by Jay Atkinson
It's 4:00 A.M. and as black as a dirty cop's soul when I get up and leave the house. As I go down the highway toward Somerville, it's thirteen degrees, the cold seeping in around my windshield and through the tiny spaces of the doorjambs. These fucking guys, they can't pull Joey's trash in nicer weather? No one is on the road at this hour, and the sleepy voices on the radio indicate that it's more last night than this morning. Rounding Stoneham, I enter the Central Artery and see the skyline of Boston spread out like a celestial city. The illuminated clock faces are shining atop the Schrafft building, and the dark spires of Boston Sand & Gravel show themselves black against the sky.
Mark Donahue has given me two conflicting pieces of advice. First, he said, whatever happens, don't get “made”— don't let this perp get a good look at me. I'm going to be helpful on this case only insofar as nobody on the other side knows who I am. But he also told me to do whatever I could to get the trash taker on videotape.
“It's gonna happen fast,” he said. “If you think you might miss it for any reason, run right out there and put the camera on him.” What if he sees me? I asked Donahue.
He shrugged. “Too bad for you,” he said.
Situated toward the top of a quiet, crowded street near Tufts University, the McCain residence is a neat, clapboard structure three stories high. Joe and his family live on the upper floors; his mother lives downstairs. As I inch along, peering at the numbers in the dark, Joey materializes at his front door, standing beneath the giant American flag strung from his upstairs balcony. He's dressed in black jeans and a black sweatshirt, his shaven head gleaming in the dimness, and he points to a space farther up the road. I park my car and walk back to him, hands in my pockets, head bent against the cold. “Hey,” he says, in a whisper. “What's up?”
We go inside, and Joey closes the door. “Most people don't live like this,” he says. “They don't get up at four A.M. to set up a surveillance on their own house— just because they've been one of the good guys, like forever.” With his father gone, Joe figures, Hyde is looking for some payback.
The key to a good surveillance is to keep from tipping off the suspect that you're watching for him. To that end, Joe plans to leave his car in the driveway and the house dark, since on his days off, like today, he'd be home sleeping. Maureen will put out the trash just after six-thirty, as always, and Joe and I will take up positions in his mother's living room on the first floor, armed with a video camera.
It's just after 5:00 A.M., and since I had to make sure to arrive before the trash puller, we have over an hour to kill before we set things up. Entering the hallway, we walk past the open door to his mother's house and tiptoe up the stairs. Inside the McCains' white pine kitchen, Joe switches on the tiny light above the stove and fills a kettle with water from the tap. “Want some tea?” he asks.
Tattooed arms bulging from his T-shirt, Joe puts a flame under the kettle and picks up a tiny dinosaur from underfoot, and places it on the kitchen table. A man is never so vulnerable as he is in the wee hours, his wife and children sleeping in adjacent rooms, his mother asleep downstairs. Even Joe McCain, Jr., professional hard guy, wears a troubled look as he pours the water for the tea and we stand in the half-lit kitchen, palming our mugs.
“What really sucks is, my wife and my mother, who's sixty-six and whose husband died last year, get pulled into this filthy little world,” says Joe.
He moves aside a plastic rifle lying on the table; the McCain children are a well-armed bunch. There's an arsenal of toy weapons on the nearby counter and scattered over the furniture and floor: pistols and ray guns and a fake shotgun with a cork on a string. “My wife has to worry if her husband's gonna get framed and go to jail. What a great fucking place to work.”
At my urging, Joe excavates his long, bad history with Jimmy Hyde. “The sad lesson learned in this case was that, in my opinion, the city's lawyers backed the cops who lied in open court, and the guy who was excoriated by cops and lawyers alike was Timmy Doherty, the one who got up there and told the truth,” he says. “Timmy wasn't trying to fuck good cops, as was portrayed. It was the other way around.”
