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

by Jay Atkinson

  After a moment Bailey came over. “Hey, Joe, that's our stuff,” he said.

  “What the fuck are you talking about?” asked McCain, keeping his voice low.

  “You're drinking our coffee,” Bailey said.

  McCain snorted at him. “Fuck you. I sent people out to get this,” he said, pointing at the bench. “That's my fucking pastry, Lee, and don't you forget it.”

  At that moment the elevator doors opened, revealing Leo Papile with a smile on his face, holding a large cardboard tray of coffee and pastry.

  “Well, here,” said McCain, rubbing his half-eaten pastry over Barboza's order of Danish and replacing the cup of coffee after he'd practically spit into it. “No hard feelings.”

  Because F. Lee Bailey had a measure of success convincing the jury that McCain and Papile were harassing Barboza, the wiseguy was convicted on the lesser charge of disturbing the peace and received only a year in Walpole. But within a few years he would be arrested for another illegal handgun and held on a million dollars bail. Eventually, Barboza became a key witness for the government against the mob bosses Raymond Patriarca and Jerry Angiulo, and was one of the first career criminals admitted to the federal witness protection program.

  This sort of dubious bargaining drove Joe McCain nuts. One of his favorite sayings was “You can trust a thief once in a while, but never trust a liar.” When he heard that Barboza had negotiated a plea agreement and entered witness protection, McCain remarked, “Would a murderer lie? Hell, you've got the big score already. You've got Mr. Shooter. Put him in the electric chair. Get rid of him. You're gonna make a deal with this guy? For what? There's no redeeming value to him.”

  And he was right. Just a few years later, Joe Barboza, while still under witness protection, killed a man named Ricky Clay Wilson out West over $300,000 in stolen securities.

  But McCain was comforted by the fact that he and Papile had taken Joe Barboza off the street twice, saving untold lives in the process. And it took ten years, but Barboza finally got his, out in San Francisco in 1976. A vengeful Jerry Angiulo dispatched one of East Boston's alleged assassins, Joseph “J. R.” Russo, a starch-shirted, silver-haired dandy. Russo caught up with Barboza shortly after he was paroled for Ricky Clay Wilson's murder and shot him dead, at close range.

  * * *

  IN THE MINDS OF THE GENERAL PUBLIC, organized crime has become, in recent years, a charming anachronism: cable television's motley assembly of middle-aged Italian men adorned with colorful nicknames and loud sport clothes. But twenty years after Joe Barboza was killed, with Jerry Angiulo in prison and the old Winter Hill gang on the run, Joe McCain appeared on a Boston TV talk show called Adler on Line. The host was Charles Adler, a bearded, bespectacled populist with a red sweater vest and a game show host's blow-dried hair. Across from him sat big Joe, dressed in a neat blue suit, blue-and-red patterned tie, and gold-rimmed eyeglasses.

  Joe was debating a criminal justice professor from Framingham State College on the topic of organized crime and the strength of its grip on the city of Boston. “Maybe these wiseguys put money in the poor box and are good to their mothers and grandmothers, but they're killers,” McCain said. “And I don't like them.”

  Chafing under the lights, Joe McCain listened as the professor explained that law enforcement had broken the back of organized crime and anyone who felt differently ought to go play for the Red Sox because he was “out in left field.”

  Big Joe couldn't contain himself. “I think you're talking through your hat,” he said.

  The professor was taken aback, but Adler turned to McCain and asked, “What do you mean by that?”

  Beyond the camera and banks of light the director nodded his head, pointing at McCain. “With all due respect to the professor here, that's not quite true,” said Joe. “The gangsters might be in jail, but the millions and millions of dollars they've made over the last forty years is out on the street. When you have that much money, you have power; when you have power, you have people who'll do anything for money who'll go out and do your bidding. And if you think they're still not controlling their empire, you're dead wrong.”

  Joseph E. McCain had made a career out of watching that money, watching it come in through the bookie joints and massage parlors and dimly lit nightclubs by the barrelful, watching it corrupt good men and destroy their families and send one generation after the next to Walpole and Concord and Framingham MCI. That money was still out there, still circulating from Winter Hill to Uphams Corner and through Charlestown's City Square and in and out of the joints on Revere Beach, just as it always had. And no egghead was going to convince Joe McCain otherwise.

  SEVEN

  God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen

  Many an exuberant voice and lively countenance I could revive from that vanished cavalcade.

