for once I don’t care.

Wednesday, February 19, and Saturday, February 22, 1936

Dad comes home from the hospital after eleven days. His pants and shirt hang on him
like he’s wearing another man’s clothing and he walks as if he has to think about
each step. I wonder how long it will be until he is completely well.

I’m hoping we don’t leave Alcatraz. Strange as this may seem, it’s my home now. Still,
I know my dad’s days as a warden are over. I’m not sure I’ll be able to stand it if
the warden promotes Trixle, though. I’d rather clean all seven hundred toilets on
this island than have Trixle be the warden.

A few days later, I see my father with his officer’s cap. He’s flicking the blood
off the badge and scrubbing the bloodstain from the fabric with a soapy rag. “What’re
you doing?” I ask.

“Got to get my uniform shipshape,” he tells me.

“Why?”

“I’m back part-time starting next week.”

“Doing what?” I ask.

“My job.”

“Associate warden?”

“Course.” He looks up at me. “What did you think?”

“I thought you might go back to being the electrician.”

He snorts. “Do I look like a quitter?”

“No. But, Dad . . .”

He scrubs harder. “If Trixle had been the associate warden, he’d have been worth five
thousand points dead too, you know. It wasn’t personal.”

I don’t want to come out and say I don’t think Indiana would have tried to hurt Darby
Trixle, so I keep my trap closed.

“Dad?” I ask.

He sticks a toothpick in his mouth and chomps down hard. “I’m listening.”

“The night of the fire . . .”

“Uh-huh.”

“I did something I wasn’t supposed to do.”

“Which was?”

“I fell asleep.”

His hand stops moving. He looks up at me. I hold my breath. “What the devil, Moose?”
He takes the toothpick out of his mouth. “It never occurred to me you’d wait up.”

“It didn’t?”

“Course not.” He dips his rag into a jar of polish. “We weren’t staying up with her
before the fire either. The whole world doesn’t rest on your shoulders, buddy.”

I close my eyes and let my head fall back. When I open them again, my father is watching
me. “You know, I was glad to hear you let Natalie go into the hospital on her own.
That was a big step for you.”

“For
me
?”

He nods. “It’s not easy being in charge, Moose . . . you think I don’t know that?
Harder to be Natalie’s brother than it is to be a warden. And being a warden is no
picnic.

“People are responsible for themselves. All you can do is try to inspire each person
to be his best self. You did that with Natalie. You let her do what she needed to
do. Your mom could never have done that. You know that, don’t you?”

I look into my dad’s deep brown eyes. It never occurred to me he understood what I
was going through. I wish I’d talked to him about falling asleep the night of the
fire a long time ago.

That’s what I’m thinking when I hear a kid-size knock on the door. I know it’s not
Theresa, because she would have already come inside.

“Door’s open,” I shout, heading out of my parents’ room.

“Hi.” Janet waves with one hand up high near her face. She carries her new pixie house—a
shoe box decorated with cut-out paper—into the kitchen and sets it on the table.

“Hi,” I say.

Janet stares at me like she’s expecting me to do the talking.

“Did you want something?” I ask.

She nods. “The pixies know something they aren’t supposed to know,” she announces.

“That’s nice,” I say.

She crosses her thin arms. “They want to tell you what it is.”

“Uh-huh.” I flip open the bread box door to see if there is anything decent to eat.

“But the pixies will never say this again.”

“Umm,” I mumble. I’ve found a piece of Natalie’s lemon cake and I’m dividing it into
three tiny slivers. One for me, one for Janet, and one for Natalie.

“The pixies know who set the fire.”

I look over at Janet. “Donny Caconi set the fire,” I say.

Janet nods.

“The pixies said you have to promise never to tell.”

I put the lemon cake slices each on a plate. “Everybody knows it was Donny.”

“That’s not what you have to promise,” Janet tells me.

“I promise,” I mumble, handing her a piece of cake. I have no idea what she’s talking
about.

Janet takes the top off the shoe box and begins unloading her pixie stuff. She pulls
out felt horses, pixie officer uniforms, pixie convict handcuffs, pixie circus elephants.

“Did the pixies see Donny set the fire?” I ask.

“No.” She scowls like I’ve suggested beheading Santa Claus.

My stomach growls. The lemon cake is good. I wonder if Janet is going to eat her slice.

“Donny got paid,” Janet whispers.

