Big Stick-Up at Brink's!

by Behn, Noel;

  “My father wants me to stay out at the house in Mattapan with them, but I tell them I can’t. I have to stay at Aunt Elizabeth’s apartment house in Dorchester. Dorchester is closer into town than Mattapan, and Jimmy’s already moved my stuff there.

  “So everybody was happy and dancing and enjoying themselves. Nobody mentions where you been for six years. They never do. They’re honest, law-abiding people. I’m the only rotten apple, but I never admitted it. They never admitted it, too. They gotta believe everything I tell ’em or else they’d go nuts. But when I promised them I’m rehabilitated for good, I really meant it. I know you always mean it when you first come out, but this time I meant it for real. It was the least you can do for the people that love you.”

  Chapter Two

  Whip Cream

  Tony Pino began serving his parole with a minimum of expenses. He occupied, rent free, the second-floor flat of Aunt Elizabeth’s three-story apartment building at 3 Fuller Street, Dorchester, Boston’s southernmost section. Owing to wartime priorities, he had no telephone; he made the majority of his calls from the top-floor apartment of his aunt or the ground-level apartment of Nancy and Jimmy Costa. Certain phone conversations, those relating to his legal predicament, were placed up the block at the home of his attorney. For more private telecommunications he walked the three blocks to his fiancée Mary Fryer’s apartment. The most confidential calls cost him a coin in the outdoor phone booth down the block from Fuller Street at the rapid transit station.

  He had no suit other than one sent him at Charlestown just before his release, only three pairs of underwear and two of socks and three or four shirts. Everything else had been mistaken as old clothes by Aunt Elizabeth and destroyed a week before.

  Because the Commonwealth of Massachusetts had long ago revoked his driver’s license and because insurance companies, as in the case of many professional criminals, had refused to issue him an auto policy, he owned no car; he had sold the one registered under a cousin’s name back in 1938. For the better part of two weeks Mary Fryer took mornings off from her nursing assignment at a nearby hospital to drive him around Boston, reacquainting him with the post-Depression city, more than anything, trying to consummate their nine-year engagement by finding a large apartment for them to share. Mary paid for lunch. Afternoon chauffeuring was delegated to Jimmy Costa, who always found some way of sneaking off from his job as presser in a clothing factory. Costa paid for late snacks and drinks. Every evening either Mary or Costa drove Tony out to her parents’ house for dinner.

  He had no job and didn’t particularly want one, but he needed one to meet parole board stipulations. Boston’s ports and industry were booming as a result of the war and offered a wide variety of employment opportunities even to ex-cons, so, like it or not, he couldn’t hold out for long. He didn’t like it. Almost every opening required manual labor. Tony hadn’t exerted himself all that much in stir.

  He had no money other than the $600 he had earned at Charlestown, and by his second week of freedom it became obvious he would need much more than that. The lawyer required $1,000 to begin the fight against deportation. Tony borrowed $500, laid out $500 of his own and was left with approximately $75.

  His first boosting, which had more to do with practice than gain, had occurred the second week Mary was driving him around Boston. Both had gone into a five-and-dime so Mary could buy some thread. When her back was turned, Tony swiped an emery board.

  Not long after, he was reunited with Big Steve, a former partner in the boost. Their first week’s shoplifting take was a disappointing $180 per man.

  The lawyer intimated to Pino that bribing several high state officials was the expedient way to fight deportation. Once paid off, these officials could get the governor officially to grant Tony a full and complete pardon on his 1938 conviction for the Rhodes Brothers’ robbery. Such a pardon would technically strike the offense from the books and leave him with a record of only one for which he had served a year or more in prison. Since the minimum federal requirement for deportation was the serving of two jail terms of no less than one year for two different convictions, the United States Immigration Board would have no action against him and would have to drop the case.

  The estimated cost of securing such a pardon was $5,000, and $1,500 would have to be paid almost immediately. The balance would be due in the coming months.

