Big Stick-Up at Brink's!

by Behn, Noel;

  “Okay, now I got all the coats over at Savin Hill and now I start driving after the hats. Them chauffeurs’ caps. I remember where I seen Sears, Roebuck before and go there. Sears, Roebuck is trickier than Army-Navy ’cause I boosted the straps off ’em, but I go in anyway. When I go in there, I don’t go asking nobody nothing. I don’t ask for them hats, see? I see ’em or I don’t. When the FBI comes looking later, they’re gonna cover the world. I don’t need ten different stores saying, ‘Oh, yeah, a fat little guy came in asking for a hat like chauffeurs wear. Store people remember something they don’t have in stock being asked for better than things they have. Sell it and put the money in the register and forget it, that’s how they operate. You don’t wanna make ’em insecure. You ask for something someone don’t got, they start thinking about it in their mind. They can say to themselves, ‘Why don’t we have that in our store? Do you think we lost a sale and he went somewhere else to spend his money?’ They make a mental issue out of it, see? They can get depressed over it. So you look to make sure they got it before you buy it. You see it on the counter. You buy something they got to sell without ’em thinking about selling it, and you’re safe because all they’re thinking about is how they’re gonna spend the bonus they got for selling it.”

  The rule for the summer was: Keep away from Brinks unless Pino tells you differently. McGinnis obeyed, if for no other reason than he didn’t like being seen there on any account. Mike and Sandy and Jimma Faherty kept away. Barney had to go down there once or twice to look over the streets, and Jimmy Costa had to go down to look over the roofs from which he would be giving the go-ahead signal. Gus told Jazz that he and O’Keefe had driven past one night with two girls, assured him they hadn’t said a betraying word, but admitted they started giggling like schoolboys when they saw it again. Maffie himself couldn’t resist driving by after having dinner at one of Little Italy’s better restaurants—“just to make sure the joint didn’t sneak away from us again.”

  The vehicle lot was enclosed by a locked cyclone fence and belonged to the Boston auto dealership firm of Lalime and Partridge, and as Barney drove slowly past late one evening, he told Pino “over on the last line,” and Tony squinted out at the three-quarter-ton open-back Ford truck with removable side partitions and said, “She looks too small,” and Barney said nothing bigger could get through Lafayette Street and Tony asked if any hacks were around and Barney said no, he’d been past a coupla times and he hadn’t seen any hacks and Tony, asked what’s on the gate and Barney asked did he mean locks by that and Tony asked what the hell you think I mean and Barney said if he meant locks, yes, there was one on the gate and Tony asked what kind of lock and Barney said he hadn’t looked to see what kind it was, so Tony said pull over for chrissakes and Barney pulled over and Tony got out and walked back and pretended to tie his shoe and looked at the lock while he was pretending.

  “Whatcha find?” Barney asked Tony as they were driving away.

  “Religious people.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah, Lalime and Partridge is very religious. They’re letting God protect all them new trucks ’cause the lock they got sure as hell ain’t.”

  A seventy-five-cent payment the next morning to a Dedham locksmith obtained a key guaranteed to open any variation of the locked model Pino had described. The test came several nights later and proved successful. Tony led the way through the new vehicles parked in the lot, did a take and stopped.

  “Where the hell’s our truck?”

  “I don’t see it,” Barney replied.

  “I know you don’t see it. I don’t see it, so why the hell should you see it? You think they got it inside?”

  Barney glanced over the garage/showroom building and shook his head. “If it’s not out here, it means they sold it.”

  “They can’t do a goddamn thing like that. It belongs to us. It’s our truck. We need it.”

  “More’ll come through,” Barney said as he opened the cab door of a new rig and began searching inside.

  “Yeah? Well, what if one don’t come through?”

  “We take our business someplace else.” Barney righted himself. “But they make it easier here,” he said, dangling a set of truck keys he’d found under the floor mat.

