Big Stick-Up at Brink's!

by Behn, Noel;

  And wouldn’t hiding on the premises and waiting for employees to show in the morning and sacking the premises be reminiscent to the police of what happened at Sturtevant back in 1947?

  From the onset Pino leaned toward an evening heist, but could not entirely dismiss the possibility of a morning strike. Night or day a great many things were unknown. Many, many questions had to be answered and worked out.

  “It was all on Anthony’s shoulders,” states Sandy Richardson. “He carried eighty percent of the load in the beginning. He found the joint and did all the difficult work and had most of the ideas, crazy or not. That was when we were thinking about a clout. When we changed over to the heavy, he did ninety percent and not one idea was crazy. He was at his best. He outdid himself. Nothing was wasted.”

  Geagan generally reinforces Richardson’s observations. “My responsibility was the men. I’d lead the men when we went in. And make no mistake about it, Tony would tell me how to lead them. He would figure out everything, and Sandy and me would help him if he asked.

  “When Tony cleared us all out of there and told us to stay away [from Brink’s], that was all right with me. Tony had to look at it his own way. If he brought one of us along, it wasn’t that we couldn’t help him. He saw things no one else saw. Tony saw things like an artist sees things. Tony was the brainpower. Tony had no equal. Tony was a genius over there.”

  On February 4, 1949, Gusciora had been caught in a police gambling raid and paid a $10 fine for violation of true name. On February 9 he paid a $15 fine for violation of true name. On February 11, 1949, Specs O’Keefe was arrested and charged with assault with intent to rob. The arrest constituted a possible violation of his three concurrent paroles stemming out of the July 5, 1945, convictions for negligently operating an automobile, carrying a weapon on person in automobile and receiving firearms with knowledge of serial number removed. On April 6, 1949, the Central Court found no probable cause for the alleged assault arrest. That same day O’Keefe surrendered to the authorities, and his original parole on the 1945 conviction which was to run until August 11, 1949, was reduced by almost three months when a new termination date of May 11, 1949, was set.

  All this seemed to elude allegedly well-police-connected Joe McGinnis, but not long after, he stormed into Pino’s kitchen with something he had found out.

  “The goddamn turnip’s a rapist,* understand?” intoned the burly skinhead.

  “Which turnip?” Pino, who had once served time for abuse of a female child, managed to ask.

  “How many turnips we got? The punk one, that O’Keefe.”

  “Joe, why you so interested in O’Keefe’s pecker? All you been hollering over since the man came in is where he’s putting his meat. The man’s behaving and doing his job. Who cares what he does with his meat?”

  “I don’t like working next to a turnip rapist, understand?”

  If Pino was irritably blunt in dismissing McGinnis’ latest assault on O’Keefe, there seems good reason. Ever since the decision to go in on the heavy, he not only felt he would require every available gang member for the job, but also had a precise idea of their dispositions. McGinnis came into the operation on a firm stipulation he be nowhere near Brink’s at the time of perpetration. Tony himself very much wanted to go inside for the stickup, but because of his easily identifiable size, Geagan and Richardson had ruled against this; they pointed out he had damn near been recognized from sheer bulk in the Sturtevant caper. Banfield would remain on the heavy where he would have been on the B&E—behind the wheel of the truck. Costa, never considered an inside man under any circumstances, would do the spotting and signaling and, if a follow car was utilized, would be the driver of that vehicle.

  Therefore, the men going in with guns would be Geagan, Richardson, Maffie, Faherty, Gusciora and O’Keefe. Six actual armed robbers. Geagan remained convinced that four or five gunmen could handle the work inside. Tony agreed that four or five men might very well be able to get the drop on the vault room employees, but the concept of hauling away $7,000,000 complicated things. Mike and Sandy, both experienced longshoremen, estimated that carting off such a large amount could take a full half hour.

