Hitman

by Howie Carr

  But the rest of their little crew still didn’t seem to have figured out just how overmatched they were. The next break for Winter Hill came from South Boston. Tommy King, one of the Mullens who had now thrown in with Whitey Bulger, got a call from a guy he knew from prison—Ralph DeMasi.

  DeMasi was unaware that it was the Hill, not the Mafia, that was hunting down his friends, and he was equally oblivious to the fact that his old friend from South Boston was now an associate of the new consolidated gang. DeMasi still considered himself a friend of King. Now he wanted to know if King could get him some weapons, to use against In Town.

  * * *

  DEMASI ARRANGED to meet King that Friday evening, March 23, at Linda Mae’s, a popular restaurant on Morrissey Boulevard in Dorchester with a big parking lot. The Hill would be waiting; DeMasi was considered a capable individual and thus would have to be eliminated.

  Driving DeMasi that evening was a thirty-two-year-old South Boston stevedore named William O’Brien. Like King, he had met DeMasi in prison, at MCI-Walpole. O’Brien had served several years for killing another man named O’Brien in a drunken brawl in a Southie tavern. O’Brien was on his way to his ex-wife’s apartment in South Boston to pick up his ten-year-old daughter Marie for the weekend.

  After the meeting at Linda Mae’s, O’Brien and DeMasi went back out to their car. At Linda Mae’s, O’Brien had bought a birthday cake for Marie, which he placed carefully in the backseat before he drove off. DeMasi was sitting beside him in the front seat. They were heading north toward Southie on Morrissey Boulevard when suddenly a Ford pulled alongside them. Again, it was the first team, the Hill’s working partners—Sims was driving; Johnny and the guy from Somerville were shooting. Johnny’s target was the driver; the Somerville guy would aim for DeMasi. They’d disposed of Stevie’s grease gun, and Martorano was now firing a .30-caliber carbine with a 30-round banana clip. As usual, Whitey was behind them in the crash car.

  “I thought someone was taking target practice on the road,” DeMasi recalled in a letter he sent to a federal judge thirty years later. “It was my good friend John Martorano.”

  DeMasi was taking literary license. Martorano didn’t know either DeMasi or O’Brien, whom he had killed instantly with his shot to the ex-con’s head. O’Brien slumped forward on the steering wheel, dead, and the car came to a sudden stop. DeMasi was wounded in the chest, arm, and shoulder. As soon as the car stopped, DeMasi jumped out and flagged down a passerby who drove him to the emergency room at Boston City Hospital. He stayed just long enough to get himself patched up, but left before the cops could arrest him for a parole violation.

  Meanwhile, at the East Fifth Street home of O’Brien’s ex-wife, his ten-year-old daughter kept looking out the window, anxiously awaiting the arrival of her father. Finally, she heard the doorbell ring. Marie ran out to open the door, but instead of her father, she saw two stone-faced Boston police officers.

  O’Brien also left behind a girlfriend who was nine months pregnant. She would soon give birth to a son who would never know his father.

  * * *

  THE NEXT afternoon, a Saturday, Ted Harrington, the federal prosecutor who headed the Justice Department’s organized-crime task force in Boston, called a press conference. For the benefit of the Sunday newspapers, Harrington denounced the wave of machine-gun violence sweeping the city.

  “These men show an utter disdain for the lives of innocent people,” the future federal judge said. “In all three of these incidents automatic weapons have been used and bystanders could have been hurt.”

  The next Wednesday, O’Brien was buried out of Gate of Heaven Church in South Boston. The Boston police organized-crime squad staked out the church, assuming that the fugitive DeMasi would make an appearance to pay his final respects to his deceased pal. The cops were right. DeMasi did show up, but he was still taking no chances, even in a house of God. He was carrying a loaded .38-caliber revolver when he was arrested and sent back to Walpole on a parole violation.

  * * *

  EX-BOXERS ALWAYS seemed to end up in the rackets in Boston. And they seemed to have a much higher mortality rate than hoodlums who hadn’t made it to the Golden Gloves. John “Jake” Leary had never done much in the ring, but he’d grown up with the Notarangelis, so his next career move was obvious.

  But when the bodies of his associates started piling up, he, too, fled Massachusetts. There was talk later that maybe Leary was looking to buy guns in Florida. But unlike Indian Al, Capizzi, and Shields, Leary let someone know where he was hiding out—in a beachfront apartment in Fort Lauderdale.