  Some believe it was earlier, right after the costumes were purchased, others that it was later, but all agree it took place in Tony’s living room. The pea coats and the caps were there, and so were the majority of the six men designated to go into Brink’s with guns. The guns weren’t there because they hadn’t been acquired yet, but Tony did bring over the pull-down full-faced rubber masks, many of which bore the features of Captain Marvel of comic book fame.

  “Let me tell you something about Tony Pino and those masks and those caps,” says Jazz Maffie. “We all had hats there that were supposed to be our size, but when Tony Pino gave me mine, it was too big. About a half size too big. Jimma Faherty’s was a half size too big, too. I don’t know about the other rogues, but I saw that and I thought, ‘There goes Tony Pino screwing up again.’ Tony Pino wasn’t screwing up. He’s the smartest little son of a gun born. He took out one of those masks and put it on his head and pulled it all the way down. Then he started crinkling it up, bunching it up over his face until it was sitting on top of his head like a headband. So we did the same thing with our masks after we put them on. When we got them up on our heads, Tony Pino had us put on our caps. My cap wasn’t big now. It fit perfectly.

  “So we’re all standing in Tony Pino’s living room in our jackets and with our hats on with the rubber masks rolled up under them,” Jazz continues. “Tony Pino had a cap on, too. With a mask under it. Rolled up. That’s when he started having a field day—putting on his show. Tony Pino started strutting around his living room to show how he wants it done. He runs a little bit with that funny hop of his. He takes a real long hop and comes down and squats like he’s taking a crap and he raises the cap with one hand and pulls the mask all the way down with the other. Before the mask is all the way down, he takes the hand away from the cap and starts aiming like it was a gun. That’s how Tony Pino thinks we should stick up the guys. He keeps hopping around doing that squat and pulling down the mask and shooting away with his finger.

  “So now he has all the guys practice the same thing. We’re all hopping around Tony Pino’s living room pulling down masks and sticking one another up. Some rogues isn’t happy just sticking up, so he starts grabbing. Pretty soon everyone’s sticking everybody up and grabbing them too. The next thing you know the joint goes wild. Guys are running around going bang-bang and grabbing one another and rolling on the floor and laughing and kicking hell out of the furniture.”

  Just mention Henry Baker’s name, and most of the crewmen couldn’t help saying what a nice guy and good thief he was; they always seemed to point out that he was Jewish and in the same breath, point out that his being Jewish didn’t matter a damn because he was such a nice guy and such a good thief. The cops didn’t think Henry was all that good a thief, but as second-rate second-story men went, they rated him a pretty nice guy.

  Five-foot-eight thin, thick and silvering-haired, Henry Baker was a pretty nice guy and a better than average thief in some respects. Pino, Richardson, Geagan and Maffie felt he had no peer when it came to opening locked doors. Henry seems to have opened quite a few in his day. He was also caught quite a few times. Of his overall total of twenty-two court appearances, ten had involved breaking and entering or burglary. He had been fined or jailed for offenses such as stealing an automobile or driving under the influence of liquor or operating an auto after his license had been revoked or having a revolver in the car, but five different B&E and larcenies plus one burglary and larceny convictions had resulted in his spending eleven years and five months in penal institutions. Forty-three-year-old Henry Baker had been as nice a guy in stir as out. He made a lot of friends doing time and grew friendlier with people he knew before. During his 1941–1943 sojourn at Massachusetts State Prison h
e was constantly in the company of Pino and Richardson and Faherty and Geagan.

  He had worked as an extra on some of Tony’s crews back in 1936 and 1937 but from that time on was usually in the can. Crewmen felt he was closer to Sandy than anyone, but O’Keefe knew him and liked him, and so did Jazz and so did Costa and so did Barney Banfield and so did Joe McGinnis. There was no trouble with his being approved by all, even though all weren’t asked if he could join the crew. So on August 22, 1949, Pino and Richardson drove to the state prison colony in Norfolk and picked Henry up. No mention was made of the Big Haul during the trip back to Boston. Henry, after all, needed a little time to rest and be with his wife and children and get himself reestablished in the family’s vending machine company. There was no doubt that Henry was now a part of the Big Haul, but you don’t finalize something like that the minute a con gets out of the can. Henry, after all, had just served five years and three months for breaking and entering and larceny of rationed property.

