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

by Jay Atkinson

  “He's not like these guys coming out of Suffolk, or New England School of Law. He's Cornell. Joe's a smart fucking guy,” says McCain, as Doyle climbs into his eight-year-old Mercedes and takes off down Highland Avenue.

  Joey and I get in the front seat of his cruiser, and he starts the engine up with a roar. Doyle's “got a lot of street attitude and street influence, and I'd bet he'd say he got a lot of that from my father,” says McCain.

  Joey and I are listening to Charlie Parker on National Public Radio, and here at noon, the sun is low and bright, tracking its arc across the Boston skyline. Driving alongside the raised Expressway, we cross the Charles River and enter a tiny parking area behind the Museum of Science that says “Police Vehicles Only.” As we turn in, smokestacks on the far bank of the river send up plumes of exhaust and cars whiz past us on Storrow Drive.

  The Lower Basin is tucked in a small, dirty space beneath the old T bridge and a concrete abutment engraved with “1910.” Beside the short driveway there's an incongruous pair of tennis courts, but those belong to the public park next door. I start to open my door, but Joe Jr. thrusts his arm across my chest. “Wait here,” he says.

  An American flag, a Massachusetts state flag, and a black POW flag are flying above the barred windows of the station's lower half. Gray-and-blue State Police cruisers, grimed with salt from the highway, are nosed right up to the building where a bright yellow candy machine and two juice dispensers flank the heavy steel entrance door. A young trooper in his jodhpurs and glossy boots emerges from the door and glances over at me without expression, leans into his car for a packet of papers, and returns inside. There's no sign marking this place, no plant-strewn lobby for visitors. And inside, fifty-four-year-old State Trooper Christopher Brighton remains anonymous himself.

  I've heard rumors that Brighton doesn't want to talk about the night Joe McCain got shot. When I covered that subject with Gene Kee, the affable State Police lieutenant retreated across the kitchen without even realizing it, until he was narrating the outcome of that particular surveillance from his dining room. While Mark Cronin, who had given the order to move in on the house, was describing it, his scalp became flushed and he dropped his head in his hand and was silent for several moments. With his angular limbs and long, bony hands, Cronin reminded me of the statue of Laocoön, who warned against the Trojan Horse and was killed, along with his two sons, by serpents.

  Although it happened fifteen years ago, there was the clear sense that their champion had fallen, and each man still struggled with that, second-guessing his own actions and turning over the what-ifs? Gene Kee and Mark Cronin were at least somewhat removed from the events that led to Joe McCain exchanging gunfire with Vladimir Lafontant. Chris Brighton had been just a few feet away, and Joe was shot with his gun.

  After a long while Joey comes out and gets back behind the wheel of his cruiser. “Is he here?” I ask.

  “Yeah, he's there.”

  “Let's go back in, and I can meet him.”

  Joe Jr. puts the cruiser in gear and backs out of the parking space. “He's kinda busy,” says McCain. “But clear your schedule for Monday. Monday at noon.”

  FIFTEEN

  You Never Come Around Much Anymore

  Well, go ahead, investigate something for us— anything— just to show us how it's done.

  — DASHIELL HAMMETT

  JOE MCCAIN, JR., AND I MEET FOR LUNCH that next Monday at a little place in Teele Square called the Soleil Café. Once again, Chris Brighton has canceled at the last minute. It's a brilliant day in February and the restaurant is deserted except for a scruffy fellow in a denim jacket scribbling on a legal pad and our waitress, a young woman with a milky complexion and short, dark hair, like a girl in a verse by Ezra Pound. Amidst the odors of baking bread and roasted herbs, Joey and I order Cuban sandwiches, and the girl smiles with her eyes and fades away while some kind of marimba jazz plays from the kitchen.