  Joe McDonald knew Leary, so he and Jimmy Sims immediately started driving south on I-95. Flying would have been quicker, but they couldn’t carry firearms—let alone an entire Winter Hill “hit kit”—onto a commercial flight. On the evening of April 3, Leary was cooking dinner in his Broward County hideout when he heard a noise near the front door. He wasn’t concerned; who could possibly know he was hiding out in South Florida?

  Leary left the kitchen and walked into the living room, where he saw Joe McDonald, armed with a revolver, trying to sneak up on him. Jake Leary threw himself at McDonald and they went down in a heap, pummeling one another on the linoleum floor. But McDonald had the gun, and he quickly got off a shot. Wounded, the younger man rolled off him, and Joe jumped up and emptied his gun into Leary’s face. The autopsy showed Leary was shot five times in the head. Fort Lauderdale police described it as a “gangland hit.”

  Back in Medford, Leary left a widow and three small children.

  LAWYER: Can you pronounce Indian Joe’s last name? I always had difficulty with it.

  MARTORANO: Notarangeli. I’m not sure.

  LAWYER: For now let’s call him Indian Joe. Do you believe you had a good reason for killing Indian Joe?

  MARTORANO: Yes.

  LAWYER: What reason did you believe was good enough to kill him?

  MARTORANO: Well, they had killed another guy before this. That’s what the retaliation was for.

  Indian Joe Notarangeli, murdered by Johnny in 1973.

  Al Angeli’s brother, Indian Joe Notarangeli, had never shortened his surname. He was thirty-five, a year younger than Al, and he hadn’t been seen at Mother’s, or anywhere else, in weeks. But Indian Joe knew he couldn’t hide out forever. Like everyone else in what was left of the gang, he believed In Town was hunting him. So he needed an intermediary, someone tight with the Mafia, but not of them. Someone of stature, someone from the old neighborhood—Somerville. It would have to be someone In Town respected. Indian Joe could think of only one such person who might be able to straighten out this thing for him and his brother.

  Howie Winter.

  Indian Joe reached out to his own Somerville guy, Charlie Raso, who’d been with the Angelis off and on in recent years, and Raso passed the message to Sal Sperlinga, who ran numbers in Somerville for the Hill. Indian Joe had left a number for Sal to call him back, at 3:45 the next afternoon. Sal showed the message to Johnny and smiled. Everything was falling into place.

  “We call him,” said Sal, “and then we kill him, and hopefully that ends it.”

  Johnny thought for a moment. He’d been thinking about trying something for a while now, and this seemed like the perfect opportunity. Johnny wanted to figure out where Indian Joe would be calling from, and then hit him right there, in the phone booth. It was an old underworld tradition, dating at least as far back as 1932. One of Dutch Schultz’s torpedoes, the Irish-born Vincent “Mad Dog” Coll, had gone crazy, and was kidnapping gangsters and shooting up Harlem. On the run, the twenty-three-year-old killer reached out to the biggest Irish gangster of the day, Owney Madden, and gave Owney a phone number where he could be reached at a certain time, after dark.

  Owney used his phone-company sources to find out the location of the pay phone—a drugstore at Eighth Avenue and Twenty-third Street. Then he called Dutch Schultz. As Mad Dog harangued Owney Madden in the phone booth, a limousine pulled up and two wel
l-dressed guys with Thompson submachines got out. One stood guard outside the drugstore, and the other gunman calmly walked inside and almost cut Mad Dog in two. The coroner dug fifteen slugs out of his body.

  * * *

  THE PROBLEM with Indian Joe was that the Hill only had a number, not the address where it was installed. But they assumed it was a pay phone. Back then, pay phones were everywhere, and most of them would accept incoming calls.

  So Johnny called up New England Telephone and told a story he’d worked out in his mind before he called. It took a few minutes, but he finally got a supervisor on the line. Johnny told him that his kid had just called him. His car had broken down. Johnny told the supervisor that his son had given him the phone number of the pay phone he was calling from, but before the kid could tell him where he was, he got cut off. His three minutes must have been up. But he never called back, Johnny said. “You know these crazy kids today,” Johnny explained with a sigh. So Johnny told the guy that it would really help him out if he could find out where the phone was, so that he could go pick up his son.

