The security team kept in contact by walkie-talkie. They were using a radio frequency reserved for special intelligence operations. Joe thought it was unlikely an assassination squad would be able to monitor the frequency. It was unknown even to the city’s aggressive press photographers who regularly monitored police activity.
As they pulled up to the Pierre’s Fifth Avenue entrance, detectives were already waiting with room keys, and the staff quickly took the small amount of baggage from the Cadillac’s trunk. It was a procession rarely seen in the staid hotel. The hotel doormen in their French gendarme costumes stood staring at the gold Cadillac with the leopard-skin roof.
Frazier wore a fur coat, a big floppy hat, and gray tweed knickers, which were a style of the day but probably never before seen in the deep-carpeted, gold-trimmed lobby of the Pierre, where a black guest was a rare enough sight in 1971. The fighter carried his ever-present guitar case, as did Perlman and the four white men in dark business suits who surrounded the Frazier party. The only difference was that Frazier and Perlman actually had guitars in their cases, whereas the white detectives were carrying shotguns in theirs.
The atmosphere of subdued elegance in the Pierre’s lobby began to change as word spread that Frazier had arrived at the hotel. Coffey did not want a scene. Up to now he was satisfied that the Pierre ploy was working, and he did not want to risk word leaking to the street that the fighter was there. So he ushered his group rudely through the lobby and into an elevator, while the Pierre management took care of registration at the front desk.
The hotel’s management was totally cooperative, although Coffey sensed they wished he had picked another hotel. Within five minutes Frazier was in a suite on the twelfth floor, which had been virtually given over to the fight entourage.
Before Frazier could sit down, Mullins and Trapani went over the two-bedroom suite. They checked for bugs under pillows, behind the toilets, in the curtains, and of course on the telephone itself. They made sure that the window shades and curtains were drawn and that all the locks in the room worked. Only then did they proclaim the room. “clean.”
Coffey was about to have his first real conversation with Frazier since picking him up at the Lincoln Tunnel, when Durham walked in complaining about the “goddamn whorehouse these jerk-off New York cops picked to stick us in.” Durham and the other men who lived and worked with Frazier were rough-and-tumble characters who had risen from meager backgrounds to earn fame and fortune in the blood-spilling world of prize fighting. They did not usually choose hotels that filled their rooms with magnificent displays of freshly cut flowers.
Durham thought the atmosphere would soften his fighter’s hard edge. For his part Frazier said that the lilac scent was hurting his nose. “This place smells like a fucking whorehouse. Get these flowers and shit out of here,” Durham barked at Coffey. Quickly the hotel bellboy and the shotgun-toting detectives were carrying vases of flowers into the hallway for disposal.
There was no doubt Durham would get what he wanted. The fight promoters were picking up the entire tab for the Pierre and other expenses related to the security. No expense was spared to keep Frazier comfortable. Over the next four days Coffey would see an almost nonstop supply of room service steaks and drinks flow into the room.
To Coffey, Mullins, and the other detectives, whose salaries at the time were less than $15,000 a year, the experience provided an intimate look into the lifestyle of the wealthy. Coffey, who at the time worked weekends for $50 a day as a waiter and bartender for a Long Island caterer, related more to the room service waiters bringing the food in than to the fight crowd eating it. The cops bemoaned the fact that Durham had gone through official channels to ask Coffey for security help. If one of the cops had been approached unofficially, they could have “moonlighted” the security detail. That is, they could have done it while off duty, charging as much as $500 a day each for their highly skilled services. “Make sure Durham has your home phone number the next time he needs help,” the cops kidded Joe.
By early Saturday evening everyone had settled in, and Frazier had changed from his furs and knickers into a rubberized sweat suit. He asked Coffey where he could go to run a few laps, just to work out some of the tension. Coffey pointed to the suite’s living room. “I do not want you leaving this room until the weigh-in tomorrow,” Coffey told the heavyweight. A tense silence fell over the room. This was the first security demand that might affect not only the boxer’s physical well-being but also, more important at this time in the training schedule, his mental attitude.
