Hitman (32 page)

“Looks good,” said McDonald, nodding. He picked up the walkie-talkie and inquired of the spotter as to whether “he” was where he should be. The answer was yes, but suddenly Johnny was antsy again. He recognized the spotter's voice—it was John Hurley, the same guy who'd mistaken the bartender Milano for Indian Al a month earlier.

“Are you positive?” Johnny asked Hurley via walkie-talkie.

“I'm positive,” he said. “It's him.”

*   *   *

JOHNNY THEN
told Hurley to come out to the car. He wanted to speak to him face-to-face. Hurley walked out to the boiler and leaned in and told Johnny again that it was Indian Joe. Johnny nodded silently. He couldn't afford any more mistakes, especially when he was walking into a place with witnesses, some of whom might be both with Indian Joe and armed. With both Johnny and Joe Mac watching him, Hurley assured them that this time he was sure he was right.

“You better be,” Johnny told him.

*   *   *

JOHNNY LOOKED
at his watch. It was 3:45. Sal would be calling the pay phone right about now. Johnny still didn't know if Indian Joe had anybody with him. They'd killed some of the crew, and others had run off, but some things you could never be certain of until you walked in and started shooting.

Johnny turned to McDonald: “If you hear more than a couple of shots, come in after me.”

“Yup,” said Joe McDonald.

Johnny got out of the car, holding a .38-caliber snub nose revolver in his hand in the pocket of his butcher's coat.

He pushed open the coffee shop door and saw Indian Joe standing at the second pay phone on the wall, talking into the receiver, making his pitch for mercy. Johnny walked right up to him, raised his gun, and fired twice at Indian Joe's heart. The restaurant was crowded, and some of the other customers started screaming as Indian Joe, his eyes wide with shock, dropped the phone and crumpled to the floor. But Johnny Martorano didn't hear them.

All he was thinking was,
Get out, get out
. He turned around, then walked out the door slowly. He left the Pewter Pot as casually as he could, walked back to the Ford, and got back inside the front seat. McDonald, who would be described by witnesses as having “stubby fingers,” had kept the motor running.

“Okay?” asked McDonald.

“Let's go,” said Martorano.

“Yup,” said McDonald.

About a mile outside Medford Square, on the way back to Somerville, Johnny spotted an unoccupied phone booth. He told McDonald to pull over, which meant the crash car and another one behind it also had to pull over. Martorano walked over to the phone booth, deposited a dime, and called a Somerville number. He wanted to check back in with the garage to make sure everything was okay—no large hits shaping up on the day's numbers.

As Martorano placed the call from the phone booth, Tommy King pulled up in the crash car alongside Johnny's boiler.

“Johnny,” he yelled, “you know that the state police will have their helicopter up in the air, don't you?” Its landing pad in East Cambridge was at most three or four miles from Medford Square. “Maybe we should get going.”

Johnny hung up the phone. They got going.

*   *   *

NOW THERE
was only one—Indian Al, the guy who had started the whole war. No one had seen him in months. He had obviously taken a powder. There was no pressing need to look for him. The war was over, his bookies now all belonged to Winter Hill—Jerry Angiulo couldn't very well argue that point, not after all the carnage. And sooner or later, Indian Al would have to come home.

And then they would kill him.

It was eight months before the call came from Indian Al, in early 1974. It was almost a year since they'd killed Michael Milano by mistake in Brighton. Angeli had returned from Oregon just before Christmas, flying into Logan Airport.

He met his mother in Cambridge, then drove with her to Gloucester where they had lunch. He told her he'd found Jesus, and that everything was straightened out, but she was not convinced. Shortly thereafter, he moved into the house owned by his late brother Joe's wife, until he could find a place for his own family. He also visited Jake Leary's widow, telling Jake's eleven-year-old daughter that he was “homesick” for Massachusetts.

Soon, Al Angeli decided he would reach out to the Hill. He apparently didn't know who his brother had been talking to on the phone when he was shot to death. Indian Al still hadn't figured out that it was the Hill rather than the Mafia that had wiped out his gang. When he finally spoke to Howie, Indian Al told him he had money, and that he wanted a sit-down with Angiulo, in a public place naturally, with Howie vouching for his safety. Indian Al wanted to straighten everything out, once and for all.

