“If anything unnatural happens to Hoffa, I can tell you all hell will break loose. I’ve got more records and lists ready to be mailed out to the media than you can imagine. I’ve had too many motherfuckers in my life I thought I could trust. I need more people like you. And I have them now. I know who my friends are.”
“Jimmy, you’re doing a lot of puffing that has people concerned.”
“That’s just the tip of the iceberg, the tip of the iceberg. Let me tell you—Dallas, did you hear that word tonight? Remember that package you took to Baltimore? I didn’t know it then, but it turns out it was high-powered rifles for the Kennedy hit in Dallas. The stupid bastards lost their own rifles in the trunk of a Thunderbird that crashed when their driver got drunk. That pilot for Carlos was involved in delivering the replacements that you brought down. Those fuckers used both of us on that deal. We were patsies. What do you think of that? They had fake cops and real cops involved in it. Jack Ruby’s cops were supposed to take care of Oswald, but Ruby bungled it. That’s why he had to go in and finish the job on Oswald. If he didn’t take care of Oswald, what do you think they would have done to him—put Ruby on a meat hook. Don’t kid yourself. Santo and Carlos and Giancana and some of their element, they were all in on Kennedy. Every single one of the same cast of characters that were in on the Bay of Pigs. They even had a plot to kill Castro with Momo and Roselli. I’ve got enough to hang everybody. And every last bit of it comes out if anything unnatural happens to me. They will all pay. All those who fucked me will pay.”
I sat there with the satchel in my lap. Jimmy would sometimes get on a kick and there was no stopping him. You just listened. But I never saw him like this before. I never saw anybody like this before. This time it was unreal. There was nothing for me to say even if I was inclined to do any talking. If the room was bugged I didn’t want my voice on anything. Picking up high-powered rifles—man, oh, man.
“You don’t know the half of it. Fitz’s stupidity is only exceeded by his arrogance. They thought Hoffa was going to drop off the face of the earth. None of them have got an ounce of balls to face me. My Irish friend, there are things I can’t tell you because it would cost you your life to know them. There are secret things I have known, seen, and supported that would rock this nation.”
Jimmy then went on to tell me alleged things about our good friends, not pertaining to this. Things not for publication. I can’t say I knew them all, anyway, but I knew most of them and I suspected some of the others. None of it was my business or his business. It was time for me to get out of there. In case the room was bugged I said, “I heard none of that was true, Jimmy.”
“Don’t worry about that. I’ve got records in the hands of the right people and the motherfuckers know I’ve kept records on all of it. And I’ve got it all in safe places.”
“Jimmy, do me a favor and keep some bodies around between you and the street.”
“Bodyguards make you careless.”
“I’m not saying bodyguards. Just travel with people. You came to this thing in Philly alone.”
“I’m not going that route or they’ll go after my family.”
“Still in all, you don’t want to be out on the street by yourself.”
“Nobody scares Hoffa. I’m going after Fitz and I’m going to win this election.”
“You know what this means, Jimmy,” I said softly. “McGee himself told me to tell you what it is.”
“They wouldn’t dare,” Jimmy Hoffa said out loud.
On the way to the door, Jimmy said to me, “You watch your ass.””
chapter twenty-seven
July 30, 1975
“I reported back to Russell that Jimmy was still running in 1976. I reported what Jimmy said about having records and lists that were going to make their public appearance in case something unnatural happened to him. I didn’t go into all the details, all the wild things Jimmy had said. These were things I didn’t need to know. Russell made a comment about Jimmy’s thinking being “distorted.”
“I don’t understand this,” Russell said. “I don’t understand why he just doesn’t go away.”
I made the drop for Jimmy at the Market Inn and called him to tell him. I really can’t tell you that what was in the package was money. I didn’t look. After that I was afraid to have too many conversations with Jimmy, because I would only have to repeat them to Russell. I got the feeling from all this that Jimmy was being ruled by his ego and by his feeling of revenge. I guess he figured that if he waited until 1980 to run, Fitz would retire and Jimmy would never get a chance to humiliate Fitz at a convention, to rub his nose in it. I guess that Jimmy was not too happy with the way things looked with our friends. After the meeting at Broadway Eddie’s and the approach that Russell took about wanting Jimmy not to run, Jimmy had to figure that Tony Pro was making progress in that part of the campaign.
