Legends of Winter Hill: Cops, Con Men, and Joe McCain, the Last Real Detective

by Jay Atkinson

  Leaning in at the door, in a soft voice McCain asked Bobo to come out. The lanky gangster, who later reinvented himself as an actor and played wiseguys in several Hollywood movies, winked at Buddy McLean and his associates and came sauntering out of the bar.

  McCain maneuvered Petricone so he was in front of the plate-glass window, his back to his friends. Standing close, McCain stared into Petricone's blue eyes and said, “I know it's you that's making those phone calls. It stops today, right now, or I'm gonna come back here and shotgun every last one of you motherfuckers.” Although McCain always believed Petricone was, at least, an accessory to Bernie McLaughlin's murder, the future actor was never charged.

  The calls stopped, but the Winter Hill gang tried one more thing to deter McCain from testifying before the grand jury. Russ Nicholson, an old pal from Marshall Street who was present at Bernie McLaughlin's shooting, called McCain and asked to meet him at Dawn's Donut shop the following day. Without having to ask what it was about, McCain agreed to the rendezvous. Under suspension from the Metropolitan District Police for beating an employee of a Greek diner across from the Ford plant, “Nick” had served as an usher at Joe and Helen's wedding. A tall, blond-haired man with the good looks of a matinee idol, Nicholson had received several commendations for bravery and done some excellent investigative work. But drinking and gambling had ruined his career, and he and the McCains didn't socialize anymore. Still, Joe figured that Buddy McLean was trying to use his old friendship with Nick to make him back off.

  Arriving early, McCain sat in his car for ten minutes wondering where these events and his acquaintances were leading him. Right on time he saw Nicholson walking toward the donut shop and stepped out of the car. He glanced over his shoulder and realized for the first time in his life that he couldn't trust Nick.

  The two men stopped just a few feet apart and regarded each other for several long moments.

  Out on bail for his part in Bernie McLaughlin's murder, Russ Nicholson wouldn't be able to go back to his police job and would never testify against the ruthless McLean, which put him at the mercy of the McLaughlins. Eventually one of them, or one of their friends, would find him in a bar or a hotel room or train station somewhere and put an end to it. Nick had made a choice, and now there was no going back.

  “You know I'm a dead man,” said Nicholson.

  “You're not a dead man if you weren't there,” said McCain, offering a little hope.

  Without saying another word Nicholson turned and walked away.

  * * *

  ON THE DAY THE GRAND JURY CONVENED, Joe McCain came through the front door of the district court, past a small army of reporters, cops, and more than a dozen men he recognized who held teamster or longshoreman union books. These men eyed him as he went by; one or two gave him a grudging nod or said hello. It was quite a thing to testify against three guys you had grown up with, played baseball with, gone to war with. It wasn't a popular decision but it was the right one, and that morning put all of Somerville on notice regarding Joe McCain and his integrity.

  It was the sort of gumption that cops like Timmy Doherty and Michael Cox would exhibit in separate incidents more than thirty years later, a demonstration of guts and conviction that would turn around on them and nearly ruin their lives. But Joe McCain bore the weight of this very same burden lightly, easily; he even managed a wink to Captain Fallon as he strode into the courthouse.

  Standing off to one side was Somerville Chief of Detectives Gleason, who had covered up the initial gun charges against Buddy McLean. Within earshot of the longshoremen and teamsters, Gleason asked, “What the fuck are you doing here, McCain?”

  “Testifying against your friends,” Joe said, looking him in the eye. “The three shooters.”

  * * *

  OVER THE NEXT FEW YEARS the Somerville-Charlestown feud resulted in more than sixty gangland killings— George McLaughlin's appreciation of Mrs. Hickey's tits was the unlikely catalyst for a veritable bonanza at local funeral homes. Not long after Bernie McLaughlin was killed, Buddy McLean was shotgunned to death by McLaughlin associate Connie Hughes outside the 3–1–8 Club in Somerville. Hughes was later cut in half by machine gun fire, his brain knocked onto the floor of the car he was driving. “Punchy” McLaughlin was shot and killed at a West Roxbury bus stop. George McLaughlin gunned down a bank clerk and went to jail for murder. And Joe McCain, who often referred to himself as “an old street cop who wasn't in charge of anything,” was right in the middle of it, developing informants, recognizing the predilections of his old acquaintances, making solid cases, and putting wiseguys in jail.

