Big Stick-Up at Brink's!

by Behn, Noel;

  “What I’m trying to imply is you don’t take everything Anthony says seriously. I admit, sometimes, it’s hard to know if he’s serious or not. On top of everything, he kids around a lot, particularly when meets are at his joint. So do the other guys—kid around.

  “I don’t think he was serious when he brought up that thing about half a gallon of nitroglycerine and seven guys all in the same car. At least I hope he wasn’t.

  “And I think he always knew we had to use a truck. In fact, once we got onto trucks, he made the best suggestion of all; grabbing one of those newspaper trucks [Record-American] parked in the downstairs garage and using that. No one around the neighborhood would think twice if they saw one of the newspaper trucks driving in or out.

  “All Anthony was doing was putting in the pitch for Jimmy Costa. He wanted Jimmy in on it, and we all knew that. As I remember, he put in the pitch again. He said even if Costa didn’t drive, we needed him on the outside peek to be on the lookout for cops or other people coming into the joint when they shouldn’t be.

  “It wasn’t a matter of greed with me not letting in extra men. Maybe it was to some of the guys, but I don’t think so. I didn’t care how many ways we split the haul just so every guy pulled his own weight. If we needed a guy outside or if we needed a driver or another torchman, that was okay with me, but we were getting ahead of ourselves. I said for myself, if we needed Jimmy, we’d use him when the time came, but there were other things we needed first.

  “If we needed anything, we needed a bigger plant. We’d have to take the stuff someplace and count it, and Savin Hill wasn’t big enough. Anthony said he’d think about it.

  “I started to get a drift of the idea when Anthony said he had a brainstorm. He said we’d have to get the best driver there was for the truck, and he had just the man. He brought up Barney’s name. I didn’t know Barney* well, but he had a good reputation with a truck. He was a nice guy, I liked him, but I knew he belonged to Skinhead [Joe McGinnis]. I didn’t know Skinhead from a hole in the wall, but I knew enough about him to know he was the biggest cheat that ever lived. Anthony did business with him, I didn’t know what kind, but that was Anthony’s business. I didn’t want Skinhead anywhere near us, and that meant keeping Banfield away, too. But it never came to a vote that night. Someone else said it was too early to talk about truck drivers.

  “When we broke up, we knew we had to find that bug. We were pretty sure we’d have to bring in one of two extra guys, but we didn’t know who they would be or when. If we didn’t find a way to kill that bug, we’d have to change all our plans—go in on the heavy.”

  Before the first meet concerning the big haul was terminated, a second warning was given that not one of the attending participants breathe a word about their plans. All six conspirators concurred wholly. The penalty for such an infraction was firmly set at death.

  The legal address for the tract of land in Dorchester opposite Franklin Park was 780 Blue Hill Avenue. Nearest the street, nearest Blue Hill Avenue, and in the right-hand corner of the property, stood a three-family house. Farther to the left on the property were lines of stores. Between the house and stores was a driveway which ran back to a garage in the rear of the plot. Alongside the garage was an old barn. The owner of the garage was eighty-two-year-old Tomasso Soracco. Soracco lived around the corner at 16 Wales Street. It was at this address that Tomasso’s daughter-in-law, Alma, answered the door on February 3, 1949.

  The visitor was tall, gaunt, properly dressed and polite. He had come to inquire about the vacant garage at 780 Blue Hill Avenue. How many cars did it hold? Alma collected and recorded rents for some of her father-in-law’s property but wasn’t acquainted with the garage. Tomasso was summoned. “Three cars,” he told the visitor. The old man wanted to know the stranger’s name. “Callahan Brothers,” was the answer. The old man wanted to know what kind of business Callahan Brothers was in. “The building cleaning business,” Callahan Brothers answered. What did Callahan Brothers mean by that? the old man wanted to know. They cleaned the inside of the buildings out, Callahan Brothers explained. How much was the rent? Callahan Brothers wanted to know. Forty dollars a month, the old man explained. Did he want to see the garage? the old man asked Callahan Brothers. That wasn’t necessary, Callahan Brothers explained. Callahan Brothers said he would take the garage. The old man told Callahan Brothers that his daughter-in-law, Alma, would take the rent. Callahan Brothers explained to Alma that he was going to Florida for a much-needed rest. Callahan Brothers asked if he could pay an additional two months’ rent in advance. Alma said yes. Callahan Brothers gave Alma the money in cash. Alma gave Callahan Brothers a receipt saying that the rent for March, April and May had been paid. Alma gave Callahan Brothers the key to the garage.