After the thing I could never understand them wanting to hurt Jo and the kids by making Jimmy disappear. While they would do whatever they had to do, people like Russell and Angelo would not want to hurt the immediate family. Make them suffer not knowing, not having a decent funeral and having to wait so many years under the law to be able to declare Jimmy dead before they could get his money. Unless Tony Pro had the final say and got the okay from Fat Tony. That we’ll never know for sure. Pro already threatened to kill Jimmy’s granddaughter. Who talks like that about a man’s grandchildren?”
In April 1975 rumors were circulating at a Teamsters convention that Jimmy Hoffa was cooperating with the FBI. The Detroit Free Press, in a December 20, 1992, article, attributed these rumors to Chuckie O’Brien, the alleged driver of the car that Jimmy Hoffa was in at the time of his disappearance. An FBI 302 from the FBI file on Jimmy Hoffa’s disappearance, the HOFFEX file, confirms the existence of this rumor and a plausible reason as to why it may have had a basis in truth: “It has been rumored among sources that Hoffa, while attempting to gain control of the Teamsters, may have provided information to the Government in exchange for a favorable decision concerning the lifting of his Union restrictions.”
On May 15, 1975, Jimmy Hoffa testified at a grand jury investigation into “no show” jobs at his former Detroit Local 299. Hoffa took the Fifth. Afterward, when questioned by a reporter, Hoffa said he was “damn proud of it.” That same day Jimmy Hoffa attended a meeting at his son’s law office with his son and Detroit mobster Anthony “Tony Jack” Giacalone. Giacalone tried to broker a meeting between Hoffa and Tony Pro, and Hoffa refused to attend. Giacalone then asked for Hoffa’s help in obtaining records that were going to be used by the government against Giacalone for an alleged insurance scam indictment. Hoffa turned down Giacalone’s request.
At the end of May, Frank Fitzsimmons threatened to put Local 326, Hoffa’s former local and power base, into trusteeship and have it run by a monitor, who would report to the Teamsters headquarters in Washington.
On June 19, 1975, Jimmy Hoffa’s ally and good friend Sam Giancana was assassinated in his Chicago home five days before his scheduled testimony before the Church Committee on the mob’s role in a CIA plot to assassinate Fidel Castro.
On June 25, 1975, a Local 299 supporter of Frank Fitzsimmons named Ralph Proctor was attacked from behind as he walked out of a restaurant after lunch. Proctor never saw what hit him. Proctor was beaten and knocked unconscious in broad daylight. Proctor’s higher-up in the Fitzsimmons camp, Rolland McMaster, said, “We had that kind of crap happen. I put investigators on it, but they didn’t find out anything.”
On the afternoon of July 10, 1975, Frank Fitzsimmons’s son Richard Fitzsimmons relaxed in Nemo’s bar in Detroit. Richard was vice president of Local 299, and in that capacity he had been given a 1975 white Lincoln Continental for his union duties. After finishing his last drink at Nemo’s, Richard left the bar and was walking toward this parked Lincoln when the car exploded. Richard narrowly escaped being injured, but his white Lincoln was blown to bits.
On the afternoon of July 30, 1
975, Jimmy Hoffa disappeared.
“The whole thing was built around the wedding. Bill Bufalino’s daughter was getting married on Friday, August 1, 1975. That was two days after Jimmy disappeared. People would be coming in from all the families around the country. There would be over 500 people there. Russell and I and our wives and Russell’s sister-in-law would be driving in a straight line that went through Pennsylvania, most of the way through Ohio, and then a right turn north to Detroit, Michigan.
Because of the wedding Jimmy would be inclined to believe that Tony Pro and Russell Bufalino would be in the Detroit area so they could meet with him in the afternoon he disappeared. The thing with Tony Pro wanting his million-dollar pension was a decoy. Pro didn’t care about his pension so much. They just used the pension beef to get Jimmy to come out.
