Al Capone Does My Homework (9 page)

Seems to me the opposite is true. The rules apply even more to me. He’s singled me
out
because
my dad is the associate warden, but I manage to keep this to myself.

“You can’t encourage these jokers.” Trixle nods toward the cons. “You gotta let them
know who’s boss. Don’t suppose you’ve learned
that
from your daddy. They eat you alive if you’re too nice, but no. Cam Flanagan gets
promoted. Warden Williams ought to have his head examined.”

“Don’t talk about my dad or the warden that way.” My voice vibrates like an eggbeater.
I should not be talking back to an adult and I know it.

“That’s right, your daddy is the boss now, isn’t he? Shall I march you up to the warden’s
place so you can explain why you’re hanging around down here, sticking your nose where
it don’t belong?” Trixle’s eyes drill into me.

“No, sir.”

“All righty then. I’d keep my mouth shut if I were you. Far as you know, I’m respectful
of your father and the warden . . . you hear?”

“Yes, sir,” I say.

“Glad we understand each other . . . Now get outta here. I don’t want to see your
face up on the balcony, the stairwell, nowhere around here, unless you are on your
way somewhere else, understood?”

I glance at the cons. They’re all standing in line now, waiting to go back up the
switchback. Darby didn’t tell them to do this, they just did.

Darby’s bullhorn is at the ready two inches from his lips, but there’s nothing he
can say to chew them out. He moves from one foot to the other like he’s got blisters
on his toes.

The cons got the best of him, just as they got the best of Jimmy and Annie and me.

They’re obedient and defiant. How can that be?

Wednesday, January 29, 1936

So much for the cockroach plan. I wonder if it’s dead yet or if it’s crawling around
inside Lizard. Can a cockroach survive the digestive process?

Everybody’s been so busy this week; it’s now Wednesday and still we haven’t made our
next move. I’m starting to get antsy. Jimmy and Annie had to go into the city with
their moms this afternoon. I have to watch Natalie so my mother can teach a piano
lesson to one of the little boys who lives on the island.

“Bye, Mom,” I tell her as she sails out the door to the Officers’ Club, her music
bag biting into her shoulder. Nat is busy manning the light switch, on-off, on-off.

With my mom gone, I can’t help thinking of Mrs. Kelly and how I told her I was working
on the eye contact problem.

I take a page and write
47 times 234
on it and tape it to my forehead.

“How much is it?” I ask.

Nat’s eyes brush past my face. “Ten thousand, nine hundred and ninety-eight,” she
says. She somehow has managed to take in the numbers that quick.

I tape a new page up to my forehead. “Look in my eyes,” I tell her.

Again, the numbers seem to enter her brain without her ever looking at them. I try
a harder equation to slow her down:
56,478 x 43 = ?

“Hey Nat, what’s this?”

“Two million, four hundred and twenty-eight thousand, five hundred and fifty-four,”
she answers. I don’t need to check if she’s right. She’s always right.

Nat is headed for the closet now. She finds her shoes and puts her toes in them, but
not her heels.

“We aren’t going out, Nat,” I say.

“I—am—going—outside,” she says, each word pronounced more carefully than the last.

I jump in front of her, blocking the door. “Look here.” I point to my forehead, where
I am holding a new equation—it’s faster than taping it.

“Five million, three hundred and twenty-one thousand, seven,” she says. “Moose stay.
I go.”

“No, you can’t go by yourself.”

“I go,” she repeats.

“You can’t, Natalie.”

She shakes her head hard.

“I go,” she repeats.

“I’m babysitting. You can’t go.”

“I’m older,” she blurts out.

“Yeah, I know, but . . .”

“I am older!” she shouts.

“Okay, all right, you’re older.” I stuff my feet into my shoes, wiggle them on without
undoing the laces. “Where are we going?” I ask.

“The birds,” Nat says. “Moose get the bread.”

Nat loves to feed the birds. My dad likes to take her down to the dock with a few
crusts of bread.

There isn’t any stale bread, so I bring three fresh slices and some crackers. Nat
waits patiently for me, but when I open the door, she pushes in front. I hurry to
pass her. She stops in her tracks.

“I am older,” she insists. Natalie always wins.

I feel like a chump following her, but there’s nothing left to do. I can’t have her
pitching a fit.

When we get down to the dock, the birds all seem to know Natalie. They’re like noisy
kids waiting for her. Their squawking rises to a fevered pitch, then dies down in
a rolling rhythm like the surf.

