The Underboss

by Dick Lehr

  In the front seat, Kennedy was worrying about the last failure. To him, the voices the Quinn team unexpectedly encountered meant only one thing—that the Angiulos kept someone on the premises overnight to guard the place. Kennedy and other members of the squad hadn’t come down too hard on the two agents who watched the office to make sure the Angiulos had left, but, still, it left him feeling uneasy about a fourth try. It meant being vigilant and ready to sweep in to back up Quinn at the first sign of trouble.

  Morris, sitting next to Kennedy, worried about the voices too, but he had not reached any conclusion. During the months of surveillance in the autumn, he thought his squad had gotten the Angiulos’ routines down pretty well. The findings suggested that no one stayed overnight at the office, but there had been the incident of the agents posing as nurses, whose knock on the Prince Street door had been answered. That surprise, however, seemed the exception rather than the rule. In fact, the premise that the office was empty had been reinforced just a few nights earlier, the night of the first attempted break-in, when Quinn had to bail out because of the wiseguys loitering on the street. That night, everyone had gone home except the two lookouts on Prince Street. Morris, always looking for fresh information, had them remain in their van until dawn to monitor the office. The agents had seen nothing.

  So Morris went back and forth on this vital matter: Was the office empty or not? Now the latest crisis—the voices—had thrown his squad into a tailspin. The only conclusion Morris had reached was that no matter how much they prepared, the break-in was going to be a hit-or-miss proposition. The only way to find out for sure was to do it.

  Morris became increasingly exacting in monitoring the progress of his agents, particularly the periodic reports that came in earlier in the evening from Cloherty and Buckley about who was departing from the Mafia office and when. Morris had the agents account for each of the major players—first the various Angiulo brothers and then key soldiers such as James “Fat Peter” Limone. The mobsters had been picked up as they left the office, either in a car or on foot, and then followed until they left the North End altogether. Angiulo had been followed home and “put to bed” by an agent hours ago at his estate on the North Shore. Now Morris had everyone just sit, to make sure neither Limone nor any other associates made a U-turn and returned to 98 Prince Street.

  Nearing 2:00 A.M., the reports coming in were encouraging. Prince Street was quiet. Meanwhile, as Morris kept tabs on the big picture, Quinn, waiting in back for the final go-ahead, was preoccupied with a much narrower focus. He saw things in terms of the route he had to take to reach the Angiulo office. It covered the length of a football field, and the first seventy-five to eighty yards—up Hull and onto Snow Hill—were relatively safe. At that hour, they could expect to find the dark and narrow streets empty; and they still hadn’t reached the immediate vicinity of the Angiulo office, so that even if someone did spot them it shouldn’t be cause for any special concern. They were just three people who happened to be walking down the street. But once they reached Prince Street and the final twenty or twenty-five yards—that’s when they had to worry. That’s where they’d seen the wiseguys. And where anything appearing only slightly out of the ordinary was expected to register with the Angiulo neighborhood network. For Quinn to cover this stretch and make it inside, the neighborhood’s back must be momentarily turned.

  Of course, Quinn retained a residual concern about the voices from the other night, but, like Morris, he couldn’t let this deter him. They were going in. However, the voices did remind him of the moments he most hated, and was most apprehensive about, in his sixteen years as an FBI agent—going through a locked door. You never knew if somebody was going to be on the other side with a club or gun. Working armed robberies in New York City, Quinn had done some door-bashing. He’d busted into apartments and ratty hotel rooms knowing an armed robber was on the other side. It was the worst a perilous business had to offer, knowing you were going to face a gun on the other side. One time, he broke down a hotel door, crouched, and aimed his Smith and Wesson at a robber lying on a bed just as the robber’s hand was reaching beneath a pillow for a pistol. It was a moment his memory had seized forever, a photograph in his mind’s eye.

  How the FBI bugged Angiulo’s North End office

  The intersection of Prince and Thatcher Streets in the North End, where each day the FBI parked the cars containing the hidden video cameras

  Gennaro “Jerry” Angiulo’s photograph from the 1936 Boston English High School yearbook. Note the misspelling and ambition.