“I knew the order to stay in the room did not sit well with Frazier, and I saw Durham bite harder into his cigar, but neither man complained. Frazier went into the living room and started running in place,” Coffey remembers. “I had feared this moment and now it passed without incident. I was beginning to gain a great deal of respect for Joe Frazier.”
That evening, Coffey and Frazier sat together watching television, and a lifelong friendship was born. Muhammad Ali was being interviewed on every sports report and his “spiel” included denouncing Frazier as an “Uncle Tom” and “white man’s slave.” He promised to destroy Frazier in the ring. While in later years it would be realized that Ali was a showman, saying what he thought he needed to say to build interest in his fights, in March 1971 much of white America looked on him as a violent revolutionary and the Muslims as a group determined to subvert society.
Coffey had been on investigations into black revolutionary groups and had testified in court against the Black Panthers. He had also learned a lot about the Black Muslim movement in America. He knew Ali’s Muslim beliefs were antiviolence and were rooted in deep moral convictions. He knew Muslims did a lot of work in their own communities to combat drug use and prostitution. But he was still amazed about how senselessly virulent Ali could appear in public, and he carefully watched Frazier’s reactions.
“If I had had any money to bet, I would have bet it all on Frazier. He was the underdog even though he was champion, but as we watched television or read newspaper stories about the fight, I saw his determination to win build. I thought to myself, ‘This man is not going to allow himself to lose.’”
Into the night, the detective and the heavyweight contender talked about their families and religion, with Frazier constantly getting out of his chair to stretch or run in place. Several times during the evening, he spoke on the telephone to his wife and five children back in Philadelphia.
Sunday morning the security team woke to the throbbing of loud rock music as Frazier did his “road work” in the suite’s living room, and various sparring partners and hangers-on began showing up for breakfast. Joe was staying in an adjoining suite, and his first duty for the morning was to relieve the cops who had patrolled the corridor and outside the hotel all night. Next he called over to the Stein-Forlano wiretap room where several detectives were doing double duty in order to spring enough help for the Frazier detail. Everything was going well; the wiretap team informed Joe that Stein was betting heavily on Ali. “If Ruby could see the determination I’ve been seeing in Frazier, he’d lay off some of that action,” Coffey told his wiretap man.
When he got to the suite, Coffey found an agitated Yank Durham. “Joe, The New York Times is on to our problem,” Durham shouted.
A Times sports columnist had picked up on the fact that Frazier was not at the City Squire Hotel. He connected it to some rumors about the Muslims threatening Frazier and to the old story about Sonny Liston’s dive. He was now pursuing a story that Frazier was in hiding because his life was in danger.
Durham’s main concern about the story was that it would disrupt Frazier’s concentration. Coffey, by now, felt very close to the boxer and did not share Durham’s concern. But to ease the manager’s anxiety, he took Frazier aside and explained that deep down his detective unit did not think an attack was a real possibility. Instead a decision had been made to provide a high level of security and they were going to stick with it. “I told hi
m to concentrate on his job and that I would concentrate on mine, and that would insure a positive outcome for both of us,” Coffey remembers. “Of course if I screwed up my job, ‘Smokin’ Joe’ would never get a chance to do his.”
After his talk with Frazier, Coffey and Mullins and Durham went to Madison Square Garden to meet with Aquafreda, Coffey’s NYPD supervisors, and the uniform brass who would be controlling the overall security operation the night of the fight. It was decided that 280 New York City cops would be assigned to the Garden to augment the sports facility’s own 240-person private security force. Aquafreda also agreed to employ for the night 150 off-duty NYPD detectives who would be placed undercover throughout the enormous arena. Coffey’s team of twelve detectives would be joined by seven of Aquafreda’s best men, once they entered the Garden. The New York Times and the rest of the media would be told that all the extra police presence was due to the discovery of a rash of counterfeit $150 tickets.
