The Underboss

by Dick Lehr

  Over his two-way radio, Quinn told Morris that the break-in had come off cleanly. Morris stiffened in his car cruising around the parameters of the North End. He ordered the second team of agents, the techies, to stand by.

  Neither he nor Quinn thought they were home free. They’d overcome one hurdle, making it inside, only to face another. The next ten minutes would be the most tense. Had someone seen the three agents enter and notified one of the Angiulo soldiers living in the neighborhood? Had a silent alarm sounded? If someone came running down the street, this was when Gianturco would quickly notify Morris. Morris and all the other agents would then descend upon the office. Quinn could only hope they would intercept the runner before he reached them. Morris had all routes to the office covered, and his theory was to overwhelm any unwanted visitor with FBI bodies, using surprise and, if necessary, firepower. No one was to reach 98 Prince Street.

  Inside, even the irrepressible Richard let the ten minutes pass in silence. It didn’t take long for them to begin sweating in the overheated and stale apartment air. But nothing stirred and no alarms went off, something Quinn and the other veteran agents of the organized crime squad would later shake their heads about back at the office. The Angiulos had foolishly relied exclusively on their neighborhood network to protect their domain. It was part of the hubris that would bring them all down in the end.

  From his van, Rafferty told Morris the street remained quiet. Rafferty’s voice was actually changing, Morris thought, thinning in the subfreezing chill. Morris signaled the second group.

  Unlike the Quinn team, this trio—all electronics specialists-hustled down Snow Hill Street, sending rats scurrying for cover. The agents lugged satchels of equipment. This was the most nervous Morris had ever felt. There was no attempt to play partygoers with the techies. They were dressed in their work clothes, carrying heavy equipment. They clearly did not belong in the North End, but rather resembled three paratroopers who’d hit the ground running. If they were spotted on Prince Street, Morris thought, that would have been it—the mission would be a guaranteed wash.

  Quinn met them at the outer door and ushered them into the apartment. With six now inside, the tiny office was suddenly overcrowded. Everyone stood still for at least another five minutes. Nobody talked. They listened, but heard nothing, except for one another breathing. The FBI radios crackled in their earplug receivers with reports that the street remained empty.

  In their car, Morris and Kennedy slapped one another on the back. Kennedy was ecstatic he was proved wrong—no one was inside the office. Morris was elated. After their third failure, he had privately begun to worry the break-in was doomed. Snags were to be expected, but three misses? And he, along with veterans like Kennedy, knew the stakes—if the Angiulos caught them breaking into their headquarters it would knock the FBI out of the box for the next ten years. Their gloating target, Jerry Angiulo, would construct a new maze of defense measures that would take agents years to decipher.

  But now, on a day when the rest of the city and country was preoccupied with the pending release of fifty-two Americans who’d been held hostage in Iran for 444 days, and when Ronald Reagan was just hours away from assuming the presidency, Morris had six agents in the geographical center of the Angiulo operation, a place few people, never mind federal agents, had ever seen before.

  Inside, Quinn motioned each agent to an area of the apartment. Using penlights, they inspected their turf. When they were done they had to leave the room as they’d found it.

  Looking around, Richard was disappointed. She had expected elegant touches from the mob leader. These guys had so much money, she figured they’d use some of it to make their workplace comfortable. But this was pure tacky—worn, crummy-looking white vinyl chairs; beat-up unpadded carpeting; walls covered with cheap panels of fake wood and dotted with Mediterranean prints that looked like $10.99 specials from a flea market. The only impressive feature was the huge stove in the kitchen, the commercial model found in restaurants, with its four burners and double ovens.

  The bugging specialists unloaded their satchels and went to work. They kept their flashlights under a black cloth to avoid the possibility of someone outside spotting a flash of light. Quinn and Richard stayed in constant contact with Morris and watched as the installers scanned the seam between the ceiling and wall to find spots to implant two tiny microphones. So he could reach the ceiling comfortably, one of the agents grabbed a ladder he’d found leaning against the wall. It became an inside joke at the FBI: To install the bugs they’d used a ladder the Angiulos had thoughtfully left behind.

