Big Stick-Up at Brink's!

by Behn, Noel;

  “I own the joint,” Pino had once said, shortly after entering past the guard room door. “I live there. I can’t get enough.”

  And so it was and continued to be between the time the last lights in the vault room went out and the last guards were seen leaving until 10 to 10:30 P.M. Finding file information which would lead to neutralizing the supposed alarm on the vault itself was uppermost, but other areas were scouted out as well, many things learned. Pino continued to be the most addicted to the nocturnal probing, hardly missed a night. But Richardson and Geagan and Maffie and Gusciora and Costa were also caught up in the often-meaningless casing. Theoretically, only two of the gang were allowed to enter at a time. Pino almost always was one of the two intruders, but sometimes an extra man showed up. Sometimes four went in at the same time. Sometimes the ever-suspicious Tony relegated two to go in, then sneaked in later to spy, to make sure they were doing what they were supposed to.

  Much of what went on was careful and calculating. Much of what went on was not. Much was a direct violation of the crew’s own rules of safety. Tony and Gus never should have parked in the public garage section of the floor, and they knew it. Jimma Faherty did them one better. He drove right into the auxiliary garage used by Brink’s and parked—drove in and parked a stolen car. Often, as Pino and Sandy had done, other men walked right past the windows overlooking the playground when they should have crouched. Often penlights were flashed on and off without being masked—in plain view of anyone who might be looking into the window. The washrooms were used, the toilets flushed. The phones were used, usually by Faherty, who seemed to prefer making personal calls from the instrument in the vault room itself. Pino, who originally put a stop on using premises phones, worked out a ring signal on which he could call in to the men assigned the casing for that night. Documents taken out of a file were often replaced in the wrong order. When a sign was read on the company bulletin board soliciting contributions for a wedding present for one of the drivers, Gus and Costa each put a dollar in the cup below, bringing the total take up to $2.75. The gang had gone through the waste-baskets looking for discarded data, knew that no one emptied the trash at night, but still shouldn’t have left an empty whiskey bottle in one. Men smoked on the premises when they knew they shouldn’t have, knew that even if they masked the red top glowing in the dark, the smell of smoke might linger. The men were absolutely certain no hacks would show up before 10:30 P.M. but had little idea of whether one might enter after that time, so they shouldn’t have remained until 11 or 11:30 as they often did. The main route for entering the office had almost exclusively become via the Hull street second-level common garage, but few, if any, of the gang were careful to see if any outsiders were around. They usually wandered right in and up to the slide door going to the auxiliary garage used by Brink’s vehicles, carrying on a conversation. If the door was closed, they slid it open. There was a lock latch on the door which Pino had broken. It had never been fixed. The men hardly ever bothered to pull up their handkerchief masks once they were past the bauxited pair of fire doors fronting the Brink’s main garage. They always wore their gloves but sometimes didn’t even bother to bring a handkerchief. Less and less were they speaking in whispers when roaming the premises. They often congregated in one room and held bull sessions at which the laughter was raucous. On one occasion Gus hid behind a desk and, when Jazz walked by, jumped out and yelled, “Stick ’em up. I got ya.” A noisy chase followed, and after Maffie got his hands on the prankster, a grunting and laughing wrestling match took place. In short, the gang was acting as if they did own the joint. There seemed to be no good reason why they shouldn’t. As Costa observed, “You coulda set a time bomb off in there and nobody in the world would care.”

