“Since those jobs’re minimum wage,” Richards said, “they’ve got two features, one of which appeals to the longhair punks, and one of which should’ve appealed to us a long time afuckingo, if I’d’ve had the brains of your average household plant. The feature the bandits like is the fact that those jobs’re always open. Joints’re always looking for help. So for them it’s not a matter of finding an opening in some deal-’em-off-the-arm, quick-’n’-dirty, happens to be near a bank; it’s a matter, finding a bank, near a quick-’n’-dirty. Once you spot a bank in a mall, with a joint across the way, you can always get somebody in there, watch the goddamned bank.
“Now,” he said, “the feature that appeals to us is that the joints have to keep records, prove they’re paying the minimum wage, and who they’re paying it to. ’Cause they got to file W-two forms and all that shit with the IRS and so forth. So that means when they hire somebody, or somebody leaves, they got to have records, when that person come on and when that person left. And that person’s got to have, Social Security number and some identification. May not be the right SS number. Maybe false ID. But something, true or false, that shows who they are. Which means that if you go back and check on who started work a month or two before the job, and who stopped showing up either just before or just after, you know who the spotter was. And what the spotter looked like. And from talking to people working there then, maybe some things the spotter said, just happened to drop, that might tell you something about who they really were.
“So,” Richards said, “this finally dawns on me, on Monday, this is what’s going on, I took a little ride for myself yesterday, just refresh my recollection. In other words: to see if there was something I should’ve noticed at the scenes of these hold-ups a long time ago. And there was. There’s a doughnut shop in Danvers with a direct view of the entrance to the bank across the way. There’s a burger joint across from the bank in Brockton. There’s a tire store across the street from the bank in Braintree, at the plaza, which is not the same thing as a fast-food joint, but hires the same kind of people. And what I’m betting is that there’s some kind of similar business operating across from the bank in the Warwick mall where the evildoers struck last Thursday, which is what we find out today.
“Now if we do,” Richards said, “if we do find that out, tomorrow or the next day you are going to sit down in your chair behind your desk and make out some subpoenas for me. And I am going to slap those little devils on the personnel managers of the restaurants and the tire store, and they are going to complain bitterly about me asking for books and records from five years back, and I am going to say: ‘I won’t tell you why. Just get the stuff together and haul your ass in before the grand jury like Mister Gleason says. All right?’ And they will do it. Because we have the majesty of the law on our side, and we can drive them crazy if they feel like thwarting us. And then we will find out whether my theory is correct. And if it is, my friend, we will have something to work with. Not much, maybe, not the Rosetta Stone, but more’n we have got now, which will make us better off.”
Gleason sat up on the passenger seat. He grinned. “You know,” he said, “there are moments when I really like this job.”
“A few,” Richards said. “They come along. Every now and then there’s one of these little breaks in the clouds, sun comes peeking through, and tally ho, my lads, it’s time to flog the steeds.” He slapped Gleason on the left knee. “Don’t,” he said, “don’t spend your whole life, every goddamned day of it, always thinking about how what you do today’s going to make tomorrow better. Think about, at least sometimes, how today is pretty good.”
TWO
7
Daniel Flynn died on May 6, 1967, in his eighty-second year, at the Veterans Administration Hospital on the VFW Parkway in the Jamaica Plain district of Boston. Surviving him were two sisters, Margaret Flynn, 84, and Emily (Flynn) Kenney, 85, both of his late residence at 41 Talbot Street, Dorchester. The principal asset of Daniel Flynn’s estate was the first-class liquor license issued by the Licensing Board of the City of Boston to Daniel J. Flynn, doing business as Broad Street Grille. It permitted him to offer for consumption on the premises at 23 Broad Street, Boston, all varieties of alcoholic beverages, provided he sold food. The license had been in his continuous possession since Prohibition ended in 1933. The lease of the premises had two years to run, but was subject to termination at the option of the landlord upon six months’ notice in the event of the demise or retirement of the lessee, Daniel J. Flynn.
The landlord, Horace Evans Properties, exercised that option on June 2, 1967. Evans, owner of several large office buildings in the financial district, was queried about the reasons for his decision by a Boston Commoner reporter when “it became known that the fifty-three-year-old landmark Broad Street Grille would close.” Through his attorney, Harold Silverman, Evans issued a statement: “Dan Flynn was the landmark, not the Grille. Dan Flynn is gone. The city is changing with the passage of men like Dan Flynn, and the rest of us have to face up to that fact and keep pace with it. Twenty-three Broad is no longer the place for a barroom to operate, not without Dan Flynn.”
Harold Silverman had known Daniel Flynn for more than twenty years. Off the record he told the reporter that “the explanation, the real explanation for the decision, is that a man like Mister Evans felt, always felt comfortable doing business with Dan Flynn. Because you always knew if Dan Flynn was the guy selling liquor in your building, things would not get out of hand. You could bring your mother in that place, or your sister or your wife, and day and night, it didn’t matter. The two of you could have a sandwich and a beer, and she’d never hear an off-color remark or be bothered in any way. And there was no gambling going on, none of that stuff at all. Dan Flynn ran a clean operation. You weren’t, if you were Horace Evans and you owned the property, you could go to bed at night knowing you weren’t going to wake up in the morning to a big story in the papers about how the cops’d raided one of your buildings the night before.