  “Wanna hear a funny story? A good cop story?” asks Joey, trying to cheer me up. “New guy on the job— I was just telling Mark this story— his name is John Bogle. He comes on, and his lieutenant is Richie Heyward, who's been on about thirty years. Richie used to be a fighter, boxer, Somerville guy, drinks all the time, a tough, tough guy but not a bad— Never hurt ya, you know? Always stays in shape, but, uh, so Richie's really gruff, smokes cigarettes, he's got a uniform, no patches and no badge, nothing that says he's a lieutenant; nothing, 'cause he could give a shit's worth— he couldn't care less. He's thrown the captains out of his office— ‘Jimmy, get the fuck out of my office. Get out of here.' ‘Richie, you can't talk to me like that.' So he says to John Bogle, they're coming down from roll call, now he's got the sheet filled out with where everybody's working, they just did roll call. So Heyward says to him, ‘Hey, uh, you, make me a photocopy of that, will ya?' So Bogle— ‘Okay, lieutenant'— so Bogle goes over, now he walks over— he's not an ‘inside guy'— he walks over to what he thinks is the copier machine. It's the fucking shredder. He walks over, and he goes like this, Jay, it goes zi-iii-ip, and then he stands there like this— he talks with a kind of lisp and he says, ‘Where's the, um, where's the copy come out?' and a guy says, ‘You just shredded the fucking roll, you jerk.' Fuckin', you could see Heyward looking out of his office, he sits like this in his chair in the office, smoking like this— you just cost him probably an hour's worth of work, to redo the whole fucking thing. But Bogle's a good guy. Plays the trumpet. He comes over sometimes and sits on my porch.”

  Things have quieted down at work for Joey. The mayor's office has postponed his suspension on appeal after downgrading it from three days to one, and Joe Doyle is busy trying to get that reduced to a written reprimand. In the meantime, an opening in the Somerville P.D. detective unit arose near the end of January, and Joey put in a bid for it. Based on his rank and seniority, he's just been named to detectives. His trash hasn't been disturbed in several weeks, and most of his detective shifts on the “first half,” 4:00 P.M. to midnight, have been uneventful, a pleasing routine of minor investigations and calm, clear nights. Since the new year began, Joe has been taking graduate courses at UMass Boston and has announced that when he retires from the police department, he'll pursue his dream of becoming a history teacher.

  Being a teacher was not something that he talked about much when his father was around. Big Joe was proud of his son, tolerant to the point of spoiling him, and never would've expressed displeasure at anything that Joey wanted to do. But the old Met was pleased that his son had followed him into police work, and had taken on the Hells Angels and broken down doors and thrown punks in jail. He was also proud that young Joey knew when to give a guy a break, when to just smile and spit on the ground and walk away. Joe Sr. considered his son a real cop.

  Our sandwiches arrive, the blunt, aromatic bread sliced into triangles, and Joey notes that a recent shake-up in the detective bureau has forced Jimmy Hyde out of his privileged assignment with the DEA and back into regular shifts. In a letter from Police Chief George McLean, Hyde has been reminded that his paychecks come from the city of Somerville, not the federal government, and as an employee of the city he's subject to the will of the chief and under supervision from the chain of command, the same as any other police officer. Hyde was also told that he must report to the P.D. at the beginning of his shift, like everyone else, and that his movements and whereabouts are not to be kept secret. The message is clear: Jimmy Hyde is a member of the Somerville Police Department, not a vigilante or self-styled lone wolf.

  As far as Joey is concerned, his trouble with Hyde is over. But since we never got him on videotape, and the possibility remains that he might try to do Joey, I'm curious about Jimmy Hyde and his motives. I've heard rumors that Hyde despised big Joe and is taking shots at Joey because his father is no longer around to advise and protect him. What happened to Timmy Doherty after he witnessed Hyde using excessive force against a prisoner leads me to believe that Jimmy Hyde is dangerous— that he's capable of
going on what big Joe would've described as “a frolic of his own.” So he still bears looking into.

  After we pay our tab and Joey heads into work, I go poking around Somerville for a couple of hours. For some reason, I need to get to the bottom of this Jimmy Hyde thing. Nor do I think I'll ever get a handle on big Joe and what made him tick until I hear the story from each of the young Mets who were there when he got shot. So far, Chris Brighton has been like the will-o'-the-wisp. I haven't taken it personally; his old partners, Gene Kee and Al DiSalvo and Biff McLean, have trouble getting in touch with him. Although Brighton had already proven his mettle in Vietnam and took most of the risks that night in Hyde Park, I'm told he still feels guilty about Joe's injuries and blames himself.