  Through it all a great deal was learned about the Brink’s offices and procedures. Four of the five pull alarms were located. Personnel files were read. So were assignment rosters. The gang had a pretty good idea of just how many people worked in any one office during the course of the day and what they did. They knew how many men were assigned to what truck for the following day, exactly where each delivery was made and how much it contained. They became aware of “sealed packages,” a service the company rendered and in which the customer turned over a delivery for shipment without specifying how much it contained or what it contained. The gang knew when each individual truck was gassing up or staying at the service station for a more serious overhaul. They knew from reading an assignment sheet that during the day there was a garageman assigned to take care of the trucks parked in the garage, he was usually finished about 5:30 or. 6 P.M. There was no information concerning cleaning personnel either during the day or at night. During the day a guard was assigned to the front guard booth looking into the main hall in the second-floor lobby. The name for the center rotunda in the garage was control room, and a man was assigned to this—during the day. The guard booth in the corner of the garage, the one with a door in it leading to the garage, was manned only on certain days. Nothing could be found concerning any guard’s being present in any booth at night after closing. Nothing at all could be found regarding night watchmen.

  Despite all the effort and searching, nothing at all had been found indicating how the bug on the vault could be neutralized. But a letter was found stating that one definitely did exist.

  “It was my weakness,” Mike Geagan asserts. “I never should have let them in. All we ever needed to take that place, either way [B & E of heavy] was seven men. Not even seven. Six of us could have done it. Costa was as much a part of us as anyone, so it was only right he be there. That could have been seven. But the other two men—we didn’t need them. Tony was the boss, and I knew he wanted them. Tony had made us all money, but I went along because he wanted it. I didn’t have anything against those two men, but we didn’t need them. The more you have along, the better is your chance for word getting out. You can’t get mixed up with too many men doing things there’s no need for. You can lose control. I felt bringing them in could be a disaster for us all. I should have said that and stopped it.”

  Pino had managed to get Richardson, Geagan and Costa’s approval beforehand and was in the process of outlining—for the consideration of Maffie, Faherty and Gusciora—the proposed guidelines of acceptance. Barney would drive and take care of transportation—on the heavy if it came to that. Joe would underwrite all expenses and—

  It was at this point that Barney and Joe walked into Pino’s living room. Tony would swear afterward it was a mistake, that they were supposed to wait until they were voted in and then come over. This, of course, was a lie. He planned it as it occurred. And once they were at the meet, specific plans began being discussed before anyone could object.

  Joe announced the ADT alarm system would be going into his two businesses within several days. If that didn’t work, he had another plan. Tony announced no wires could be found for the bug but that he had another system for killing the alarm.

  Joe and Barney stayed until the meet broke up. Tony contacted Jazz and Jimma and Gus the next day, apologized for Joe and Barney’s walking in unannounced and then asked if, they wanted the pair along on the haul. Jimma said okay. Jazz said, what the hell, which meant okay.

  Good old well-liked easygoing Gus said, “Whatever the other boys want,” then for the first time he told Tony Pino what he wanted in return—who he wanted to come on the crew.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Specs

  Swimming, swimming for his goddamn life in the harbor, trying to escape the detention house on Deer Island, swimming in the water in the middle of the night, swimming like a madman and complaining every stroke of the way—that was the illusion Joe McGinnis used at the meet to illustrate what a chronic bellyacher Specs O’Keefe was. Haberdasher of disaster—was the malapropism spit out to warn what a chronic bad-luck guy Specs O’Keefe had been to all who had known him in the past, would unquestionably be again in the future. That anyone with half a brain and half an eye and only one arm and no
legs who owns a grocery can make it pay off—even Ben Tilly makes that grocery store of his pay off—but not that dope-eating queer was a comparison used to put across what a chronic loser Specs O’Keefe had been.

  Well, Joseph James O’Keefe did bellyache a lot and did have a grocery store fail, just like the real estate business and several other legitimate undertakings failed, and it did seem that those close to him, with the possible exception of Gusciora, were star-crossed, and every time you looked back over your shoulders there he was swimming like a madman in the middle of the night, trying not to go under for good, but did that make him any less a crook? That was the attitude of some other crewmen at the meet.