  Richard decided to sit in one of the vinyl chairs. “What happens if we have to use the bathroom?” she whispered. “Do we flush the toilet or just leave it?” The others snickered. There were jokes about cooking up a feast on the Angiulo stove.

  The work went in spurts. They were careful to stay away from the front windows, knowing that if they got too close someone outside could see their silhouettes, even though the window shades were drawn. But every ten minutes or so word came across the FBI radios to stop—someone was approaching on foot. Or a car was driving down Prince Street toward them.

  Quinn and the others would duck and freeze. Each time their hearts pumped faster, worrying that someone would enter 98 Prince, or the car would pull up out front. Each time Morris held his breath, wondering if their cover was blown and he’d have to send for the dozen agents roaming the neighborhood’s boundaries on foot or in cars, to rescue them.

  The agonizing waiting game was easier when the alert was prompted by an approaching car; it would pass quickly. But the passers-by on foot seemed to take forever to make their way down Prince Street. To deal with some of the late-night pedestrians, Morris sent Regii up Prince Street several times, usually when the unknown person appeared from the direction of Salem Street, the area popular with Angiulo soldiers. Regii did his thing, casually checking to see if the person was Mafia.

  But each time proved to be a false alarm. The agents resumed placing two bugs about fifteen feet apart, one up front near the television and the other halfway down the room, close to a large table where the Angiulos ate. Based on their informant intelligence, they were hiding the mikes as closely as possible to where Jerry Angiulo usually held forth.

  In the near darkness, Quinn didn’t see the wrench when it fell from the hand of the agent standing on the ladder. But he heard the tool when it hit the floor. Several agents swore. Quinn’s body tensed. Oh my God, he thought, if anybody was in the building he or she would have heard that ringing noise. Even taking into account that his senses were magnified in the situation, Quinn was convinced the office was like an echo chamber and the noise had awakened the entire street.

  No one moved. The agents waited a few minutes, but nothing stirred.

  Resuming work, the installers strung wires from the microphones to power cells the size of fireplace logs. In this case, there would not be any hookup to a telephone or electrical line, not after the Angiulos caught wind of their past attempts to use the two utility companies to supply power for a bug and camera. The risk of having to reenter the apartment every thirty days to install new power units was determined to be lower than the risk of a leak from outsiders.

  To make an opening, the installers pushed aside several of the tiles that formed the dropped ceiling. Quinn and Richard watched as they carefully placed the huge power units on parts of the framing that supported the tiles. They made sure the heavy units were safely in place. The concern was that the ceiling might collapse under the weight, with the units crashing down into Angiulo’s lap.

  The installers then began stuffing mounds of insulation around the power units. Quinn couldn’t see everything the men pulled from the satchel to conceal the batteries, but installers were known to bring along rat turds to scatter around a secret installation. The idea was to make it as difficult and unpleasant as possible for anyone to find the three power packs.

  “How much longer?” Morris asked Quinn ov
er the radio.

  The installation was actually going smoothly. They’d gotten the bugs in place in about an hour. To test them, Quinn and the installers began talking in low tones. Richard listened from her seat; if she had been doing the talking, she probably would have pulled a Neil Armstrong: “This is one small step for the FBI,” something like that. But Quinn was all business: “Testing, one, two, three. Testing, one, two, three.”

  It was a system with several parts. The transmitter in the ceiling would scramble the agents’ words and send the signal to a booster located five blocks away atop a North Washington Street building. They used a scrambled signal to safeguard against people in the neighborhood bumping into the bugged conversations on their own scanners.

  The booster then sent the signal across Boston Harbor to a monitoring site in Charlestown equipped with tape recorders. By the time the signal reached the agents stationed in Charlestown, it was unscrambled and understandable.