  A thirty-minute loading period was alarming to Pino. It was simply too long to keep a robbery in progress. Tony, for one, would have been happy if another reliable thief or two were available and upstairs with the six now assigned. Sandy, as a result of his concern over this perilous time span, urged that however the robbers came into the joint, the truck be pulled right into the Brink’s garage and loaded up there. Barney saw no difficulty in turning a truck off Commercial Street, ascending the hill via Hull Street, pulling into the second-level common garage and right on through to the Brink’s garage and backing and parking in front of the guardroom door. The gunmen inside could load, jump in and they could all leave together. The getaway route from the garage was heaven-sent: follow Hull Street a few hundred feet up to the crest of Copps Hill, take a left at the Snowhill intersection and follow one-way Snowhill a short distance down the waterside slope to Charter Street, turn left into Charter and, almost immediately, right into wide two-way Commercial Street and sprint for home.

  For a time Pino subscribed to this plan. Day or night the Hull/Snowhill/Charter/Commercial Streets route had a minimum of traffic. But soon he grew uneasy over the thought of all the men and money being inside a truck that itself was inside a garage—far inside a garage that had only one exit.

  In a morning escape that route could inadvertently be blocked by any number of incoming parkers who utilized the common garage. They would have to pass through on the Hull Street side of the building. Tony had always had a preference for loadings and getaways that originated in the open—on streets or sidewalks or even alleys—places from which there was a maximum chance for escape.

  His alternative was Prince Street. If the truck pulled before the door at 165 to load, a follow car could cover its rear—could be parked up near the corner of Commercial, could pull out into the middle of the street and temporarily block intruding police vehicles, obstruct the way long enough for the robbers down at 165 to light out in any number of directions, vanish into the maze of narrow streets and clustered houses.

  But even if the loading went well, what then? Prince was one-way. After leaving the door at 165, the truck would have to drive down several blocks and then turn into the heart of Little Italy—into a network of narrow, pedestrian-traveled, parked-car-lined streets.

  “And the traffic will kill you over there,” Pino pointed out. “That’s where everyone in Boston comes to buy their spaghetti dinner. It’s where all the restaurants are. It’s busier at night than Boylston. You want the shortest and fastest way to a main street, a big, wide main street you can make some time on getting the hell away from there.”

  This description put Pino right back on Hull Street—leaving the second-level garage, going to the top of the hill, taking Snowhill down to Charter and Charter out onto wide two-way Commercial.

  Oddly enough, Prince Street also provided a shorter and faster route to Commercial. Cattycorner to the Brink’s door at 165, just before the candy store called Peppy’s, was an entrance to Lafayette Street. Lafayette ran only a short block and stopped at Endicott Street. Endicott lay parallel to Prince and ran one-way in the opposite direction. Once they were on Endicott the distance back to Commercial Street was only a few yards longer than the length of the North Terminal Garage building.

  The problem here, as Banfield saw it, was that no regular get-away truck he had ever driven could make the sharp turn off narrow Prince Street and into narrower Lafayette Street at anything but a snail’s pace. Even if you could turn, wheeling a bulky truck past the one or two cars usually straddling the curb in barely alley-wide Lafayette Street seemed impossible. The problem, as Sandy saw it, was that the robbery team upstairs in the vault room, instead of toting the money into the garage, would now have to haul it out the front of the room, through the payroll wrapping and counting room, on
through the front corridor and front hall, through the first metal door, down two half flights of steps, past the metal and main door on Prince Street and then load it onto the truck. This not only was as long an alternative as existed, but was hands down the most susceptible to detection. The gunmen would be lugging $7,000,000 right across the windows that overlooked the playground.

  Pino still preferred a street-side loading over the risks involved in escaping from the second-floor Brink’s garage. He told Banfield to look around for some kind of vehicle which could negotiate a getaway via tiny Lafayette Street and carry $7,000,000 and the men.

  In his talks with various crew members, Tony sounded cocksure about his plan, but at this juncture only one thing was absolutely certain: The six gunmen would be entering Brink’s as the days grew shorter and the fall thieving season began.

  The pull-down rubber masks Tony had stolen on his honeymoon and the three keys for Brink’s doors remained behind in the Savin Hill garage. Almost everything else was transported across Roxbury to the larger garage at the rear of the property on Blue Hill Avenue.