Following the meeting, evidence turned up for the first time that an assassin might indeed be stalking Joe Frazier. As they drove away from the Garden’s 33rd Street entrance, Mullins noticed a green 1970 Plymouth pull out behind them. As he turned north on Eighth Avenue, the Plymouth also turned and seemed to get in the lane directly behind them. Mullins alerted Coffey to his suspicion. For a few blocks Coffey watched the Plymouth follow them up Eighth Avenue. As they approached 42nd Street, Coffey ordered Mullins to turn left and head west, away from the direction of the Pierre. The Plymouth stayed with them. The Plymouth was close enough for Coffey to spot two white men in the front seat. “Head for the tunnel and lose these guys,” Coffey ordered Mullins.
Coffey and Mullins had both been taught the art of tailing and shaking a tail by two legendary NYPD wheelmen, Tony Procino and John O’Donnell. Mullins was as good at that particular game as Joe Frazier was at his. He knew he needed to accomplish two things. First, he had to make the men tailing him believe he did not know he was being followed and was headed in a direction that would lead the assassin to the target. Second, as their confidence grew that they had accomplished a successful tail, Mullins had to give them the slip. When he made his move he had to leave them in the dust with no ability to regain their tail.
Mullins headed for the Lincoln Tunnel at seventy miles per hour. The tail remained two cars behind the detectives’ undercover car as Mullins approached the tunnel entrance. Then just as he was about to go underground, Mullins swung his car around, knocking over dozens of orange rubber traffic cones. Mullins completed a U-turn and with tires squealing was once again headed east away from the tunnel. The tail, caught totally by surprise, was forced to continue on to New Jersey. The key to a clean escape would depend on whether or not the tail had a second or even third car sweeping the front and rear of Coffey’s car. So Mullins still did not head directly back to the Pierre. First, he turned south back toward the Garden, then west again, and finally, after Coffey was certain there were no sweep cars still on their tail, returned to the Pierre.
Throughout the incident, Durham sat in the back of the car biting through his ever-present cigar. He was becoming a nervous wreck. Coffey suggested to him that he should not let Frazier see him that way. Durham followed Coffey’s advice and stopped for a drink before returning to the hotel.
Coffey entered the suite with a heightened concern for Frazier. By this time he had come to like the fighter very much. The entire security team had fallen for the man’s quiet charm and were feeling even more protective because they all felt like they were helping a friend.
Having a black friend was a new experience for most of these cops. Like Coffey they had all come from white, middle-class backgrounds, from white urban neighborhoods where blacks were looked upon as threats to law-abiding, clean-living citizens. Though they may not have had any more money or education than the blacks in the ghetto neighborhoods, they were brought up feeling superior to and auspicious of blacks.
When they joined the Police Department in the 1950s and 1960s, they found relatively few blacks on the force. Few blacks were assigned to the prestige units like the DA’s squad, and they were rarely teamed with white partners. The general attitude among the police force was that blacks were the enemy of a lawful society. Most cops were rooting for Joe Frazier because they were frightened by Ali when he hooted that Frazier was an “Uncle Tom.” Ali and his rigid Muslims, cops believed, were a threat to white America.
Joe Coffey was a product of that system, and his work against the violent Black Panthers had served to reinforce many of those ingrained feelings. He once was described as a “fascist” by a reporter because after a raid on a Black Panthers headquarters, Coffey ordered poster of Che Guevara taken off the walls. But he remembers beginning to doubt, for the first time, his willingness to follow the company line.
“We were so impressed with Frazier as a man that we forgot what color he was. His professionalism and his regard for his family gave us a look at a black man that we normally did not have the opportunity to see. Protecting Joe Frazier made a better man out of me, and I know it had the same effect on several other members of the security force,” Coffey says.
Coffey low-keyed the car incident. He thought the two white men who followed them were probably reporters but decided to use his beat-up 1963 Oldsmobile for any further trips away from the Pierre.
