I Heard You Paint Houses Page 3

  “I won’t meet with the little guy,” Jimmy said, “Fuck the little guy.”

  “You’re making me work hard here, Jimmy. I’m not trying to go for the Nobel Peace Prize here.”

  “Help Hoffa square this beef and I’ll give you a peace prize. Remember, just the three of us. Take care.”

  I had to be content that at least the three of us were going to sit down by the lake on Saturday. Jimmy sitting down with “Russ & Frank” with our names on that yellow pad he kept near his phone for anybody to find.

  The next morning was Monday the 28th. My second wife, Irene, the mother of the youngest of my four daughters, Connie, was on her own line with her girlfriend. They were trying to decide what Irene should pack for the wedding when my line rang.

  “It’s Jimmy,” Irene said.

  The FBI has a record of all these long-distance calls back and forth. But I don’t think Jimmy had these kinds of records on his mind when he made his threats about exposing this and that. People couldn’t tolerate threats like that very long. Even if you don’t mean them yourself you send the wrong message to the people at the bottom of the chain of command. How strong are the leaders if they tolerate people talking about ratting?

  “When are you and your friend getting in?” Jimmy said.

  “Tuesday.”

  “That’s tomorrow.”

  “Yeah, tomorrow night around dinnertime.”

  “Good. Call me when you get in.”

  “Why wouldn’t I?” Whenever I got into Detroit I would call the man out of respect.

  “I’ve got a meeting set up on Wednesday afternoon,” Jimmy said. He paused. “With the little guy.”

  “Which little guy?”

  “That little guy.”

  “You don’t mind me asking what changed your mind about meeting with that individual?” My head was spinning.

  “What have I got to lose?” Jimmy said. “McGee would expect Hoffa to try to square his own beef first. I don’t mind making one last try before you come out to the lake on Saturday.”

  “I gotta urge you to take along your little brother.” He knew what I meant, a gun, a piece, not the peace prize, a peacemaker. “Precautionary.”

  “Don’t you worry about Hoffa. Hoffa doesn’t need a little brother. Tony Jack set the meet up. We’ll be at a restaurant out in the public. The Red Fox on Telegraph, you know the place. Take care.”

  Anthony “Tony Jack” Giacalone was with the Detroit outfit. Tony Jack was very close to Jimmy and his wife and kids. But Jimmy wasn’t the only one in the picture that Tony Jack was close to. Tony Jack’s wife was a first cousin to the little guy, Tony Pro. That’s serious with the Italians.

  I could understand why Jimmy would trust Tony Jack. Tony Jack was very good people. He died in jail in February 2001. The headline read: “Reputed U.S. Mobster Takes Hoffa Secret to Grave.” He could’ve told some things.

  Word was out for a long time that Tony Jack had been trying to arrange another sit-down between Jimmy and Tony Pro after the fiasco in Miami, but Jimmy went thumbs down on that idea like Siskel and Ebert. Now all of a sudden Jimmy was agreeing to meet with Pro, the same Pro that threatened to rip his guts out with his bare hands.

  Looking back, you know hindsight and all, maybe Jimmy was the one setting Pro up to go to Australia. Maybe Jimmy was counting on Pro to act like Pro. Tony Jack would sit there at the restaurant and watch Jimmy being reasonable and Pro being an asshole. Maybe Jimmy wanted Russell to know on Saturday by the lake that he had tried everything humanly possible with the man, but now Pro had to go.

  “Out in a public restaurant, that’s good. Maybe this wedding really is bringing everybody together,” I said. “Smoking the peace pipe and burying old hatchets. Only I’d have more comfort if I was there for backup.”

  “All right, Irishman,” he said, as if he was trying to make me feel better, even though he’s the one that asked me when I was getting in to Detroit in the first place. As soon as he asked me when I was getting in, I knew what he wanted. “How about you take a little ride and meet me there on Wednesday at 2:00? They’re coming at 2:30.”

  “Precautionary. But however, you can rest assured, I’ll bring my little brother. He’s a real good negotiator.”

