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

by Jay Atkinson

  We weren't so lucky with Billy Giampa, the truck driver with the ankle injury. McKenna and I chased him up and down Wollaston Beach for two solid weeks without getting any good video on him. If I were a betting man, I would've set the odds at two to one he was defrauding that transportation company of his labor. Zooming around in his pickup, Giampa was doubling back on his routes, charging through stop signs, playing cute with right-hand signals and left-hand turns; he knew he was being followed and did everything he could to shake us, a pretty fair indicator of guilt. But after McKenna finally got him on tape, in the parking lot of a strip mall, we watched Giampa go into a podiatrist's office, where he remained for three hours. Inside, a doctor performed surgery on his left ankle, and the company later extended his benefits for another six months. I told McKenna that Giampa must have hurt his foot trying to get away from us.

  Our best case was the mechanic with the bad back who lives a half mile from Giampa on Houghs Neck. We sat on his place a few times, but the guy never came out. I saw him only once: a tall, portly fellow with blue-black hair and thick sideburns. McKenna heard a persistent rumor that the guy was working at night and spotted him leaving the house after dark and tailed him up to Revere Beach. With rain falling on the strip, the mechanic with the supposedly bulging lumbar disk entered one of the nightclubs on Ocean Avenue, carrying a small brown valise.

  McKenna waited outside for a couple of minutes, then paid the three-dollar cover charge and went in. The bar was dark and smoky, populated by a dozen or so ratty beachcombers and smelling of old cigars. McKenna bought a glass of beer just as a lone spotlight illuminated the stage and a recording of “Viva Las Vegas” boomed over the sound system.

  Wearing a sequined cape and a pair of oversized mauve sunglasses, his mop of black hair slicked into a ducktail, the erstwhile mechanic skittered onstage, gyrating his hips and lip-synching to a medley of Elvis Presley tunes.

  Case closed.

  * * *

  AFTER SUCH CHILLY WEATHER, the narrow confines of the Tir na nOg are warm and dimly lit, smelling of grilled onions. The dark-paneled bar, which runs three-quarters of the way down the left side of the room, is occupied by a pair of teamsters with their backs to me and a cheerful young barmaid, who is standing by the taps. Pudgy and round-faced, she smiles and gestures along the bar and tells me to sit anywhere I like.

  On the right side of the pub are a half dozen wooden tables, bolted to the floor and accompanied by tall metal stools. Hanging above each table is a single hundred-watt bulb protected by a rounded piece of metal that looks like a crinkled pie plate.

  As I pass beneath the old megaphones, banjos, and tricycles suspended from the ceiling, Joe McCain, Jr., calls out to me from a table down by the stage. He's wearing a black leather jacket with his police radio sticking out of the front pocket and a dark blue Hawaiian shirt, patterned with white flowers. Joey has unscrewed the lightbulb above his table, throwing shadows over the two men he is sitting with. I don't recognize either of them.

  “What're you drinking?” asks Joey, taking me by the arm. They've also just arrived and haven't ordered anything yet. “I want you to meet somebody. Somebody who knew my father.”

  The older of the two men sitting with Joey rises to shake my hand. He looks vaguely Middle Eastern, five ten, slim build, wearing a gray fleece jacket and an orange sweatshirt with “Plymouth” across the front; dungarees, brogans, a heavy gold watch, and a pair of sunglasses, lightly tinted in rose, complete his ensemble.

  “They call me Black Jimmy,” the man says, as he grips my hand.

  “No shit?” I ask.

  “In the flesh,” says Jimmy, and the others laugh.

  Jimmy has short dark curly hair, tinged with gray, and a pencil mustache. He's sixty-four years old but looks at least a decade younger. When he smiles, his teeth are even and white, and there's a glint of shrewdness in his eyes. “How ya doing, kid?” he asks.

  The barmaid approaches and I ask for a pint of Guinness and we all lean back to scrutinize today's menu, which is written on a chalkboard nearby.

  “What's good here, Joey?” asks Black Jimmy, noting that he hasn't been in this part of Somerville for years. In fact, he hasn't been anywhere near Boston since the early nineties.

  “Best steak tips in the city,” says Joey. “Best fries, too. Awesome.” He grins at me. “One hundred percent natural.”