There was a lot of eating and drinking in the Frazier suite that day. Detectives from the Stein-Forlano wiretap stopped over, and higher-ranking officers from headquarters came in to meet Frazier and have a drink. “In the DA’s squad we loved assignments when the food and booze flowed. Durham was picking up the tab and money was no object. The joke about our squad back then was that we only drank on duty,” Coffey says.
Saturday night a story in the Times pretty much nailed the death threat angle. While it did not mention where Frazier was holed up, it indicated he was being kept under heavy guard. Joe knew the Times reporter and decided to call him to find out how much was really known.
Coffey had maintained a sophisticated relationship with the press in New York. He knew that by calling the reporter he would confirm the story, but he also understood he would be giving the reporter enough to do his follow-up story with out causing any kind of pressure that might hinder the security setup.
Sunday morning, Vitrano was on the phone with Coffey before Frazier was even awake. There had been more threats. A local radio station received an anonymous call threatening that Frazier would be dead an hour before fight time. The Garden was getting bomb threats. Vitrano sent more detectives up to Coffey’s suite.
A little after ten that morning, two limousines arrived at the Pierre to take the Frazier group downtown to Madison Square Garden for the weigh-in. Surrounded by detectives prepared to put themselves between him and an assassin, Frazier left the hotel for the first time in two days. The limos drove right into the arena, stopping about 100 feet from the weigh-in scales.
Now the champ and his opponent were surrounded by people: New York State Boxing Commission officials, the entourages from both fight camps, and of course the press. Coffey’s men stood in a circle around their fighter except for the moments he was on the scale and getting his blood pressure and other cursory physical checks.
When they returned to the hotel, Frazier slept while the cops played cards and drank much of the scotch that seemed in endless supply.
Monday, fight day, tension grew among Coffey and his men. The assassins were running out of time to strike. The detectives spent the day pacing the room and drinking coffee, Frazier remained the calmest in the group. At 7:30 P.M., with three hours to go before round one, the Frazier group left the hotel and drove directly into Madison Square Garden. By this time the arena was crawling with uniformed cops and detectives, including more from Hogan’s office and off-duty detectives from dozens of different NYPD units.
Detective Toby Fennell, Frank Hogan’s personal bodyguard, was assigned to conduct a security sweep of Frazier’s dressing room. Inch by in
ch he went over the room, which contained only two lockers and the training table. He was bothered by the fact that the two water bottles Frazier would use in the ring were already filled, three hours before the fight. Fennell dumped the contents into the sink, washed the bottles and personally refilled them. He kept them in his own hands until moments before the opening bell.
After Fennell pronounced the room safe, Coffey ordered all the cops to stand by the door while Frazier changed into his working clothes. “I could not believe it. We were as nervous as could be, but after he put on his boxing trunks and shoes, Frazier actually took a nap. He was the coolest man I ever met.”
Later a fight commission doctor came into the dressing room to give Frazier a short prefight physical. The doctor turned out to be a bigger threat to the fight than the assassins in the shadows. Frazier had always suffered from high blood pressure, but that evening it was going through the roof.
“We were in the dressing room and the doctor was telling Durham that his man’s blood pressure was way too high to allow him to fight. Frazier was sitting on the training table staring straight ahead, as intense as he had been the past four days. Durham bit on his cigar, then motioned the doctor into the shower area,” Coffey remembers. “In less than a minute they came out with big smiles on their faces and the doctor told Frazier he would approve the medical forms. Behind closed doors Durham convinced him to do the right thing.”
At 9:30 P.M. Durham told the fighter to finish dressing. In minutes Coffey and the others would have to lead him through the screaming crowd, down to the ring. Coffey remembers discussing the murder of Lee Harvey Oswald with the security team. “I wanted to remind them of how easily a gunman could slip through a crowd. If anything went wrong, even if something was thrown at us, I was prepared to cancel the fight—to tell the Garden to have them fight in the dressing room and I, Detective Third Grade Joe Coffey, would tell the world who won.”
The Coffey Files Page 13