  “Barney knew where the plant was,” says Costa, “because he rented it for us. But he didn’t know what was in it. Tony never told him or Joe what we had in there, and he sure as hell didn’t let them come in. Nobody went in there but Tony and Sandy and me.”

  And as far as Pino was concerned, nobody ever would.

  For all practical purposes the crew did not have a plant for the Big Haul.

  They had been there right under his nose. He had seen them departing in the evening, arriving predawn, walking alone or in pairs or even groups of four or five. He may have even watched four or five together climb or descend the triple terraced outdoor stairway rising up from the building’s corner of the playground to Hull Street some forty feet above. He believed he had. His interest in the species in months gone by had focused on the times of goings and the comings, mainly the goings. He himself really didn’t dare return to the area and watch again because the days were long, dawn too early, dusk too late. So he thought it through, recaptured and visualized. Forgotten aspects came into focus. No one on the streets could be remembered giving them a first glance, let alone a second. They were as indigenous as the cracks on the aging sidewalk or the peeling paint on the venerable wood façades, these Brink’s guards and drivers, these ubiquitous strollers in their standard hip-length square-shouldered uniform jackets and hard-beaked caps. Cold or warm, rain or sleet or clear, their silhouettes had always been the same—had always been ignored. From what Pino could recall, they had always been ignored when they entered the door at 165 Prince.

  And so, many important logistics for the Big Haul began to fall in place: The robbery would occur at night; entry would be made through the door at 165 Prince Street; pending the finding of a suitable truck, the loading would take place on Prince Street, if not inside the garage.

  Maffie took out his golf clubs and started hitting the links almost every morning of the week with the advent of warm weather. His wife, Eleanor, didn’t complain, simply gave an ultimatum. If he wanted her to continue getting up a full hour before the children did and fix him breakfast, then he would have to take the entire family on a motor trip before the summer was out. If not, he could fix his own breakfast. Jazz asked for time to think it over. Mike Geagan’s wife wasn’t as permissive. She was beginning to question her husband on his comings and goings—particularly at night. It had reached the point where Mike had to sneak his robbery clothes from the house a full week in advance of a job. On occasion the working togs were out and waiting, but Mike himself couldn’t get out and had to miss a couple of good scores. He really didn’t care. The Geagans had a brand-new baby daughter, their first child, and Mike liked to be home with her as much as possible. Faherty, well, Jimma loved the warm weather better than cold, didn’t lose as much clothing when he went on one of his bouts—and he was going on quite a few and sometimes sticking people up when he was drunk as a skunk. Gusciora and O’Keefe were still pulling minor stickups whenever they got short of funding for their perpetual rounds of hoodlum watering holes with whatever women they could find. Sandy was content with working at the pier and being home for dinner and an evening with his wife and children. But his late-afternoon drinking with a couple of longshoremen buddies was markedly heavier; often not only was he dead drunk when he reached the dinner table, but he passed out during the course of a meal.

  Joe McGinnis had exchanged his turtleneck sweater for a T-shirt. As always, the trousers were dark and apparently heavy. Sunday was still the time to don a suit and take his wife to mass. Thursday afternoons his shoes and socks came off while he hosed his car in front of the package liquor store. As always, Barney Banfield had to do the chamoising once the vehicle had been washed. In the early days of June he began making the trip across the street, up the short alley and into Pino’s apartment more frequently.

  “I was measuring the fellas for their costumes, and that knocked Joe out,” Tony recalled. “You’d think it was a goddamn free movie, the way he wouldn’t miss it.

  “I’m measuring their heads and jacket size and shoe size, see. That’s all the costume is gonna have, caps, jackets and rubbers. Anything that looks like Brink’s [uniforms]. Not the rubbers. Brink’s don’t give their people rubbers.