  But Brighton hasn't been the only guy who's hard to track down. I've been trying to get hold of Leo Martini since the Somerville P.D. Christmas party. We were introduced, and after Leo almost broke my hand by shaking it, Mark Donahue said that big Joe had once intervened on Martini's behalf when he got in a jam at work, and that Jimmy Hyde was involved. By this time we were across the room from Martini, who was fixing me with a hard-eyed squint, and I nodded at him and decided to broach the subject another time.

  As a kid, Leo Martini captained the football and baseball teams at Matignon High and in '72 was headed to UMass on an athletic scholarship when the last in a series of concussions ended his football career. One of seven children, he grew up tough in a tough part of Somerville. His old man was a teamster, Local 25, the same union Joe McCain, Sr., had belonged to. The Martini household was often a gathering place for Winter Hill criminals, and Leo's older brother, who got on the Mets through his father's union ties, was later indicted on criminal charges and fired.

  Despite his family history, Leo Martini's in a category all his own. A legendary street cop with muscles on top of his muscles, Martini has been a fixture in Somerville for more than thirty years: walking the beat; riding a bicycle; coaching kids in basketball, football, and baseball; and cracking a few heads, if the situation warrants it. But I'm not from Somerville, and he's been difficult to pin down.

  Coming up Broadway at dusk, I spot Martini working a detail in front of a housing project and use the bus turnaround to change direction. He looks like a prison guard in a sitcom: thick forearms over his bulkhead of a chest, no neck, a slick bald head and cauliflower ears supporting a pair of very dark sunglasses. Cars slow down, and scary looking kids in baggy jackets and do-rags avert their eyes when they see the cop on the corner. Nobody messes with Leo Martini.

  I park my car and hail Martini from a distance and he comes walking over. On the way he recognizes me, and his stone face cracks into a smile and he grabs my hand and squeezes it in a death grip. Mark Donahue has told me that I'll be all right with Leo if he starts punching me on the arm and twisting my shoulder. Martini calls me “kid,” and after about three minutes my biceps feels like it's been tenderized by a sledgehammer and the cap of my shoulder is throbbing at the pressure points.

  Leo Martini is forty-nine years old and a solid 235 pounds. He never touched a weight until his late thirties; his father used to train boxers, and as a teenager and young man Leo gained his core strength and thickness from sparring thousands of rounds, often with heavier, older professional fighters. He and his brothers scrapped with each other and endured hundreds of street fights. It got so bad that when he was twenty-three or twenty-four years old, out on a date somewhere with the lovely girl he's now married to, Martini would be approached by all the local hard guys.

  “Are you Martini?” his antagonist would say. “I heard you're pretty tough.”

  Leo would look the kid in the eye and say, “You wanna fight, meet me here tomorrow night at nine o'clock. Otherwise, leave me the fuck alone.”

  Telling his stories, Martini throws a punch I can't even see, bringing it up from his hip and stopping a quarter inch from my right eye— his fist hovers there for an instant, like the moon— and taking it away in a blur. He's still pretty fast.

  All this is pertinent to understanding Leo Martini and what he was accused of. Shortly before Thanksgiving 1995, Martini responded to a call for backup outside a group of tenements in East Somerville. Upon arrival, he learned that another cop had arrested a crack dealer named Martin Mickle. Martini has worked uniformed patrol on rotating nights over his entire seventeen-year career. He knows a lot of people on the street. Also, Leo grew up in what he calls a “crossroads” household, where gangsters like Sal Sperlinga and Howie Winter and Whitey Bulger often congregated. So he hears things. One of the things he'd heard was that a shitbird named Mickle was throwing his name around East Somerville.

  “Which one of you is Leo Martini?” asked Mickle when one of the cops mentioned the name.

  “Funny you don't know who I am, when you can't stop fuckin' talking about me,” said Martini.

  Leo had a few more things to say that you wouldn't hear in church, and then the wagon arrived and he pitched Mickle into the back. That would have been the end of it, except that within a few days the crack dealer was saying Leo Martini had dragged him fifty yards over the pavement, struck him in the face several times, and even pulled out his service revolver and threatened him with it. The slightly built Mickle filed assault charges against Martini and the police department, and soon the FBI, Mass. State Police, and the Somerville internal affairs unit were investigating.