Nat takes the bread and begins her ritual. Each slice must be broken into a certain
number of pieces and then the pieces thrown so that they get divided evenly among
the birds.

Natalie is in charge. She doesn’t need me. I watch for a while, but I get tired of
how relentlessly methodical Natalie is and I begin pacing, drifting farther and farther
away, until I’m outside the Caconis’ apartment on the ground floor of 64. The Caconis’
apartment is dark and quiet. The only sign of life is the laundry bag sitting on the
doormat. That’s when I start thinking about what happened with Donny Caconi and the
bottle cap and how Jimmy didn’t believe Donny could throw better than I could and
he wasn’t even there. How did he win?

Maybe I’m just a sore loser, but I can’t help wondering if you could doctor bottle
caps so that one flew better than the other. Would Donny’s pockets have a clue?

I look out at Nat. The birds are winding down. They know when she’s run out of bread.
I wave to Nat to come back. It doesn’t look like she sees me, but she must, because
she starts walking my way.

I pick up the laundry bag. “Let’s go,” I say.

“No Moose. Caconi. Not Flanagan,” she murmurs like she thinks I’m playing the Stupid
Moose game.

“Yeah I know, Nat. I’m just checking something.”

“Caconi. Not Flanagan,” Nat says louder this time.

“I’ll bring it right back,” I assure her.

My father once told me there are lots of things to keep private, but if you’re doing
something in secret ask yourself why.

His voice keeps rattling around in my head, but my hands still have the Caconi laundry
bag and my legs are following Nat up the stairs. Inside #2E, I head straight for my
room. On the way, I flick the hall light switch a few times. It doesn’t even work
right now, but Nat’s happy turning it on and off anyway. I slip in my room and close
the door.

My pulse beats in my head like the tommy guns on the officers’ firing range. I reach
in the bag and pull out one of Mrs. Caconi’s aprons.

That’s strange. She doesn’t send her laundry through. She doesn’t like having the
convicts touch her clothes.

I rifle through Donny’s pants, his shirts, his socks. I wiggle my hand inside each
pocket. Empty. Empty. Empty. Every pocket is empty.

Did I really think Donny Caconi was a cheat? Now I’m ashamed of myself.

I’m just putting Mrs. Caconi’s gigantic apron back in the bag when I feel something
hard graze my hand.

Inside her apron pocket is a handkerchief with something inside.

A round roll of money. Five-dollar bills. Eight of them. Forty dollars!

Mrs. Caconi is not rich. Why would she leave forty dollars in her pocket?

Wednesday, January 29, 1936

I can’t do anything about the money. I mean really, what am I going to do? I’d have
to tell my dad I was rifling through Donny’s pockets because I didn’t believe he could
outthrow me.

What does that make me look like?

A chump.

I think about telling Jimmy. But I can’t do that, either. I mean, I didn’t even find
anything, except money. It isn’t a crime to leave money in your pocket—even if it
is a lot of money. But if the laundry cons find it, she’ll lose it for sure. How do
I explain to Mrs. Caconi how I happened to be digging through her pocket?

It seems like the best thing to do is leave well enough alone. I put the money back
where I found it and shove the Caconis’ laundry bag inside ours.

“C’mon, Nat,” I say.

“Where c’mon?” she asks.

“You were right. Caconi, not Flanagan. This isn’t our laundry bag. We’re going to
return it.”

“Just checking something,” she mumbles.

“Yeah, I know. I checked and now it’s time to put it back.”

Natalie nods and follows along behind me without any argument. She likes putting things
back where they belong.

To my surprise, the dock cons are out. They usually don’t come down in the afternoon,
but I guess the ferry dropped off a lot of building supplies for #2E. Darby must have
decided it was easier to bring the cons down than have the officers move all that
lumber up two flights of stairs.

I dig the Caconis’ laundry bag out of ours, and drop it where I found it. As soon
as I’ve let it go, I begin to breathe more normally again.

Nat and I stand behind the white line watching the cons. Lizard can’t seem to do anything
without talking to Indiana about it. The Count takes orders from Indiana too, but
he clearly doesn’t like this. The way he clears his throat and purses his lips makes
me wonder if Indiana gets on his nerves.

The cons are in a line formation, carrying lumber off the ferry, when I see Indiana
flick his head like he wants something. Lizard moves forward to talk to Darby, while
the Count slips to the rain gutter, kneels down, takes off his shoe, and shakes it
as if he’s got a pebble inside.