  — SIEGFRIED SASSOON

  AS FAR AS OUR FAMILIES ARE CONCERNED, Mark Donahue and I are going to the Somerville Police Department's annual holiday party to wish Joe McCain, Jr., a merry little Christmas. But as I drive south on Route 93, Mark is fidgeting in the passenger seat, worrying about his old buddy and his troubles with Jimmy Hyde. New developments have Joey in a “world of shit,” stressed out and raging over what he believes Hyde is trying to do to him. A friend of Joe's whom I'll call Vinnie Carbone, a motorcycle enthusiast and a former corrections officer, just yesterday reported that another cop friend of his overheard some DEA guys talking about Joey McCain. Vinnie's buddy was standing nearby and began to listen only when he heard Carbone's name mentioned.

  One of the DEA guys said that Vinnie Carbone, Joe McCain, Jr., and another Somerville cop, a good friend of Joey's named Johnny Barnhardt, are the subjects of a DEA surveillance aimed at cracking the three cops' purported drug ring. Vinnie's brother is a convicted dealer of steroids and last June, when they raided the Carbones' house in Saugus, where both Vinnie and his brother live with their parents, they found Vinnie's gun in the wall safe along with his brother's stuff. On the day Vinnie was fired from the sheriff's department for his possible role in the steroid business, Joey says that Jimmy Hyde and another agent followed him after he left the office.

  As Mark Donahue has explained to me, when someone involved in a conspiracy is popped for it, often the first place he goes is to his coconspirator, partner, or boss to warn that person about the heat. Vinnie Carbone went straight to Fulton Street in Boston's North End, to the offices of McCain Investigations. Thus, the notion of a drug link between McCain and the Carbones was born in the minds of the DEA.

  What Jimmy Hyde and his cohorts perhaps didn't realize was that Carbone was already working part-time on cases at the P.I. firm. Now out of the sheriff's job, he was looking to replace his lost income by putting in more hours at his friend's company. But Hyde didn't consider that, or the possibility that a family might have one honest guy in the sheriff's department and another who sold drugs.

  “Small minds don't think big,” said Donahue.

  Mark figures that Jimmy Hyde has a “hard-on” for Joe McCain, and the Carbone connection is the key to igniting the same ardor in his associates. Carbone's source said that the DEA guys are right now watching McCain, Carbone, and Barnhardt, looking for evidence. Joey is afraid he might be set up.

  Mark says that Joey is supposed to call the number-two man in DEA operations, Billy Simpkins, who is an old friend of Joe Sr.'s and in a position to help him. In fact, Joey is angling for permission to sting whoever might be trying to get him. Should anyone apply for a search warrant for Joe's house, the idea is to have officers complicit in the sting accompany this person to McCain's and, before they can get inside, arrest the person who applied for the warrant. If there are any drugs concealed on that person, it will be clear that the whole thing is a setup. It's risky, but with Hyde's move gathering strength and speed, Joe has to make a bold counter or he might be the guy who goes down in flames.

  The lights on the dash throw a weird tint over the inside of the car, and the moon, high and white, shine
s down on the highway like a beacon. I ask Mark why Hyde would move against Joe through the DEA when the McCains are good friends with Billy Simpkins. He says that Hyde doesn't know Simpkins came to big Joe's funeral and repeats his line about small minds. I mention that the ideal scenario would be that Hyde gets caught in the act and Joey and the other good guys ride off into the sunset.

  “That'll be great, if it ends up happening that way,” Mark says, although more and more that appears to be a long shot.

  We arrive in Davis Square and hunt around for a parking space. The night is cold and black, and late shoppers crisscross the street, rushing past the lighted windows of the stores. The heavy thrum of an electric bass marks the site of the party, and Mark and I nod to the doorman and go inside. The bar is one of those two-level, brass rail and cell phone joints, with piped-in ambient music and sloe-eyed, racially ambiguous waitresses in snug black clothing. Up on a raised platform at the front of the room, two dozen cops are drinking beer in pint glasses and gnawing on chicken wings.

  Joe McCain, Jr., is there, with an arm around his wife, Maureen, talking and laughing with a bald, jug-eared man with a chest like a piano.

