The way I remember it, on the left in the hall there was a staircase to the upstairs. On the right there was a living room and a dining room that had rugs on the floor, not wall to wall. There were no rugs in the vestibule or the long hallway leading from the vestibule to the kitchen. Probably they had picked up the rugs if there were any. There was just a piece of linoleum in the vestibule. I don’t know how it got there.
I knew of these people as Pro’s people, but I had never met them before that day. These were not my social friends. There was no reason to talk. Later during the different Hoffa grand juries we got to see each other a little bit. I walked down the hall to the kitchen. I looked out the back door just to get a feel for the backyard. The high fence and the garage gave the backyard some privacy.
I walked back down the hall to Sally Bugs in the living room. He was peeking through the curtains. “This Chuckie is late,” he said in that north Jersey accent.
Jimmy Hoffa’s foster son, Chuckie O’Brien, and I were going to be part of the bait to lure Jimmy into a car with Sally Bugs, Tony Pro’s right-hand man. Sally Bugs was a squat little guy. Even with a piece in his hand, Sally Bugs was no match for me. Without being told I knew that there was no reason for Sally Bugs to get in Chuckie’s car other than to keep an eye on me. To make sure I didn’t spook Jimmy not to get in the car. Jimmy was supposed to feel safe with me in Chuckie’s car so he’d go to this house with brown shingles and walk right in the front door with me as his backup.
“Here’s a car. Is that Chuckie?” Chuckie O’Brien had long sideburns and a paisley shirt with a wide collar and lots of gold chains on his neck. He looked like he belonged in Saturday Night Fever. Chuckie was an innocent bystander. If Chuckie knew anything to hurt anybody, he’d have been gone to Australia the next day. No way would they have him in that position. Chuckie was known for bragging and boasting. He used to make himself bigger than he was, but he had to look between his legs to find his balls. He could not be trusted with anything worth knowing. If he suspected anything he’d be too nervous when we picked up Jimmy and Jimmy would sense it. All he knew was that he was taking us to pick up Jimmy—a man who helped raise him, a man he called “Dad”—and then driving us all back here to an important meeting with important people. He would just be at ease with Jimmy, acting normal. I always felt sorry for Chuckie O’Brien in this whole thing and I still do. If anybody deserves to be forgiven it’s Chuckie.
My presence there would be the thing that would start out putting Chuckie at ease so he’d act normal with Jimmy. Chuckie was driving Tony Jack’s son’s maroon Mercury, not the kind of car that spells trouble. That familiar car would put Jimmy and Chuckie both at ease. Jimmy was expecting Tony Jack and so his son’s car would be normal. Chuckie picking me up at the house where we were going to come back for the meeting would also put Chuckie at ease.
Everybody being at ease was an important feature, because Jimmy was as smart as they come at smelling danger from all his years in bloody union wars and knowing the people he was dealing with. He was supposed to meet Tony Jack and Tony Pro in a public restaurant with a public parking lot. Not many people change a public meeting place to a private house on Jimmy Hoffa—even with me in the car. Even with his “son” Chuckie driving.
I said, “That’s him.”
Chuckie parked in the street at the front door. The two good-looking guys stayed at the back of the house, down the hall in the kitchen. Sally Bugs got in the backseat of the four-door maroon Mercury right behind Chuckie, introduced himself, and shook Chuckie’s hand. I sat in the front passenger seat. Jimmy would be sitting behind me. Sally Bugs would be able to see us both.
What was going to happen to Chuckie after all this was over? Not a thing. He’d keep his mouth shut about what little he did know out of fear and embarrassment. Chuckie was never known for sticking his neck out. He was the only one in the Hoffa family to keep his job under Fitz.
“What the fuck is this?” Sally Bugs asked. He pointed to the floor in the rear. “It’s wet back here.”
“I had a frozen fish,” Chuckie said. “I had to drop off a fish for Bobby Holmes.”
“A fish, how do you like that?” Sally Bugs said. “The fuckin’ seat is wet back here.” Sally Bugs took out a handkerchief and wiped his hands.
We got there in less than fifteen minutes.
