Hitman (17 page)

 … and the East Boston Mafioso who killed him, J. R. “Joe” Russo.

The first shot went through the back window and into the back of Amico's head, killing him instantly. They kept firing, but even though he was shot in the back, Kearns was able to continue swerving until he finally ran off the road, down an embankment, and into a ditch. He survived. A few hours later, just before Kearns was brought into the Charles Street jail, all bandaged up, detectives arrived at Barboza's cell to break the news to him about Chico.

“I just sat stunned,” the Animal recalled in his 1976 book. “No matter who died it affected me, but Chico's death affected me the worst. He was like my son, my brother, my partner.”

Joe Barboza would have his revenge, but now it wouldn't be on the street, it would be in a courtroom.

*   *   *

WIMPY BENNETT
never saw it coming. He got it in the garage in January 1967. Stevie Flemmi had accused Peter Poulos, the gang's bookkeeper, of stealing money from their numbers racket. He pulled a gun and put it to Poulos's head. Poulos denied stealing the money, and said he'd given it to Wimpy. According to Salemme's sworn testimony in 2003, he stepped in and told Stevie that he needed to ask Wimpy directly.

Peter Poulos, taken for a ride in the Nevada desert by Stevie Flemmi.

So we got Wimpy up there either that night or the next night at six o'clock. There was a meeting with everyone there. And the next thing you know, Peter put it right on him, I gave the money to you, and you did it before. Bennett couldn't even explain himself, and so Flemmi took the pistol out and shot him in the head.

They buried Wimpy out in Hopkinton, at a shooting range they'd used for target practice during the recent gang war. The next morning, George Kaufman sold Wimpy's car to someone for $6,000—or so Stevie later told the feds. But there was more to Wimpy's murder than just money, as important as money was to Stevie. As Johnny Martorano saw it, there was also underworld status involved.

“They wanted to impress Larry. Killing Wimpy makes 'em big shots down at the Bat Cove. It was a two-birds-with-one-stone thing. Same with Larry. He had two reasons for wanting Wimpy dead. Number one, Wimpy was Irish, which he didn't like, and number two, Wimpy was too sneaky for Larry.”

Soon the newspapers were reporting that Wimpy the Fox had vanished—“missing from usual haunts … foul play suspected…” “rubout victim?” Flemmi assured the FBI that there was “absolutely no hope of finding BENNETT alive,” as if Rico didn't know.

Walter was the next Bennett brother to go, in April. He'd been noticed lurking around Larry Baione's neighborhood in Jamaica Plain. Bennett had figured out the Mafia angle, Salemme said.

“The word got out that Stevie Flemmi did it for the Italians, for lack of a better—the guineas is what he [Walter] said.”

Walter, however, still trusted Salemme and Poulos. As Salemme explained, that was Walter Bennett's fatal mistake.

We lured Walter to the garage to a meeting with me at six o'clock one night. Peter Poulos drove him to the garage, and I had a big door that you press a button to open. It was a huge garage, and he drove in and walked up the stairs to the office. Stevie was waiting at the end of the stairs, shot him, and he took him out to the car.

They buried him next to Wimpy in Hopkinton. Two Bennetts down, one to go.

*   *   *

BARBOZA WAS
shipped off to MCI-Walpole in January 1967. He was doing four-to-five. The Bear had also ended up there, on a parole violation, and Nicky Femia was also doing time at Walpole, on the same gun charge they'd used to take Barboza off the street. It looked like they'd all be gone for a good long time. The owner of Champi's even screwed up his courage long enough to appear at a Boston Licensing Board hearing to beg the city not to revoke his liquor license. The man had been living in abject fear, an East Boston detective testified on his behalf. Why, Nicky Femia, the tenant of record, hadn't even been paying rent on the upstairs apartment where they stashed their arsenal in an old Frigidaire.

“I'm a victim of circumstance,” the owner of Champi's told the board. “That's all I can say.”

*   *   *

MEANWHILE, STEVIE
started driving down to visit his brother more often after murdering Wimpy. Johnny Martorano would often go along for the ride. Johnny would talk with Barboza while Jimmy Flemmi would huddle with his brother. A couple of times the Flemmis got into fistfights in the visiting room. After the brothers finished their private conversations, they'd switch off—Stevie would sit down with Barboza and Johnny with the Bear.

The FBI, in the persons of H. Paul Rico and Dennis Condon, would soon be paying Barboza a recruiting visit, and Martorano thinks he knows now what Stevie was discussing in hushed tones with Barboza and his brother.

If one of them was going to flip, which one would be the better witness, Barboza or the Bear? Barboza was looking at serious time, while Jimmy was about to get out. Plus, if Jimmy flips, it's all over for Stevie too. So you'd want Barboza to do it, but then you've got the Deegan problem. The Bear was in on that hit, you've got witnesses in Chelsea who remember seeing a bald guy in the front seat. Who else can that be but the Bear? They had to get that whole Deegan thing straightened out, one way or the other.

More than thirty years later, as they all sat in the Plymouth House of Correction, awaiting their trial on federal racketeering charges, Salemme put it directly to Flemmi. He asked his old partner if he had gone down to Walpole to broker the deal for the FBI, arranging to turn Barboza into a rat, in order to protect his brother the Bear.