  But of all the Somerville guys who went bad, Russ Nicholson affected big Joe the most. After their brief conversation in front of Dawn's Donut shop, the two men never spoke again. In fact, the next time Joe McCain saw his old friend was on a slab at the medical examiner's office when he went to identify the body. Nicholson had been shot twice in the back of the head.

  SIX

  The Seventh Basic Investigative Technique

  If you want people to like you you have only to spend a little money.

  — ERNEST HEMINGWAY

  NEAR MIDNIGHT, WHEN JOE MCCAIN and Leo Papile descended from the General Edwards Bridge, passed the open door of the Mickey Mouse Club, and hit the rotary that marked the edge of Revere Beach proper, they rolled down their windows and breathed in the scent of fried clams, roasted pavement, and spent gasoline, all of it underscored by the creeping marshy stench of low tide. In the four years since Bernie McLaughlin had been gunned down, McCain and Papile had moved up in the world; they were bona fide Met detectives, assigned to the beach. Patrons were lined up for a hundred yards in front of Kelly's Roast Beef, kids in hot rods gunned their engines, and a high, yodeling scream echoed along Ocean Avenue as the roller coaster plunged from its height.

  McCain and Papile loved the action on Revere Beach. The carny games, the young families strolling the boulevard, and the giggling hordes of teenage girls outside the Rollaway rink, where Joe had once rescued the night watchman from a fire, brought back memories of their “walking man” days. Up and down they used to go in their heavy blue uniforms, equipped with three pair of handcuffs so if they pinched a drunk and received a more urgent call, they could cuff him to a pole and run off; and just the feeling they got when they passed among the summer crowds, all the kids smiling, wanting to be like them.

  As detectives McCain and Papile wore narrow-lapeled jackets and skinny ties and worked at night. Wiseguys from East Boston and Winter Hill and the North End had adopted Revere Beach as their unofficial headquarters and playground; the mob boss Gennaro “Jerry” Angiulo owned two nightclubs on Revere Beach Boulevard, the Tiger's Tail and the Ebb Tide Lounge, which became havens for the likes of Stevie and Jimmy Flemmi, Jimmy Kearns, Joe Amico, Nicky Femia, John and Jimmy Martorano, and the three Frizzi brothers: Tony, Guy, and Conno. Capitalizing on the Somerville-Charlestown feud, Angiulo used the Flemmis, the Frizzis, the Martoranos, and the rest of his enforcers and leg breakers to consolidate the fractured gambling and loan sharking operations under his lieutenant Sal Sperlinga; he got Howie Winter and his Irish gang on Winter Hill to handle the truck hijackings, union extortion, and methamphetamine traffic, with a piece of everything, always, coming home to “Papa.”

  By the mid-1960s, Joe McCain had demonstrated his familiarity with the six basic investigative techniques used to solve crimes: the development of informants, employment of undercover agents, laboratory analysis of physical evidence, physical and electronic surveillance, interrogation, and where permitted by law, the use of wiretapping. In pursuit of the Angiulo brothers and their associates, McCain found that the seventh fundamental technique was one of the most useful: watch the money. A crime of passion aside, the principal motivation for racketeers involved in drug dealing, hijacking, fencing, shylocking, gambling, prostitution, and extortion is the desire for financial gain. You can always spot a big-time criminal when his reported income doesn't match his l
ifestyle.

  Mob boss Jerry Angiulo and his brothers operated the Huntington Real Estate Company on Prince Street in the North End, a business endeavor that hardly explained his palatial oceanfront home in Nahant or the expensive pleasure boat docked out front. Measuring that discrepancy by poking around in his tax records and bank statements, Joe McCain worked backward into the street, where the low-level mob enforcers and goons were harvesting all the cash and hauling it to their boss, like an army of ants bringing crumbs to the colony.