The parking lot was clearing out. Most of the lunch crowd had finished and were gone already. We saw Jimmy’s green Pontiac off to the side on our left as we pulled in. There were trees along Telegraph Road in those days that gave the lot a little privacy.
“He must still be inside,” Chuckie said. “I’ll get him.”
“Don’t bother. There’s a spot over there,” Sally Bugs said, “on the other side of the lot.”
Chuckie drove to where Sally Bugs had pointed. From there we could see Jimmy and get to him before he got to his car. It was believed he had started keeping a piece in his glove compartment.
“Let him finish whatever he’s doing,” Sally Bugs said. “Keep the motor runnin’. When he heads over there to his car, we’ll pick him up.”
We sat and waited a minute. Then Jimmy came from the area of the hardware store behind the restaurant walking toward his car. He was wearing a pullover short-sleeve sport shirt and dark slacks. He was looking around impatient while he walked, looking for me or for the two Tonys. He most definitely didn’t have his piece on him. Not in that outfit.
Chuckie slowly pulled up to Jimmy. Jimmy stopped. He was showing rage in his eyes, that look of his that could make any man respect him.
Chuckie said, “I’m sorry I’m late.”
Jimmy started yelling, “What the fuck are you even doing here? Who the fuck invited you?” He was jabbing his finger at Chuckie.
Then Jimmy looked at Sally Bugs in the rear seat behind Chuckie. “Who the fuck is he?”
“I’m with Tony Pro,” Sally Bugs said.
“What the fuck is going on here? Your fucking boss was supposed to be here at 2:30.” Jimmy started pointing at Sally Bugs.
A few people going to their cars in the parking lot started looking over at us.
“People are staring at us, Jimmy.” Sally Bugs said, and then he pointed over at me. “Look who’s here.”
Jimmy lowered his head and looked in the other side of the car. I lowered my head so he could see me and waved at him.
Sally Bugs said, “His friend wanted to be at the thing. They’re at the house waitin’.”
Jimmy put his hands down and stood there squinting. Seeing me there, Jimmy instantly would believe Russell Bufalino was already in Detroit sitting around a kitchen table at a house waiting. My friend Russell wanting to be there would explain the sudden last-minute change in plans in Jimmy’s mind. Russell Bufalino was not the man to conduct a sit-down in a public place he didn’t know like the Red Fox. Russell Bufalino was old school. He was a very private person. He’d only meet you in public in places he knew and trusted.
Russell Bufalino was the final bait to lure Jimmy into the car. If there was going to be any violence, anything unnatural, Russell would not be there.
Jimmy would believe it was safe to get in the car. He would be too embarrassed at his outburst even to think about not getting in the Mercury with us. He would be too embarrassed to insist on driving his own Pontiac with the piece in it. The psychology of the matter was played to perfection. They knew how to get under the man’s skin. Jimmy Hoffa had been forced to wait for me for a full half-hour, from 2:00 to 2:30, only because he was stuck waiting for the 2:30 meeting. And then he waited his standard fifteen minutes for the two Tonys besides. Waiting forty-five minutes made Jimmy nuts like it was supposed to and then to compensate for all the bull he put out, he got cooperative like he was supposed to.
Not to mention he was now impatient as only Jimmy could be. Jimmy went around and got in the backseat behind me. I heard that Jimmy’s hair that the FBI analyzed for DNA turned up in the trunk. Jimmy was never in the trunk, dead
or alive.
There was no sign of a piece anywhere on Jimmy as he got in. With me finally sitting there as backup like I was supposed to and with us now going to a meeting with Russell Bufalino it would have been the height of disrespect for Jimmy to go and get his piece out of his own car if he had one in it. Plus Jimmy was a convicted felon now and he didn’t need a gun on him if he didn’t need one.
“I thought you were supposed to call me last night,” Jimmy said to me. “I waited in front of the restaurant at 2:00 for you. You were going to be sitting in my car with me when they showed. I was going to make them get in for the sit-down.”
“I just got in,” I said. “We had a delay in plans.” I wasn’t lying to Jimmy. “McGee had to rearrange things so that we could do this meeting right. Not sitting in a car.”
“Who the fuck is Pro?” Jimmy yelled at Sally Bugs, regaining his steam. “Sending a fucking errand boy?”