  Had Pino wanted to go back into safe theft, as he now contemplated, there were many obstacles. His prize collection of thieves’ costumes, which Costa had transferred from the storage shed behind the Mattapan house to the basement of 3 Fuller Street, wouldn’t fit in the overcrowded and locked closet, had been discovered and mistaken for old clothes, along with Tony’s regular clothes, and burned in the furnace by Aunt Elizabeth the week before he was paroled from Charlestown. The battered leather valise containing burglar’s tools was safely in the cellar under lock and key, but many of the implements had become outmoded even before Tony went away. The use of wartime-developed miracle metals—ultrahard metals—in the construction of new safes rendered even more of the tools obsolete.

  He had considered reactivating his prewar robbery crew, but there were even greater difficulties. Jimma Faherty was still in prison, along with Henry Baker. Mike Geagan was out, but off in the Merchant Marine sailing the North Atlantic, the provision on which he had received an early parole.

  The one remaining bright spot was Pino’s old-time pal and former robbery crew associate, as well as fellow con, Sandy Richardson.

  “With all the others gone, that leaves us only three hands,” Pino had stated in their first meeting in late September.

  “Two hands, Anthony,” Sandy had answered.

  “Three,” Pino had insisted. “I’m thinking of bringing in Sam.”

  “Sam’s on the same boat with Mike.”

  “Mother of God.”

  “Anthony, I think you ought to know—”

  “The Kid,” Pino interjected, “we’ll bring in the Kid!”

  “Gus?”

  “Sure, why not? I promised him up at Charlestown he could come along anytime.”

  “Anthony, Gus came right out of the joint in May and went right into the Army.”

  “Why are you telling me all these horrible things?”

  Sandy parked in a lot beside a waterfront bar without answering.

  “Where’s the plant?” Pino asked as they left the car.

  “There isn’t one.”

  “Whaddaya mean, there isn’t one?” Tony demanded. “How can you do business if you don’t have no plant?”

  “We don’t have a plant because I didn’t rent one. I didn’t rent one because I don’t need one. Try to understand, Anthony. There’s a lot of strong feelings about the war. What I’m trying to tell you, I guess, is I haven’t been on the grab since I got out!”

  Pino seized Sandy’s arms. “Are you standing there more or less saying you’re laying off because of the war?”

  “That’s what I’m saying more or less. Our men are getting killed fighting!”

  “And nobody’s making a buck off the whole thing? No general or supply sergeant or congressman or nobody isn’t robbing the country blind while them boys is getting blasted?”

  “That’s their business, not mine!”

  “Okay, okay,” Pino said quickly. “Now what about after the war? You thinking about getting off your ass after?”

  “Once we’ve won, why not?”

  “We’re winning already. Every place you look it says we’re winning.”

  “After—not before, Anthony. Save any of the malarkey about future planning. After!”

  “Okay, after Okay.”

  Pino followed Richardson to the wharf railing and stood absently staring at a large white ship with a red cross which was docking.

  “Can you gimme some goddamn help at least?” Tony finally muttered. “Nothing overwhelming, only some steers?”

  “I know you and know myself. If I start giving steers, the
next thing I know I’ll be back on the bend.”

  “Mother of Christ, Sandy, I just come out of the can. I’m gonna need hands, and I don’t know who the hell’s around. All I’m asking is, who the hell’s around?”

  Richardson considered the request for a moment, then responded, “None of our guys.”

  “Not even extras?”

  Defense production had drastically curtailed production of civilian automobiles, creating a simultaneous scarcity and boom in its used-car market, so Pino would have to come up with more money than anticipated to buy the mobility he now needed. Arranging for a counterfeit driver’s license until he could get a bona fide one would also cost. A cousin’s wife would soon be giving birth, and Pino never could bring himself to boosting presents for a baby—he would have to buy them. An uncle was having trouble with a mortgage payment. Mary had found at least six apartments and was already pricing furniture. Costa was demanding payments for some gasoline consumed while chauffeuring Tony around.

  And time was running out. Prime crooking time. Night time. Tony would soon have to take a job to meet parole board regulations. The only one he had lined up was at night.

