Final Confession (6 page)

Nobody ever reported a stolen car because of them, and the owners were often pleasantly surprised that their cars were so clean when they returned. Except for the people who were the team's victims, it was a win-win situation.

I
N SOME WAYS
Boston is a small town, and everyone knows who's doing what. By August 1963 Cresta's team was pulling off respectable smaller jobs and not getting caught. “You had to be on your toes all the time,” Phil said. “No matter how many friends you had or how many cops you paid off, there was always one guy who didn't like you or one cop who didn't get enough. I was constantly watching my back, constantly paying off people to be quiet. It only takes one pissed-off guy to bring you down. Most of the guys who ended up in Walpole never knew who ratted them out. It was expensive. We had to provide our own muscle just to keep people off our backs. But in a tough business, you gotta do what you gotta do.”

Phil, Tony, and Angelo worked at developing a string of “ears” throughout Boston. “You can never have enough ears,” Phil stated. “I might have had only two eyes, but I had a couple of hundred ears working for me by the mid-sixties.”

These hired ears, not unlike the ones on people's heads, came in different styles. One ear might share information on one good score he'd been planning for years but never had the courage to pull off himself. Another ear might work in a bank or at
an armored car facility or in some other business where money changed hands and either wanted more money or simply talked too much. Still another might have a vendetta against a certain individual or company. Everyone knows that the best way to get back at someone is through the pocketbook.

A friendly bartender or barber was one of the best kind of ears; people told them things without being aware they were doing so. Pretty women were great ears too. Then there were the professional ears, or “moles,” who made a living out of dealing in information. “I liked working with reliable moles because they knew the importance of keeping their own mouths shut, even though they made a living out of other people opening theirs,” Phil explained. A good mole could make a fine living without worrying about going to prison or getting shot, as long as he knew who he was dealing with.

Being an ear was a very competitive business and, as in any other, buyers who paid the most usually got the best results. Everyone knew that Angiulo, now clearly an underboss to Patriarca, could pay the highest price for ears, but a lot of people on the street were afraid to hook up with the mob. This drove them to listen for Phil, Angelo, and Tony. “That was fine with us,” Phil said, laughing. “We always paid top dollar for good information. When word got around that we could deliver—and the return was good—we had more info on potential jobs than we could handle. It was simple: you had to spend money to make money. We treated people with respect—not like Angiulo, who intimidated and insulted people—and the good ears always came back to us.”

One of Phil's favorite ears was a barber who still owns a shop on Commonwealth Avenue, in Kenmore Square. Phil would hang out there and act as if he were waiting for a haircut. He'd listen to some of the stories and watch the ball players, who stayed at the nearby Kenmore Hotel, come in for haircuts. Mickey Mantle, Whitey Ford, Billy Martin were among the players who came in whenever they were in town, playing the Red Sox. It wasn't surprising to see Mickey Mantle and Billy Martin in the barbershop one morning and then at McGrail's, getting
last call that night. The bartender at McGrail's was Phil's other favorite ear. “People tend to tell a friendly bartender or barber a lot more than they tell anyone else. Every bartender and barber who worked in Kenmore Square was on our payroll,” Phil explained.

Kenmore Square was now Phil's center of operation. It was away from Angiulo's North End operations, and since Phil had separated from his wife, Dorothy, earlier in 1963, he'd been living rent-free at the Fenway Motor Inn, across the street from McGrail's. The motel was owned by the legendary Boston ex-dentist and bookmaker Doc Sagansky, who was a close friend of Phil's. Since the mobster didn't charge for the two rooms Phil kept there, whenever he scored big, Phil compensated Sagansky in return.

At this time, there were several banks around Kenmore Square. One day after a Sox game a bartender at McGrail's mentioned to Phil that a guard had been coming into the bar after the bank closed, and he regularly stayed until last call. Phil stored the information away and asked the bartender, who was on Phil's payroll, to point the guy out the next time he came in. About a week later, Phil and Angelo were in the bar, and the bartender kept looking toward Phil to get his attention. When the bartender had it, he motioned his head toward a guy sitting alone at the end of the bar. The guy wore a bank guard's uniform.

Phil told Angelo he had some business to attend to and moved to the stool next to the bank guard. Phil started talking about the Red Sox, a subject everyone in Boston had an opinion about. Within an hour he had this guard thinking he was his new best friend.

The guard, it turned out, had no family and was bitter that life had passed him by. He made little money at his job, and it was obvious that he liked to drink. Phil began buying him top-shelf whiskey, meeting him nightly, and listening to his tales of woe. Within a week Phil had the guard in his pocket.

One night the guard got really drunk. When last call came,
Phil invited him to sleep it off at one his rooms at the Fenway Motor Inn. He had two, he pointed out, and they were conveniently located right across the street. The guard was reluctant at first. Phil told him he'd set the alarm so the guard would be on time for work. When Cresta added that there was unlimited booze at the inn, the setup was synched. A half hour after entering Phil's room, the guard was out cold.