  * * *

  THE PAY phone was in Medford Square, at the Pewter Pot, a busy coffee shop in the heart of the square, on High Street, which was a narrow two-way street, not much more than a lane really, with parking spaces on either side.

  Medford Square was only about two miles from the garage, so a couple of guys were immediately dispatched to scout the location. The pay phone was just inside the front door, but that was the only good thing about the Pewter Pot.

  Pulling this one off would make the Commercial Street hit seem easy. But it was too tempting, knowing exactly where Indian Joe was going to be, and at what time. Joe was very cautious. He hadn’t been seen since the night the bartender was killed in Brighton. It might be months before the Hill got another opportunity like this.

  They went up to the garage and picked out a green ’71 Ford Galaxy sedan. It had been stolen in Framingham on March 25.

  Johnny would of course handle the hit, but this time he wanted Joe McDonald behind the wheel. Sims was good, but for this one Martorano wanted an even cooler head. Some of the guys at the garage called McDonald “Yup,” because that was how he answered every question. Can you take the guy yourself, Joe? Yup. Is the job doable? Yup. Can you unload the hot merchandise? Yup, yup, yup.

  The next afternoon, April 19, Joe McDonald was behind the wheel of the boiler. Tommy King, the ex-Mullen, was driving the crash car. They had various other guys on the street, just in case. At least a few customers—potential witnesses—were always hanging out at the Pewter Pot. Johnny was wearing a disguise—one of the yellow construction worker’s hard hats that they’d taken out of the Ford that was used in the Plummer hit.

  To further confuse any witnesses, Martorano was wearing a white meat cutter’s coat and a fake black beard.

  The big problem was that narrow two-way street with parking on either side. If somebody double-parked in the wrong place, they might have to abandon the car and make a run for it. Then they noticed another problem. As McDonald pulled into a legal space on the street a couple of doors up from the Pewter Pot, he and Johnny saw a cop standing in a doorway across High Street. Johnny didn’t like the layout. The vibes weren’t right.

  “How’s it look, Joe?” he asked.

  “Looks good,” said McDonald, nodding. He picked up the walkie-talkie and inquired of the spotter as to whether “he” was where he should be. The answer was yes, but suddenly Johnny was antsy again. He recognized the spotter’s voice—it was John Hurley, the same guy who’d mistaken the bartender Milano for Indian Al a month earlier.

  “Are you positive?” Johnny asked Hurley via walkie-talkie.

  “I’m positive,” he said. “It’s him.”

  * * *

  JOHNNY THEN told Hurley to come out to the car. He wanted to speak to him face-to-face. Hurley walked out to the boiler and leaned in and told Johnny again that it was Indian Joe. Johnny nodded silently. He couldn’t afford any more mistakes, especially when he was walking into a place with witnesses, some of whom might be both with Indian Joe and armed. With both Johnny and Joe Mac watching him, Hurley assured them that this time he was sure he was right.

  “You better be,” Johnny told him.

  * * *

  JOHNNY LOOKED at his watch. It was 3:45. Sal would be calling the pay phone right about now. Johnny still didn’t know if Indian Joe had anybody with him. They’d killed some of the crew, and others had run off, but some things you could never be certain of until you walked in and started shooting.

  Johnny turned to McDonald: “If you hear more than a couple of shots, come in after me.”

  “Yup,” said Joe McDonald.

  Johnny got out of the car, holding a .38-caliber snub nose revolver in his hand in the pocket of his butcher’s coat.

  He pushed open the coffee shop door and saw Indian Joe standing at the second pay phone on the wall, talking into the receiver, making his pitch for mercy. Johnny walked right up to him, raised his gun, and fired twice at Indian Joe’s heart. The restaurant was crowded, and some of the other customers started screaming as Indian Joe, his eyes wide with shock, dropped the phone and crumpled to the floor. But Johnny Martorano didn’t hear them.

  All he was thinking was, Get out, get out. He turned around, then walked out the door slowly. He left the Pewter Pot as casually as he could, walked back to the Ford, and got back inside the front seat. McDonald, who would be described by witnesses as having “stubby fingers,” had kept the motor running.

  “Okay?” asked McDonald.

  “Let’s go,” said Martorano.

  “Yup,” said McDonald.