My mouth freezes, mid-bite. “What do you mean he got paid?” I ask. “For setting the
fire?”

“The pixies say yes.”

I snap my jaw shut. “Who paid Donny for setting the fire?”

Janet gallops her horses around the new pixie house.

Suddenly, the missing fifty dollars that Bea accused Jimmy of stealing floats through
my head. My eyes are riveted to Janet.

“Do the pixies know who paid Donny?” I ask.

Janet nods ever so slightly.

My mouth is so dry, I can hardly speak. “Was it your dad?” my voice croaks. “Did he
steal the fifty dollars from the store to pay Donny?”

“He didn’t
steal
! It’s our money. He just forgot to tell my mom.” Janet’s pixie horses stop galloping.
She shoves them helter-skelter back in the pixie house shoe box.

“The pixies said that, not me,” she informs the floor. Her shoulders are low like
the pixie house weighs a ton as she carries it out the door.

I can hardly breathe. I couldn’t have heard what I thought I heard. I head straight
for my parents’ room. “Dad, I have to talk to you
now
.”

My father’s eyes are closed, his head sunk into the pillow. “What?” He blinks his
hazy eyes.

“You got to hear this.”

He pulls himself up to a sitting position.

His frown deepens as I tell him what Janet said. He tips his head to the side and
pulls his lips in away from my words. “I can’t believe that,” he says.

“It makes sense, though.”

“A lot of things make sense that aren’t true,” he says. “Let’s not jump to conclusions.
All we know for sure is a seven-year-old child’s imaginary friends have come up with
a theory.”

“Come on, Dad, Janet must have heard her parents talking about this.”

My father’s eyes are focused out the door. “She’s a fanciful child. That may be all
there is to this.”

“Dad, I think it’s true.”

“Then Donny’s lawyer will bring it up. He’ll use it to plea- bargain a shorter sentence.”

“But what about Darby?”

“If it comes out in court, then Darby will be charged.” My father is reaching for
his jacket. He runs a comb through his hair.

“Where are you going?”

“I’m gonna talk to Warden Williams about this right now.”

“You do think it’s true.”

“I think it warrants further examination.”

“But Dad, why would Darby pay Donny to set fire to our apartment?”

My father takes in a sharp breath. “In Darby’s mind, I’m the threat. He feels the
cons are here to be punished and my plans to rehabilitate them are crazy at best,
dangerous at worst. I would never compromise when it comes to safety, but he doesn’t
see it that way.”

“He figured Natalie would be charged with the fire and we’d be asked to leave?”

“Maybe he believed he was doing the world a favor. He’s never thought Natalie belonged
on the island. Look, let’s take this one step at a time, Moose. We don’t know if any
of this is true. Right now, you need to honor your commitment to Janet and keep quiet.”

“Okay,” I say as I watch him leave.

Even now, hearing what Trixle may have done to us, my father is fair, thoughtful,
and even-tempered. This is why he is the warden and Trixle is not.

Saturday, February 29, 1936

Things will be changing tomorrow and we all know it. The cons have finally finished
the work on #2E, so I will no longer be living half my life up top, the other half
in 64 building. Natalie will be back at the Esther P. Marinoff during the week and
Piper will be going to boarding school. It took a while for the warden to work out
a deal with the FBI and then locate a school that would take Piper in the middle of
the year, but it’s all settled now. After tomorrow, we won’t see her except for holidays
and summers. We’ll all miss her, even if she is a pain in the butt a lot of the time.

Annie and Piper, Jimmy, Theresa, Natalie, and me are all at the Mattamans’ like always.
We’re trying to hold on to the old life, even as it’s slipping away. It’s hard to
believe things are changing this much.

“What’s the name of the school you’re going to?” Jimmy asks.

“St. Ignatius School for Girls,” Piper says.

“Is it a nunnery?” he asks.

“No,” she laughs.

“So whatever happened about the money?” Annie wants to know.

Piper shrugs. “I owe two hundred and eighty-five dollars. Gotta pay it all back.”

“Two hundred and eighty-five dollars . . . how are you going to get that kind of money?”
Annie asks.

“Babysitting,” Piper says.

“You’re going to be a grandma by the time you make two hundred and eighty-five dollars
babysitting,” Jimmy tells her.

I think Piper will get mad at this, but she just shrugs. “I had another idea, but
it didn’t work out.”