  Callahan Brothers was Barney Banfield, who turned the key and receipt over to Tony Pino.

  “That new plant had nothing to do with Brink’s, see?” Tony insists. “I was gonna get a new plant for Brink’s all right, only this one wasn’t it.

  “Let me tell ya what the place on Blue Hill was for, okay? I was getting back into a lot of my other business and needed a bigger joint. Sandy and me and Jimmy were grabbing lots of refrigerators and TVs and power lawn mowers, and we needed a big joint for them. That garage over at Savin Hill couldn’t hold ’em all. Barney and me was bringing in some cigarettes from New Jersey, too. Not McGinnis, just Barney and me. McGinnis and me had a lot of our own business going good then, but not cigarettes. Joe didn’t know nothing about Barney and me.

  “Okay, now what happened is Barney tells me about this guy, Sam the Toy Man. An old friend. Sam the Toy Man uses the big barn back there on Blue Hill, and one day he tells Barney about a garage being free come March. So I give Barney the money to go rent it—pay a coupla months in advance.

  “He rents it for the outside business, know what I mean? Not Brink’s. I ain’t even cased the whole joint yet. I’m still down in the basement looking at wires. And nobody knows about it like we agreed. No one but the five of us.”

  Not quite the truth. Over the threat of imminent death Pino had told Costa everything there was to know about Brink’s—had taken Jimmy into the premises and on the QT given him the TT&T; had alerted Banfield to be ready to drive for the “biggest thing you ever heard of”; had hinted to Joe McGinnis that something spectacular was in the offing.

  *This was an incorrect assumption.

  *Joseph Sylvester Banfield.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Skinhead

  Joseph F. McGinnis was born on August 19, 1903. He grew up in Providence, Rhode Island. His father was a Rhode Island cop. His mother never cut his hair and dressed him as a girl until he was seven or eight. His two prettiest frocks both had ruffles and velvet and could be worn only on Sunday, when his mother would take him to mass. Sometimes she would take him to two masses on the same morning to show him off. His father objected to his son’s being dressed as a girl. His father had fights with his mother over this. His father had fights with his mother over her thriftiness—over the fact that she wouldn’t spend money on anything but Joe. His mother cried after a fight. His mother died when Joe was still very young.

  When Joe McGinnis grew up, he shaved off all his thinning hair long before he became prematurely and totally bald. He moved to Boston, where he had lived for a short period during his late teens. His first wife was well publicized as being one of Boston’s leading madams. He was cheap, wouldn’t spend a dime on anything. He loathed clothes, usually was seen—depending on the weather—in a T-shirt or dark turtle-neck sweater with the same pair of inexpensive plain dark trousers. As far as anyone knew, he owned only one suit, which was worn only on Sunday when he went to mass. He never missed mass. Sometimes he went to two masses in the same day. As far as anyone knew, he seldom smiled, and he seemed to dislike everybody with the exception of his second wife. He smiled with her, often appeared to be gentle when he was with her. They were rarely seen publicly together anywhere other than mass. H
e detested anyone who treated a woman, let alone a wife, shabbily. He hated cops and the law as few men have ever hated cops and the law.

  Joe McGinnis’ first recorded arrest came on June 2, 1919. It was for robbery and was filed without prosecution. Four days later a Boston juvenile court ordered him to be committed to the Shirley School for idle and disorderly behavior. He moved back to Providence, and by the time he was twenty he had been fined a total of $200 for two different larceny convictions, served four months in jail for aonther larceny conviction, plus almost three full years in state prison for robbery. During Prohibition he moved quickly up the bootlegging ladder from peddler to distiller to importer. In 1933, the same year he had to pay a $15 fine for making a false statement on an auto license application, McGinnis, with a partner, purchased the J.A. Café at Egleston Square, Dorchester. Five years elapsed before he was arrested again—and subsequently served six months at the Hampden House of Corrections for carrying a revolver. McGinnis’ final arrest, on February 21, 1938, was his first federal violation—a narcotics violation—and made the front pages of Boston papers, where he was referred to as “the husband of a once notorious vice queen.” The ring he was publicly linked to allegedly trafficked in a million dollars’ worth of smuggled dope a year. On May 26, 1938, he was found guilty of conspiracy to violate narcotics laws and sentenced to fifteen months in “a penal type institution.”

