Big Stick-Up at Brink's!

by Behn, Noel;

  “Let’s go get him,” a voice Jazz immediately recognized as Gus’s said.

  Maffie’s masked head shook. “Let’s see what he does first.”

  The man turned from the door, raised a hand and scratched his head, tucked something under his other arm that looked like a small package or lunch pail, walked past the rotunda window for the corner.

  Maffie nudged Gus with his elbow, gripped his .45 more tightly in one hand, pushed open the door in the front of the booth with his other and stepped out into the garage. The man went into a booth just before the corner. Jazz and Gus returned to the corner guard booth.

  And newly appointed garageman William Manter crossed the supply room, entered the supervisor’s office and seated himself at the desk and began eating his lunch.

  And Tony Pino paced the floorboards under the canvas rigging, muttering to himself, put his eye to the side peephole and paced and muttered some more.

  Geagan stood in the ransacked vault room, listening to Maffie and Gusciora, and learned that an unknown man was on the premises. He gazed longingly down at the GE box but decided not to take any chances. His gloved hand raised and pointed toward the door in the grille wall.

  Four perspiration-soaked robbers walked from the vault room and into the darkness of the payroll wrapping room, leaving no one behind to guard the prisoners. Single file they crossed the counting room, and whoever it was who was supposed to take the wastepaper baskets away from the doors forgot in at least one instance—but not as badly as whoever it was who was supposed to take the rope and tape and extra sacks. They ran into two more robbers heading back to the vault room and motioned them to turn around. They bumped into a third robber heading back, one who ignored their signal to go on downstairs—one who muttered something about leaving something behind in the vault room. Geagan said, “Okay, go back, but when you come out make sure you close the doors.” One by one they came out of the long dark corridor and across the shadowy front hall and down the first half flight of stairs. Sisal bags were piled up on the bottom steps of the second half flight, and several robbers stopped here. Several more squeezed through the sacks on the main-floor landing, got off to the right behind them. One or two ripped the rubber masks off their sweat-drenched faces and emitted audible sighs of relief. One or two left their masks on after Geagan took off his and signaled that all the others should do the same. Geagan pointed out assignments, deployed the men amid the crush of sacks as he thought best to create a human conveyor belt. He waited for the last man to return from upstairs. Then he gripped the doorknob, turned it carefully, felt the lock tongue depress. He pushed the door open several inches, then pulled it close, reopened it a crack and peered out.

  Pino saw the signal, all but shouted as he slapped the top of the cab—and did shout when he realized Barney had let the idling motor die. The starter whined, the engine kicked over, and the truck lurched across the street, climbed the curb, overshot the door, backed up and stopped. Costa pulled the Chevrolet out into the middle of the street, let it stand idling.

  The metal door at 165 Prince Street flew out and open. The secret canvas door in the canvas side of the truck flew in and open. Two costumed robbers bounded on beside Pino. Large, open-mouthed sisal bags flew out of the Brink’s door and into the truck. Bag after bag flew out, and in less than twenty-five seconds the haul was loaded. Geagan and Faherty hurried up the street to where Costa was parked.

  Richardson closed the door at 165 Prince Street.

  “Where’s the metal box?” Pino called out.

  “We couldn’t get it,” Sandy whispered as he ran up.

  “Whaddaya mean you couldn’t get it? You gotta get it!”

  “‘We couldn’t get it. Now get out of the way and let me on.”

  “That box is what started it all. That box is got a million smackers in it. I been dreaming of that box for six years!”

  “Let me on, for God’s sakes.”

  And Pino went bananas, absolutely ape. He kicked at Richardson, yelled at Richardson, ordered him back into Brink’s and was about to jump off the truck and go in himself when Maffie bear-hugged him from behind and lifted him off the floorboards and clamped a hand over his mouth. He still struggled and even hit Jazz’s gloved hand. Sandy jumped on board, and someone else banged on the cab roof and somebody began snapping the trick door in place.

  And Barney took off like a bat out of hell. And Maffie fell back and let his grip on Pino go. And Pino scrambled to his feet and tried to run for the trick door. And Barney wheeled as hard a right as he had ever wheeled. And Pino went flying as he had never flown.