  Big Steve reached out, scooped three shirts off a pile and stuffed them through the trick door in the side of what appeared to be a large gift-wrapped box. He turned, pushed through the noon-hour crowd clogging the department store main floor, set the box down on the counter and began inspecting argyle socks.

  “Can I help you?” asked a department store clerk.

  “Browsing,” Big Steve answered.

  The clerk smiled, gave a curt nod. Big Steve smiled, gave a curt nod back and continued fondling the socks. The clerk stood watching him, then moved away to wait on a customer. The customer was Jimmy Costa, who pointed at an item in the display case behind the counter. The clerk turned to fetch it. Big Steve slipped a pile of socks into the trick box, then started examining sweaters. The clerk’s back was still turned. Two sweaters were halfway in the box. A large, powerful hand clamped onto Big Steve’s wrist. A second large, powerful hand seized his neck and forced the shoplifter’s head forward.

  “Good work, good work,” Pino called, hurrying up to the burly salesman holding Big Steve down over the counter. “Goddamn good work. We’ve been trying to catch this lousy thief for months. What’s your name, fella?”

  “Alwin,” the salesman replied as Pino grabbed Big Steve by the back of the collar and brusquely pulled him up.

  “Alwin, I’m giving you full credit for this pinch. I’m personally telling the president what ya done. Now go back to work, go back to work. Don’t wanna terrify the honest customers, do we? Go back. I’ll handle this lowlife like he oughta be handled.”

  Pino jerked Big Steve around, picked up the trick box and hurriedly led his boosting partner out of the store by the scruff of the neck.

  Twenty minutes later they were in a store three blocks away—and back on the boost.

  There was trouble, big trouble, Pino explained when he rendezvoused with Richardson late in the evening on a deserted street running along Fort Point Channel in South Boston. And when Sandy asked what kind of trouble, Tony complained that he still didn’t have a phone in his apartment and that his parole officer was demanding that he take a job within a week and that he couldn’t find a used car to buy at a reasonable price, and that he hadn’t liked any of the apartments Mary had found and that she had warned he’d better like one quickly—but all that wasn’t the real trouble.

  Deportation was the real trouble. Tony had visited his lawyer earlier in the day. The price for buying off the state official had jumped to $30,000. And $10,000 would have to be paid almost immediately. The balance would be due in the coming months.

  And when Richardson asked, Pino said no, no, he didn’t have anywhere close to ten grand. And when Sandy said he could lend Tony five grand right away and probably muster up another five grand in a week, Tony said, “I ain’t asking for charity! I’m asking for loyalty!”

  “NO!” Sandy categorically said.

  “Whacha saying no for before I spoke what’s on my mind?”

  “I’ve had dealings with that mind, so I’ll tell you no right now. No, I’m not going on the bend with you.”

  “Where the hell am I going to raise that kinda substantial money unless I do some work, and how can I do the kinda work that pays substantially unless I got you along?”

  Sandy had no immediate answers.

  “I sure as hell ain’t gonna raise it going on the penny boost with the Polack. I told you already what happened with him. We almost got grabbed.”

  They were walking now, and Sandy still had nothing to say.

  “You wanna come visit me in Salerno, is that it?”

  “You’re from Sicily, Anthony, not Salerno.”

  “That shows you what an atrocity it is to deport me,” Pino responded. “I don’t know one Eyetalian city from another.”

  “I can get you the first ten grand, and maybe I can get you more. You can pay me back when—”

  “Sandy, the score I got in mind ain’t strategic, see? It’s got nothing to do with war production. It’s underwear, Sandy. Goddamn unimportant underwear and not soldiers’. It’s ladies’ drawers.”

  “How did you come across something like that?”

  “I had nothing to do with it. Jimmy found it.”

  “A pete job?”

  “Yeah—and a real sweet chunk of chocolate cake, too.”

  “What the hell does Jimmy know about spotting a pete?”

  “He don’t know nothing, only he used to work at the joint. Wanna take a look?”

  “No!”

  “Okay—I’ll knock it over with the Polack.”*

  “Stop being idiotic.”