  Five of the six Angiulo brothers in 1964 at the Suffolk County Courthouse where they appeared before a special Grand Jury probing organized crime. The brothers are (left to right) Antonio, Michele, Nicolo, Gennaro, and Donato

  New England organized crime boss Raymond L. S. Patriarca outside his headquarters on Atwells Avenue in in Providence, Rhode Island

  Ilario Zannino leaving court with prominent Boston criminal defense attorney Joseph J. Balliro in 1978

  James J. “Whitey” Bulger and Donato Angiulo, a capo de regime, at Bulger’s office in the Lancaster Street Garage, circa 1980

  Three Angiulo brothers, (left to right) Francesco, Michele, and Donato, outside their Prince Street office

  Angiulo lived in this spacious oceanfront home in Nahant, north of Boston

  Whitey Bulger conducting business with Ilario Zannino

  FBI agent Edward Quinn escorts Jerry Angiulo from the Boston police station after his 1983 arrest

  Jerry Angiulo entering federal court in Boston on racketeering charges in 1983

  Edward Quinn, as case agent, ran the Angiulo bugging operation

  FBI agent John Morris, supervisor of the Organized Crime Squad in Boston, conceived of the Angiulo bugging operation that became known as Operation Bostar

  John Connolly points as he and another agent take Francesco “Frankie” Angiulo to court to face racketeering charges following the bugging of the Mafia’s headquarters in Boston in 1981

  Former FBI agent John Connolly, for years the Boston office’s star informant handler, was indicted as part of a federal probe of FBI corruption in Boston

  But, for the most part, Quinn was feeling ready having prepared for this fourth attempt in the calm, businesslike manner he was known for. In the afternoon, he’d watched the Celtics beat the Lakers on television. The Lakers, playing to a packed house at the Garden, had led most of the game, but the Celtics pulled it out 98-96. Larry Bird was off, hitting a miserable 4 of 13. Robert Parish was strong, scoring 22.

  At six o’clock, Quinn drove from his home on the South Shore to the FBI office. He dressed neatly, but casually. He wore a long overcoat. He took off his large Boston College class ring, but kept his wedding band and wrist watch. Morris was already at the office, and the two went over the game plan. Cloherty and Buckley were in their white van on the early shift monitoring the office. By about ten, the other agents straggled in.

  For the entire squad, the three failed break-in attempts meant, on the one hand, that they’d all had a chance to practice and polish their roles in the bugging plan. But, on the other hand, with a thirty-day deadline, the pressure was mounting. It was day ten, and this time, Larry Sarhart, the agent in charge of the Boston office, was participating in the mission, a new development that many of the field agents weren’t certain how to interpret.

  The agents drank coffee, sat around on top of their desks, and waited for the night to wear on. The large, open squad room on the ninth floor, with desks lined up facing north, resembled a big classroom, and the wisecracking among the agents was not unlike the ribbing heard in any high school homeroom. Periodically, Morris dispatched a team of agents. After midnight, he was on the road himself, with Quinn and his team in the back seat.

  The prolonged waiting game ended shortly after two. Quinn, Richard, and the locksmith climbed out. Quinn pulled up his collar against a stiff breeze. The ice on the street crunched beneath his feet. Richard shook from th
e night air and her nerves. “Let’s speed this up, I’m cold,” she complained.

  The three were just beginning their hike up Hull Street, everyone feeling tense, when Richard slipped. She almost caught herself, but her foot slid out from under her on a slab of ice. She began laughing, and the others joined in. Here she was supposed to be acting so cool and she’d gone down like a clown in the first few steps. Quinn helped her to her feet.

  The fall actually cut some of the tension. The trio joked and began acting more like the partygoers they were supposed to be playing. They paused at Snow Hill to await word from Morris that they could descend onto Prince. Quinn could see that the street below was empty.