  The jug-eared cop is forty-eight-year-old Leo Martini, one of the toughest guys in Somerville. His legendary grip, applied between neck and shoulders, can take even a big guy like Mark Donahue to his knees. When I'm introduced and shake Martini's hand, it's like trying to squeeze an oak tree. The son of a union boss who ran with the Howie Winter gang and brother to a dirty Met cop who did time in prison, Martini is a complicated guy. Mark and Joey have said that he's like the Lone Ranger, still going out on patrol, still doing things his own way. Popular with kids throughout the city, Martini is a former boxer and star athlete who ran the Somerville recreation program for many years. He has also tangled with Jimmy Hyde.

  Although not a close friend of Timmy Doherty, Martini supported the young cop in his battles with Hyde and his cronies. I've also heard that, a year or so later, Jimmy Hyde attempted to frame Martini for the same sort of thing Hyde allegedly had done to Michael Henderson. From across the room, I can feel Martini staring at the back of my head, sizing me up. I plan on talking to him but can sense that it's not going to be tonight. Around here, these things take time.

  Joey introduces me around the party, indicating a young kid who was paralyzed in a motorcycle accident and has worked at the P.D. answering the 911 line. “See the guy in the wheelchair?” he asks.

  Maureen McCain darts over and sticks her head between us. “He can't walk,” she says.

  Joe grabs his wife's chin and moves her aside. “Wiseass,” he says.

  As soon as he can, Mark Donahue sidles up to McCain, puts a big paw on his friend's shoulder, and leans down to Joe's ear. “You call Simpkins yet?” he asks.

  Joe grimaces. “No. I will. Tomorrow.”

  Donahue edges in closer, dropping his voice. “These guys are trying to fuck you, Joey. Call Billy Simpkins before it's too late.”

  “I'll call him tomorrow,” says Joe. He looks at me. “You want another beer?”

  Mark relaxes a little. This is the message that he's come to deliver, and now it's up to Joe to follow through. When they were kids, Mark and Joey accompanied Joe Sr. to Billy Simpkins's rented beach house in Plymouth, where the young DEA agent would wrestle with Joey on the living room rug.

  “He used to beat the crap out of him,” Mark says. “But in a good way.”

  Billy Simpkins is the only guy who has enough juice to extricate Joey from the mess he's in. But as Joe buys another tray full of beers and pounds Leo Martini on the back, he doesn't look worried at all— which troubles me a great deal.

  Around 10:00 P.M. the party begins to break up, and Joe hatches a plan to move across town to an Irish pub called the Tir na nOg. Joey occasionally sits in on drums with the Ronan Quinn Band and they're playing at the nOg tonight. The cops and their wives drift off in various directions and a small group of us spill onto the sidewalk in front of the bar. Suddenly a city bus arrives farther up the block and because they've been drinking and wish to abandon their cars, Joe and Maureen and a few others run for the bus, grabbing at their hats like the Keystone Kops.

  “We'll see you there,” says Donahue, laughing, and we head down an alley to where my car is parked. On the way to the nOg, Mark says, “Ever since he was a kid, Joey's wanted to be a history teacher and a musician. He became a cop when his father got shot, which opened up a spot on the list. Big Joe wanted him to do it.”

  “Do you think that, deep down, Joe thinks this trash-pulling thing is a way out?” I ask. “That an investigation and countersuit and all that will let Joe quit his job and then he can get his Ph.D. and play drums four nights a week?”

  “I told Joey, Hyde isn't just trying to get you fired,” Mark says. “He wants to handcuff you in front of the kids and put you in jail.”

  We arrive at the Tir na nOg, a green, trolley-shaped pub tucked against a larger building in Somerville's Union Square. Joe McCain is already out front, talking on his cell phone, and as we pull up, four members of the band emerge from the pub, troop across the alley like they're the Beatles, and go into the apartment house next door.

  “Hmm. I wonder where they're going,” says Joe, snapping his phone shut. “They must be checking the air pressure on their tires.”

  Inside the nOg, Eartha Kitt is singing “Santa Baby” from hidden speakers. It's a crowded warren of a place, narrow and deep, with bicycle wheels and miniature canoes and heavy gilt-edged mirrors hanging from the walls. There are about a hundred people in a space for fifty, dressed in old woolen coats and ski hats, piled against the bar. In the back, near the tiny stage, Joe McCain introduces me to one of his noncop friends, a guy named Moose Analetto. Beneath his floppy cowboy hat, Moose has a jowled face and thick black beard, and is decked out in a leather vest and black T-shirt. Joe says that Moose once made a cross-country pilgrimage to Merle Haggard's house in Bakersfield, California.