This would look perfectly normal if I hadn’t seen that nod between Indiana and Count
Lustig. It reminds me of the code between the catcher and the pitcher about what kind
of pitch to throw. Plus it seems like Lizard’s trying to distract Darby.

Now the Count’s got his hand in the downspout. Did he put something in? Or take something
out?

The whole thing takes maybe thirty seconds and then the Count slides back in line
and Lizard finishes talking to Darby. Now Lizard and the Count are carrying the two-by-fours
up the stairwell, as if nothing happened.

What the heck was that about?

I could just walk right over there and find out.

“Wait here a second,” I tell Natalie as I walk by the downspout and kneel down. I’m
pretending to retie my shoe—with one hand, while the other reaches inside the rain
gutter. I pull out a leaf and a small piece of paper folded up tight like a football.
I slip the paper in my pocket and tie my shoe just as I hear the cons coming down
the stairwell again

“C’mon, Nat,” I say. We take the other stairwell up and across to the back of 64.
My hand shakes as I unfold the paper. It has numbers on it.

213 35-2-75

A code? An address? Part of a phone number? Alcatraz convict numbers?

Nat is walking on toward the swings. I run to catch up with her, then show her the
slip of paper. “What do you make of this?”

She drags her toe against the ground, her complete attention on that foot.

“You don’t know?” I ask.

“Don’t know,” she mutters.

“Yeah, me neither,” I tell her.

I try to think this through. If the Count put this information in the rain gutter,
he’s trying to communicate these numbers—whatever they are—to someone.

But isn’t this a bad spot to put a message for another prisoner? Wouldn’t it be easier
to send messages in the cell house?

What if this isn’t a message for another convict.

What if it’s a message for one of us.

That’s when I begin to itch all over.

• • •

Now I know I need to talk to Annie and Jimmy. I tell Natalie she’ll get extra swing
time after we talk to Annie, and to my surprise, Natalie follows along without any
objection.

When Annie opens the door, she blushes so deeply, it looks like she’s rolled her cheeks
in pomegranate juice.

Her hair is wet and she has her bathrobe on.

I’m so keyed up, I can hardly get the story out.

“Show me,” Annie says when I’m done, and I dig the note out of my pocket.

“Chapters or page numbers? Geometry? Coordinates? Longitude and latitude? It could
be anything,” she says.

“Only one way to find out.”

“Which is?” Annie asks.

“Put it back and see who picks it up.”

“Watch the downspout all the time? How are we going to do that? And besides, won’t
that be dangerous?”

“Not if they don’t see us. Listen Annie, what do you know about the Count?”

“You heard about his Eiffel Tower con, right?”

“The one where he sold it?”

“Uh-huh, as scrap metal to a scrap metal company. Played that scam twice. He likes
to forge things too. Hey wait a minute. Theresa and I made a convict card for him.
I’ll go get it.”

She and Theresa make these convict cards for the best-known cons. Annie does the research
and Theresa helps her write up the cards. They’re recipe cards folded in quarters.

Count Lustig
, AKA: Victor Lustig, Robert V. Miller, Victor Gross, Albert Phillips, Charles Gruber,
George Shobo, Robert Lamar, JR Richards, Victor Shaffer, Frank Hessler, Frank Kessler

Born in
: Bohemia

Family
: Wife and daughter

Business
: Con artist

Favorite pastime
: Reading.

“Reading? That’s his hobby?”

Annie shrugs.

Favorite crime
: The Count stole $22,000 from a group of bankers. When they caught up with him, he
convinced them if they pressed charges, their bank would go belly up. The bankers
let him go free and paid him $1,000 for the inconvenience they caused.

“So wait . . . he blackmailed them about his own crime?”

“Yep.”

“That’s one for the record books.”

Favorite description of crimes
: “Fingering suckers”

Most famous escape attempt
: The Count escaped from prison in New York City by weaving bed linens into a rope.
He cut the wire screen in the bathroom with stolen wire cutters and lowered himself
down three stories on the woven bedsheet rope.

Sent to jail for
: Running a confidence or “Bunco” game

Current home
: Alcatraz Island

“I know, I’m gonna get my baseball gear. I left it at the Mattamans’. We’ll play catch
at the dock and just happen to drop the ball around the gutter. And then I’ll put
the note back.”

Annie gives me a funny look. “Moose?”

“What?” I ask, my hand on the door.

