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

by Jay Atkinson

  At first the noise of the wind blocks out everything else, but as I wait for Donahue to catch up, I tune in the various sounds coming from the apartments. A loud television dominates in many of them, but I can also make out a man and a woman arguing in Number 592 and a drunken voice singing in Spanish in the apartment next door. Right in front of me, I can hear a woman talking to herself or to someone on the phone.

  Mark knocks on the door to Number 593 and the woman answers the door. “Are you Martha Pacquin?” he asks.

  The occupant of Number 593 is a rail-thin female of indeterminate age, with a tattered mop of long brown hair. A pointy nose and dark circles under her eyes give her the look of an anemic raccoon. “I'm Martha's roommate, Sandra Dionne,” the woman says. She's lost in the beer company sweatshirt she's wearing and carries a small, hairy dog under her right arm. “What's this about?”

  “Where's Martha?”

  “Martha ain't here,” says Dionne with her small, ugly, mobile mouth. “She's at work.”

  Donahue raises himself to the top step. “Where does Martha work?”

  “Over in New Bedford,” says Dionne. “She's a metal finisher.”

  “Really? What's the name of the place?”

  “I don't know,” Dionne says. “So, what's this about?”

  Donahue explains the terms and conditions of Martha Pacquin's bank loan. Sandy Dionne replies that Martha gives her cash and she deposits it in her account and mails a check for $224.92 to the bank every month. “I just faxed everything over to them, every check, every stub, everything about the car,” says Dionne, pronouncing it “cawh,” a New Yorker. “Just yesterday I faxed it all over. I got it all upstairs. Everything. You wanna see it?”

  The apartment is poorly lit and smells of dog. When Dionne, despite Mark's remonstrance, slips away to produce some document or other, there's just the shaggy-haired mutt pressing his nose against the screen. But Mark keeps his foot against the bottom of the door so the mutt can't escape.

  “It's just a little Pekingese or something,” I tell him.

  “There's another one in there,” says Mark.

  Dionne reappears with a small white envelope in her hand. “Oh, I got a Rottweiler— she's trained,” she says, turning to flip the envelope onto the counter. “If you live down here, you gotta have a Rott or a gun.”

  “What kind of gun you have?” asks Donahue, joking with her.

  “I ain't got no gun. I got my baby here,” Dionne says, laughing. She bends to scratch the ears of the Rottweiler, who's an indistinct shape from where I'm standing. “Right, baby? You protect us.”

  There's a certain ragged charm to Sandy Dionne's monologue as she runs out the length and breadth of the effort that she has expended to keep Martha Pacquin rolling down the road to her job in New Bedford. “I got the checks, the money order stubs, the stamped envelopes, and the files,” she says. “The files I have, you wouldn't believe.”

  Mark speed-dials Ray at the bank and explains the situation. Ray wants to talk to Sandra and Mark hands over the phone. “That's impossible. That's bullshit,” says Dionne. “I paid it and I got the stub to prove it . . . last week. . . . I make out all the envelopes. . . . I already faxed it to you, all of it. . . . Don't I fuckin' know it. . . . You wanna hear a secret? Listen.”

  She hangs up on Ray. “That's what I call it— a secret,” she says with a nasty laugh. “I don't have to listen to that bullshit for another minute.”

  The long-suffering Ray calls back and Donahue answers and takes a little walk into the quad, picking his way around the frozen turds and flat, yellowish disks of used condoms. Dionne hoists up her own cell phone and dials Martha Pacquin at work and gets her voice mail. “She don't turn on her phone when she's working,” Dionne says to me. “Martha, this is Sandy. There's two gentlemen here wanna tawk to you about your cawh. Call me back.”

  Sandy clicks the phone shut and gropes around on the counter behind her and produces the envelope, which she presses against the screen. “Lookit. I got one right here,” she says, beckoning me up to the top step. It's a self-addressed envelope, made out to the bank in shaky blue script. “I send the checks in these every month.”

  The envelope doesn't even have a stamp, but it makes for good theater. Mark walks back over and gives me the eye; we're leaving.

  “Tell Martha that the bank wants the car,” he says. “Forget about the money— she's nine hundred sixty-eight dollars in arrears.”

  Dionne shakes her head. “I'll tell her.”

