Hitman (7 page)

Roxbury and the South End were controlled by Edward “Wimpy” Bennett, a treacherous old-time Irish thug who had been a B-29 tailgunner during World War II. His nickname came from the hamburgers that he was always munching on at the White Castle on Tremont Street. All through the fifties, he had been linked to the famous Brinks robbery of 1950. Bennett's only vanity was a wig; whenever he appeared in court or had to have his mug shot taken, he tried to make sure he didn't have to remove his fedora—or his rug.

Buddy McLean, the first boss of what became the Winter Hill Gang.

Wimpy Bennett was amazing. Behind his back, everyone called him “the fox.” He always talked with his hand to his mouth, even when he was inside, so that nobody could read his lips. He said he learned it in prison. Then he would hire lip readers to hang around other wiseguys he was lining up, so he'd know what they were talking about. He was continually looking for an edge. I always wanted to stay on Wimpy's good side, so he wouldn't be talking behind my back. That's probably how Stevie learned how to be so devious, from working for Wimpy. Wimpy got along great with Patriarca, always called him “George” for some reason I never found out. Everybody figured he was the spy for “George” in Boston, which was one reason In Town hated him so much.

Edward “Wimpy” Bennett, the Roxbury gangster, who brought the Flemmi brothers into the rackets.

After Jerry Angiulo, Wimpy the Fox probably had more money than anybody else in Boston—he had a piece of everything in Roxbury. But he always dressed like a laborer off Dudley Street, which is what he'd been before he got into the rackets. He smoked these really cheap cigars—White Owls or something. And he was a compulsive thief; he wouldn't pay for anything. He had overalls specially made—“booster clothes”—so he could go into a store and shoplift. Sometimes I'd be there in his garage when he'd be changing into his booster clothes, and he would literally take a roll of maybe 10,000 bucks out of his pocket before he went shoplifting. He'd look at me like he knew what I was thinking, which was how crazy is this, a guy with that kind of dough shoplifting, a kleptomaniac basically. And he'd say to me, “No way am I ever gonna pay for hamburger, or razor blades, or whatever.” That was Wimpy.

In the late 1950s, Wimpy recruited a couple of young brothers from Roxbury. Vincent Flemmi, born in 1932, was better known as Jimmy the Bear. His brother Stevie, born in 1934, had drifted into the underworld after returning from two tours of duty in the Korean War. On his first eight-man combat patrol, his unit ran into a company of Chinese regulars, and Stevie had killed five of the enemy, hence his subsequent nickname, the Rifleman. In the early 1960s, one of the Mafia guys from Revere was quoted in an FBI report as describing the Flemmis as “a couple of bad kids”—an understatement, as it turned out.

Vincent “Jimmy the Bear” Flemmi at age 24.

Stevie Flemmi at age 23, about to be booked, 1957.

Johnny Martorano got to know the Bear in the early '60s, before he ran into Stevie. Jimmy had just finished a stretch in prison for the 1957 robbery of a credit union at South Station. The Bear's life was always tumultuous, even when he was in prison, where he ended up spending more than half his adult life. While doing time at MCI-Walpole prison in 1961, the Bear was charged with stabbing another inmate to death. But the Bear beat that charge when several potential witnesses—his fellow prisoners—refused to testify against him. That would be a recurring pattern for the rest of his life.

Meeting Jimmy Flemmi was my downfall. I never had done anything really serious until I met the Bear. I mean, I killed people later on, but I always needed a reason, unlike those other guys I was hooked up with. Jimmy chopped people's heads off. Then there was Barboza—they didn't call him “the Animal” for nothing. As for Stevie—I never killed any of my girlfriends, or my daughter. And Whitey, well, this was a guy who killed Stevie's girlfriend and daughter—for kicks. I know I was with them, but please, don't ever put me in the same category with any of those guys.

South Boston was a bit off the gangland radar screen, with its “organized” crime being more than somewhat disorganized. When they weren't getting picked up for “DK”—public drunkenness—Southie hoods often made their living “tailgating”: stealing cargo off the backs of trucks, with an occasional hijacking thrown in. The top guys in “the Town,” as Southie was known, were the Killeen brothers. They ran their small-time numbers and loansharking rackets out of a barroom in the Lower End, the Transit Café.

Charles “King” Solomon, a major Prohibition-era gangster, relaxing at the Cotton Club in 1932.

There were smaller crews in Boston as well. Harry “Doc Jasper” Sagansky was a Tufts-educated dentist born in 1898. He handled layoff bets for all the city's numbers operations, from Angiulo on down. During a police raid in Charlestown in 1943, “Doc Jasper” was found in possession of a life insurance policy he'd taken out on Mayor Curley—the only way Doc could be sure of being repaid what the “Purple Shamrock” had borrowed from him. Sagansky still backed various gambling rackets, paying short money to the Angiulos for protection.

Until his fatal heart attack in 1963, an old-time Jewish mobster named Louis Fox—LF—controlled Revere, a notoriously corrupt city north of Boston. Revere was the home of Arthur's Farm, a sprawling warehouse-type store where stolen merchandise was openly fenced to anyone with cash, including some of Boston's top professional athletes. The owner of Arthur's Farm was Arthur Ventola, and he eventually became so notorious that he and his well-heeled clientele were written up in a
Life
magazine cover story. As for LF, he'd been around since Prohibition, when he was a lieutenant to the famous bootlegger Charles “King” Solomon. In the early '60s, LF controlled the illegal slot machines along Revere Beach and Shirley Avenue. Like Dan Carroll and Phil Buccola before him, LF was always respectfully referred to in the Boston papers as a “prominent local sportsman.”

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IN 1961,
Boston was running wide-open. But on Labor Day weekend that year in Salisbury Beach, everything changed. Georgie McLaughlin, the youngest of the three Charlestown brothers, was drunk as usual, so loaded that he tried to pick up the girlfriend of a Somerville guy connected to Buddy McLean. Georgie wouldn't take no for an answer, so the Somerville guys finally beat him senseless, dumping him unconscious on the lawn in front of a local hospital.

Bernie McLaughlin, the Charlestown boss, demanded that Buddy hand over the men who'd beaten his brother. McLean refused, saying Georgie had been way out of line. In retaliation, the McLaughlins tried to wire explosives under one of McLean's cars, the one that his wife used to drive the family's young children to school. McLean was irate at such a breach of gangland protocol. A few days later, as Bernie McLaughlin was making his daily collections at high noon in City Square in Charlestown, Buddy McLean calmly walked up behind him on the sidewalk outside the Morning Glory Cafe. Buddy McLean shot Bernie McLaughlin at point-blank range in the back of the head, in front of dozens of witnesses, none of whom saw a thing.

Georgie McLaughlin, the youngest of the Charlestown brothers, in police custody in the 1950s.

An off-duty Metropolitan District Commission (MDC) police officer drove the getaway car for Buddy. The war was on.

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AT FIRST,
In Town loved the bloodshed. For one thing, it was the Irish, and their non-LCN allies, many of whom happened to be Italians, killing each other. The ongoing mayhem also gave the Mafia carte blanche to handle their own internal problems, knowing that every organized-crime hit would now be written off in the newspapers as part of the so-called Irish Gang War.