  He preferred the early Monday morning slot for attempting an entry. All of their footwork showed this was the quietest time in the North End. On other nights at 2:00 A.M., cars were triple parked outside places like the Café Pompeii up on Hanover Street, which the Angiulos owned. On a night like this, they still could encounter people who went to work before dawn, but they didn’t have to deal with the wiseguy element. If ever there was a night the wiseguys stayed home, it was the Sunday to Monday swing.

  Surveying the area, Quinn could see lights on in the buildings that hugged the narrow streets, but they lit mostly entryways. Few apartment lights were on. The popular pizza parlor a block behind the Angiulo headquarters, Pizzeria Regina, had been closed for hours. Chairs were stacked atop tables and only a night light shone. The North End was as still as it ever gets.

  The first phase of the entry went off without a hitch, the kind of smooth action that delights a movie director who is shooting a scene and gets it right in a single take. Had there been a camera rolling, it would have captured this seven-minute scene:

  Three revelers share a bottle of Scotch and small jokes as they meander down Snow Hill looking for an after-hours party.

  They pause briefly at an alley, where the woman nuzzles up against the men, and talk quietly.

  When they reach the corner of Prince Street, deserted in the early morning shadows, the three suddenly step briskly across the intersection to a doorway faintly framed by a streetlight.

  With the camera zooming in for a close-up, it’s clear the trio in search of a party is not dressed for one. Bulletproof vests are beneath their overcoats and .38-caliber revolvers hang from their belts.

  After climbing the five steps, two of them huddle as the third kneels and picks the lock.

  In a matter of seconds, the FBI is standing at the Mafia’s inner door.

  Behind the scenes other agents made myriad movements prior to that seven-minute stroll—all of them choreographed by Morris from his car.

  Morris kept Quinn from walking down the ice-capped hill into the tight confines of the old neighborhood until he received final word from his two agents in the lookout van that Prince Street was empty.

  Nick Gianturco and Shaun Rafferty, having relieved Cloherty and Buckley around midnight, were seated on milk crates in the back of the van. For hours they had been alternating between binoculars to see out the van’s front window and peepholes to peer through the sides.

  Even though they thought they’d learned their lesson after the first screwed-up effort at breaking in, they still froze their butts. That first night, when Morris had had them stay in the van after the break-in was called off, to see whether anyone came or left Jerry Angiulo’s place, they had been there for almost nine hours. Rafferty had worn only his wingtips, and his toes all but froze. He’d never been so cold in his life. Ever since, the agents had come prepared, or at least tried to. Rafferty found a pair a thickly lined boots with heavy soles issued by the U.S. Air Force—called Moon Boots. He climbed into them, a pair of long underwear, two pairs of pants, and a couple of sweaters. His partner, Gianturco, had a pair of battery-operated, heated socks, but the damn things stopped working. He wore long johns, several sweaters, a hat, and a couple of pairs of gloves. Gianturco also brought along some munchies—eggplant sandwiches to bug Rafferty, who didn’t like them. Rafferty munched on candy bars. Eating helped break the monotony of watching and waiting.

  The van was parked strategically on Prince Street, in the second of two spaces that Shaky Schopperle had acquired squatter’s rights to by parking his cars there for the past several weeks. Inside the van, Rafferty and Gianturco didn’t have much room to move around, and even when they did they worried someone would spot the vehicle stirring. They threw blankets over their shoulders, were forced to urinate into a can, and kept wiping the fogged-up windows, taking care that no one saw them.

  Rafferty’s toes still went numb, but he and Gianturco always managed to keep Angiulo’s place in sight.

  They were Quinn’s eyes.

  As the penultimate step, Morris signaled Bill Regii. From the foot of Prince Street, where it intersected Commercial, Regii began walking down Prince. He walked past the west side of the abandoned parking garage and toward the back end of the lookout van.

  He scanned the entryways and alleys, making sure no one was hiding in either.

  Rats scurried along the curb amid the rubbish.