  We move off down the sidewalk, and I turn back for a moment. “Martha's car, is it the green one?” I ask Dionne.

  “It's cranberry,” she says. “I ain't gonna lie to you.”

  We're about twenty feet apart, looking at each other through the screen. “You from Staten Island?” I ask. “You sound like you're from New York.”

  “Manhattan, born and bred,” says Sandra. She throws out her arms. “And now I'm living here.”

  We get in the car and drive up the hill. Offstage throughout this dark little comedy is Martha Pacquin, who's just the sort of person Joe McCain would have taken pity on. She's at some metal-finishing plant over in New Bedford, struggling for her wages. At the end of each day she comes home to the stench of dogs and the blare of a television and with Sandra Dionne concocts whatever schemes are necessary to make it through the week. No doubt her days are swifter than a weaver's shuttle, and will come to their end without hope.

  “Ray says he got their fax, all right,” Mark tells me. “All the checks— but just the fronts. Know why? The backs are stamped ‘insufficient funds.'”

  Donahue turns left onto South Main Street. “You're learning, Coach,” he says. “You got the color of the vehicle out of her. But you didn't see the knife, did you?”

  “What knife?”

  We pass the oxidized spires of St. Anne's Church, and then the square, brick buildings occupied by the Dominican Sisters of Hope. “She had a paring knife in her left hand the entire time,” Mark says. “With about a three-inch blade. Always watch the hands, Coach. The bad guys are gonna hurt you with their hands.”

  When I think of being called to the top step to look at that envelope I get that same queasy feeling I had when I saw the battleship Massachusetts. My midsection was right against the screen and if she had felt like it, Sandra Dionne could have stabbed me through the liver.

  “What do you think?” Mark asks. “Will she leave the car out?”

  I make no reply, but my guess is that the malevolent forces arrayed against Martha Pacquin will grind her down to some tortured end and she'll finish up on top of the hill at St. Anne's Church. Under the best of circumstances she'll be wearing a clean set of clothes amidst the incense and gladiolus, and a nice woman from the choir will sing “Ave Maria,” with burial to follow in Notre Dame Cemetery.

  EIGHTEEN

  The Return of Billy Dennett

  AROUND THE TIME THAT JOE BARBOZA was using Revere Beach as his headquarters, and Black Jimmy nearly got killed by James “the Bear” Flemmi, Jimmy's old shortchanging buddy from the South End, Billy Dennett was implicated in the disappearance and murder of a small-time hoodlum named Tony Veranis. Veranis was last seen above a bar called Walter's Lounge on Dudley Street, playing poker with Dennett, the Bear, and several other known criminals. Rumors circulated that Veranis was beaten and killed after he insulted someone in the game— and there were a number of suspects, as many of the cardplayers were known to have short fuses. The murder was said to have occurred a short while after Veranis was shoved into the passenger seat of Dennett's '66 Thunderbird and driven away from Walter's Lounge.

  All this came as a surprise to Joe McCain, who considered Billy Dennett one in a troupe of happy-go-lucky con artists, not violent men at all and certainly not a bunch of shooters. But acting on a tip, McCain found Veranis's body in a remote section of the Blue Hills, left in a kneeling position with bruises on his face and neck and two entry wounds in his head. The practical-joke-loving De
nnett was long gone, heading west, McCain heard, in the company of someone else who had been at the card game, a vicious thug named William Geraway.

  At the autopsy, the medical examiner waved Joe McCain closer so he could take a look at Tony Veranis's brain. An ex-boxer, Veranis was a tough, well-built, but not very bright twenty-eight-year-old kid from Dorchester. He had been badly beaten and shot twice in the head at close range, and the M.E. had laid open the skull, halving it like a cantaloupe. Taking up a stainless steel probe, McCain measured the depth of the wounds.

  “Joe, have you ever seen a skull that fucking thick?” asked the M.E. McCain noted that the bone wasn't thick enough to stop a .38.

  At first there were very few leads in the case. But as McCain was to find out later, Billy Dennett had stolen identification from the president of Gulf Oil, forged a driver's license to match, and he and Geraway were passing checks at a string of banks in Michigan. They had over $100,000 in the trunk of the T-bird, and with Dennett at the wheel and Geraway passed out beside him, the fugitives ran a stoplight and were pulled over by a black policeman.