  Despite this public record, little was actually known about McGinnis. The Boston police, as well as underworld sources, believed Prohibition had made him many times a millionaire, yet Joe’s style of living belied any hint of money. The J.A. Club and his liquor store were both modest enterprises, and his apartment around the corner was plain. God only knows Joe wasn’t a spender. A favorite story among the crew was of the time Joe stole an entire car to get a battery for his own car. Another dealt with his being too cheap to spend twenty-five cents for a car wash, and this could easily be verified by driving past the package liquor store where he hosed down his car once a week—weather permitting.

  Revenue agents kept an occasional eye on Joe because they believed, but couldn’t prove, he was still bootlegging—was continuing to distill liquor someplace. The FBI knew of him as well, believed, but couldn’t prove, that he was a partner with Raymond Patriarca—the alleged boss of New England organized crime—in the Islander Hotel in Providence, Rhode Island.

  It was this supposed association with Patriarca and other Providence big shots that greatly added to McGinnis’ criminal prestige. Joe had come from that city and unquestionably knew many of the reputed overlords, probably not as well as did Ben Tilly (Benjamin Franklin Tilly, alleged operator of a jewel theft ring and a childhood friend of Pino’s) but well enough to spawn a persistent rash of rumors, and Joe didn’t seem inclined to negate any of them, not if he could use them to his own best illicit advantage. And he usually did.

  McGinnis was generally considered a prominent figure in Boston’s highly disorganized underworld; a potent guy, who on his own was strong as a bear and didn’t need a baseball bat to knock you down the stairs but used one just the same because he was also as mean as a bear; an A-one organizer with the capacity to spot and perpetrate the biggest of scores; possibly Massachusetts’ leading fixer because dozens of politicians and police officials and maybe a few feds and judges were on his payroll; the official link between the Boston and Providence mobs and those in Chicago, Cleveland, Detroit and maybe half a dozen other Midwestern cities; a master fence; a master money changer; a near criminal genius if you like.

  Of course, there were some close to McGinnis who dismissed most of this as malarkey; who wrote Joe off as three-fourths bark and one-fourth bite. Police Lieutenant James Crowley did. But not all that many people could get halfway near Joe to begin with. In regard to business it was next to impossible to know what Joe was about. His personal life and background were a far deeper mystery. Only Joe knew the details here, and he wasn’t the type to confide in anybody—unless, of course, he happened to forget himself in the presence of a fellow thief as penurious and crooked as himself.

  “He opened up twice in my kitchen, know what I mean?” said Pino. “It’s only a couple of steps from his house to my back door, and he’s always coming over for something when I’m having my breakfast. I don’t know why he always picks then. Maybe he wants to see what I’m eating.

  “So he comes in this one time and says, ‘Why are people always saying I do damage?’ I tell him, ‘That’s ’cause you go around hitting them with baseball bats and knocking them downstairs.’

  “‘That only happened that once,’ he tells me, ‘and I didn’t damage him. He got right up and walked away.’

  “See what was happening? Joe didn’t like everybody whispering he was a killer.

  “Now the second time is when my mother and father musta been over,” Pino recalled. “Joe runs into ’em in the kitchen before they left. They talked to Joe a couple of minutes, and then they left. Now I get along good with my mother and father. We loved one another, and Joe musta seen that. So after they go, he says how nice they are. Then he tells me about his own father. He says everybody got it wrong about his father. He says he don’t hate cops because his father was a cop or because his father argued with his mother. He says he hates cops ’cause they fired his father, made him go tend a bar someplace. They kicked him out for no good reason, and he worked all his life for ’em. And when they kicked him out, his mother suffered ’cause there wasn’t any money. His mother died ’cause of it—’cause they were poor. That’s why he hates cops.