Jimmy had a meeting that was arranged by Tony Giaccalone for 2:30 at the Machus Red Fox Restaurant on Telegraph Avenue outside of Detroit on July 30, 1975. Tony Pro was supposed to get there at 2:30 with Tony Jack. The whole idea was for Tony Jack to make peace between Tony Pro and Jimmy. Jimmy left for that meeting, and Jimmy was seen in the parking lot of the restaurant, but Jimmy never came home from that meeting.
By the time of the wedding everybody was talking about Jimmy’s disappearance. I got to talking with Jimmy’s old-time buddies from Local 299, Dave Johnson, the president who got his boat blown up, and Bobby Holmes, the old Strawberry Boy who used to be a miner in England. They both asked me, practically at the same time, if I thought Tony Pro had it done.”
chapter twenty-eight
To Paint a House
“The pilot stayed put in the plane. I stepped in. The pilot turned his head away even though I knew him. He’d been around the block enough times with our friends to know not to look at my face. I looked out the window at the grass airstrip at Port Clinton, Ohio, and saw my black Lincoln with Russell sitting in the passenger seat. Russell had already started to nod off to sleep.
Port Clinton is at the southern tip of Lake Erie. It’s a fishing village just east of Toledo, a little over 100 miles from the city of Detroit by car. To drive around the lake to the Georgiana Motel in Detroit could take almost three hours back then if you stretched it and took a little bit of a roundabout route. To fly over the lake and land near Detroit would take maybe an hour.
If you want to know what I felt sitting in that plane, I’m sorry to admit, but back then I felt nothing. It wasn’t like I was heading into battle. The decision was made to paint the house and that was that. Sure, I don’t feel good about it if I think about it now. I’m in my eighties. Back then, you start feeling too much and no matter how much nerve you have the nervous tension builds up in you and you get confused. Maybe even act stupid. The war taught me how to control my feelings when it was called for.
The sad part of it is that the whole matter could have been stopped by Jimmy any time he wanted, but he kept sailing into the storm. He could have sunk a lot of people in the same boat with him if he kept going in that direction. We all told him what it is. He thought he was untouchable. Some people are like that. Like my father thought he was untouchable when he tossed me the boxing gloves.
But everybody bleeds.
Was I still concerned for my own health and Irene’s health the way it crossed my mind last night at Brutico’s when Russell told me what it was going to be today? Not even a little bit. They had only two choices. Kill me or put me in the thing. By putting me in the thing they got a chance to make sure they could trust me. By being there to take part I could never do anything back to them. I would be proving, in the best way you could prove it, that it had never been my intent to go out and kiss Tony Pro or Fitz for Jimmy. Russell understood these things. He saved my life over and over again. I had seven contracts out on me over the years and Russell was able to square every one of the beefs.
Even though he was a boss, Russell himself had to do what he had to do. They took care of bosses, too. I didn’t sleep at all that night at the Howard Johnson’s, pondering these things, but I always came up with the same answer. If they had decided not to use me in the thing Jimmy would have been just as dead and no doubt in my mind I’d have been dead along with him. They even told me that later on.
After what seemed like a quick up and down I got out of the plane the way I got in, alone, with the pilot looking the other way.
My wife, Irene, Russell’s wife, Carrie, and Russell’s wife’s older sister were in Port Clinton at a restaurant having coffee and smoking cigarettes while they thought Russell and I had gone to do some of Russell’s business. We already had done some business on the way out and we would stop to do more business on the way home. Among other things, they knew Russell always had his eyepeice with him to look at diamond jewlery. When we got back together in three hours they would never think I could have driven to Detroit and back in three hours, when it would take three hours one way by car just to get to our motel in Detroit.
It wasn’t something that entered my mind, but there was no doubt about my boarding this plane again safe and sound when I was done with my errand. There’s no way they would put the women in the middle of an investigation if something unnatural happened to me in Detroit. I’d be hooking back up with my black Lincoln in Ohio and Russell and I would pick up the women. You might analyze it that the women being in Port Clinton was insurance and gave me a psychological comfort zone, but that kind of thinking never entered my mind.