  Wearing a suit and tie, Dennett was polite and cheerful to the Michigan cop, handing over his license with a smile. “I'm very sorry, Officer,” he said. “Where I'm from, the lights are on the corners and I drove right under that one and never saw it.”

  The cop was about to let Dennett go when Geraway began to stir. Scratching at himself, he looked over at Billy Dennett and then past him to the cop, who was leaning in the window. “C'mon,” Geraway said. “Give the nigger a sawbuck and let's go.”

  The patrolman arrested Dennett and Geraway on the spot, and they ended up two cells apart in the local jail. Unaware at this point that Geraway had murdered Tony Veranis, Dennett couldn't believe the sudden downturn in his fortunes. “You couldn't keep your fucking mouth shut,” he shouted at Geraway.

  “You're lucky I wasn't sober,” said Geraway. “I was gonna fuckin' kill you. You were never going back to Boston with me.”

  Startled by this, Dennett used his phone call to reach Joe McCain back in Somerville. Meanwhile, Geraway was indicted on a previous check scam and sent to the federal penitentiary in Terre Haute, Indiana. Dennett was on his way to Marquette Penitentiary on the check charge, a remote maximum-security facility on the Upper Peninsula in Michigan, where it snows from September to early May and where patches of the white stuff can be found in the woods as late as July.

  “Get me out of here, Joe,” said Dennett.

  “What're you gonna give me?” McCain asked.

  “Geraway. He did Veranis.”

  McCain had already seized Billy Dennett's car and had it shipped back to Boston. Then McCain and Leo Papile bought a brand-new vacuum cleaner to avoid any contamination of the evidence. They vacuumed up fibers from the Thunderbird, including some that matched those on Veranis's clothing, as well as traces of the dead fighter's blood. Right now Billy Dennett looked good for Veranis's murder, but Joe McCain was listening.

  “Okay, Billy,” he said. “But the trip out there better be worth it.”

  “I'll give you everything,” said Dennett. “Just get me out of this fucking place.”

  McCain and a detective from the Boston P.D. flew out to Chicago's O'Hare Airport. From there they took a small prop-engine plane to Green Bay, Wisconsin, and then a little puddle jumper over Iron Mountain to Marquette. It was snowing when they flew into Michigan, the pilot somehow finding the runway in the midst of an encompassing whiteness; and it continued to snow that night and all the next day. Triple-bladed plows were everywhere and there on the spit between Lake Superior and Lake Michigan most of the locals walked around in snowshoes.

  An imposing brick edifice constructed on the shores of Lake Superior in 1889, Marquette Prison is a tough joint. It's surrounded by a concrete wall, razor-ribbon wire, and electronic detection systems and overseen by eight gun towers. Six thousand prisoners were housed there when Dennett arrived, almost all of them from Detroit and very few of them white; Billy Dennett was petrified.

  Taking along his arrest warrant and Dennett's rendition papers, McCain and the Boston detective arrived at the gates of the prison. The warden, a tall, gaunt fellow who escorted Joe and his partner inside the walls, explained that no one had ever escaped from Marquette. To keep this record intact, the warden said, they had developed certain security procedures that even other law enforcement personnel were required to follow.

  The warden and his guests entered a room, where the two visiting cops turned over their weapons and handcuffs for safekeeping. From there, still accompanied by the warden, they proceeded into “the trap,” a small concrete chamber with iron grates in place of the ceiling and floor.

  “We're going to strip down, gentlemen,” said the warden, unbuckling his belt.

  McCain laughed. “Pardon me?” he asked.

  “It's one of my rules— take all your clothes off,” the warden said.

  McCain looked at his partner and shrugged. A few moments later, the three men stood naked in the cold, empty room, shivering as they waited for the guards to open the door in front of them. “You go in with nothing,” said the warden, as the bolt shot back. “I'll give you pencil and paper if you like, and you can talk to the prisoner in a conference room I have inside the jail. Take it or leave it.”

  “You're the boss,” McCain said.

  In the next chamber, McCain, his partner, and the warden endured a thorough strip search; they were told to bend over and spread their cheeks, and the guards looked in their mouths, ears, and hair. Then they were allowed to put their clothes, which had also been searched, back on and were treated to sandwiches and coffee.