Jimmy Hyde has gone around with Joe Jr. more than once. A few years ago, Denny “Rat” Shaughnessy, a friend of Joey's who owns a motorcycle shop, was being harassed by a merchant named Vincent Titone, whose tire shop was across the street. (Shaughnessy had begun living with Titone's ex-wife; aggravating perhaps, but not illegal.) One day Joe got a call from Shaughnessy, who said that Titone was pointing a silver handgun at him from across the street.
“If he does it again, call me back,” Joe said.
A short while later Rat called again to say that Titone was now parked across from his store in a white pickup truck. “He's pointing it at me right now,” Shaughnessy said.
Joe headed right down there with another Somerville cop named Jimmy McNally. They told Titone to get out of the truck, and McNally searched through the driver's side and Joe took the passenger side. Neither found anything; then they crossed over and switched. Joe stuck his hand way under the driver's seat, back where the wall of the truck bed comes down. Groping around, he felt a metal object inside the liner of a work glove that was pressed against the back of the cab. It was a silver-plated .38, with two loose rounds stuck in the fingers.
Titone was charged with assault and battery and possession of an unregistered handgun. The case was eventually dismissed because McCain and McNally had searched for the gun without a warrant. But later Joe Jr. heard rumors that Jimmy Hyde was behind a push with the district attorney to have him arrested for planting the gun in Titone's pickup. It went nowhere; Titone flunked a lie detector test.
“The only thing he got right was his name,” says Joe.
“Maybe Hyde figures I don't have the juice anymore,” says Joe Jr. “Look— there's only a couple people capable of ‘doing' a cop. Is Hyde capable of doing this? Yes.”
It's time to set up the surveillance. We pad down the staircase and into the front room of his mother's apartment. Against the windows, which let in some reflected light from the street, is a narrow table crowded with pictures of Helen McCain's three grandchildren and an old photograph of a youthful Joe Sr. in his double-breasted uniform with the pinched motorman's cap and glossy boots. In the photo, Joe and a grim-faced fireman are carrying a body up from the banks of the Mystic River. The figure on the stretcher is covered with a sodden blanket.
We each take up a position near one of the windows, and Joe Jr. gives me a quick lesson on how to operate the video camera. He points out where the Crown Vic was parked last week, and the approach its occupant took to the house.
“It sucks that it's right at eye level,” he says. “So stay low, and I'll tape him until he gets to the sidewalk out front, then I'll hand you the camera and go outside and you follow me.”
“You gonna confront him?” I ask.
“That's right. And I want you to tape the whole fucking thing. It ain't gonna last very long.”
A faint odor of Murphy's Oil Soap inhabits the room, and not a speck of dust resides anywhere. Every Saturday morning Helen McCain blasts The Irish Hour on the radio and to the skirl of Gaelic music cleans her apartment from top to bottom. A ship's clock is ticking from the mantelpiece, and beside me on an end table is a propped open book of Psalms. I can't make out the entry in the dimness.
“You carrying a gun?” I ask Joe.
“Nah. These guys have balls, but they're not gonna draw down on me here. They wanna come back and take me out in handcuffs in front of my wife and kids.”
I'm kneeling on the edge of the rug, which is patterned with a pink, aqua, and teal seascape. Three glass dolphins decorate the coffee table, and there are several vases filled with dried flowers scattered across the room. I drop my hand below the windowsill and press the little button that illuminates my wristwatch.
“What time is it?” Joey asks.
“Six-thirty.”
There are several moments of quiet, just the ticking
of the clock. “I'd be so psyched to see that car pull up,” Joe says.
I tell him that I can't believe anyone would do it; that a snoop would just walk up to a man's house in daylight and grab his trash.
“I've done it a thousand times,” Joe says. “You just act like it's the most normal thing in the world. No rush. Then you just walk away.”
The floorboards creak overhead. We can hear the door tilt open, and Maureen comes down the stairs in her pajamas and Joe's leather jacket and goes out with the trash. She makes two trips to the curb, returns to the house, locks the front door, and goes back upstairs.
“If it's gonna happen, this is gonna be when,” Joe says.
It's getting light. Neighbors begin to stir, heading off to work. “I gotta take a quick piss,” says Joe, getting up. He hands me the video camera.