  On his radio, Quinn contacted agent Joe Kelly, who was at the Charlestown apartment listening to the bugs through earphones. Kelly quickly radioed Quinn the good news: He could hear their chatter. More successful tests were conducted. But suddenly the transmission failed. One microphone worked, but the second didn’t. The installers began poking around. They cursed the equipment. The microphones were top quality, but the supporting equipment was older. This was one of the prices they’d paid for staying inside the agency. They’d had to take what was available off the FBI shelves in Washington.

  “How much longer?” Morris asked for at least the tenth time.

  Quinn and the others had been in there for more than ninety minutes and still the system was down. Morris was worried. Quinn had gained entry at 2:00 A.M. They’d all hoped the installers would be out by 3:30, or 4:00 at the latest. Hitting a snag, Quinn and Morris kept postponing the last possible departure time.

  “How much longer?” Morris asked again over the radio.

  “Give us thirty more,” Quinn said. He couldn’t imagine getting this far and then having to leave without a working bug.

  They moved their deadline to 4:00 A.M., then to 4:30.

  Richard could see that the installers were acting more and more nervous. She couldn’t believe the equipment foul-ups or understand how they ended up with this stuff, given the amount of money the agency had to work with. “When the hell is daylight?” one of the agents asked rhetorically over the radio. Morris ordered someone to find out. An agent drove to a pay phone and dialed the weather service number. Daylight, he reported back to Morris, was at 7:08, but already Morris could detect a lightening in the sky. He also knew that activity on Prince Street began even before 5:00 A.M. People left home to go to their jobs in hotels and factories. The bakery on the corner of Salem Street had already opened. A few trucks had even made some deliveries to North End restaurants and stores. Quinn had to be out of there soon—or all was lost.

  In their van, the semifrozen Gianturco and Rafferty kept track of both the increasing light and foot traffic.

  Inside, the agents, especially Quinn and Richard in their bulletproof vests, were soaked in sweat. Where’s James Bond when you need him? Debbie Richard thought to herself. But she made no more jokes. Nerves were frayed. Richard was hungry and actually did have to go to the bathroom. She worried that they had gotten so close and now the bugs were never going to work properly.

  “Let’s get this equipment going and get out of here,” she said aloud.

  “How much longer?” Morris asked yet again. He turned to Kennedy, “My God, are they ever going to get this to work?”

  Quinn held on. Suddenly Kelly was on the radio reporting that the bugs were up: Both worked.

  There was a rush of elation and relief, a kind of soothing electricity that flashed around the darkened office. The agents began their housecleaning assignments, sweeping up any material that fell from the ceiling and making sure they left every item in the office just as they found it. They remained another ten minutes to make sure the connection stuck and nothing was amiss in the room. The installers packed up their tools and put the ladder back where they’d found it.

  Quinn asked for clearance. Morris gave him the go-ahead. The three installers left first. They turned left and hustled down Thatcher to a car waiting for them at North Washington Street. The locksmith, Richard, and Quinn left the apartment. Quinn took a last look behind him. Everything appeared to be in place.

  It was 5:00 A.M. The city sky was brighter than Quinn had expected. He could smell the bread in the ovens of the bakery up the block. He and the others made their way past the lookout van, hurried down Prince Street, and climbed into Morris’s car, parked on Commercial Street.

  Morris reached back and shook Quinn’s hand firmly. There was quiet jubilation—victory grins, but not much talk.

  “We’ll find out in the morning,” Quinn said laconically. The FBI would be listening when Frank Angiulo opened up at nine.

  8

  Inside 98 Prince Street

  When the bug was first planted it was a handful of weary-eyed agents who gathered the morning after the installation to find out whether their predawn mission had achieved what had always seemed so impossible—getting the Angiulos where they lived.

  Ed Quinn, sleepless, had remained guarded, even after leading Debbie Richard and the others safely out of 98 Prince Street with the morning light brooding over the neighborhood. Still in his mind was the possibility that somebody had watched them from a window the whole time they were inside. There was the chance that the mobsters, upon entering their domain, would begin singing nursery rhymes. Or someone might start praising J. Edgar Hoover as the second coming of Christ. Or there would be this loud, back-slapping talk about how wonderful the Angiulo family was for all the charitable contributions they made to the church.