Phil telephoned Angelo, who came over. Together they went through the guard's belongings. “The guy had a key ring hooked onto his belt, so we took the keys off one by one. When we had them all, we took them next door to the room I used for a workshop and made duplicates,” Phil said. He set the alarm for the guard as he'd told him he would, returned all the keys to the key ring, and spent the night in his second room. Two nights later the guy was back at McGrail's, falling all over himself, thanking Phil for his kindness and hospitality. After giving the man half a dozen drinks, Phil remarked that the guard carried a lot of keys on his ring and asked what they were all for. “Oh, some are for my house and some are for work,” the guy replied nonchalantly. Phil called Angelo.

Several hours later, around three-thirty in the morning, they headed over to a certain Kenmore Square bank. “There's no way they'd give that drunk any important keys,” Angelo insisted as Phil tried one in the bank's back door, then a second. The tumblers clicked. Phil turned to Angelo and responded, “That drunk just got us into this bank.” Phil and Angelo looked at each other, laughed, relocked the door, and walked away.

Within a week, Phil's team knew everything they needed to know about the bank's layout. “Getting into a bank isn't that hard, all you have to do is break the window. It's what you do once you're in that determines whether you go from there to Hawaii or Walpole,” Phil said philosophically.

They waited for a night when the Red Sox would be away and the weather rainy. That night came in late August 1963.

Tony drove the car, which he parked behind the bank, to wait for the getaway. Phil and Angelo, dressed as industrial cleaning
men, carried their equipment down a long alley. They dumped that equipment at the bank's back door. Within seconds Phil had disabled the alarm, and they were inside, thanks to the duplicate key they had made. They headed directly toward the vault, knowing that it would take at least seven minutes before anyone would come to check on the disabled alarm. Having made several earlier trips to case the bank, they were as familiar with its layout as they were with their own homes. They did not turn on any lights, for Phil considered that too risky.

Within thirty seconds of entering, Phil was kneeling in front of the vault. Since there were no windows in the room, he turned on a little flashlight that gave him just enough light to see the numbers. In less than a minute Phil had the lock picked and he was inside the ancient vault. “I can't believe how much banks spend on alarms and how little they spend on vault locks,” Phil later commented. They were in and out of the bank in less than three minutes.

“We scared the shit out of Tony when we came back out so quick,” Phil said, laughing. “What's wrong, what's wrong?” he kept asking. “Nothing. Just drive—and take your time. We're in no hurry. Just take it easy,” Phil said to reassure his nervous partner. The next day the bank reported that $75,000 was stolen from the vault by professional thieves. “We appreciated the compliment,” Phil said, “but we got only fifty-five thousand that night. It seems we weren't the only crooks in that bank.” The bank president inflated the amount stolen, to get more insurance money. He was not caught.

As planned, the guard they got the key from never knew he was in any way connected to the robbery. He was questioned on five different occasions, but he had nothing to tell. Phil, who was never questioned about that heist, made it a habit to pick up the guard's bar tab from that night on. Keeping a source safe was a matter of pride.

F
ROM
1962
THROUGH
1964 the team made a living—not a great one, but they managed to get by. As they began to rob higher-level marks, they found themselves spending more time clocking and pulling jobs and, eventually, no time at legitimate jobs. They kept the appearance of holding down legal jobs, however. Phil paid a car dealer to make it look as if he worked for the man. This gave Phil an alibi when jobs were pulled, and gave the car dealer extra money.

As Phil put it, “People think that robbing's easy. But we worked hard every day at it, from morning until night. When we planned a hit, we left nothing to chance. There's always the possibility that something will happen during job to make you change plans. The difference between a successful robber and a robber who goes to jail is planning for the unexpected.”

By late 1964 they were still pulling small-time scores but always looking for the one score that would take them to the next level. Angelo and Tony were anxious for that big score, but Phil warned them not to force things. Their days of eating at the Ritz-Carlton would come, and in the meantime, they certainly weren't starving.

Phil said of those days, “I knew our break would come if we continued to work carefully and look for opportunities.”

When planning a score Phil took everything into account, especially the weather. As he had with his parking meter theft and with the Kenmore Square heist, Phil continued to use the weather to his advantage. A case in point is the famous Quincy armored car robbery.

In Phil's words, “We were out clocking armored cars in Braintree one day in November, when we happened to see a guard come out of a supermarket carrying a moneybag. He walked straight to an unmarked station wagon, threw the moneybag in the backseat, and got into the front passenger seat. He nodded to the driver, who looked all around and then took off. But it was what they did next that really caught our attention.” Phil laughed when he related this story. “It seemed too good to be true,” he said. “Mistakes like that were what we lived for. We immediately dropped the other plans we had and began to put all our time and effort into casing that job.”

The first day they spotted the guards was Saturday, November 14, 1964. The team watched them leave the Braintree supermarket, make two more stops, and then stop for coffee and lunch at the Wheel House Diner, at 453 Hancock Street in Quincy. Against all policy, they left the money in the car—untended.

To make sure they broke policy consistently, Phil, Tony, and Angelo followed them in different cars for six more Saturdays. One week Phil drove. The next week Tony drove, and the next Angelo. The guards never looked around to see if they were being tailed, but it still paid to be safe. The team fine-tuned their plans en route. Finally, after seven freezing trips, the team decided it was time to take them down. They planned for January 2, 1965, but then Phil told Angelo and Tony to hold off.