  Costa, Faherty and Geagan looked ahead through the windshield of the follow car and watched the rigged truck jump the curb as it bounded into Lafayette Street, noticed the right canvas side mushroom out as if it were going to explode.

  Nineteen-year-old Edwin Coffin glanced up from his nocturnal playground activities on the outside staircase in time to see a gray canvas-backed truck climb the curb and drive into Lafayette Street followed by a dark car.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Disputed Time

  The truck rocketed up Lafayette Street, skidded around the corner into Endicott Street, spun its wheels on the wet pavement, shot forward, reached the end of the block, slowed down and made an easy right turn onto Commercial and approached Prince Street at approximately twenty miles an hour. As the follow car emerged from Endicott and fell into the rear, it accelerated past the North Terminal Garage building and Hull Street, then, as the road began to circle Copps Hill, maintained a constant speed of forty miles an hour.

  Geagan, sitting in the back seat of the Ford sedan, stripped off his mask and costume and rubbers, stuffed everything into an empty laundry bag, took his own hat and car keys and change and driver’s license out of the other laundry bag Costa had handed him. Faherty sat panting in the front seat with his costume on his lap, waited for Geagan to hand forward the filled sack, then deposited the robbery gear.

  Some of the men in the rear of the truck were standing amid the bulging sacks of loot, removing their costumes; others were sitting. Almost everyone was breathing hard and perspiring.

  “If anyone was talking, I didn’t hear them,” states Richardson. “Anthony was moving around passing out the laundry sacks with our clothes and personal effects. Some of the guys didn’t use the sacks when they were empty. They threw their costumes on the floor.

  “I was thinking the faster we got out of there, the better for all of us. We just had gone through an ordeal. After it’s over, the tension almost grinds you.”

  The tandem of truck and follow car continued along Atlantic Avenue. Once across the Summer Street intersection, Costa pulled to a stop. Geagan jumped out.

  “I had my car parked down near Congress Street,” states Mike. “The law would be coming to me first, so I had to go home. I would have liked to have been along with the men instead. There was a lot to do, but I drove for home. It was like a battlefield. After the attack the fear sets in.”

  The drizzle turned to rain. Costa sped up, flashed his highway lights, couldn’t see anything on the avenue ahead. He increased his speed to nearly sixty miles an hour. Red taillights were spotted in the distance, then a familiar silhouette of square canvas.

  “Tony Pino was sitting on a Coca-Cola box and keeping quiet, so I thought he was really pissed off,” states Maffie. “Somebody said, ‘I bet we grabbed four million dollars.’ That’s all I remember anyone saying. I wasn’t thinking about that, and I wasn’t worrying about getting pinched. I might have been thinking why Barney Banfield was taking his sweet time, but the first thing I know the truck started to slow down and Tony Pino got off his Coca-Cola box.”

  Richardson was waiting at the rear when the truck came to a stop, pulled open the canvas door for Pino.

  “If you hadn’t stolen more goddamn money than anybody in the world,” Tony told Sandy, “I’d kill you with my bare hands for leaving the metal box behind.” Then he jumped off and hurri
ed home.

  “Okay, so now I call my lawyer and tell him I’m coming over to see him as soon as I stop at my aunt’s,” Tony said. “That was the plan, see. I’m planning to go over to Joe’s liquor store and buy my aunt this bottle of brandy. So I tell Mary that’s where I’m heading for. And going out the front door, I bump into this woman friend of Mary’s and ask if she knows the time. She says it’s seven fifteen. It’s only seven five when I change the clock back, but what the hell.

  “So I walk around the corner instead of using the alley. I want everyone else in the world to see me. I start up to Joe’s package liquor store, and Mother of God, I couldn’t believe it. There was Joe standing out in front big as life talking to Lieutenant Crowley. Okay, I stop and say hello to them and ask Joe if I can have credit for a couple of bottles of this Metaxis brand. You always wanna ask for something people is gonna remember. Nobody forgets a name like Metaxis. Joe says okay, okay. Then I give the signal, see, I ask Joe what time it is. If I ask the time, that meant the job come off. If I don’t ask, it mean we busted again.

  “So Joe says it’s seven ten, and I could of killed him. Officer Crowley don’t look at his watch, but now he’s got seven ten psychologically stuck in his subconscious mind. That goddamn McGinnis coulda told six forty-five or six fifty just as easy.