  I called Russ right away and told him the encouraging news about Jimmy’s meeting with Jack and Pro, and that I was going to be with Jimmy for backup.

  I’ve thought a lot about it since, but I can’t recall Russell saying anything.”

  chapter two

  What It Is

  “When my wife, Irene, and I got to Kingston in upstate Pennsylvania near Wilkes-Barre that Monday night, our plan was to have dinner with Russ and his wife, Carrie, and her older widowed sister, Mary. Irene and I would spend the night at the Howard Johnson that Russ owned a piece of. Then early Tuesday the five of us would start off for Detroit in my new black Lincoln Continental. (It was a car they said I got under the table. When they were trying to get the eight of us Hoffa suspects on anything they could, they used the car to send me to jail in 1981 on labor racketeering.)

  The drive would take us about twelve hours because Russell didn’t allow smoking in the car. Russ quit smoking on a bet with Jimmy Blue Eyes, who was with Meyer Lansky, on a boat they took out of Cuba in 1960 when Castro kicked them all out and took away their casinos. They lost a million dollars a day on account of Castro. They were all mad as hell at Castro, especially Russell and his two very close friends, Carlos Marcello, the New Orleans boss, and Santo Trafficante, the Florida boss. Castro had the nerve to actually put Trafficante in jail. I heard that Sam “Momo” Giancana had to send Jack Ruby to Cuba to spread some green stamps around to get Trafficante out of jail and out of Cuba.

  Being so fuming mad, Russell smoked cigarette after cigarette and softly cursed Castro on that boat. So Jimmy Blue Eyes saw an opportunity to bet Russ twenty-five Gs Russ couldn’t go a year without smoking. Russ threw his cigarette overboard and never picked up a cigarette again, even a year later after the bet was over and Jimmy Blue Eyes had paid up.

  But the ladies in the car made no such bet with anybody. We’d be stopping along the way for their smoke breaks, and that would slow us down. (Smoking is one vice I never had to confess to the priest when I was a kid. I never got started on tobacco, not even in the war, not even pinned down at Anzio with nothing else to do in a dugout for four months but play cards, pray to God, and smoke. You need your wind in this life.)

  Another reason it would take so long is that Russell always had business stops to make along the way whenever or wherever we went together—instructions to give about certain matters, cash to pick up, stuff like that.

  On Monday night Irene and I had dinner with Russell, Carrie, and her sister Mary at Brutico’s in Old Forge, Pennsylvania. Russ had special restaurants that met his standards. Otherwise, if he didn’t cook it himself, most of the time he didn’t eat it.

  If it weren’t for Russ’s gray hair there’s no way you would know he was in his seventies. He was very spry. He was born in Sicily, but he spoke perfect English. He and Carrie never had any children. Many a time Russ reached up and pinched my cheek and said, “You should’ve been Italian.” He’s the one named me “The Irishman.” Before that they used to call me “Cheech,” which is short for Frank in Italian—Francesco.

  After we had our meal, which was something like veal and peppers with spaghetti marinara, a side dish of broccoli rabe, and a nice salad with dressing Russell made in the back, we sat and relaxed with our coffee laced with Sambuca.

  Then the owner came over and whispered to Russ. This was before portable phones. Russ had to leave the table to take the call. He came back business-like. He had that smile on his round, craggy face you get when you squint at the sun. He had muscle deterioration in his face that gave him a lazy eye. If you didn’t know him you would think he was blinking or drinking. With his good eye he looked through his wide glasses into my blue eyes.

  Russell didn’t say anything a
t first, like he was trying to think how to say it by studying my eyes. Russell had a voice that crackled like a rattle, but the madder he got the softer Russell talked. He was very soft-spoken that night before my testimonial dinner at Frank Sheeran Appreciation Night when he warned Jimmy to back off from trying to take back the union.

  At the table at Brutico’s, Russell was talking so soft I had to lean my extra-large head real close. In a raspy whisper he said, “We got a little change in plans. We’re not leaving tomorrow. We stay put ’til Wednesday morning.”