  During their free time the ants liked to drink, fight, and chase the skirts down on Revere Beach. One rainy night Joe McCain and Leo Papile responded to a complaint about a brawl in Sammy's Patio Lounge on the boulevard. When the two detectives burst through the door, there was a melee in progress: bottles and glasses were flying, women were screaming, and chairs and tables were being broken. The Frizzi brothers had tripled up on some poor bastard from Dorchester, beating the guy senseless amidst the hollering and shoving that occupied the fringes. In those days Joe McCain was thirty-six years old, large and solid at 250 pounds, with only a smattering of gray hair at the temples. He ran over and grabbed Conno Frizzi, a stocky, flat-nosed man who weighed close to 200 pounds, and used a headlock to drag him outside to the paddy wagon.

  As he hauled the biggest of the Frizzis over the threshold, McCain felt a pinching sensation in his lower back but thought little of it. On his way back inside, however, Leo Papile stopped him in the doorway. “Hey, Joe,” he said. “What the fuck is that?”

  “What's what?”

  Papile removed a jackknife that was hanging from the back of McCain's raincoat. “This,” he said, handing over the knife.

  McCain reached around beneath his raincoat and shirt, and felt a trickle of blood. Apparently, while he was on the way out the door, Tony Frizzi, the youngest and lightest of the brothers, who preferred silk shirts and combed his thick chestnut hair into a pompadour, had crept up and stabbed McCain from behind. When Joe rushed across the bar to thrash him, Tony cowered against the wall, putting out his wrists to be handcuffed. Unfortunately, no one had seen Frizzi stab McCain.

  After the prisoners had been driven to the station, fingerprinted, and booked, McCain went downstairs and stood in front of Tony Frizzi's cell. Making sure that everyone could hear him, he said, “You sneaky fucking greaseball. I know you're the one that did it.”

  From that night forward, Tony Frizzi was persona non grata on the beach. All the cops knew he'd sneak-stabbed one of their own, so over the next several weeks Frizzi was arrested for disturbing the peace every time he set foot in one of the nightclubs on the boulevard. Eventually the young gangster got the message and stayed away.

  But of all the vicious, unpredictable, and cowardly thugs who frequented the joints on Revere Beach, the worst was Joe “the Animal” Barboza, a thirty-four-year-old hired killer and loan collector who, when Joe McCain first saw him, had already served more than twelve years in Walpole State Prison for robbery, assault and battery with a dangerous weapon, and kidnapping. Barboza, alias Joe Baron, was a muscular, dark-haired thug who had once boxed professionally and had “Born to Lose” tattooed on his right arm. During the Charlestown-Somerville wars, Barboza had been aligned with Buddy McLean and later claimed responsibility for more than twenty-five murders, putting him in a class with the hit men Jimmy “the Bear” Flemmi and John “the Basin Street Butcher” Martorano.

  Joe McCain was well acquainted with Joe Barboza and his Revere Beach haunts. The infamous Ebb Tide Lounge, managed by gin player and loan shark Richie Castucci, had a narrow, crooked entrance to prevent rival gangsters from storming the door. Inside, the bar ran along the right-hand wall with a stage opposite and several small, round tables in between. Although the Ebb Tide often featured colorful, relatively harmless mob types like the gambler and fence Eddie Miami, and Castucci's ability to trim performers like Fats Domino at gin attracted top-notch entertainment and a good-sized crowd, the dank little nightclub was like a second home to Barboza and his gang of enforcers and strong arms, including Nicky Femia, Joe “Chico” Amico, and Guy Frizzi. Two months earlier, Joe McCain had arrested Barboza after the killer had brained a twenty-two-year-old patron with an ashtray, ditched a knife beneath a parked car, and threatened to put a bullet in the kid's head if he testified. On that occasion, when McCain was locking Barboza up, the former boxer accused McCain of hiding behind his badge, baton, and gun— that he wouldn't be so tough if he didn't have guys like Billy Parsons and a dozen other cops to back him up.

  McCain sent Parsons and the other cops upstairs. While Barboza looked on, he unbuckled his utility belt, put aside his nightstick, and entered the cell.

  “Go ahead,” said McCain. “Take a shot.”

  Barboza stared at him. Then he backed away.

  “I thought so,” McCain said.