  “I go in and ask the clerk for this Metaxis, and I ask him the time, too. He looks at the clock and tells me it’s seven ten. I get the two bottles, and I come out and start talking to Joe and the lieutenant. The lieutenant asks me what I know about a piece of work over at the Statler Hotel—the stickup the day before. He tells me he’s getting a lot of heat about it. I tell him I don’t know a thing about the Statler, and I start wondering what the hell’s gonna break loose any minute now.”

  Barney Banfield pulled to a hard stop. The Chevrolet pulled to a stop beside it. Richardson and Gusciora were the first to jump off the truck. Costa and Faherty hurried from the car and headed for the truck.

  “You never saw people working faster in your life,” asserts Jazz Maffie. “That stuff was flying off the truck. It was like one of them movie-picture comics, them cartoons where everything’s speeded up. Some of those big wastepaper sacks flew off the truck all at once. Jimmy Costa and Jimma Faherty took their lives in their hands trying to get onto the truck.”

  Costa and Faherty jumped on and began collecting the laundry sacks.

  “I grabbed Tony’s gun satchel and tossed in the loose guns. Some guns were laying loose on the floor, and they weren’t supposed to be. A lot of the costumes were laying around loose, too. It was a madhouse in the truck for a couple of seconds, and then the guys got the money sacks off. Jimma ran around picking up everything that was left. I jumped off and started carrying armloads of junk over and dumping them in the trunk of the car. Jimma got off, too, with an armload. And then that goddamn Barney takes off. He’s supposed to wait until we got everything off the truck, but he takes off before. There’s still some empty bags on the truck and Tony’s gun satchel is still on the truck.”

  A few more people joined the sidewalk conference in front of the Imbescheids’ package liquor store.

  “So now Crowley changes the conversation,” Pino related. “I stick around for a few minutes but tell them I gotta go see my sick aunt.”

  Pino started for this corner and waved to Boston Police Officer John J. Tierney, Division 13, who would recall the time as being approximately 7:30 P.M.

  “We dragged the big wastepaper sacks over and lined them against the wall,” Sandy Richardson relates. “What was supposed to happen at this time was everyone leaving except Henry and myself. What did happen was Costa and Jimma left and Jazz and Gus and Specs stayed around. One of them lugged over one of the sacks and dumped it on the table. The stuff all fell out and covered most of the table. We tore open some of the packages and spread some of the money out. One of the guys threw some of the loose money up in the air. To be truthful, I may have thrown some money up myself. Anthony would have had a heart attack if he saw us.

  “That went on for about five minutes, and then they left. Gus and Jazz and Specs. Henry and I stayed and started cleaning up. Henry turned on the radio. We expected some kind of report somewhere. Henry kept changing the station, but we couldn’t find anything about Brink’s.”

  Costa and Faherty were driving in the Chevrolet sedan along Columbia Road with their radio on.

  “There was nothing about Brinks coming in,” Costa relates. “I took a right at Columbia Square and passed a joint that has a clock in the window. It ain’t even seven thirty yet. Christ, it ain’t even seven twenty-five. I can’t figure what those guys over in Brink’s are doing. Then for a minute I get a chill. I thought maybe something bad happened in the joint they didn’t tell me about. But Jimma said hell, no. He said all that happened was the Brink’s guys got tied up good and tight.”

  Brink’s cashier Thomas Lloyd lay back to back with Brink’s armored truck driver Charles Grell on the vault room floor and tugged and strained and twisted and finally ripped his hands free. He jumped up, tore the tape from his mouth and, ankles still bound, began hopping toward the phone table. Another holdup victim, James Allen, managed to shed his bindings just as Lloyd pulled the ADT alarm.

  “Call headquarters,” Allen shouted.

  “Christ, I don’t know the number,” Lloyd yelled back.

  “Devonshire 1212!”

