I’d lived in Snorkey’s kingdom for many years, and it was unnerving approaching the monarch’s throne room, even if it was concrete and steel.

Capone-who wore not a jailhouse-gray uniform, but a blue flannel suit with a tan shirt and no tie-sat playing cards at a table with the only other prisoner in the cell, a small, pretty young man of perhaps nineteen. On the way up in the elevator Dohmann had mentioned that Capone had been allowed the cellmate to help him pass the time with handball and cards. Looking at this kid gave the term “handball” new implications.

“Ness!” Capone said, and stood, walking over with a huge paw thrust forward.

Eliot wore the faintest ironic smile as he accepted the hand through the bars and shook it.

“No hard feelings between us, right?” Capone said, with a disarming grin.

“None,” said Eliot.

Capone wasn’t as big a man as you might think, and-like his adversary Eliot Ness-was much younger than the public thought of him, perhaps thirty-two or-three. His shoulders were broader than any fullback’s, however, and his head was as round as a pumpkin. His full face was deceptive, as he was not fat.

What really struck me, though, were his eyes: greenish-gray, small and round and glittering, half-lidded under black bushy eyebrows that met between them like conspirators.

When he placed his big, veined hands on the bars, it was like a strong man about to bend them for a stunt; but his feet were small, almost dainty, in expensive black leather shoes with pointed toes.