  “Now let me tell you about the rubbers,” Tony went on. “Sometimes when we used to sneak into the joint and it was wet out, I made the fellas take off their shoes and knot ’em and hang ’em around their necks. That’s so we wouldn’t leave no marks on the floor. They had to walk in their stocking feet. Well, you can’t do that on the big night, see. If it rains, you gotta go on it anyway, so if you got rubbers on, you’re all set. But that ain’t the real reason for the rubbers. You’re wearing rubbers rain or shine because they don’t make no noise when you walk over those floors in there. Some of the fellas have been wearing crepe [soles] in there, and crepe makes less noise than rubbers. But if you’re wearing crepe and it starts raining, you slide all over hell. All we need is one of the men slipping and falling down on his way in.

  “Anyway, Joe showed for the measuring of the fellas like I was running mass or a dirty dame show.”

  Those measured were the six designated gunmen—Geagan, Richardson, Maffie, Faherty, O’Keefe and Gusciora.

  Richardson lay on the grass under a tree, watching Geagan approach from across the park. It was nearing dusk, and the lights from a nearby ballfield had just gone on.

  “My God, look at that,” Mike muttered just as he reached Sandy. Both men gazed off beyond the softball diamond. Tony Pino was striding toward them attired in shorts, a Hawaiian sports shirt and a wide-brimmed frazzle-edged straw hat.

  “Think anybody will notice you?” Sandy asked as a somewhat panting Pino stood over them.

  “Whatcha say?” Tony asked, plopping down.

  “I said, do you think you might draw undue attention in that getup?”

  “Naa, I got my dark glasses on, don’t I?” Pino reached up and tapped one of the Polaroid lenses. “Pretty classy, ain’t they?”

  “How much didn’t they cost you?” Geagan inquired.

  “I didn’t boost ’em, I bought ’em. Bought ’em when I bought some of the caps.”

  “Bought the caps?” Sandy repeated.

  “‘I ain’t stealing none of the stuff. Whaddaya think I am, crazy?”

  “We think Henry’s getting out,” Sandy said.

  “When?”

  “Pretty soon. We don’t know exactly, but word is pretty soon.”

  “Sandy thinks we should ask him in,” Mike said.

  “What if Henry don’t want in?” Pino asked.

  “He’ll want if we ask,” Mike replied. “If you ask.”

  “Well, sure, let’s talk it over with the—”

  “No talking with Skinhead, Anthony,” Sandy warned. “The say is here with the three of us.”

  “Why the hell do you always have to call him Skinhead?” Tony snapped. �
��Don’t I have enough heartache between him and O’Keefe without you taking out after him for no good reason?”

  Richardson’s intended rejoinder was thwarted by distant shouts and whistles. The trio of thieves looked up. Players were waving at them from the nearby night-lit baseball diamond. Pino rose, retrieved a rolling softball and awkwardly hurled it toward the infield.

  “Who picked this spot?” Geagan asked, watching two of the players hustle toward the weak and misdirected toss.

  “I did,” Pino said. “Is something wrong?”

  “You ever been pinched by a fed?”

  Pino shrugged. “Not that I remember.”

  “Know any of them on sight?”

  There was another shrug. “Maybe one or two.”

  “Know who you threw that ball to?”

  “A fed?”

  Geagan nodded. “A whole nest of feds. The men out on that field are all FBI.”

  Tony knew the towns and individual stores well. All had either been on his boosting or safecrack or burglary agenda in the past. But this time he was traveling alone, was paying cash on the line.

  “Now the closest thing I can find to one of them Brink’s jackets is them Navy pea coats over at the Army-Navy [stores]. So that’s where I start driving [midsummer]. I take lots of trips. I got the hat sizes and the coat sizes. And I start with the coat sizes. The dark blue Navy pea coats is what I’m after first. I drive up to Worchester and Springfield. Oh, yeah, and Weymouth. I even go up to Manchester, where they don’t like me. I give ’em some of their money back. I only buy one or two at a joint. I try keeping it to one so no one gets ideas. It ain’t always Army-Navy, but some were. A lot of other joints were selling Navy surplus then. I think I got Jazz’s coat first ’cause it was the biggest.

  “I keep traveling, see? I drive from town to town. I get all the pea jackets and get one for Henry [Baker], too. I know he takes about the same size as Sandy.