  The news hit me like a mortar shell. They didn’t want me in Detroit Wednesday afternoon at that restaurant. They wanted Jimmy alone.

  I stayed bent over close to Russell. Maybe he’d tell me more. You listen. You don’t ask questions. It seemed like it took him a good while. Maybe it just seemed like a long delay to me before he spoke. “Your friend was too late. There’s no need for you and me to meet him on Saturday by the lake.”

  Russell Bufalino’s penetrating good eye stayed on mine. I moved back up in my seat. I couldn’t show anything in my face. I couldn’t say a word. That’s not the way it works. The wrong look in my eyes and my house gets painted.

  Jimmy warned me to watch myself back in October at the Warwick Hotel in Philly when I tried to tell him what it is. He said, “…watch your ass…you could end up being fair game.” Just yesterday he got done warning me again on the phone that I was too close to him “in some people’s eyes.” I put the coffee and Sambuca up to my nose. The licorice didn’t smell strong enough against the smell of the coffee so I added some Sambuca.

  I didn’t have to be told that I better not even think about calling Jimmy when Irene and I got back to the Howard Johnson motel for the night. From this point on, whether it was true or not, I would have to assume that I was being watched. Russell had a piece of that Howard Johnson’s. If I used the phone that night it is quite likely that Irene and I never would have made it out of the parking lot the next morning. I would have gotten what some people thought was coming to me anyway, and poor Irene just would have been in the wrong place at the wrong time with the wrong Irishman.

  And there was no way in the world Jimmy could call me. In case the feds were listening, you never said on the phone where you’d be staying when you got to where you were going. There were no cell phones then. Jimmy just wouldn’t get a call from me Tuesday night in Detroit, and that would be that. He would never know why. He’d go alone to his meeting on Wednesday. My little brother and I wouldn’t be there for backup.

  I sat there in silence with the ladies talking among themselves about who knows what. They might as well have been on the other side of the bridge over the waterfall in Bill Bufalino’s basement.

  I was reviewing things fast. Right after I called Russell that morning about Jimmy calling me, Russell would have called certain important people. He would have told these people about me going to the restaurant with Jimmy and taking my little brother. Right or wrong, the best I could figure at that moment was that these people called Russell and told him they wanted us to stay put for a day so they could get Jimmy alone.

  Only before they called Russell they must’ve been reviewing things themselves. All day certain people in New York, Chicago, and Detroit must have been deciding whether or not to let me be there with Jimmy on Wednesday. That way one of the closest Hoffa supporters in America would go to Australia with Jimmy. Whatever secrets Jimmy may have told me after Broadway Eddie’s that night at the Warwick and over the years would die with me. In the end they made the decision to spare me out of respect for Russell. It wouldn’t be the first time Russell saved me from something serious.

  I don’t care how tough you are or how tough you think you are, if they want you you’re theirs. It’s usually your best friend that walks up to you talking about a football bet and you’re gone. Like Giancana got it frying eggs and sausages in olive oil with an old friend he trusted.

  This was the wrong time for me to sound like I was worrying about Jimmy. Still, I couldn’t help myself. Without making it sound like I was trying to save Jimmy, I got right next to Russell’s ear. “The nuclear fallout from the feds.” I tried not to stammer, but I probably was stammering. He was used to it; it was the way I talked since childhood. I wasn’t worried that he might view it as some kind of sign that I was having a problem with this particular matter because I was very loyal to Jimmy and very close to Jimmy and his family. I bowed my head and shook it from side to side. “The nuclear fallout’s going to hit the fan. You know, Jimmy’s got records stashed away in case something unnatural happens to him.”

  “Your friend made one threat too many in his life,” Russell shrugged.

  “I’m only saying the nuclear fallout’s going to hit the fan when they find his body.”

  “There won’t be a body.” Russell went thumb down on the table with his right hand. Russell had lost the thumb and index finger on his left hand when he was young. He moved the thumb he still had around like he was grinding something into the white tablecloth and said, “Dust to dust.”