When Howie called In Town with the news, Angiulo was pleased. For the meet, he suggested his usual restaurant in the North End, Café Pompeii. Howie and Johnny picked Indian Al up on at the Northgate Shopping Center in Revere. They'd never laid eyes on him before, but compared to his mug shots, he looked at least a decade older. He had a shopping bag with him, but mostly Indian Al wanted to talk about the Lord. He'd found Jesus. John 3:16. He was saved.

In the North End, they brought him inside the café, to Jerry's table, in the corner of the restaurant. No one was allowed to sit at the tables immediately around him. It was less about physical safety than about not wanting to be overheard—or bugged. Indian Al tried to give Jerry a hug, but Angiulo refused to rise from his seat. Howie and Johnny sat down at a nearby table, watching and listening in silence.

“Mr. Angiulo,” Indian Al began, “I'm sorry.…”

Jerry Angiulo just sat there, scowling. He lived for moments like this. He'd never been a strong-arm, and now he lived in a seaside mansion in Nahant. But he still reveled in playing the tough guy, the Mafia don. His top guns, Baione and Russo, might be away, but he still had these other guys, from Somerville, his secret weapons sitting a couple of tables away. In Providence Raymond Patriarca might be “the Man,” but on Hanover Street Gennaro Angiulo called the shots, and he never let anyone forget it.

Johnny and Howie listened as Angiulo berated Indian Al in unbelievably foul language, telling him how he now had to make sure Paulie Folino's family was taken care of. With a real hitman sitting two tables over, Angiulo shamelessly took credit for all the work of the Hill. It was at moments like this that Johnny realized that the Mafia was no place for anyone with a mind of his own. Who needed a “boss”?

Finally, Indian Al pushed the bag across the table to Jerry Angiulo.

“There's 50,000 there,” he said, and Anigulo nodded. Jerry smiled weakly and told Indian Al that everything was okay now, and that he should stay in touch—but only with Howie. Don't call me again, Jerry ordered. Ever. You want to open a nightclub or any other fuckin' thing—I don't give a fuck what you want, after what you done to Paulie Folino, I don't need to ever be talking to a piece of shit like you. You wanna do anything from now on, you call Howie. You clear it with Howie.
Capisce?
Then he nodded at Howie and Johnny and they stood up. It was time for Indian Al to go. As Indian Al and Howie went on ahead, Johnny lingered behind at Jerry's table.

“I leaned in close to Jerry and told him, ‘You deserve an Oscar for that performance.' What I was really saying to him was, maybe Indian Al believed that bullshit, but don't ever try anything like that on me, because I know better.

“In the car, Howie told Indian Al to stay in touch with Sal Sperlinga. He figured Sal knew Indian Al better than we did, so he'd be more comfortable with Sal.”

*   *   *

HOWIE AND
Johnny drove Indian Al to his sister-in-law's house and then returned to the Dog House. Angiulo was sitting at a table. He'd split the $50,000 into two equal piles. One he pushed across the table.

“Expenses,” Angiulo explained.

That was the way they all preferred to look at it. It wasn't really murder-for-hire, this was just settling up … for out-of-pocket costs. Jerry just wanted to show his respect and appreciation for a job well done, and the Hill couldn't very well turn it down because that would be a slap in the face to Jerry Angiulo. Not to take the $25,000 would be showing disrespect to In Town.

LAWYER:
You certainly didn't have $25,000 worth of expenses, did you?

MARTORANO:
We just threw it in the pot. There was a lot of expenses, a lot of equipment, a lot of walkie-talkies. There was a lot of equipment.

LAWYER:
But it had nothing to do with expenses. He just paid you to do it, isn't that right?

MARTORANO:
Not at all.

LAWYER:
After expenses, the rest was just the fee for killing him, right?

MARTORANO:
It wasn't a fee for killing him, but we took the money.

LAWYER:
And that was half of the money Mr. Angeli gave to Mr. Angiulo for not killing him, right?

MARTORANO:
Right.

Back at 98 Prince Street, Howie Winter took the $25,000 and stuffed the wad of bills into his winter overcoat.

“Now you can kill him for killing Paulie,” Angiulo said.