Besides, I had a piece in my back under my belt. Even today at my age in a nursing home, there’s still nothing wrong with my second finger.
I landed at the Pontiac airfield, a small one just north of where everything was going to take place. It’s gone now; if I’m not mistaken it’s a housing development. You didn’t need a flight plan to land in those days and they kept no records.
There were two or three cars in the lot. One of them was a Ford with the keys sitting on the floor mat just like Russell said. It was plain and gray and a little dusty. You would never expect to find a flashy car that would attract attention in a situation like this. It was a loaner. Cars would be taken off lots and the owners would never know about it. Hotels were good. Long-term parking at airports was good. An inside man could make himself a nice note here and there providing loaners for cash customers.
I had the address and the directions from Russell. I knew Detroit pretty good from working for Jimmy, but these directions were real simple. I was to get on Telegraph Road, which is Route 24, a main artery into Detroit. It was a sunny day, hot enough for the air conditioner. On my right I drove past the Machus Red Fox Restaurant, which is on Telegraph Road. I took a left off Telegraph Road onto Seven Mile Road. I drove a half-mile on Seven Mile, crossed a roadway bridge over a small creek. I made a right and down that road there was another roadway bridge, then a footbridge nearby, and then I made a left and there was the house with brown shingles, a high backyard fence, and a detached garage in the back. The houses in the neighborhood weren’t far away but they weren’t on top of each other either. I checked the address. I’d been driving just a few miles.
Like I said, on the way to the house, going south on Telegraph Road, I passed by the Machus Red Fox Restaurant where Jimmy would be waiting in vain for me to show up for our 2:00 appointment. The restaurant was set back quite a way in the parking lot. When I passed it I wasn’t concerned that Jimmy would spot me. Because of my size and the good posture I still had in those days before I got bent over by the arthritis, I sat with my head up close to the roof of a car, and people had to take a close look to see my face. Nobody ever identified me in this matter.
I was supposed to be sitting there in the restaurant when the two Tonys showed up for their 2:30 appointment with Jimmy. Only Tony Jack was getting a massage at his health club in Detroit. Tony Pro meantime wasn’t even in Michigan. He was in New Jersey at his union hall playing Greek rummy, with the FBI no doubt sitting across the street from the union hall keeping an eye on him.
The house was just a
few miles from where Jimmy’s remains would go. Everything was going to be very close to everything else, all of it a straight shoot. You most definitely couldn’t go driving around any kind of distance and making lots of turns with Jimmy’s body in a car. The writers that claim I shipped the package in a fifty-five-gallon drum to a dump site in New Jersey or to the end zone in Giants Stadium never had a body on their hands. Who in their right mind would transport such a high-profile package a block longer than was necessary, much less across the country?
And this theory that somebody hit Jimmy inside Tony Jack’s son’s car is another idea that is just plain crazy. You kiss somebody in a car and you never get the smell out of the interior. It becomes a corpse car. All the body chemicals and body waste gets released into a small space. The death smell stays in the car. A car is not like a house in that respect. A house doesn’t retain the death odor.
The house with the brown shingles was another loaner. Could be some old lady lived there by herself and never knew her house was being borrowed for an hour. People like chiropractors would know when people would be out of town so that burglars could unload their houses. Might even be that somebody in the Detroit outfit had a chiropractor who treated an old lady who lived there alone. They would know she wouldn’t be home, and they would know her eyes were so shot she would never notice anybody had been there when she did get home, much less smell anything. The house is still there.
When I pulled up to the house, I could see a brown Buick at the end of the single-lane driveway. I pulled in and parked my Ford in the driveway behind the Buick.
I went to the front and walked up the steps. The front door was unlocked and I walked in. Sally Bugs was already in the small vestibule inside the front door, looking up at me through his Coke-bottle glasses. He had thick, curly black hair. I closed the door behind me. We shook hands.
I Heard You Paint Houses : Frank The Irishman Sheeran & Closing the Case on Jimmy Hoffa Page 29