“I’m in my bathrobe.”

My ears heat up.

Natalie laughs. I turn and watch her. She actually got the humor.

“She likes to make fun of you, Moose, that’s for sure. Look, I have to get ready.
We’ll put it back tomorrow, okay?” Annie smiles.

It takes me by surprise that smile . . . how beautiful it is.

On my way across the balcony, I do some thinking. What if whoever is expecting to
find the note looks for it and it isn’t there? Will he get suspicious and change the
drop location? That would be bad for us because we wouldn’t know the new location.

I should put the note back now, but I doubt I’ll be able to get Natalie to go down
there again. I can only put off her swing time for so long.

“Nat,” I say when we get to the stairwell. “Let’s go the long way to the parade grounds.”

“Short way,” Nat says.

“If we go the long way, we can check on your birds,” I say.

“No bread,” Nat says.

“I know, but still. The long way. Just this once?”

“Two hours,” she says.

“It doesn’t take two hours. It’s an extra five minutes, that’s all.”

“Two hours at the swings,” she says.

“Two hours!” I laugh. She’s got me over a barrel and she knows it.

“Okay.” I put my hands up. “Two hours.”

I have to put the note back, but the cons are still in #2E. I stall until I see Darby
march them back up the hill to the cell house. Then we bypass the second floor and
go directly to the dock again, where I follow the same trick tying my shoe by the
downspout. Only this time I return the folded note to its original hiding place.

Now all I have to do is watch.

Except first I have to give Natalie her swing time at the parade grounds or there’s
going to be big trouble.

Natalie walks faster and faster the closer we get. But when we come around the bend
and have a clear view of the swings, we see Nat’s favorite swing is occupied by Janet
Trixle.

“Nat, take the other swing. It’s much better. I’ve tried it,” I say, though even as
the words come out of my mouth, I know this is futile. Natalie only likes the one
swing. She’ll wait hours for it to be free.

Sure enough, when we get there, Nat lines up behind Janet waiting for her turn.

“Nat.” I jiggle the chains on the open swing. “You can swing here until your swing
is available.”

But Nat won’t fall for this. I’ve tried it before.

“Janet,” I say. “Would you mind switching? Natalie really likes the swing you’re on.”

Janet digs her toe in the sand to stop herself. She stands up holding tight to the
swing chains. “I can’t,” she says.

“Why not?” I ask.

“My mom.” She frowns, nodding in the direction of Bea Trixle, who is headed our way.

Oh, great . . . now I want to get out of here, but there’s no way to persuade Natalie.
I promised her two hours. It’s amazing she let me put her off as much as I have already.
Nat rocks, hovering behind Janet’s swing. She waits to pounce the second Janet lets
it go.

Blickety-blackety. Bea’s high heels make a dull sound on the cement. “What did Daddy
tell you about standing your ground, Janet,” Bea Trixle asks, clutching her fur-trimmed
sweater. “You can’t let big kids push you around.”

Janet scoots back on her swing. “Sorry,” she tells me.

“Janet Lily Trixle.” Bea scowls. “Why are
you
apologizing? The Flanagan girl has no business here. We should post a sign. These
swings are meant for children ten and under.”

“No business here.” Natalie wedges the sand between her feet.

“You have to be tough in this world, Janet, or people will take advantage of you,”
Bea rattles on.

Janet inspects her feet. “The pixies find things in the sand. Valuable things like
jewels,” she whispers.

“Not the pixies again,” Bea snaps.

“I mean me. I find things in the sand,” Janet corrects herself.

“Janet Trixle,” Darby’s bullhorn booms across the parade grounds. “Attention!”

Janet jumps out of her swing, then stands up straight as a ship’s mast.

“Do you have your bullhorn, Lieutenant?” Darby asks.

“Yes, sir,” Janet says, pulling a Janet-size bullhorn out of her pixie bag. She holds
it in her right hand, like Darby does, and follows in lockstep behind him. Bea glares
at me, dumps the sand from her high heels, and blickety-blacks after them.

With Janet gone, Nat slides into her favorite swing. It’s started to drizzle now.
In a few minutes, it’s really raining, but even if it starts to pour, I have to let
Nat swing the full two hours. A promise is a promise.

The rain gains force, pelting our heads. The wind stings our faces, but Nat continues
swinging happily. She doesn’t care that she’s soaking wet.

The water has begun to drip off my nose by the time it occurs to me that a paper note
in the downspout won’t last long in rain like this.