  The laundry delivery truck just happened to be parked beside Pino’s Buick at the Socony service station across the street from the Columbus Avenue apartment. The driver just happened to have the rear door open and be stacking empty bags on the vehicle’s floor according to size—according to five specific sizes—when Tony just happened to walk up and look over his shoulder.

  “The big one is okay,” Pino told the driver, indicating a regular-sized laundry sack, “but the small ones ain’t small enough.”

  “How small you want?”

  “About the size of a cigar case.”

  The laundry man thought for a beat. “We got something on that line ordered over at the steaming plant. How many you want and when do you need them?”

  “How much you charging?”

  “You taking the little ones and big ones both?”

  “Depending on what you’re charging.”

  “Twenty-five bucks for two dozen. You take two sizes, make it an even fifty.”

  “For goddamn empty bags you’re stealing?”

  “Hey, I take risks.”

  “I don’t need two dozen of each size. I only need a dozen of each size.”

  “They come in two dozen, that’s how they come.”

  “What kind of crap is that? They come how you pack ’em up. Whatcha trying to pull, mister? You think you’re the only goddamn fella in town stealing bags from his own laundry company?”

  “Nope, but I’m the only one who delivers ’em to your doorstep.”

  “I’ll give you a sawbuck for everything.”

  “You’ll gimme a sawbuck a dozen.”

  “Fifteen for the lot.”

  “Fifteen ain’t worth my time of day.”

  “Split the difference?”

  The driver thought for a moment. “When do you want them?”

  The next day the driver delivered two dozen regular-sized heavy-duty white muslin laundry bags and two dozen envelope-sized string-mouthed gray linen pouches. The total cost was $17.50.

  Joe McGinnis led Pino down into the basement, where he usually chained up Barney when Barney needed chaining up, and displayed the large sacks.

  “They were bone acks,” Tony recalled. “The size was okay and I didn’t mind the price either. Joe was asking five bucks each, but the dumbbell forgot he’s paying for it anyway. That’s our deal. What was wrong with the sacks was the printing. They had some stencil printing on ’em. Something about Brazil and some meat company. You don’t wanna use nothing like that. Nothing that’s marked.”

  Two different cars left Boston. One carried Pino and McGinnis, who were heading to a hotel in Providence to meet a gun merchant. Richardson and Baker were in the other car and drove to New York.

  “We went up along the East River [in Manhattan],” relates Richardson. “The Lower East Side where they make burlap bags and this sort of thing. Henry stayed in the car, and I went into one of these places that said ‘Big Bags,’ used bags. I’d never been to this place before. I just picked one of many advertising on the street. They had signs on the building saying they sold bags. I picked one, and who the hell’s going to know anything since I’m dressed in working clothes.

  “I go up into this loft and I proposition this guy, one [of the businesses] that said ‘Big Bags.’ I bought a dozen of these big burlap bags. Like coffee bags, only bigger. Like big trash bags. Burlap. They were regular big bags such as on the docks. They were not threaded at the top. The regular big bags that were open at the top—almost, like I said, big trash bags. Not one was marked, had printing on them. As I remember, they cost no more than two dollars each. All twelve couldn’t have cost more than twenty-five dollars. Henry and I drove back to Boston and gave them to Anthony.”

  Henry Baker would be going in with the other six, thereby making a total of seven armed and masked gunmen entering the premises via the door at 165 Prince.