  And when Specs was on the lam after that escape from Deer Island and met and married Mary Gerst, he hadn’t lied to her about being a crook, as Joe McGinnis claimed—he merely forgot to tell her what he usually did for a living. And when he went back with her to the Midwest, didn’t he give it his honest all to get on the straight and narrow once again? Do you think any man who loves his wife and adopted son is going to let them be in need? And just because he never stayed with them after he brought them back to Boston didn’t mean he loved them any the less, as Joe McGinnis accused. Some guys just aren’t born to be monogamous. And why doesn’t Joe McGinnis make up his mind? One minute he’s calling Specs the scum of the earth for running off and womanizing with Helen Whatchamacallit and in the next breath he’s saying Specs himself is womanish. And anyway, does that make him any less a crook?

  Being nearly forty-one years of age and standing five feet seven and weighing about 150 pounds and having a gaunt, sallow, pinched face, Joe O’Keefe wasn’t exactly an Adonis. He seemed to have worked extraordinarily hard to find a girl, some nights seemed to work every joint in town from Jimmy O’Keefe’s restaurant down to the lowliest semi-hook shop trying for a pickup. But Joe McGinnis, like many other underworld denizens, professed that this was only show. Specky was thin, wiry and light on his feet. He also possessed a slight lisp. Rumors of his being “womanish” persisted. McGinnis not only repeated and elaborated on these but recounted homosexual experiences O’Keefe supposedly had when he was in the can.

  And it was possible, as Joe McGinnis claimed, that Specky wasn’t always a stand-up fellow. Maybe because of all his problems, maybe because of his small physical stature, he dogged it a wee bit too much. Specky did seem overly concerned with passing himself off as a tough guy—a movie type tough guy replete with tucked-in elbows and thrown-back shoulders and the best and latest in gangland suits and overcoats. Overcoats seemed important, or at least many of the crewmen recall he wore them a lot. So maybe Specky felt he had to act like a tough guy to prove a point; maybe he challenged the wrong guy every now and then and had to back down. Maybe he developed a great big ego to con himself into being tough when he wasn’t. Maybe he was scared silly half the time, and that’s why he went on the attack every now and then, suddenly became cocky and abrasive and aggressive. A lot of guys in town were laughing at him to begin with, and a lot that counted didn’t even know who he was. That could be good for crew purposes, Specky being dismissed as a third- or fourth-rate crook, being ignored as a joke. My God, the man made one of the most spectacular escapes ever when he swam off from Deer Island, and nobody who was anybody even seemed to notice. Sure, that all could be good for the crew, but it didn’t do Specky’s self-respect all that much good.

  Specky probably did smoke pot every now and then, or at least Gus, who smoked pot, told a couple of the gang guys Specs smoked, but it’s hard to say if he was addicted to opium and heroin, as Joe McGinnis claimed at the meet. His father had been a hack, for a time the acting master at the very house of correction on Deer Island from which Specs had once escaped—but not at the time he escaped. And sure, Specs was close and loyal to him and to his sisters and brother, just as he was close and loyal to his pals, such as Stanley Gusciora. That didn’t mean he was trying to hide something, as Joe McGinnis insinuated, did it? Sure, everybody around town knew Specky had somewhat of a temper when he thought about it, and could become emotional when he didn’t think about it, and his sister and brother were often recalled as being emotional in public, but did that mean, as Joe McGinnis finally came out and said, that insanity ran in their family? For chrissakes, family members could be close and spend time together for reasons other than hiding the skeletons of five generations of babbling maniacs in the attic—look at the time Pino spends with his family for chrissakes.

  And who the hell cared if Helen Whatchamacallit, the woman for whom Specs had deserted his loving wife and adoring adopted child, was or was not a prostitute, did or did not have a massive case of the clap? Joe McGinnis, who was once married to the number one hook shop operator in town, should be the last guy going around throwing rocks. Nah, forget all that back-alley gossip. Mike Geagan had known Specky nearly twenty years, and the same was true for Sandy and Jimma. Maffie had been friendly with him since 1945, drank with him every now and then over at Jimmy O’Keefe’s. Specs was no less human than the next fellow. All that counted was his being a pretty good thief. But was he?