  This was Quinn’s fear. It wouldn’t be the first time mobsters had talked nonsense into a bug to signal the monitoring agents that what was supposed to be the FBI’s secret had become the Mafia’s morning laugh. So, when his agents, eavesdropping inside a cramped apartment in Charlestown, reported, “We have a go,” Quinn experienced his most rewarding moment during three years of fretting, planning, and setbacks.

  Morris, too, breathed a sigh of relief. Right up until the moment Frank Angiulo arrived to open the shop at nine o’clock, the crew of FBI agents had continued to go about their business in a very mechanical way. There was still so much to do, particularly at the monitoring site. It was like an operating room, Morris thought. Not a lot of emotion because of all the work remaining to complete the surgery. But once Frankie Angiulo arrived and began talking with a visitor about bookmaking accounts, it was as if the surgical team had closed up the patient, knowing he would survive.

  Word spread quickly among the crew. This was the heartbeat of La Cosa Nostra in Boston, they realized, and they were right where they should be. But the satisfaction of not having been made was quickly overcome by another concern. As Pete Kennedy listened to Frank’s first words, his heart sank. Sure, you could catch Frankie Angiulo talking, but it wasn’t easy. Frankie’s voice was competing with an obfuscating din caused by the police scanner, the radio, and the television he’d switched on. Kennedy was not alone in his dismay. Tom Donlan, listening to Frankie’s conversation, thought, I’ll never learn those voices. I don’t know what the hell they’re saying.

  The clash of sounds became a major concern to Morris and Quinn. For use in any courtroom, they had to capture the words clearly. Maybe they would have to break back into the office to wreck the radio? But Jerry Angiulo would only get a new one. Technical agents went to work figuring out ways to separate the conversation from the other noise in order to enhance the mob talk. But eventually the static proved not to be as bad a problem as it first seemed. In the end, the agents just got used to the background noise and grew accustomed to the halting dialogue, the half-sentences, the mangled syntax, and the sudden shifts in thoughts that came from Jerry Angiulo and his men. Besides, An
giulo tended to shout, not talk, making his voice easier for monitoring agents to follow.

  For the next 105 days of secret surveillance, agents got heavy doses of Boston’s leading Mafia family. There was their daily bookmaking, gambling, and loan-shark businesses to care for; talk of murders to commit, one as a favor to a New York family; and Jerry’s growing preoccupation with the feds and his constant concern about the threat of the powerful RICO law.

  Leading the chorus throughout was Jerry Angiulo, the tireless braggart who often indulged in a politician’s penchant for dropping names and defining turf. He couldn’t hold his tongue. Much later, Quinn remembered that during the break-in of the Mafia office he’d noticed a motto posted above a desk that Jerry Angiulo was going to wish he’d followed. “It is better to remain quiet and be thought a fool, than to speak and remove all doubt.”

  “WHAT THE FUCK is this?” Jerry Angiulo complained to Larry Zannino, his second-in-command, one night when the two were going over the card game Zannino managed. Angiulo was angry about the other owners being slow to cough up their stake to sponsor the game, a shortfall Angiulo was not about to make up himself. “Remember, I didn’t give anybody anything out of the goodness of my fuckin’ heart.”

  It was a line from the Book of Angiulo, part of a rubric reflecting Angiulo’s basic belief: Everybody owed him something because he owned a piece of everybody. The sermons included Angiulo’s bloodless view on the loyalty due the people who carried out his enterprises. Following a gambling raid, he once told Zannino and two of his brothers, “We find that one of these individuals that we use becomes intolerable, we kill the fuckin’ motherfucker and that’s the end. We’ll go find another one.”

  The bugged conversations also confirmed what the FBI had always suspected. Angiulo had legions of lookouts. Frequently, Quinn’s men listened as young wiseguys rushed into 98 Prince to tell Frankie Angiulo that “the law” was on Salem, Hanover, or some other North End street. They’d taken the license plate number and it wasn’t long before the Angiulos knew whether it was city, state, or federal.