“Don't miss it,” I say. Joe laughs and goes out.
I fiddle with the zoom for a couple of seconds, then pick my head up and stare out the window. Did I miss something? Somebody just walked by the end of the street. I shut my eyes for a nanosecond and study the image that's printed there: was it a guy in a brown coat?
You picture yourself in this situation like Sam Spade, cool, hatted, invisible, with a blackjack in your pocket and a snub nose in the waistband of your pants. But with Joe out of the room, I feel more like one of the extras in Lancelot Link/Secret Chimp, the old kids' show with live-action chimpanzees wearing trench coats and fedoras. Fumbling with the camera, I'm about as useful as a trained monkey, distinguished only by my clean-shaven face.
Joe returns from the bathroom and takes up the video camera. Full daylight has come up, and we crouch by the furniture to remain out of sight. “I'd love to get these bastards this morning,” says Joe, peering out the window.
Suddenly there's a grinding noise at the end of the street, and Joe stands up. “Look at this,” he says. Snorting plumes of exhaust, a garbage truck lurches around the corner and two men in reflective vests leap off the back and grab Joey's and his neighbor's trash. It's seven-thirty; the surveillance is over.
“Not this time,” says McCain. “But they'll fuck up. You watch.”
FOUR
Redbones
What can I say, except that the world is no good anyway and we all know it.
— JACK KEROUAC
THREE DAYS LATER JOE MCCAIN, JR., and I are having lunch at Redbones, a funky little barbecue joint located just off Davis Square in Somerville. The place features valet parking for bicycles and is redolent of Memphis pork ribs and fried Louisiana catfish. Joey's in uniform, and a young guy with a towel over his arm tells us to sit anywhere. Divided into a narrow bar on one side and a larger area filled with picnic tables, Redbones has a boisterous noontime crowd of mostly college kids, and we head over to an empty table near the kitchen. Joe takes the gunfighter's seat, with his back against the wall so he can see everyone coming and going.
I'm busy reading the menu, which is painted on the wall and illustrated with colorful drawings of sweet potato pie, et cetera, when Joey says, “It's all about the red meat.”
“It's all about the massive coronary,” I say, shaking my head.
Over to the table comes a thin, dark woman with gray streaks in her hair and a notch in her upper lip. I go for the pulled chicken sandwich with black beans and Joe orders the Texas chili, and just seconds later, the waitress delivers a bowl of the steaming meat stew piled high with onions.
Joe takes a big bite and gasps, his blue eyes veined in red and bulging. “That's fucking hot,” he says, reaching for his Coke.
Things are heating up around the Somerville Police Department, too. Advised by his lawyer, Joe Doyle, to inform his superiors about the trash pulling at his home, McCain wrote a letter to Chief George McLean and the mayor that has stirred up some old feuds in the department. Just as our waitress delivers his fried catfish sandwich and dirty rice, Joe pushes a copy of the letter across the table.
This unknown white male then picked up the four green plastic trash bags that were on the sidewalk at the bottom of my front stairs. . . . He then proceeded back to his vehicle. . . . I am requesting that the Police Department and the City of Somerville treat this as a direct threat to me and my family; and immediately initiate an investigation into determining the identity of the person or persons that may be targeting myself and/or my family. I have informed my mother and my wife of this situation and as you can imagine they are frightened for their safety and the safety of my three young children.
After receiving the letter, the chief called Joe in for a meeting and asked him what could possibly be in his trash that anyone would want. “Beer bottles, tattoo magazines, and porn aren't illegal,” Joe said to his boss. “It's not what they're going to find in my trash, it's what they're going to put in my trash.”
While asserting that he believed the trash pulling was more likely connected with the P.I. business than with the police department, Chief McLean, who's known as a hard, fair guy, said he'd assign a detective to interview Joe's neighbors and launch an internal investigation. After his talk with the chief, Joe also learned that Jimmy Hyde had approached another sergeant in the department and asked, “What's up with McCain? He thinks the feds are looking at him?”
I let out a whistle. “The catfish is out of the bag now,” I say.