  It turned out that Mickle was a snitch, according to Martini, working for the feds and Jimmy Hyde in spite of his significant crack cocaine habit. When Hyde had been accused of beating Michael Henderson while he was handcuffed two years earlier, Leo Martini had supported Timmy Doherty's version of what happened. He and Doherty were not close friends; they rarely socialized and had never been to each other's homes or met each other's wives. Martini had been away on vacation when Henderson was allegedly beaten in the police station. But he believed Doherty was telling the truth and made his opinion known. Martini thought Jimmy Hyde was looking for some payback.

  When Martini found out he was being investigated he unearthed the photographs of Michael Henderson and Martin Mickle, taken shortly after the respective incidents had occurred, and brought them up to Chief Robert Carroll. Henderson was a mass of lumps and bruises; he looked like the Elephant Man. Mickle didn't have a mark on him.

  “Look at these,” said Martini. “Who's telling the fucking truth— me or Jimmy Hyde?”

  On Christmas Eve 1995, Leo Martini was at home with his wife and baby and nine-year-old son when Somerville police knocked on the door. They arrested him and told his wife that there was a cash bail of $15,000. “Where am I gonna get that kind of money on Christmas Eve?” asked Martini. “And where am I gonna go? I've lived in Somerville my whole life.”

  The patrolmen's union bailed him out, and Martini entered a whirlwind of police interviews, grand jury appearances, and an indictment. He was suspended without pay and watched his life and career go into the sewer on the testimony of a junkie. Besides hiring a lawyer, there was little Martini could do about it until he decided to pay a visit to Joe McCain's P.I. office in the North End.

  It was an interesting situation for both men. They had only a nodding acquaintance and were aware of each other's reputation. But Leo Martini had a less sanitized view of Joe McCain than most people did. His father's pals had always insisted that big Joe had shaken them down in his Revere Beach days. McCain was quick to use his fists or the stick, they would say, and he knew how to accept an envelope. Leo Martini had heard all the stories but decided to make his own judgment.

  For his part, McCain was acquainted with Martini's father and didn't think much of the old man's choice in friends. He considered Leo's brother a rogue cop and a thug and had no use for him whatsoever. But McCain, unlike folks in other parts of the country, had never used a man's family as a line of demarcation. In Somerville, and certainly on Winter Hill, a single family might include a “good” cop, a bad cop, a priest, and a wiseguy— with a lot of gray area eve
n between them. Leo Martini is his own man, and the McCains never held what his father or brother did against him.

  When Leo Martini came to the office, big Joe asked him to describe that night with Mickle and to outline the charges that were being made. When Martini finished telling his story, the old Met detective was gazing straight into his face. “I know you,” said McCain, citing the work Leo had done with kids in the city. “I know you wouldn't do something like this.”

  Big Joe sent a couple of his operatives to interview the various parties to the incident and find out who had seen what. It didn't take them long to whittle down the prosecutor's list of witnesses: most of them hadn't seen a thing. One of Joe's guys found an elderly neighbor who signed an affidavit stating that Leo Martini had used a lot of profane language but had barely touched Martin Mickle.

  Soon the case began to disappear. The FBI dropped out, then the State Police, and finally the Somerville cops. By May 1996, Leo Martini was reinstated with full back pay. No disciplinary action was ever brought against Jimmy Hyde, who, according to Leo Martini, had led the witch hunt against him.

  While Martini and I are standing there, he gets hailed from passing cars and talks to half a dozen passersby. A wiry man in his sixties with a dyed pompadour stops to chat for a minute. Martini calls him Rock and promises to talk to a guy he knows about a bartending job.

  “A man with a head of hair like yours ought to be working,” says Leo, running a hand over the smooth dome of his own head.

  Rock laughs and saunters down Broadway. A woman of a certain age stops her gleaming sedan and gets out to ask Officer Martini for directions. She is wearing an expensive overcoat over a brown-and-yellow flowered dress and high heels, and smells of lilacs. Saying that she's late for a wedding in Medford, the woman flutters her eyelashes when Martini points her in the right direction and walks into the middle of Broadway to direct her back into traffic.