  A few minutes later, Billy Dennett was led into the windowless conference room, dressed in prison overalls and wearing shackles. He had lost a little weight, and his present circumstances had robbed him of his usual ebullience, but Dennett still managed a grin when he saw his old friend.

  “Hey, Joe,” he said. “How's tricks?”

  “Do you want to go back?” McCain asked.

  “Yeah. Can you arrange it?”

  McCain nodded. “I'll just call back there and say you're coming, and we'll have to get the tickets.”

  “What tickets?” Dennett asked.

  “The plane tickets.”

  Billy Dennett looked at McCain in surprise. “Oh, no,” he said. “I don't fly.”

  “Whattaya mean, you don't fly?” asked McCain.

  “I'm not gonna fly back.”

  “The fuck you ain't,” McCain said. “I'm not spending a week trying to drive out of these mountains.”

  Two days later Billy Dennett was remanded into Joe McCain's custody, and handcuffed together, they departed Marquette's snowy little airport for O'Hare. And the Michigan authorities were happy to get rid of him— it was one less body the state would have to feed. Onboard the plane, Dennett was fidgeting in his seat, pawing the floor, and twisting his wrist in the shackle.

  “For crissakes, sit still,” said McCain.

  Billy Dennett looked like he was going to cry. “Can I get a drink, Joe?” he asked.

  McCain glanced at his partner and the other detective made a palms-up gesture. “You can have a couple pops,” Joe said.

  After three whiskeys they landed in Chicago, and Dennett became his old fun-loving self. During the layover, the two police officers and the convict were walking through the terminal when Dennett said he was hungry. He convinced McCain to stop into a nearby pancake house for breakfast. While the busboy and waitress looked on, Joe's partner unlocked the handcuffs and all three men took up their menus.

  “Behave yourself,” Dennett said to McCain, wagging his finger. “Otherwise, I'll put the cuffs right back on you.”

  The waitress delivered their menus and retreated to the kitchen, staring at Joe McCain like he was an escaped ax murderer. Billy Dennett had a good laugh and when they arrived in Massachusetts, he said that he'd testify in front of the Suffolk grand jury that it was William T.
Geraway who had killed Anthony Veranis.

  In Joe's mind, Billy Dennett was still the most likely suspect. Known as a dissembler and opportunist and never adept at choosing his companions, Dennett had been running with a murderous crowd at the time and his car had been loaded with material evidence. But in his conversations with McCain, the affable con man insisted that he and Geraway had been in cahoots while passing bad checks and that they'd paid cash for the Thunderbird after a big score. Although the car was registered in Dennett's name, Geraway believed he had a claim on the T-bird and would borrow it whenever he felt like it.

  The night Veranis was murdered, according to Billy Dennett, Geraway took the T-bird from outside Walter's Lounge after the card game. A few weeks earlier, Geraway had mouthed off to Veranis and the former welterweight had dropped him with a quick right hand. Geraway hadn't forgotten that embarrassment, but Veranis, who was punchy from his years in the ring, apparently had; when Geraway asked him to take a ride that night so they could force open a safe he had hidden on Castle Island, the slow-thinking pug agreed to go along.

  Dennett said that Geraway, who had related this sordid tale during a whiskey binge, drove Veranis to the remote South Boston park, lured him out of the car, and produced the murder weapon. He tied Veranis's hands behind his back, pistol-whipped him for the punch he had thrown, and then, in a fit of rage, shot Veranis twice in the head. He stuffed the dead man back into the Thunderbird, drove up to the Blue Hills and dumped the body at the foot of an embankment, returning the car to Billy Dennett.

  The story was, at least, plausible. And Dennett had one other thing going for him as far as Joe McCain was concerned: he had no history of violent crime. On the other hand, Geraway did; he was a suspect in the murder of David Sidlaukas, who had been found dead on Moon Island Road in Quincy a year earlier; Sidlaukas had also been shot twice in the head. Geraway was also believed to have some connection to the 1965 murder of Edward “Teddy” Deegan, a muddy event that would turn into one of the most notorious cases of wrongful imprisonment in Boston history and would involve Joe McCain at the height of his abilities.