  “That’s all I got left to me is the Polack or Italy.”

  “Anthony, I doubt that President Roosevelt will call a truce just so he can convince Mussolini to take you back.”

  “But the war’s gonna be over any day, you said so yourself. If I don’t get the deportation settled now, I’m cooked. I got no choice but to go with that dumb Polack.”

  “Mike mentioned a person the last time he was here. A new person called Jazz. Jazz Maffie.”

  “Jazz?” Pino reported. “What kinda name’s Jazz?”

  “The person’s name.”

  “Where’s he from?”

  “Here in Boston. From around Roxbury. He runs a book.”

  “Bookies is nothin’.”

  “Mike says this Jazz is the exception, that he only uses the book for storefront. No one knows he’s out for work except Mike and another guy.”

  “You saying Mike’s been on the grab with him?”

  “That’s the impression I got.”

  “Light or heavy?”

  “With Mike it has to be both.”

  Pino considered. “Unh-unh. I don’t like the idea of working side by side with no bookies. They gimme the jitters.”

  “It’s your trip to Italy, not mine,” Sandy said, walking away.

  Pino changed into the white baggy work clothes he had boosted that morning, packed three salami and cheese sandwiches, two peaches, an apple, a container of sweet pickles, four candy bars, two comic books and a thermos of milk into the lunch bucket he had been forced to pay for in cash, left his Dorchester apartment, walked two blocks to the Fuller Street stop of the rapid transit system, and caught the 6 P.M. train for Boston.

  He walked the ten blocks from South Terminal to the D Street warehouse of Stop and Shop, one of the area’s leading retail chain grocers. A union steward explained that until full membership in Local 22 was granted, Pino would work as an assistant order filler, cart pusher and truck loader at $80 per week. Once a union card was issued, base pay would rise to almost $100, plus overtime. The work by and large, he was told, should be a breeze.

  Pino time-clocked in at 7 P.M. He punched out at 5 A.M. in a state of near collapse. Attempts to find a taxi tailed. He somnambulistically managed the ten block
s back to South Station only to learn the train service to Dorchester didn’t begin until 6 A.M. He dropped onto a bench, fell asleep sitting upright, awoke in time to catch the 10:30 A.M. local.

  Pino phoned Big Steve from the Dorchester Street station, postponed their scheduled boosting expedition for another day, dragged himself to his 3 Fuller Street apartment, plunged onto the bed and ended his first full day of rehabilitated labor sleeping facedown, spread-eagled and fully clothed.

  The second night of work proved more exhausting than the first. The third was even worse. The fourth he hardly remembered until there was a pounding on the door.

  Under ordinary circumstances Mary Fryer stood a good two inches taller than Tony Pino. When she wanted something, the inches multiplied to feet, and now, as she marched into his second-floor flat, she not only was in want, but was serving an ultimatum. Tony was told to get dressed, come with her, make a final decision on which of two apartments they should take or go on living right where he was—alone. He got dressed.

  The second premises they reinspected that afternoon, the four-room layout at 1955 Columbus Avenue, Roxbury, provided Pino with pause. Tony had grown up at Andrew Square, knew what it was to live at a noisy intersection, and the Roxbury building was at the corner of Washington Street and Columbus—smack-dab on busy Egleston Square. If this wasn’t enough to keep you up nights, there was always the elevated which ran over Washington Street. Tony couldn’t see the need for two bedrooms. Mary could; she had a married daughter and a grandson. More likely than not the grandson would be staying with them a great deal of the time. Tony pointed out that the flat didn’t have a dining room and was emphatic about not liking to take his meals in the living room. Mary was equally emphatic. She’d be doing the cooking, and he’d eat where she served the food—kitchen or living room. The rent bothered Tony. He felt that $25 a month was “unethical highway thievery.” Mary let it be known that living with a man didn’t mean she was dependent on the man, proclaimed she and she alone would be signing the lease and she and she alone would be paying the rent from her salary if she continued working or her savings if she retired—and she and she alone would determine what was or wasn’t a fair price. She thought $25 was fair.