  About a mile outside Medford Square, on the way back to Somerville, Johnny spotted an unoccupied phone booth. He told McDonald to pull over, which meant the crash car and another one behind it also had to pull over. Martorano walked over to the phone booth, deposited a dime, and called a Somerville number. He wanted to check back in with the garage to make sure everything was okay—no large hits shaping up on the day’s numbers.

  As Martorano placed the call from the phone booth, Tommy King pulled up in the crash car alongside Johnny’s boiler.

  “Johnny,” he yelled, “you know that the state police will have their helicopter up in the air, don’t you?” Its landing pad in East Cambridge was at most three or four miles from Medford Square. “Maybe we should get going.”

  Johnny hung up the phone. They got going.

  * * *

  NOW THERE was only one—Indian Al, the guy who had started the whole war. No one had seen him in months. He had obviously taken a powder. There was no pressing need to look for him. The war was over, his bookies now all belonged to Winter Hill—Jerry Angiulo couldn’t very well argue that point, not after all the carnage. And sooner or later, Indian Al would have to come home.

  And then they would kill him.

  It was eight months before the call came from Indian Al, in early 1974. It was almost a year since they’d killed Michael Milano by mistake in Brighton. Angeli had returned from Oregon just before Christmas, flying into Logan Airport.

  He met his mother in Cambridge, then drove with her to Gloucester where they had lunch. He told her he’d found Jesus, and that everything was straightened out, but she was not convinced. Shortly thereafter, he moved into the house owned by his late brother Joe’s wife, until he could find a place for his own family. He also visited Jake Leary’s widow, telling Jake’s eleven-year-old daughter that he was “homesick” for Massachusetts.

  Soon, Al Angeli decided he would reach out to the Hill. He apparently didn’t know who his brother had been talking to on the phone when he was shot to death. Indian Al still hadn’t figured out that it was the Hill rather than the Mafia that had wiped out his gang. When he finally spoke to Howie, Indian Al told him he had money, and that he wanted a sit-down with Angiulo, in a public place naturally, with Howie vouching for his safety. Indian Al wanted to straighten everything out, once and for al
l.

  When Howie called In Town with the news, Angiulo was pleased. For the meet, he suggested his usual restaurant in the North End, Café Pompeii. Howie and Johnny picked Indian Al up on at the Northgate Shopping Center in Revere. They’d never laid eyes on him before, but compared to his mug shots, he looked at least a decade older. He had a shopping bag with him, but mostly Indian Al wanted to talk about the Lord. He’d found Jesus. John 3:16. He was saved.

  In the North End, they brought him inside the café, to Jerry’s table, in the corner of the restaurant. No one was allowed to sit at the tables immediately around him. It was less about physical safety than about not wanting to be overheard—or bugged. Indian Al tried to give Jerry a hug, but Angiulo refused to rise from his seat. Howie and Johnny sat down at a nearby table, watching and listening in silence.

  “Mr. Angiulo,” Indian Al began, “I’m sorry.…”

  Jerry Angiulo just sat there, scowling. He lived for moments like this. He’d never been a strong-arm, and now he lived in a seaside mansion in Nahant. But he still reveled in playing the tough guy, the Mafia don. His top guns, Baione and Russo, might be away, but he still had these other guys, from Somerville, his secret weapons sitting a couple of tables away. In Providence Raymond Patriarca might be “the Man,” but on Hanover Street Gennaro Angiulo called the shots, and he never let anyone forget it.

  Johnny and Howie listened as Angiulo berated Indian Al in unbelievably foul language, telling him how he now had to make sure Paulie Folino’s family was taken care of. With a real hitman sitting two tables over, Angiulo shamelessly took credit for all the work of the Hill. It was at moments like this that Johnny realized that the Mafia was no place for anyone with a mind of his own. Who needed a “boss”?

  Finally, Indian Al pushed the bag across the table to Jerry Angiulo.

  “There’s 50,000 there,” he said, and Anigulo nodded. Jerry smiled weakly and told Indian Al that everything was okay now, and that he should stay in touch—but only with Howie. Don’t call me again, Jerry ordered. Ever. You want to open a nightclub or any other fuckin’ thing—I don’t give a fuck what you want, after what you done to Paulie Folino, I don’t need to ever be talking to a piece of shit like you. You wanna do anything from now on, you call Howie. You clear it with Howie. Capisce? Then he nodded at Howie and Johnny and they stood up. It was time for Indian Al to go. As Indian Al and Howie went on ahead, Johnny lingered behind at Jerry’s table.