  By radio, he reported back to Morris that the lights in the Angiulo office were off and the shades were drawn. Months before, they had learned drawn shades meant no one was home—most of the time, anyway

  After looking left to check for lights in the building where Frank Angiulo lived, Regii continued past 98 Prince Street to the intersection of Salem Street, where some Angiulo soldiers and associates lived.

  All was clear.

  Morris then gave the go-ahead to Quinn, Richard, and the locksmith. He quickly made another radio call and, in code, issued a car-blocking order. Suddenly, two vehicles pulled out to clog the two streets leading to 98 Prince. Buckley, with Regii back at his side, steered a Chevy Impala across the opening of Prince Street at Commercial Street on the harbor side of the North End.

  Tom Donlan maneuvered his navy blue Buick to block Thatcher Street at Endicott. Riding with Donlan was Larry Sarhart, the top man in the Boston office.

  Though blocks apart from one another, the agents’ actions were identical. Sarhart and Buckley climbed out of their cars, popped the hoods and, until receiving word that Quinn was safely inside Angiulo’s office, acted like motorists whose cars had conked out on them in the bitter cold. For the next seven minutes, no cars were going to get past them and drive down Prince Street.

  Overall, the plan had been designed to ensure that the neighborhood’s back was indeed turned for the few seconds it took Quinn and the others to cover the final twenty yards.

  For, Quinn, Richard, and the locksmith, standing motionless in the foyer of 98 Prince Street, it was pretty much now or never. But once again they were thrown by the sound of muted voices coming from inside. Instead of retreating quickly, they hung on. The thirty-day clock on the court order was running and they’d already suffered three failed break-ins. So they stayed, and after several seconds they began to detect an odd cadence in the steady talk. Fighting off anxiety, they listened long enough at the door to realize the noise might be radio voices.

  The locksmith went to work on the office door, but the lock wouldn’t release right away. Richard was standing to one side, waiting, squeezing the neck on a bottle of Cutty Sark.

  Using the Scotch as a prop had been her idea. The brand was actually Quinn’s, but he’d only sipped it to put the odor of booze on his breath. Suddenly, Richard heard a noise up on the second-floor landing. She reacted instinctively, thinking: Christ, somebody hears us. It sounds like they’re coming. We might as well make some noise and sound like we belong.

  “Hey, Frankie, really,” she blurted, slurring her words as festively as she could. “Is this where the party’s supposed to be?”

  The question hung in the air.

  Frankie, one of Jerry’s four brothers, lived on the second-floor across the street, and if any of the Angiulos was guarding the office, Frankie was the most likely candidate.

  Fortunately, no one answered
.

  The agents looked at one another, relieved they did not have to draw upon a threadbare ruse of having the wrong address for a party. For even though Richard was improvising, they all knew that if their cover got blown Quinn would have to shout, “FBI.” Guns would be drawn. With luck, no shots would be fired.

  The locksmith worked the lock free, and Quinn signaled to him to go ahead and open the door that led from the hallway into the office. Quinn took a deep breath. He wasn’t scared, but he was apprehensive—if some wiseguy was behind the door waiting for them, his only hope was that the guy wouldn’t shoot.

  Quinn went in first. He crouched at one side of the door; Richard quickly crouched at the other. They were consumed in the apartment’s darkness, except for the low light of the radio. They stood perfectly still, their eyes straining to see. Richard took over, again relying on instincts developed in years of undercover work. “Hey, Frankie, I’m heah. Where’s the pahty?” It was not a line the team had rehearsed, but Quinn understood immediately. If an underworld figure were hiding in one of the dark corners and heard a woman call out for Frankie, he would be puzzled long enough for Quinn to react.

  Richard offered more greetings and stepped around the office, which was L-shaped, about thirty feet long and twelve feet wide. The quarters came into focus—the kitchen in back, a table in the middle, a bathroom off to the side of the kitchen, a television up front near the two windows facing the street. The smell of garlic was overpowering.

  The only sounds came from the radio. The agents immediately realized what had thrown them before: The Angiulos had left the radio turned to WEEI, the city’s all-news station, as a precaution. There was nobody here, just radio voices.