  “He wasn't home,” says Moose, who, upon finding the country legend absent, turned around and came back.

  Although he has no formal training, Moose Analetto is a musical savant who reveres American outlaw singers and can imitate them to a T. Back in high school, when Moose was a quiet kid with very few friends, he arrived on Senior Day in a limousine, dressed as Elvis Presley and giving the hang loose sign out the sunroof.

  “We thought he was a retard,” says Donahue. “We were the fucking retards. Moose was so far ahead of us, it wasn't funny.”

  Joey and Moose go pretty far back. When Joey first became a cop, he responded to a 911 call and found Moose's father stricken with a heart attack. First on the scene, Joe applied CPR and although Mr. Analetto ended up dying, Moose always believed Joe gave his father a shot.

  The guys in the band return from next door and squeeze past the bar and take the stage. Ronan Quinn, the bearded, rugby-shirt-wearing lead singer, hails the crowd in his Irish brogue and then launches into Joe Strummer's version of a Pogues tune, “Once upon a Time.”

  Joey studies the band like a medical student watching open-heart surgery. The music pounds out from the four musicians, driving us all back against the wall. Beneath the mismatched faux Tiffany lamps and tin suitcases hanging from the ceiling, Joe McCain, Jr., is in his element.

  When the number concludes, Quinn announces that a friend of the band will come up and sing a song. He smiles at Moose, and the big fellow lumbers up to the microphone while the drummer relinquishes his kit to Joe McCain. Amidst the closed-in, stale beer and cigarette smell, Joe marks off four beats on the rim of the snare, and Moose throws out his hands, launching into an old Johnny Cash number. It's like the Man in Black has materialized in the Tir na nOg.

  Far from Folsom Prison

  That's where I want to stay

  The room is hazed over with smoke and the crowd presses in on all sides. In her newspaper boy's cap and skintight jeans, Maureen McCain undulates in front of the stage, her eyes closed. On the d
rum kit, Joe keeps a hard, steady beat, mouthing the words of the next verse, and when he looks toward us, he smiles like a little kid. The cop job is a million miles away.

  The music rattles the bric-a-brac strung from the walls and ceiling, and the drinkers packed against the bar sway against one another as Moose digs deep for the final chorus. It's not far removed from the days of big Joe and Stew Henry and Chris Brighton at the Parker House, telling stories and singing along with the band. This is a Somerville Christmas: Moose Analetto crooning about that train rollin' round the bend, and about hard guys doing hard time and making no bones about it.

  EIGHT

  The Halls of Montezuma

  I thought of Beowulf lying wrapped in a blanket among his platoon of drunken thanes in the Gothland billet.

  — ROBERT GRAVES

  EVERY YEAR AT THE MCCAIN INVESTIGATIONS'S Christmas party, held right there in the office on Fulton Street, big Joe and the fellows pushed the desks against the wall, laid out an array of catered food on garnished silver trays, and hired a bartender for the night. Meanwhile, Lori Hays, pretty much the agency's most vital employee, and Joe's niece Lynn Harrington, a crackerjack undercover investigator, shopped for $700 or $800 in gifts, wrapped them at Lori's desk, and then big Joe, dressed as Santa Claus, delivered them to children with AIDS at the local homeless shelter. Returning to Fulton Street, he'd pose for photographs with the early arrivals and then change back into his shirt and tie and the annual Yuletide festivities would commence.

  If Charles Dickens had grown up in Somerville, this was the sort of gathering the old scribbler would've reveled in: cops and ex-cops and feds and bail bondsmen in green jackets and red silk ties, their wives dressed in gaudy Christmas sweaters. Defense lawyers in Santa Claus hats, parolees, pizza shop owners, former pugilists, and white-haired judges accompanied by their Ivy League wives. Helen McCain and Al and Mary Seghezzi and professional snitches with three pagers clipped to their belts, gabbling in an undifferentiated mass and eating little meatballs speared on toothpicks. Mark Donahue and his wife, Maureen, talking to Joe Jr. and his wife, Maureen, the younger McCain wearing his trademark black T-shirt accessorized by a leather Renegade Pigs vest for such an auspicious occasion. Laughing and beaming and palming his glass of Chivas, big Joe presided over them all, his arm around Helen and his eyes watching the door for the arrival of his favorite guest.