  On that Friday night in the summer of 1965, standing on the General Edwards Bridge, Joe McCain and Leo Papile spotted a Rhode Island license plate— OP880— that belonged to the mob boss Henry Tameleo. Later, as McCain and Papile came up Revere Beach Boulevard, they saw Tameleo's Cadillac parked outside the Ebb Tide Lounge and pulled to the curb. Above the entrance the marquee read, “Fats Domino— Two Weeks,” and before McCain could set the hand brake the crowd massing on the sidewalk parted and Joe Barboza walked up, sneering, with Conno Frizzi, Nicky Femia, Jimmy Kearns, and Joe Amico following behind him like jackals.

  Barboza took off his coat and handed it to Femia. Making straight for McCain's car, Barboza flexed his hands and loosened his shirt collar. “Look who's here,” said the killer, blocking McCain's exit from the vehicle by standing against the door.

  Not long before this, Joe McCain's younger brother Eddie, a former paratrooper, had done a short stint in Walpole for robbery. The McCains weren't the only family on Winter Hill that had one boy on the P.D. and another in the can, but Joe didn't talk about Eddie much. Knowing this was a sore spot, Barboza leaned into the Crown Vic and said, “If I ever do time again, I'll take out on your brother what I shoulda taken out on you, you motherfucker.”

  In the same instant McCain kicked his door open, knocking Barboza aside. Before the gangster could steady himself, McCain was right there— bang, boom— a left hand and a straight right, and Barboza was on the ground, kicking at McCain with his ripple-soled shoes and frothing at the mouth. They rolled off the sidewalk into the gutter, and Barboza caught McCain in the right temple with his heel.

  With Barboza kicking and swearing, McCain wrestled on top of him and pulled out his service revolver. The gun came up, knocking against Barboza's teeth, and went straight into his mouth. The killer went limp. Surrounded by a couple of hundred onlookers, McCain stood up, rolled Barboza onto his stomach, and applied the handcuffs.

  Standing back a little ways, Nicky Femia tried to hand Barboza's coat off to Amico, and a .38 pistol fell onto the sidewalk. “Fuck,” he said.

  “What do we have here?” asked Papile, shooing the crowd away from Barboza's gun. “This is turning into a good fucking night, Joe.”

  Billy Parsons arrived with the paddy wagon and hauled Barboza away. Later, during the routine inspection of the wagon, the Met cops found five .38 shells hidden behind a heating unit bolted to the floor. When Barboza had been transported to the station, he was rehandcuffed in front instead of behind his back, which allowed him to ditch the cartridges before he was thoroughly searched.

  Barboza's gun, which turned out to be unregistered, proved that the gangster had malice aforethought; McCain had relied on his street instincts to move quickly and get in the first whack. But back at the police station, Joe McCain learned that Barboza was planning to charge him with assault and battery, and excessive force. While he and Leo Papile sat in the detectives' room, pondering this turn of events, Joe noted that he hadn't received a scratch in his tussle with the mobster. On the other hand, Barboza looked like he'd been run over.

  “Hey, Joe,” said Papile, standing on his partner's blind side.
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br />   McCain swiveled around and— wham— Papile bashed him in the forehead with the telephone. “Jesus Christ,” said Joe, clutching his head. “What the fuck are you doing?”

  Papile admired the lump that had already risen on his partner's forehead. “Now you look like you been in a fight,” he said.

  Five months later, half of Revere Beach turned out to watch the state try their case against Barboza for the unregistered handgun; for assault— barring a motorist's exit from his vehicle— and for battery with a dangerous weapon, his shod foot, on Metropolitan Police Officer Joseph E. McCain. Representing Barboza was the criminal defense attorney F. Lee Bailey, who later assisted in O. J. Simpson's murder trial. To intimidate the jury in the Barboza case, Bailey instructed Joe Barboza's gang to sit in the front row of the spectators' gallery. There they were every day, the Frizzis and Nicky Femia and Jimmy Kearns and Joe Amico, dressed in their tight black chesterfield coats with the velvet collars, homburg hats canted over their knees, looking like what they were: members of La Cosa Nostra.

  During a recess on the first day of the trial, McCain sent Papile to the Steaming Kettle across the street from the courthouse to buy coffee and pastries. Out in the corridor a few minutes later, McCain approached a bench that was laden with Danish and styrofoam cups of coffee, taking one in each hand. As McCain leaned against the wall relishing his snack, Bailey and Barboza and his gangland associates emerged from the courtroom and stood a short distance away.