In March 1929, my assignment was to keep a car accessible, not to discover what happened behind federal doors. A crowd made even that difficult. Men stood in the gutter watching the entrance while a delivery wagon occupied the space I needed. I asked its driver to pull ahead. He pointed at the crates still on his wagon. I helped carry two onto the sidewalk, then guided him clear with my palm raised. By the time I brought our car forward, my collar was wet.
The newspapers had reported a postponed appearance earlier that month after a medical affidavit. Later they reported Capone appearing before the grand jury. I knew those things as any reader could. On my brief exterior assignment I saw coats, hats, doors opening, and men trying to get close. I could not hear through stone. When Capone came within reach, I moved between him and a fellow stepping backward with a camera. The fellow stumbled against me; I steadied him rather than send him beneath a passing wheel.
Capone entered the car with another escort. I shut the door and stood on the running board long enough to keep a hand from catching in it. A different driver took him away. That was the extent of my service that day. By the end of the month, the papers reported his arrest for contempt and release on bond. None of those proceedings concerned a truck at Frank’s garage. Yet when Paul found me after the assignment, he spoke as if the courthouse had settled our private argument.
He was beside a hired car, giving a folded note to a young runner. “Bruno’s place,” he said. Hearing the name, I crossed the pavement and caught the runner before he stepped off the curb. Paul tried to put himself between us. I held out my hand to the boy. He looked at Paul, then back at me. “Who’s paying?” he asked. I gave him a coin for his trouble and took the note. Paul seized my wrist before I could unfold it.
We struck the side of the hired car together. Its driver came out swearing, and I used that interruption to pull free. The note demanded that Bruno accept terms for the truck and presented the demand as carrying our employer’s authority. I had received no such authority. “Did he tell you to write this?” I asked. Paul reached for the paper instead of answering. I folded it into my own pocket. “You don’t get to borrow his name because people are watching him.”
“You want Bruno in the yard again?” “I want you to stop promising what you can’t give.” The hired driver ordered us away from his fender. Paul obeyed first, smoothing his coat as if I alone had made the spectacle. I could have handed the note back and saved myself another enemy for the afternoon. Instead I tore it across the fold while he watched. The runner had vanished. Paul said I could explain the absence of a settlement myself. I told him I intended to.
Bruno was unloading potatoes when I reached the produce store. He made me take the other end of a sack before he would hear me. We carried it across boards slick with peelings and set it inside. I told him Paul had prepared a message claiming authority he had not shown me. Bruno wiped his hands on his trousers. “You bring the real message?” “I bring my own. Let me get both sides into one yard with somebody to value what’s left.”
He pushed another sack toward me. We carried that one too. His refusal to stand still kept the talk from becoming a performance for the other men. I admitted I could promise neither protection nor payment from Capone. I would not discuss the proceedings downtown because I knew nothing about them. What I could do was seek permission to speak about the disturbance surrounding the garage and ask Frank to face an assessment. Bruno said he had heard enough offers from drivers. I tightened my grip and finished the carry.
Outside, he stopped me before I left the alley. “If your employer chooses you, I’ll hear you. Otherwise don’t come selling another afternoon.” I asked whether that meant he would keep his men away while I tried. “It means I’ll hear the man he chooses. Not Paul.” There was no handshake and no agreement to stop anything. Still, I had brought away a condition instead of a threat. I walked back with the torn note in my pocket. Having prevented Paul from pretending to speak for somebody else, I now had to ask that somebody to let me speak.