“We’ll be there in two minutes,” Chuckie said, trying to be a peacemaker. Even as a kid there was never any fight in Chuckie. He couldn’t fight to keep his hands warm.
“I called Jo,” Jimmy said to me. “You could have left a message.”
“You know how McGee is about the telephone when it involves his plans,” I said.
“Somebody could have told me 2:30,” Jimmy said. “At the very least. With all due respect to McGee.”
“We’re almost there already,” Chuckie said. “I had to run an errand. It’s not my fault.”
We passed the footbridge and pulled up in front of the house and everything looked normal for a meeting. The same two cars were there, the brown Buick and the gray Ford, to signify to Jimmy that people were already inside waiting. I was disappointed when I saw the two cars still there because if either one of the cars was gone, that would have meant that the matter would have been called off.
The house and the neighborhood were not threatening in the least. It was a place you’d want your kids to grow up in. The garage in the rear was detached, which was a nice touch. Nobody was asking Jimmy to go in that house in secret through an attached garage. Jimmy and I were walking right in the front door in broad daylight with two cars parked right there in the driveway.
Time was of the essence. The thing had to be done on a schedule. There were alibis to consider. There’s only so much time Tony Jack could spend getting a haircut and a massage. Plus I had to reconnect with Russell and the women in Ohio.
Chuckie pulled up the driveway and stopped near the brick steps to the front door.
Jimmy Hoffa got out of the rear door of the maroon Mercury. I got out of the front door at the same time. Sally Bugs would not be important enough to be going to a meeting like this. So Sally Bugs stepped out of his rear door and went around the Mercury and got in the front passenger seat. Jimmy and I headed for the steps while the Mercury backed on out to go the way we came. Chuckie drove away with Sally Bugs sitting in the shotgun seat. And that’s the only point Sally Bugs could ever talk about. He knew only up to that point. Anything else he thought he knew was hearsay.
Russell told me that Chuckie dropped Sally Bugs off at Pete Vitale’s office. Pete Vitale was an uncouth old-timer from Detroit’s Purple Gang who owned a meatpacking plant where a body could be cut up and an industrial incinerator where a body could be burned up.
Jimmy Hoffa always walked out front, way ahead of people he was walking with. He took short steps but he was fast. I caught up to him and got right behind him the way you get right behind a prisoner you’re taking back behind the line, and when he opened the front door I was right behind him up the front stoop and into the small vestibule, shutting the door behind us.
Nobody was in the house but the Andretta brother and the one that was with him, and they were down the long hall in the kitchen. You couldn’t see them from the vestibule. They were there as cleaners to pick up the linoleum they had put down in the vestibule and to do any clean-up that might be necessary and to remove any jewelry and take Jimmy’s body in a bag to be cremated.
When Jimmy saw that the house was empty, that nobody came out of any of the rooms to greet him, he knew right away what it was. If Jimmy had taken his piece with him he would have gone for it. Jimmy was a fighter. He turned fast, still thinking we were together on the thing, that I was his backup. Jimmy bumped into me hard. If he saw the piece in my hand he had to think I had it out to protect him. He took a quick step to go around me and get to the door. He reached for the knob and Jimmy Hoffa got shot twice at a decent range—not too close or the paint splatters back at you—in the back of the head behind his right ear. My friend didn’t suffer.
I took a quick look down the hall and listened to make sure nobody was going to come out and try to take care of me. Then I dropped the piece on the linoleum, went out the front door with my head down, got in my loaner, and drove back to the Pontiac airport where Russell’s pilot was waiting for me.
The planners had timed the operation in Detroit to take an hour from start to finish.
Russell told me that after the two guys got done cleaning the house they put Jimmy in a body bag. Protected by the fence and the garage they took him out the back door and put him in the trunk of the Buick. Then they took Jimmy to be cremated. Russell told me the two cleaners picked up Sally Bugs at Pete Vitale’s meat-packing plant and drove to some other airport, I don’t know which, where the three of them flew back to Jersey to report to Tony Pro.
Once again, the pilot never looked at me. It was a quick up-and-down flight.