  “You wouldn't know it, but Joey's cardiovascular system is a hundred fifty years old,” I say. “He goes to the museum for checkups.”

  Black Jimmy laughs. “That's a good one,” he says, before turning to the barmaid. “I'll have the steak tips. And bring us a basket of those fries.” Jimmy orders a Canadian beer from another chalkboard over the bar and Joey orders a diet Coke; he's working and this is his lunch hour.

  Black Jimmy's companion is a small, reedy fellow wearing an Air Force baseball cap. He's about forty years old, with a close-cropped black beard and a set of false teeth. “I'll have a Coke” are the first words he speaks.

  “That's Mike,” says Black Jimmy. “He used to work with us.”

  Mike has doll-sized hands and a doll's expressionless black eyes. “Good to know ya,” he says, with the enthusiasm of someone meeting his new dentist.

  “This is Billy Dennett's kind of place,” says Black Jimmy, glancing around. “He woulda liked this.”

  Meanwhile, our food is delivered to the table: strips of broiled chicken and vinaigrette over mesclun greens for me, and steak tips for everybody else. The cherubic young barmaid, who has the sort of robust manner not typically associated with New England girls, hears Black Jimmy say that he's living in Colorado.

  “Wow. I'm from Colorado, too,” she says, delighted at the coincidence.

  Jimmy smiles at her. “Whereabouts?”

  “I grew up in Evergreen. Do you know where that is?”

  “Sure, I do,” says Black Jimmy. “It's a great little town.”

  As he banters with his new friend, it occurs to me that Black Jimmy has laughed at all my jokes, marveled at my wisdom, and shined the same sort of light on me that he's shining on the barmaid right now. Of course he has. What else would a con artist do?

  After the barmaid clears our dishes away, Jimmy takes out his wallet and plunks down a shiny new credit card. “It's on me,” he says.

  “Whose name is on the card?” I ask, winking at Joey.

  Everyone laughs, punctuated by Jimmy's low, raspy chuckle. “It's mine,” he says.

  I pick up the card, tilt it toward the light from the bar, and replace it on the table. “I'm pleased to meet you, Mr. DiMaggio,” I say, and Joey spits out his diet Coke.

  I notice that Black Jimmy has several rubber bands wrapped around his billfold. A pickpocket once told him that the elastics, catching on the inside of his pocket, would make it harder to steal his wallet. Right on cue, Mike and Joey take out their elastic-bound wallets and demonstrate that I am the only guy at the table who grew up in the suburbs. Then Jimmy whispers that he ought to shortchange the barmaid, “for old times' sake.”

  “No fucking way,” says Joey.

  “Aww. I'd give it back,” Jimmy says. “I just thought Jay would like to see how it's done.”

  * * *

  IN THE TIR NA NOG, Black Jimmy settles our bill by adding a hefty tip and signing with a flourish. As we make our way toward the exit, an old Lynyrd Skynyrd song plays from over the bar and Jimmy pokes Mike in the shoulder. “Remember this?” he asks, and Mike laughs.

  “This was our theme song in the slow walkin' days,” Jimmy says.

  When the Skynyrd tune reaches the chorus, Black Jimmy does a little rumba move over the scarred wooden floor of the pub.

  Gimme three steps towards the door?

  And you'll never see me no more.

  In their heyday, Jimmy explains, even a bit player like Mike could earn $2,500 just for tying up a pay phone until he arrived to take a prearranged call. “We could do no wrong,” says Jimmy.

  Black Ji
mmy decides to pay a visit to Helen McCain, and since Joey's cruiser is back at the house and I'm parked near there, we're all going to ride over in Jimmy's rental car. Out on the street, Jimmy lights a cigarette and flings the match away. Waiting at the curb is a brand-new SUV with racing wheels and tinted glass.

  “I got lucky,” says Black Jimmy as he climbs in. “I started with a little shitbox Ford, and it died at the airport and they gave me this.”

  Jimmy's been on a hot streak lately. He hit for $3,600 at the track in Denver, which allowed him to buy a nice round-trip ticket to Boston. But his first trip to his old stomping grounds in ten years is not a social visit. Back in 1974, when the slow walk was booming, he took $1,800 cash and bought his wife, Hope, an odd-sized parcel of land deep in the Plymouth woods. Jimmy kept his own name off the deed because there were warrants out for him.