  I leaned back and sipped my Sambuca and coffee. “That’s what it is,” I said. I took another sip, “So, we get it on Wednesday night.”

  The old man reached up and pinched my cheek like he knew what was in my heart. “My Irishman, we did all we could for the man. Nobody could tell that man what it is. We get into Detroit together Wednesday night.”

  I put my coffee cup down into its saucer, and Russell moved his warm, thick hand to the back of my neck and left it there and whispered, “We’ll drive so far, and we’ll stop for the women someplace. We’ll go do some business.”

  Sure, I thought, and nodded. Russell had business all along the route from Kingston to Detroit. We’d drop the women at some roadside diner and go do our business while they smoked and had coffee.

  Russell leaned toward me, and I bent down and leaned close to him. He whispered, “There’ll be a pilot waiting. You take a quick fly over the lake and do a little errand in Detroit. Then you fly back. Pick the women up. They won’t even notice we’re gone. Then we take our time. Nice, leisurely drive the rest of the way to Detroit. The scenic route. We’re in no hurry. That’s what it is.””

  chapter three

  Get Yourself Another Punching Bag

  “What were the twists and turns that brought me to that exact moment in a small Italian restaurant in a coal-mining town in Pennsylvania, where I listened carefully to whispered orders? Orders I had to follow for the part I had to play in the plot against my friend Jimmy Hoffa.

  I wasn’t born into that Mafia way of life like the young Italians were, who came out of places like Brooklyn, Detroit, and Chicago. I was Irish Catholic from Philadelphia, and before I came home from the war I never did anything really wrong, not even a pinch for disorderly conduct.

  I was born into some rough times, not just for the Irish, but for everybody. They say the Depression started when I was nine years old in 1929, but as far as I’m concerned our family never had any money. Nobody else’s family did either.

  My first taste of enemy fire came from farmers in New Jersey when I was a young lad. Philadelphia sits across the wide Delaware River from Camden, New Jersey. Both cities got their start as ocean-going port towns and are connected by the Walt Whitman Bridge. It’s hard to believe now, when you drive out past Camden and you see that there’s hardly any free land for so much as a tiny Victory garden, that in the Roaring Twenties when I was a kid it was all flat, fenced-in farmland. New Jersey was the sticks compared to Philadelphia. It was real peaceful out there.

  My father, Tom Sheeran, would borrow a big old clumsy car with a running board. He’d drive me out to the farm fields outside of Camden from the time I was very little. He’d drop me off where the Camden Airport is now so I could do a little harvesting.

  We’d go in the early evening when it was still light enough to see, but getting dark. That’s the time of day when the farmers were expecting to have their own dinner.
I would climb over the farmer’s fence and toss back to my father samples of the crop I was harvesting. It could be ears of corn or tomatoes or whatever was in season. That’s what you had to do to get by and put food on the table.

  But the farmers weren’t any too happy with our ideas about sharing in nature’s bounty. Some nights they’d be waiting for us with shotguns. Some farmer would chase me, and I’d jump over the fence and get hit in the butt with birdshot.

  One of my earliest childhood memories is getting birdshot picked out of my backside by my mother, Mary. My mother would say, “Tom, how come I’m always picking this stuff out of Francis’s behind?” My father, who always called her Mame, would say, “Because the boy doesn’t run fast enough, Mame.”

  I get my size from my mother’s Swedish side of the family. Her father was a miner and a railroad worker in Sweden. Her brother was a doctor in Philadelphia, Dr. Hansen. My mother was about 5'10" and never weighed less than 200 pounds. She ate a quart of ice cream every day. I used to go down to the ice-cream parlor for her every night. You would bring your own bowl and they would give you so many dips of ice cream. They knew to expect me. My mother loved to cook and make all her own bread. I can still smell the aroma of her roast pork, sauerkraut, and potatoes simmering on the coal stove. My mother was a very quiet woman. I think she showed her love for us through her cooking.