Russell was sleeping in my big black Lincoln at the small airfield in Port Clinton. We picked up the ladies and pulled into Detroit a little before 7:00. We picked up a Detroit police tail just inside the city limit. On account of the wedding they were on the lookout for people like us in out-of-state plates in big Lincolns and Cadillacs.
The only thing that was said between Russell and me that night about the particular matter was back there at the airstrip in Port Clinton, Ohio, after I slid behind the wheel and started up my Lincoln.
Russell woke up and winked his good eye at me and said softly with his raspy voice, “Anyway, I hope you had a pleasant flight, my Irish friend.”
“I hope you had a good sleep,” I said.”
chapter twenty-nine
Everybody Bleeds
On August 4, 1975, five days after the disappearance of Jimmy Hoffa, the FBI made note of a meeting at the Vesuvio Restaurant at 168 West Forty-fifth Street in New York City. Present at the meeting were Anthony “Fat Tony” Salerno, Russell Bufalino, Frank Sheeran, Anthony “Tony Pro” Provenzano, and Salvatore “Sally Bugs” Briguglio.
“New York had turned it down. They didn’t sanction it, but they didn’t oppose it either. “If you did it you were on your own”–type of thing. It couldn’t have been done without Detroit’s sanction, because it was their territory. Same for Chicago because they were close by and there was a lot of tie-in between Chicago and Detroit. The purpose of this meeting at the Vesuvio five days after Jimmy disappeared was to report to Fat Tony Salerno to tell him how the whole thing was done. Fat Tony was very satisfied. If New York had been involved in it, Fat Tony would already know how it was done and we wouldn’t have been there reporting to him. Also, you wanted to let him know if there were any loose ends. You don’t do a whole lot of talking. Just enough so that if something else needs to be done it can be ordered by Fat Tony, who was the top guy. Homicide detectives were all over the place. They try to be nonchalant but they can’t help themselves; they peek. Charlie Allen drove me up and he waited at a table in another area and drank coffee. Sally Bugs sat at a different table in that area.
That first meeting at the Vesuvio went fine and then Tony Pro asked for another meeting to take place right after the first meeting. This one was about me. At this second meeting, Tony Pro made the claim that I knew all along that Jimmy wanted him whacked. Tony Pro claimed that he heard that Jimmy had asked me to kiss him and Fitz.
Tony Pro looked at me and said, “If it
was up to me, you’d have gone, too.”
“That works both ways,” I said. “Everybody bleeds.”
Tony Pro also complained that I was telling people at the wedding that he was capable of killing Hoffa. Tony Pro and I then got up from the table. I waited where Charlie Allen was, and Tony Pro sat down with Sally Bugs while Russell talked to Fat Tony about the whole thing. Russell came out from the partitioned area and got me and left Tony Pro sitting behind. On the way back to where Fat Tony was Russell said to me, “Deny it.” I got back there and Fat Tony Salerno started off telling me he didn’t believe I would be thinking about kissing a made man for Jimmy Hoffa and that was it. Russell Bufalino once again had taken care of his Irishman. Then they got Tony Pro and told him there was nothing to it.
Then Tony Pro started complaining to them about some time that I made him look bad. There was a joint council convention banquet in Atlantic City a few months before Jimmy disappeared. It was Pro’s joint council. Fitz was supposed to be a speaker at the testimonial banquet, but Fitz canceled his visit. He wouldn’t come to Atlantic City because he was afraid of me. Pro was hot talking about it to Russell and Fat Tony. He never took his eyes off me the whole time. Pro said, “You made me look bad. I didn’t have the president. The president speaks at every joint council banquet everywhere in the country, except at mine. Fitz told me he heard you were going to give him a kiss for your friend Hoffa if he showed his face in Atlantic City.” I told Pro, “If I was going to kiss Fitz for anybody he’d be long gone. I’m not your pimp. I can’t straighten out your affairs. It’s not on me if Fitz is a pussy and has no confidence that you can’t protect him in Atlantic City with all your muscle.” Russell told us to shake hands at once. That was not an easy thing to do. But if I ever said no to Russell I wouldn’t be here now. We shook, but I hated Pro for the whole thing, all of it.
I Heard You Paint Houses Page 30