  At 7:27 P.M. the tape alarm machine at American District Telegraph sounded. A minute after that the Boston Police Department was notified there was “trouble at Brink’s.” Four minutes after that the first patrol car responded to the North End radio alert and pulled up in front of the Chamber of Commerce building. While the armed officers dashed across the Federal Street sidewalk to the glass doors, a second prowl car arrived. A minute or so after that, Jazz Maffie moseyed into Jimmy O’Keefe’s restaurant and lost himself at the crowded men’s bar, while reporter Tom Sullivan, along with photographer Meyer Ostroff, used the side steps from the ground floor of the North Terminal Garage, where their newspaper, the Boston Record, parked its truck, took them two at a time and came out into the second level of Brink’s garage, expecting that an armored car had been robbed, never suspecting there was a money room on the premises. He found Police Captain John Ahern at sea in the middle of the floor, asking, “How the hell do we get into this place?”

  At 7:35 P.M. Jimmy Costa and Jimma Faherty were inside the Savin Hill plant, unloading costumes and bags. Costa, who knew there were six pistols on the rigged truck Barney had prematurely driven away, now found another eight weapons—which meant the gang had come from Brink’s with four more handguns than they had taken in. Tom Sullivan and Meyer Ostroff followed Captain Ahern and a plainclothes detective into the vault room, which looked as if “a bomb had exploded inside it,” and got one of the dazed hold-up victims to help them move a table which shouldn’t have been moved. Ostroff climbed on top and began taking pictures, while Ahern questioned the other four employees—and from the beginning all five eyewitnesses never could agree on how many men had stuck them up.

  Tony Pino poured Aunt Elizabeth a glass of Metaxis brand, then left to join his lawyer. Boston police headquarters received confirmation from the scene that an armed theft had been perpetrated at Brink’s and perhaps as much as $100,000 stolen. Costa drove his Buick toward Uphams Corner, glanced down and noticed Jimma Faherty was wearing the rubbers he should have taken off on the getaway ride from Brink’s, so Jimma took off the rubbers and, to Costa’s amazement and despair, tossed them out the car window.

  By 7:45 P.M. the Brink’s premises were being inundated by policemen and reporters, and despite repeated shortwave radio corrections, prowl cars continued to arrive at the Chamber of Commerce building. Mike Geagan was in the basement of his home washing his infant daughter’s clothes; Jimma Faherty was drinking like a fish with friends at Gusti’s Restaurant at Uphams Corner; Jazz Maffie was ordering dinner with his wife in the dining room at Jimmy O’Keefe’s
restaurant; Specs O’Keefe and Stanley Gusciora were at a downtown bar having drinks with two girlfriends; Barney Banfield was in Joe McGinnis’ secret plant at Jamaica Plain, swigging whiskey with one hand and wiping fingerprints from the rigged truck with the other hand. Sandy Richardson and Henry Baker were seated at a table, listening to the radio and inspecting stolen packages and tossing crisp new bills whose serial numbers ran in sequence into a sisal sack designated for “bad money” and fast counting the old or used bills and dumping them in a sisal sack being utilized for “good money.”

  By 8 P.M. the bridges leading out of Boston were sealed off by the Boston Police Department, officers were at the railroad and bus terminals, and every last man of the Massachusetts State Police was on alert. Other troopers were delaying airplane takeoffs at Logan Field, checking passengers, and commercial radio programs were being interrupted by bulletins of the robbery. Jimmy Costa arrived at the Harbor Motor Terminal and joined Tony Pino and the lawyer for a discussion of lease adjustment on the property.

  At 8:30 P.M. the assistant special agent in charge of the FBI’s Boston field office, Billy West, learned of the robbery at home—while listening to a commercial radio program—and called the night duty agent at his office, who didn’t know a thing about Brink’s. Fifteen minutes after that a tipsy Barney Banfield drove across the Wellington Bridge between Somerville and Medford. He reached into Pino’s leather gun satchel, which never should have been left on the rigged truck, and, without disassembling them, tossed the weapons out the window, handguns as well as Tony’s rifles and shotguns, and hurled the satchel into the water as well. A minute or so later he discovered two more weapons on the seat and pulled off the bridge and into Somerville and stopped along the banks of the Mystic River, not more than a block from where Geagan’s mother-in-law lived, and hurled the pair of handguns into the water—at low tide. Not too long after that Jimma Faherty, who intended to use arrest for drunkenness as his alibi, drunkenly broke a couple of windows and managed to get arrested—for suspicion of robbing a drugstore some months before.