  Black Jimmy and Hope were divorced in 1986, and she died last year. It turns out that silent Mike, who is Jimmy's nephew, tipped him off regarding the value of his ex-wife's estate. Development has encroached on that once rural plot of land, and the probate court has estimated its value at $500,000.

  “I'm gonna get my piece,” Black Jimmy says. “After all, I bought the fucking land in the first place.”

  A heavy fog has descended over Somerville and the streets are gleaming in the darkness. Mike is driving; Black Jimmy says that everything looks different and he doesn't know his way around town anymore. We cruise past a huge Stop & Shop, illuminated like a Vegas casino, and Jimmy says there used to be a joint called Pal Joey's on that lot. The Winter Hill gang made its headquarters there and he used to avoid going in.

  “In them days, you hadda walk around on your tiptoes,” Jimmy says. “I never used a gun but I carried one.”

  When I ask Black Jimmy if he's stayed away from Boston because of possible retribution for his testimony against Jimmy “the Bear” Flemmi and other gangsters, he cuts me off.

  “They're history, them guys. Who's going to pick up their play? Nobody,” says Jimmy. “Martorano's in jail. Stevie [Flemmi] is through. The state oughta give me a medal for what I done.”

  But he's puffing away at his cigarette and shifting back and forth against the upholstery. You never know with the mob.

  The old days are on Jimmy's mind. His former partner Jimmy O'Grady works a legitimate job at Fenway Park, which is seasonal, and in the winter lives on his savings. Earlier today, Black Jimmy visited O'Grady at the veterans' housing project in Braintree. His old partner is trying to resurrect the slow walk, and Jimmy went down there to humor him. “He's crazy,” says Jimmy.

  Apparently, White Jimmy sits around all day, drinking his bank account dry. “Used to be a sharp dresser,” says Black Jimmy, noting that O'Grady hardly eats anything and is down to about 110 pounds.

  “He didn't look good,” says Jimmy. “Reminded me of Billy Dennett that last time, down in Florida.”

  Suddenly, a tall, clapboard house appears in the mist, rising above the hedges that demarcate the tiny front lawn. At the curb Joey gets out and heads for his patrol car. “Go ahead in, Jimmy,” he says. “My mother's downstairs. I'll catch you guys later.”

  “There he goes,” I say. “Super cop.”

  Joey snorts at me. “Look who's talking,” he says, rounding the hood of the cruiser. “Dick fuckin' Tracy.”

  Black Jimmy and I laugh and start up toward the house. Mike is standing by the rental car. “What're you doing?” asks Jimmy.

  “I can wait out here,” Mike says.

  “Helen knows you. Come in and say hello,” Black Jimmy says.

  We wait for Mike to join us and go up and ring the bell. Helen McCain answers the door gripping the handles of an aluminum walker. Her light blond hair is damp from the shower, and she's wearing a beige fisherman's knit sweater and black wool pants with house slippers. Helen's arthritic hip has been bothering her lately, but she refuses to take the walker when she goes out, complaining that it makes her look “like an old broad.”

  “Jimmy,” she says, clasping his hands for a moment. “Come in, fellas. It's cold out there.”

  We follow Helen into the dining room and take seats at the table. China cabinets loom all around, and Gaelic music is playing from a radio in the den. As Helen stumps out there to turn it down, she says, “I used to have it playing in every room and Joe would say, ‘Jesus, I can't get away from it.'”

  The dining room table is heaped over with photographs of big Joe and letters from the state and federal governments regarding his pension. There's an admiral's cap from the Charles River Country Club lying atop one of the piles, and Black Jimmy puts it on the floor.

  “Bad luck,” he says, with a shudder. “Hats on the bed. Birds in the house. We believed in that stuff.”

  Mrs. McCain offers to make a pot of tea, but we all decline. Jimmy introduces his nephew; after a little prompting Helen remembers Mike from big Joe's retirement party in 1989, when Joe was still recovering from his gunshot wounds. Black Jimmy was in Florida because of a slow walking beef and couldn't attend. “I heard it was quite a shindig,” he says.

  “So many people,” says Helen, rolling her eyes in mock exasperation. “And so much food.”

  “There was food everywhere,” admits Mike.