  How they would reach that door hadn’t been determined. How the truck would reach the area and where exactly it would drop them off were far from clear, and therefore, just how, where and when the go-ahead signal would be given wasn’t clear either. Pino still preferred the loading of the stolen money to occur at the 165 Prince door, but even this hadn’t been totally set. So when Mike Geagan began rehearsing the masked robbers, he could only work on entry maneuvers and deployment and the surprising of the guards. Even when he took some of the men into Brink’s late at night and acted out the entire operation—had himself and Henry Baker going under the half door and up to the rear of the vault room while the other men crept across the parkside offices to reach the grille walls fronting the vault room—he couldn’t be sure what would be happening next. The actual stuffing of money into bags—who went into the vault itself first—could be designated, but where they took their sacked loot remained a mystery.

  Many physical items had to be obtained. Tony didn’t like the guns Joe McGinnis’ contact had displayed in the Providence hotel, so pistols were still needed. No plant had been gotten, and as a result, plans for the count and processing and distribution of stolen money remained up in the air. No truck of the size preferred by Pino had been located yet, and Tony was beginning to feel that maybe they would have to make do with something larger. One small requisite was scratched from the shopping list when Gusciora and O’Keefe were sent over to Sears, Roebuck and stole some adhesive tape and window sashing with which to bind and gag vault room personnel, but as the days grew shorter and daylight savings neared an end and perfect crooking nights approached, a great many factors were missing—the most important being an overall plan.

  Pino walked along the playground, glancing back over his shoulder. The lights burned in the stairwell window at the rear of North Terminal Garage, as well as in the six larger windows stretching across to the middle of the building on the second level. He turned and walked a few more steps and again glanced back. The light in the fourth window went out as he watched. He slowed his pace and angled across the street and glanced back up. The third, second and first windows went dark simultaneously. Pino stopped mid-sidewalk, turned around and watched the stairwell window fade to black and then a man step through the door at 165 Prince. Tony remained transfixed. He slowly raised his eyes. Only one window remained illuminated: the fifth window. Then he realized he had seen what he wanted.

  They stood on the roof of 109 Prince Street the next night, four of them, Pino, Banfield, Costa and Richardson, standing bold upright with Tony closest to the edge, waving his arm and pointing. The fourth, third, second and first office windows went dark. Next to lose illumination was the stairwell window. Tony waved more frantically, pointed to the one window that was still lit—the fifth and vault room window—pointed down to Prince Street and Lafayette Street and up to the top of the hill and down to the terraced steps, back to the rooftop on which they stood. And the others saw it immediately and began to nod, and Barney even slapped Tony on the back. All the loose ends had been suddenly tied together, and a final plan worked out.

  The truck car
rying seven robbers would pull into Prince Street from Commercial Street and drive slowly past the building. If someone inside the truck saw that only the light in the fifth window was burning, they would know that everyone had left the building except the men in the vault room. They couldn’t be sure the vault was still open, but at least they would have isolated their main target and only four or five employees. When they saw this, the truck would take a sharp right turn into narrow Lafayette Street and then another right turn into Endicott and another right turn into Commercial Street. Costa would be in a car following the truck from the beginning. He could see on his own if the lights were right—if only the fifth window was lit—and if they were, he would follow the truck onto Lafayette and Endicott and Commercial. The truck would pass Prince and the front of the garage and turn up Hull Street. Costa would pull back into Prince, park, get out and start walking for 109 Prince Street. The truck would climb Hull Street, angle across the intersection at the top of the hill, turn left onto Snowhill and park right there. Costa, in the meantime, would have climbed to the roof at 109 Prince and with his binoculars could see if the vault was open. If it was, he could give some kind of flashlight signal. Maybe a signal wasn’t even necessary. Maybe when the truck pulled in to park, the seven men would just automatically jump down and cross over to Hull Street and start down the terrace steps into the playground. Somewhere along their route across the playground Costa would give another signal, a signal saying whether the vault was still open or not. If it wasn’t open, the men would turn around and go back to the truck. If it was open, they would continue on to Prince Street, open the door at 165, sneak upstairs and go to one of the windows in the dark counting room. Costa would now give them the final signal. If the vault was closed, they would turn around and go out. If it was open, they would deploy, simultaneously creep in the front and back of the vault room, stick up the employees, bind and gag their prisoners and begin their looting.