*   *   *

INDIAN AL
still didn't get it. His sister-in-law had watched out the window as he was dropped off in front of her house by a dark car with two men inside—Howie and Johnny. Once Indian Al was back inside Joe's house, he went straight to the kitchen and started making phone calls.

“Everything is fine,” he told someone. “I want that nightclub.”

He was beaming as he hung up. He told his sister-in-law that everybody could come home now. Indian Al then called his wife in Oregon. He said he would be meeting someone for breakfast, but did not say who.

Despite his apparent relief, Indian Al decided to move out of the family house and into the Holiday Inn on the Lynn-Peabody Line. After he checked in there, his sister-in-law drove him to Cambridge, where he rented a small white car. But he didn't call the Hill.

After a while, Jerry started calling us every day, yelling, “Where the fuck is that no good motherfuckin' motherfucker? I want him dead! I want this over!” We told him, we aren't even sure where he is. We also told him, this ain't the kind of thing you can rush. You start trying to pressure a guy to set up a meet, he's going to figure out what's up.

Finally, on February 21, Indian Al reached out to Sal. He wanted another sit-down with Jerry.

Johnny went up to the garage at the top of Winter Hill to see what boilers were available. He settled on a Ford coupe.

On the last morning of his life, Indian Al met a guy who'd been holding onto some of his late brother Joe's effects. They drove to a warehouse in Woburn and Indian Al sadly went through a couple of his brother's steamer trunks. They drove back to Winchester and he ran into a cop he knew. He told the cop he had straightened everything out with Angiulo and that he'd soon be opening a “diner” in Magoun Square in Somerville—in the heart of Winter Hill territory.

Back at the Holiday Inn, Indian Al ate an early dinner of clam chowder and shish kabob, leaving a one-dollar tip. The total: $8.20. He went back to his room and at 5:21
P.M.
made his final telephone call, to Jake Leary's widow. When cops later asked her where she'd been that evening, she told them she'd just started a new program at Diet Workshop.

A few minutes later, Indian Al was picked up again at the Northgate Shopping Center by Sal and Johnny. This time Indian Al wasn't carrying a bag, only a Bible. Johnny got out so that Al could sit in the front seat—the death seat. Johnny climbed into the backseat.

Johnny saw the Bible, and suddenly he remembered an old western starring the guy he'd been drinking with nights at Chandler's—Robert Mitchum. The movie was
Five Card Stud,
and Mitchum played a preacher with a hollowed-out Bible in which he carried a hidden gun. Just when the villain thinks he's got the drop on Rev. Mitchum, he opens the Bible and pulls out the gun and kills the bad guy. Johnny kept a close eye on Indian Al—and on his Bible.

Indian Al climbed in the front seat and didn't say much. He wasn't acting like Robert Mitchum. He seemed like a beaten man. Once they got onto an open stretch of road, Johnny took out his gun and shot Indian Al once behind the ear, and then he fired a second time into the base of the neck. Johnny was usually a one-bullet guy, but this was too important. This was the end of the war. Neither Johnny nor Sal said anything as they drove back to the garage at the top of Winter Hill.

As always, Whitey was in the crash car, with the scanners and a walkie-talkie. For this hit, Whitey was trailed by a second crash car, a boiler. They weren't taking any chances now at the end.

A bunch of guys were at the garage, waiting. They took the body out of the coupe, wrapped it in a heavy moving-company blanket, and put it into the trunk of a Ford sedan that had been stolen from a supermarket parking lot in Dorchester the previous day. Johnny told the guys to empty Al's wallet and to strip all the jewelry off his body. It was supposed to look like a robbery. Johnny grabbed the Bible himself and opened it, just to make sure. It wasn't hollowed out, of course. This wasn't the Wild West, it was Winter Hill. Johnny tossed the Bible to one of the other guys.

In the dark, the four-door with Indian Al's body in the trunk was driven to the Bunker Hill projects in Charlestown. Everyone knew it wouldn't take long for some project rats to steal it for a joyride. Two Townie kids, ages sixteen and fourteen, quickly noticed the popped ignition, but either failed to notice, or more likely didn't care, that the trunk lock had also been popped. They drove the stolen Ford into the North End and back before the cops spotted them and turned on the blue lights.