  For several moments the room grows quiet, except for the fiddle music emanating from the den, as Jimmy sifts through a stack of photographs, Helen arranges a letter opener and paperweight, and Mike, in the corner, studies the nap of the carpet. Helen and Jimmy have known each other for twenty-five years, and he's been a guest in her home before, but with big Joe gone there's a hint of formality in their meeting, a slight unease. The circle of Joe McCain's life eclipsed many other spheres, but most of those barely touched one another. What he did with guys like Jimmy, big Joe kept out of the house, and who he was at home he kept away from people like Jimmy. Still, Joe McCain was the bond that connects Helen and Jimmy, and each is left with a separate parcel of memories.

  There's a stack of duplicate photos from Joe's retirement party, the big, white-haired Met cop wearing a broad smile, his arm around Helen and a line of well-wishers to either side, including Joey and Maureen, the police commissioner, and a U.S. senator.

  “Can I have one of these?” asks Jimmy.

  “Sure, go ahead,” Helen says. “Joe would want you to have it.”

  A short while later, we all stand up; Jimmy and I kiss Helen on the cheek, and she escorts us to the door.

  “It's nice to see you again,” says Jimmy, crossing the threshold.

  “Nice to see you, Jimmy,” Helen says. She watches him descend the staircase in the gloom. “Good-bye.”

  A dank, penetrating chill occupies the neighborhood. Mike hustles around the front of the rental car and climbs in the driver's side and starts the engine with a roar. Jimmy and I are alone in the street, the fog shrouding the hedgerow and seeping in tendrils across the pavement.

  “Joe McCain,” says a wistful Black Jimmy, raising the photograph and squinting at it. “When other cops would give him shit about using me as an informant— that I was a bad guy, you know, like Whitey and Stevie turned out to be— Joe would throw up his hands. ‘Oh, c'mon,' he'd say. ‘Jimmy never killed anybody. He never hurt anyone.'”

  Jimmy looks at me, and I realize this isn't a con. “In them days, kid,” he says, “Joe McCain was the best fuckin' cop in the city.”

  TWENTY-THREE

  Eddie Miami

  I love the wild not less than the good.

  — HENRY DAVID THOREAU

  I'M SUPPOSED TO MEET BLACK JIMMY for dinner a couple of nights later, but he skips town pretty fast, disappearing like smoke. It seems that whenever I'm not working with Kevin McKenna or Mark Donahue, I'm out chasing the ghosts of Joe McCain and the men who knew him. And after several months of poring over old files, old photographs, yellowed newspaper clippings, and batches of memoranda and personal correspondence, I'm a little closer to understanding the personality and character of big Joe than I was
before. It's no easy task to reconstruct a life after it's over; in that sense, the jobs of the detective, the journalist, and the historian are not far apart. The advantage I have over someone investigating, say, the legacy of Paul Revere, is that I can still talk to folks who lived and worked alongside McCain. You can tell a lot about a man by the friends he keeps.

  A native of White Plains, New York, where his father was chief of police, the thirty-two-year-old Secret Service agent Stewart J. Henry had ten years' experience helping to break up counterfeit rings and investigating threats against Presidents Nixon, Ford, and Carter when he was shifted to the outfit's Boston office in 1980. Just a few days after he arrived in the city, Stew Henry met Joe McCain, Sr., who he had been told was a “cop's cop” and a man he could trust. The two hit it off immediately.

  A hulking ex-football player, who had built himself up through countless hours in Jack La Lanne's gym in Manhattan, Stew Henry had a flair for undercover work. As a twenty-four-year-old rookie, he posed as a hit man in New York “for some schmuck who wanted to kill Nixon.” At first the Secret Service didn't think it was such a big deal, just some garden-variety nutcase spouting off about the Republicans. But while researching the suspect's background, they discovered that he was an intelligent, clean-cut twenty-seven-year-old University of Pennsylvania grad named Andrew B. Topping and that he was quite serious about his threats. To sting Topping, Stew Henry created one of his most memorable characters: a slow-thinking, gold-chain-wearing mobster from the Bronx named Joey DeVito.

  Through an informant, a meeting between Topping and the “hit man” was arranged at the Harvard Club. The three men convened at the bar and by prior arrangement, the informant withdrew and Topping and Joey DeVito moved to a table to discuss the assassination in more detail.

  “At first I made him think I was just a fucking nut, like him,” said Henry. “The next day I called back and asked for money.”