“What was that?” I ask.

Piper leans down to her book bag, takes out a baseball, and hands it to me.

I turn it over. Carved into the leather in awkward hatch-mark strokes are the words
Do your own time.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” I ask.

“Thought I might get a little help from Capone. I threw the ball over the rec yard
wall with a note asking him to sign it for me. Do you know how much a baseball signed
by Al Capone is worth?”

“A lot,” I say.

“So wait, Al Capone wrote
Do your own time
?” Annie asks.

“Yeah,” Piper says.

“Funny guy,” I say.

“C’mon, all he had to do was sign one stupid baseball. His signature is worth more
than FDR’s.”

“Why would a gangster’s signature be worth more than the president’s?” Annie asks.

“Same reason David Hughes isn’t as famous as Machine Gun Kelly,” Jimmy points out.

“Who is David Hughes?” I ask.

“He invented the radio,” Jimmy says.

“Never heard of him,” I say.

“That’s the point,” Jimmy says.

“Hey,” Piper says as she peers out the Mattamans’ front window. “Look who’s down at
the dock . . . the devil himself.”

Sure enough, there is Donny Caconi in a gray pinstriped suit helping his mom carry
suitcases and boxes from her apartment.

“Mrs. Caconi is moving out?” I ask.

“Going to live with her sister in Fort Bragg,” Annie says.

“Be the last time you’ll ever see Donny, that’s for sure. Unless of course they send
him to prison here,” Piper says.

“Hey, you know, you’re right.” Jimmy dashes to his room and comes out with a small
paper sack.

“He’s out on bail, isn’t he?” Piper asks.

“I thought he was broke. How’d he get the money together for bail?” I ask.

“He’s Donny Caconi, that’s how. I mean, how did he know the Count? How did the Count
trust him with the locker number and combination? He has connections, that’s how,”
Piper says.

“C’mon, Moose,” Jimmy says. “We got business with Donny.”

“We do?” I ask.

Jimmy turns and looks at me. “I never did think he beat you fair and square. Did you?”

Heat rises in my face. This is not the kind of thing I want to admit.

Jimmy smiles. “That’s what I figured. Now, c’mon.”

“If you think Donny Caconi will ever tell you the truth about anything, you’re wrong,”
Piper says.

“Yeah, we know. C’mon, Natalie,” Jimmy says.

“One thing that doesn’t make sense is why the Count needs money,” I tell Jimmy as
we head down the stairs with Natalie. “He’s in prison for life.”

“His daughter needed money. And he wanted to give her the real stuff. Besides, it’s
pretty boring in prison. Conning people is like, you know, his hobby.”

• • •

Down at the dock, Jimmy pulls out a few bottle caps from his sack.

Donny ignores us as he carries a small trunk from his mom’s apartment to the dock.

Jimmy walks right up to Donny. “It’s the weight,” he tells Donny, holding out the
bottle caps. “Makes all the difference. The light one here is harder to throw. The
heavy one goes farther. But when you change the shape just slightly—make it more aerodynamic—that
helps too.”

“But if they’re too heavy,” I take over, “that’s a problem too, isn’t it? You got
to get it just right, don’t you?”

Donny gives us a lazy shrug. All of his attention is on Natalie. “She’s an interesting
person, your sister,” he tells me. “People think she can’t do much, but she has a
genius for numbers. Nobody expects her to understand much of anything . . . that’s
the beauty of it. Could do a lot with a person like that.”

Natalie’s standing by herself. She takes her own air space with her everywhere she
goes, but Donny breaks through. He’s talking to her now. I can tell from the careful
way she’s tipping her toe that she likes what he says. I walk over there, ready to
bust him in the chops. I don’t like Donny trying to charm her.

But Nat looks at Donny straight in the peepers. “Alcatraz three hundred and seventeen,”
she says.

What’s she talking about? Nat is up to thirty-two in looking people in the eyes, not
three hundred and seventeen.

Then it registers. This is the number of the next convict to arrive on Alcatraz.

“Gonna be your new prison number,” I tell him.

Donny’s eyes shift. He squirms like his clothes don’t fit so well anymore.

“Alcatraz three hundred and seventeen,” Nat repeats.

“Will you tell her to shut up?” Donny says.

But I don’t tell her to shut up. When it comes to numbers, Natalie never makes a mistake.