  “Now that ain’t all. He tells me the goddamn thing about being a girl. His mother thought he was a girl and put him in dresses. Joe said he didn’t mind ’cause it made his mother happy. He said he did everything to make his mother happy, and when she cried, it damn near killed him when he was a kid. She cried ’cause they didn’t have no money ’cause the cops fired his father. When she cried, she got unhappy about the crying. It killed her to cry in front of her kid. She thought it made her look bad—weak. Joe told me the last time he ever cried was at her funeral.”

  Tony Pino didn’t think Joe McGinnis weak in the least. In fact, he thought Joe was the toughest guy he’d ever met. Tougher even than Mike Geagan. Tony Pino didn’t care that nobody, absolutely nobody except himself and the second wife of McGinnis, had anything nice to say about Joe. He liked him. In fact, Tony Pino looked up to Joe McGinnis. He thought Joe McGinnis was the biggest and best crook he’d ever met. Far bigger and better than himself. Tony Pino not only trusted Joe McGinnis, but damn near adored him. Joe McGinnis was his hero. He believed the worst about Joe McGinnis—which, in Pino’s mind, was the best.

  And after Tony brought up Joe’s name at two different meets concerning Brink’s, Sandy Richardson started to grow uneasy.

  “Okay, I’m steaming,” said Pino, “I go all over the goddamn building looking for wires. I’m gonna find ’em no matter what. I go up on the roof looking. I look on the top floor [third] and down in the first [Commercial Street garage]. I’m out in the hallways and up and down every staircase in the joint. They got staircases all the hell over. One right next to Brink’s on the other side [nearest to Hull Street on the playground side of the building and going up to the second-level common garage].

  “I’m cooking. Nothing’s gonna stop me. Most of the time I spend looking in the offices [Brink’s offices]. I gotta check out every wire going outta the joint. And there’s lots of ’em. They got five of them no-good cheap pull boxes [pull alarms] in there. One in the rotunda [control room] and one out near the pete. Three more in the joint. I’m on the crawl seeing where the wires will take me.

  “And when you’re on the crawl, you don’t waste time. You keep the peek on everything. I gotta learn how these people operate. I’m starting to know Brink’s better than Brink’s knows Brink’s, see what I mean? These working people they hire come in and do their job. They’re only concerned with what’s on their own desk. They become oblivious
. I ain’t oblivious. I’ve been on my hands and knees learning. Examining every goddamn inch. I know what’s, under the desk and in it, too. I got a mind like a camera. I can’t remember everything I read in books, but looking over a joint, I don’t forget nothing. I don’t let nothing pass and remember forever. It’s a natural talent.”

  Pino also had a talent for forgetting to tell others all that his mind’s eye had photographed or, if too much time lapsed between the seeing and relating, jumbling certain facts. Both these tendencies became more pronounced when a mass of data was being mentally recorded, as in a situation such as the casing of Brink’s.

  Whether Tony was aware of these flaws, had consciously tried to correct them by telling Jimmy Costa his every last experience shortly after they occurred, is conjecture. But Jimmy, except for activities involving Joe McGinnis, knew nearly everything Pino was about. The crew had been in the habit of going to him for the latest details on the group’s operations.

  Sandy, for one, didn’t have any delusions that Tony hadn’t told Jimmy everything about Brink’s already, but before the second meet he pointed out to other crewmen that if anyone could keep up with, and make sense out of, Tony’s multinefarious doings, it was Costa. That was one of the reasons for suggesting Costa be brought in on the job.

  There was other discussion relating to Costa before the second meet. But who was kidding who? Tony Pino wanted him in, and Tony Pino was running the show, had always run the show, had almost always got what he wanted.

  There was a little discussion at the second meet in Pino’s living room. The haul would be divided into seven equal parts, and Jimmy Costa could have one of them. He was unanimously voted in as the seventh man.

  Henry Baker’s name was mentioned along with Barney Banfield’s at this meet. Henry might be getting out of prison sooner than anticipated, it was learned. Not only was he a friend and working associate of all but Gusciora, but he was, to the majority’s way of thinking, the best sneak thief in the business. Henry could open anything there was to open. No one was quite sure what had to be opened besides the vault at this juncture, but Maffie, Geagan, Faherty, Pino, Richardson and now Costa said Henry should be brought in on the great haul if he was available. As he had done with the vote on Costa, strapping, amiable Stanley Gusciora smiled and nodded and said, “Anything you boys want.”