“He didn't deny it,” Salemme told the prosecutors in 2003. “He said, what could I do? You know, he's my brother.… He said, I had to protect my brother. I accused him right out, you went up there for this guy, Rico. He just put his head down and was nodding his head yes.”

It didn't take long for Barboza to agree to all of the FBI's demands—that he put the finger on everyone in the top hierarchy of the New England Mafia. He tied Patriarca to a contract hit on two brothers in Providence who had started a card game on Federal Hill that was not “protected.” He fingered Jerry Angiulo for setting up the murder of an ex-boxer who'd been sticking up Mafia-protected dice games known as barbooth. As an added personal bonus on that one, Barboza named as the shooters several of the same hoodlums who had killed Chico Amico.

Finally, Barboza accused three made LCN members—Henry Tameleo, Peter Limone, and Louie Grieco—of having taken part in the 1965 Deegan slaying.

To explain away the bald man in the front seat the night Deegan was murdered, Barboza replaced his bald friend the Bear with the doorman at the Colosseum nightclub, Joe “the Horse” Salvati. Barboza swore that Salvati had donned a “bald wig” before going into the alley to shoot Deegan.

The Federal Witness Protection Program had just been started. Barboza was a one-man pilot program, an experiment of sorts. Now the feds would find out if they could protect a witness from Mafia retribution. They moved Barboza from safehouse to safehouse, including jails and islands owned by the Coast Guard, as well as gated compounds they rented north of Boston in Essex County along the coast.

Three of the men framed by the FBI for the murder of Teddy Deegan: (top left) Peter Limone, (top right) Henry Tameleo, and Joe “the Horse” Salvati.

One day in early 1968, Johnny Martorano got a call from his old pal Barboza, whom the newspapers had taken to calling “the Canary” or “the Turncoat.”

“I was living in Lynn with some girl, and he tracks me down somehow. I don't know where they had him stashed at the time. He says to me, listen, I consider you a friend, I'm not going to bother you. But I gotta do this and I'm not concerned with who's guilty or innocent. I just don't want you coming in and calling me a liar.”

Johnny had of course followed Barboza's story as it unfolded in the papers. But to actually hear Barboza calmly explain how he planned to lie, under oath, in a capital murder case, was still a shock. Barboza obviously remembered that he'd told Johnny who had really killed Deegan.

“I think you're wrong, Joe,” Martorano told him. “I don't think this is the right thing to do.”

“That's it,” Barboza said. “This is what I'm gonna do.” Then he hung up. They never spoke again.

*   *   *

JOHNNY STILL
didn't care much for Jerry Angiulo or Larry Baione. But he couldn't stand by as Barboza railroaded guys who'd had nothing to do with the murder of Teddy Deegan. He called the Dog House, and asked for a sit-down with Jerry Angiulo.

Dido Vaccari had already stopped by 98 Prince Street to tell Jerry's brother Danny Angiulo what Barboza had told him about the Deegan hit. If necessary, Dido was ready to take the witness stand to impeach Barboza's testimony. Now it was Johnny's turn to lay it all out to the underboss. Johnny said he was also willing to testify if it came to that, to recount under oath what Barboza had told him about the murder itself, and his plans to commit perjury.

For once, Jerry Angiulo was polite, gracious. It's a generous offer, he told Johnny, but it's not necessary. It's all bullshit. Everybody knows it's bullshit. Why, Louie Grieco was in Florida when Deegan got hit, and he can prove it. Plus he's a World War II hero—decorated veteran, combat, European theater. As for Joe the Horse, he owed Barboza a couple of hundred bucks, and when Barboza was in the can and sent somebody over to get the dough, the Horse told Barboza's guy to go fuck himself. If the Horse had just ponied up fifty bucks, Jerry went on, he wouldn't be in this jam, but what are you gonna do now? Plus, Barboza's admitted killing like twenty-six people. Who's gonna believe him?

As he left 98 Prince Street, Johnny was reassured. No way a jury would ever believe Barboza, right?

*   *   *

THE MAFIA,
though, was a lot more worried than Jerry Angiulo was letting on. They put out a $300,000 contract on Barboza. And then they decided to whack Barboza's new lawyer, John Fitzgerald.

He was the son of a minister, with five children, but despite the squeaky-clean image he acquired later, Fitzgerald was in fact a rather shady character, even by the standards of mob lawyers. He was running around with a gangland groupie, and he had taken over the payments on Joe Barboza's gold Oldsmobile. Earlier he had represented Georgie McLaughlin—enough in itself to make him persona non grata with much of Boston's underworld. Now he was Joe Barboza's mouthpiece.

Stevie Flemmi and Frank Salemme drew the assignment from their new Mafia friends at the Bat Cove: hit Fitzgerald. But first Stevie needed to handle one more pressing piece of personal business in Roxbury: clipping the last of the Bennett brothers, Billy.

On December 22, 1967, after speaking to Flemmi, Rico filed this report:

STEVIE FLEMMI indicated that they are going to have to do something about Wimpy Bennett's brother … as he has accused them of being responsible for the murder of his brothers and he has indicated that he is going to kill him.