  O’Keefe’s first arrest, when he was six, came in the company of another six-year-old neighborhood boy, his best friend—a roly-poly Italian immigrant boy named Anthony Pino.

  “I told you we was all part of the same bunch,” Tony acknowledged. “O’Keefe, his older brother and some more. We all went to the same school and church over in Southy—John Andrews School and St. Monica’s Church.

  “Now, what most people don’t know about O’Keefe is how he got his name [nickname]. They think you call him Specs because he wore glasses or something, and that ain’t it. He got it ’cause when he was a little kid, he was always mooching bananas from the peddler, see what I mean? He’d go to a food peddler and beg for old bananas to eat. Old brown colored ones with specks on them. ‘Got any speckled for me today?’ he was always asking the poor unfortunates. Pretty soon he became a speck himself. He was Specs.

  “So the thing I brought up at that meet was all about that record of his,” Pino went on to say. “It was as long as your two feet. All our fellas been stealing as long as O’Keefe, and they don’t have even half the pinches O’Keefe got. Not two of ’em together has as many pinches.”

  Specky’s police record covered a thirty-five-year career in crime which was definitely far lengthier than any other crew member’s: thirty-three arrests on thirty-seven counts; twenty-one convictions, which resulted in eight reformatory, correctional institution and prison sentences; one escape from incarceration; at least three violations of parole or probation; two returns to detention for such violations; and no less than fifty SP pickups. The offenses themselves included four breaking and enterings and larcenies, five plain larcenies, one plain B&E, two attempted B&Es, one carrying a pistol, one armed robbery, one assault and battery and one possession of burglar’s tools. Almost everything was of a minor nature, and local cops didn’t even rate O’Keefe in the upper echelon of street thieves.

  Nobody attending the living room meet was aware of O’Keefe’s actual record, nor did they know he was still on parole. All they knew was that Specs got pinched often. And yes, Geagan and Richardson and Maffie suspected he couldn’t do time well, but they seemed to overlook this.

  Pino’s general, somewhat lackadaisical accusation that O’Keefe wasn’t of the caliber required for the big haul was dismissed on several counts. Tony had used O’Keefe on the American Sugar caper, had grown incensed when Specs later complained about Pino’s receiving a full share of the take for not actually participating in the heist; for merely turning the job over to another group to rob. The crew got a sort of kick out of Pino’s getting beet red and flustered and calling O’Keefe every name in the book, and then, when O’Keefe heard about what he was being called, he started saying a few more things himself, which got back to Tony and only made him all the madder, started off a new round of epithets.

  “The thing that got Tony the maddest is when Specky
called him the Pig,” Jimmy Costa says. “Specky always tried to be neat, and he liked to eat in fancy restaurants even though he couldn’t afford to. He used to tell people about his good table manners and the plays he went to see. It drove him crazy that every crook sin town respected Tony and that Tony was making so much goddamned money when he couldn’t pay his rent. He used to tell people what bad table manners Tony had and how sloppy he lived. That’s when he called him the pig the most.

  “Tony was jealous of Specky, too—that was over Gus. Tony had this thing about bringing in young guys on the crew and teaching them. He acted like their father, maybe because he never had any kids of his own. He did it with a couple of guys in the old days, and he tried doing it with me and tried doing it with Gus. Tony didn’t like Gus running around with Specky as much as he did. They were close as brothers and spent all their time together.

  “I think what Tony worried about the most was the trouble with some crap game guys [most likely the Callahan Brothers—specifically Tommy Callahan]. They’d been warning Gus and Specky to stop sticking up their games. Gus and Specky didn’t stop, and they [the Callahans] came around and talked to Joe and Tony. They said the only reason they hadn’t done damage to Gus was he was a friend of Tony’s. They said enough was enough, so Tony said he’d talk to Gus and try to have him stop. When he talked to Gus, he blamed Specky for the trouble and tried to get Gus to keep away from Specky. Specky was telling Gus the same thing—keep away from Tony. He told Gus that Tony would rob him blind.