During the meal, Joe's phone rings and it's Danny Rizzo, a friend who just got out of Walpole State Prison after serving three and a half years on a drug charge. Here in “Suma-vull,” where everybody knows everyone else and there's a very thin margin separating the good guys from the bad— a dividing line that runs straight through some family living rooms— even a phone call out of the blue can be connected back to the Jimmy Hyde case.
According to Joey, Hyde arrested Rizzo on a motor vehicle charge a few years ago, and in exchange for leniency tried to coerce him into conducting a coke deal at Rat Shaughnessy's motorcycle shop while Joey was present. “If not to pinch me, to embarrass me,” Joey says. An expert tile installer, Rizzo had been hired by Joe Sr., who didn't know he was doing drugs, to refurbish a bathroom at his house. When the cops and the DEA pinched him on the phony motor vehicle charge, they said they knew he'd been “frequenting” the McCain residence and wanted him to implicate Joe Jr. in drug trafficking and therefore disgrace his old man.
“Dad blew up,” says Joey. “Not because they arrested Danny Rizzo, but because after all those years working with the DEA, nobody gave him a heads-up, nobody contacted him to say, ‘We think that someone who's doing work at your house has a drug problem.' He was hurt.”
I put my eyes on him across the table and say, “Maybe you should stay away from Rizzo for a while, until this thing blows over.”
“My friends are my friends,” says Joe. “You know what I got from my father? You learn nothing about human nature by hanging around only with guys in blue suits.”
But Joe Sr. never encountered a vendetta quite like the one Joey is facing. Big Joe believed that a police officer should never work in his own community (as a Met detective, the elder McCain worked in several area towns at once, not just Somerville). The political and personal pressure is bound to haunt you. People who know you too well ask for favors that compromise your ability to conduct investigations or make a clean arrest. But Joey loves Somerville and often says that he'd never consider moving out of town.
We push our plates aside, and Joe takes out his wallet. But the waitress shakes her head. “You're all set,” she says, cleaning up.
Joe leaves a wad of bills anyway. “She thinks we're both cops,” he says.
“No, she's impressed that you're the only cop who drives around with his personal biographer,” I tell him.
On the way out of Redbones, Joe gets a call from Timmy Doherty, the patrolman who witnessed the Henderson beating in '94 and testified against Jimmy Hyde in federal court. Now thirty-five years old, Doherty is still “on the job,” assigned to the detective unit, where he specializes in gangs. He's in the nei
ghborhood and wants to meet Joe and me for coffee. On the sidewalk in front of the restaurant, Joe whistles at an unmarked car and Doherty stops, idling in the street.
“What's up?” asks Joe, leaning in the window.
“Let's go over the hill,” says Doherty, naming a coffee shop in Medford. He looks at me. “I learned the hard way to take it out of the city.”
Joey and I climb into the baked stink of his patrol car, and two minutes later we arrive at a Dunkin' Donuts and Timmy Doherty pulls in beside us. He's a stout fellow in a gray scally cap and leather jacket. Married with three kids, he wears a gold claddagh ring on his left hand, with the heart turned inward, and his solid blue tie is fixed to his dark blue shirt with a gold harp pin.
“How was lunch?” he asks Joe.
Joe touches his sergeant's stripes. “She tried to put it on the sleeve,” he says.
“The dark-haired one? She's Fleming's ex-wife,” says Doherty, naming a fellow cop. “She gives it away to everyone, except Fleming. He has to pay.”
Doherty and McCain laugh. An artificial Christmas tree stands inside the door, and we enter the cattle chute surrounded by the rich, earthy smell of brewing coffee. “Timmy, you still eatin' crullers the long way?” Joe asks.
“You just suck the cream out,” says Doherty.
They laugh again, and we take the steaming drinks to a little Formica table in the corner, where both Doherty and McCain sit with their backs against the wall. Doherty has an impish, pie-shaped face, but when I am introduced and he shakes my hand, his palm dry and stiff like a board, his eyes harden into little black dots. It's the look of a skeptic.