They were irritated. They reminded Phil how easy a mark this was. “Easy I like; perfect I like better,” Phil told them. “We need to wait for a little cooperation.” Tony and Angelo complained about waiting that week and the following Saturday too. But on Saturday, January 16, 1965, exactly nine weeks after they'd first spotted the guard in Braintree, Phil got his cooperation.

It began snowing in the early morning hours, and while every other guy in Boston was thinking about the AFL all-star game in which Patriots linebacker Nick Buonoconti would run back a seventeen-yard fumble for a touchdown, Phil Cresta was thinking about two guards and a diner in Quincy.

“It's on,” he said to Angelo. Angelo just grinned. He knew exactly what he had to do, so he got the car. With a smiling Tony in the backseat, Phil got into the front. They drove to a parking lot in Quincy, where Phil picked the lock of a nondescript 1963 Buick.

Phil drove Tony in the stolen Buick to the spot they had chosen, about thirty yards from the diner. They parked. Angelo drove the other car to their predetermined rendezvous point, a mile and a half from the diner. Phil and Tony watched people entering the diner from the front seat of the Buick. “There's always nervous tension at a time like that,” Phil noted, “but we felt very good about the situation. We just weren't sure of the take.” About twenty-five minutes later, the station wagon carrying the two guards pulled into the parking lot. Phil watched the guards lock the car and head inside for a hot cup of coffee and a lunch they would never forget.

Phil got out of the driver's seat. Tony slid over and picked up the binoculars, with which in a minute or two he would begin casing the area around the diner. Phil had a hat pulled almost completely over his face, a heavy coat, fake glasses, and winter gloves. To any person walking or riding by he looked as if he was just another guy trying to keep warm, to shield himself from the elements. As he got near the station wagon he quickly looked at the diner window where the two guards always sat. Though the window was ten feet from the station wagon, it was, as Phil had hoped, completely frosted over.

Phil could have picked the lock in seconds, but he didn't. Like an amateur, he simply broke the vent window and opened the front door. As he did, he spotted a cardboard box about the size of a case of beer on the front seat. He grabbed it and walked back down to the end of the driveway, where Tony was waiting. The robbery took less than thirty seconds.

Once in the car, Phil had a hard time containing his excitement. He knew by the number of bags and manila envelopes in the cardboard box that this score was going to be profitable. “How'd we do, how'd we do?” Tony kept asking as he drove them away. Phil didn't reply. The two met up with Angelo and ditched the stolen Buick.

Meanwhile, the two guards, laughing, left the diner and headed for their station wagon. They quickly froze in their tracks—and not because of the weather. Then they ran back into the diner screaming, “Call the police! Somebody stole our deposits!”

Within minutes, the Norfolk Downs section of Quincy was awash with police cars. Quincy Police, working with FBI agents from the Boston bureau, told the press that the actual amount of money stolen was $119,047.19. Guards Joseph Whitfield and James E. Carroll of the Skelly Detective Agency had just been “Crested.”

AS PHIL, TONY, AND ANGELO
drove along Route 3 to Cape Cod, Angelo asked, “Any problems, Phil?”

“Naw, piece of cake,” Phil responded, laughing. He had finished looking over the take.

“Speaking of cake, I'm kinda hungry,” Tony said.

Angelo and Phil just shook their heads, amazed at how anyone could be hungry at a time like this.

“How much?” Angelo anxiously inquired.

“Over a hundred large.” Phil waited for a reaction.

“Wow! I thought these guys were small-time.” Angelo reached over to look in the bag. “I would've been happy with twenty or twenty-five large.”

Phil slapped his hand. “Take it easy, we'll count it more closely when we get to the Cape.”

Angelo was quiet for a few minutes, but as they were passing Norwell he asked, “Did you pick it okay?”

“I didn't use a pick,” Phil shot back.

“How'd ya open it up?”

“The old-fashioned way.” Phil, the best lock man on the East Coast, smiled. “I broke the fucking window.”

Phil could tell from the looks on their faces that they needed an explanation. “I knew the guards couldn't see shit because the window was frozen over and the snow was coming down pretty good. Ya with me?”

They both nodded like students at Christopher Columbus High in the North End.

“I didn't want to give the cops nothing to go on—no MO—especially with Tilley still out there. Okay so far?”

Again they both nodded. They knew how angry Tilley still was that Phil had “stolen” his gang. Keeping Tilley thinking the Cresta team wasn't making a lot of money was wise.

Professor Phil went on slowly. “I wanted them to think this was a small-time hood who got lucky, so I decided to bust the window and open the door just like we did when we were kids on Hanover Street.”

Angelo was shaking his head in admiration.

Tony said, “Yeah, Phil, but we never scored no hundred large on Hanover Street.”

Then all three sat back, lesson over, and drove in silence until Plymouth, where Tony announced, “
Now
I get it! That's why you waited two extra weeks? You were waiting for the snow?”

“Light dawns on Marblehead,” Phil responded, and he and Angelo laughed the rest of the way to the Bourne Bridge and Cape Cod.