“Well,” Silverman said, “you can’t do that anymore. Now you’ve got all these kids coming along, and they’re selling marijuana, and this and that, and a tenant with a liquor license, unless it’s someone like Dan Flynn, just isn’t the kind of risk you want to take. There aren’t many like Dan Flynn,” he said. “They don’t come along every day.
“Of course the funny thing is,” Silverman said, “the funny thing is that if Horace Evans’d owned the building back in 1921, when Dan first leased the space and moved his so-called restaurant operation into it from LaGrange Street, the chances are Horace would not’ve let him have the space. Because that ‘restaurant,’ unless you were a total idiot, you knew what it was. It was a speakeasy. The Congress passed the law you couldn’t legally make or sell booze, and all the people like Dan who’d been making and selling booze — well, not all of them, of course, but a good many of them — all of a sudden, overnight, they became ‘restaurateurs.’ And what they used to serve you in glasses, before you had your meal, they now served to you in coffee cups, before you had your meal. But only if they knew you, of course, or if you came recommended by somebody else they knew.
“I’d drop in to Dan’s place many nights after work,” Silverman said. “He had no illusions. Absolutely none. ‘Who am I, indeed,’ he’d say, ‘who am I to say a man’s not good as me? That Army doctor? I fooled him. Didn’t want to fight for England. Fight for England, that was hunting down half my friends and relatives? Not on your life. Not on mine, anyway. Do you know what it does to your lungs, you inhale eight cigars every day for a week? Well, I do, and fortunately for me, the Army doc did not. And, I could’ve gone to prison. Broke the law for thirteen years and knew I was doing it. Cops knew I was doing it, too, and not every one of them that looked the other way always looked the other way without first getting something in his pocket for his wife and family. So that’s another thing.’ ”
Silverman laughed. “I must be getting old,” he said. “I must be getti
ng on in years, when I miss the old outlaws. Old Dan was like a lot of us, I guess. Always obeyed the law. Except when he thought the law was wrong; or he didn’t have any choice.”
Atty. Dennis M. Keohane, with offices at 1012 Dorchester Ave., Boston, represented the Flynn estate. Late in the morning of June 19, 1967, he received a call from Atty. Philip Ianucci, representing Joseph Nichols and Joseph Abbate. He made their offer to purchase the liquor license held by the Flynn estate for the sum of thirty thousand dollars, subject to approval of its transfer to the Downtown Social Club, Inc., a close corporation in which Nichols held forty percent of the voting stock, Abbate held thirty-five, and the remainder was divided among members of their families.
“Look,” Keohane said, “obviously we’re going to sell. My two old ladies aren’t about to run a barroom. Although if you ask me, old Emily could do it if she set her mind to it. Old Emily could ramrod a trail drive through the Panhandle. Thing of it is, though, and I assume you want a transfer, the thing I got to know is whether all your guys’re clean. Because if they’re not, and the cops find out, and they start making calls, the next thing you know, everybody’s getting jumpy at Licensing, you know? And we do not need that shit, Phil, where we got this thing all tied up while those jerks investigate, and hem and haw and jerk around, deciding what to do.”
Attorney Ianucci assured Keohane that neither of his clients had a criminal record, “except for Abbate got some speeding tickets. And Nichols, I think he had a drunk-and-disorderly beef from about nine years ago — walloped some cop in Somerville after the cop started a fight.”
On December 5, 1967, the Licensing Board of the City of Boston approved the transfer of the Class A license issued to Daniel Flynn, d/b/a Broad Street Grille, to Downtown Social Club, Inc., for the sale of alcoholic beverages to be consumed on the premises where common victuals would be offered, at 34 Randolph Street in Boston, the location being on the ground and basement floors of an eight-story masonry building two blocks south and one block east of the old Broad Street Grille.
Downtown Social Club, Inc., doing business as The Friary, had a pre-opening celebration on Wednesday, March 6, 1968. Among about eighty attending were a retired first baseman for the Boston Red Sox, two former Celtics guards, three members of the City Council, two priests active in CYO sports programs and a jockey under ten-day suspension at Suffolk Downs for rough riding. The rest of the invited guests enjoying a buffet of shrimp, roast beef, ham, and crabmeat, with an open bar, were men between the ages of twenty-eight and fifty who worked in offices near 34 Randolph Street, and women between the ages of nineteen and twenty-six employed by various airlines and modeling agencies in Boston. They mingled among heavy oak tables and sat on bentwood chairs in cosy beamed alcoves where the back walls were studded with protruding half-barrels charred with brands that said: port, and malmsey, and sherry. Jolly Falstaffs and rollicking monks were the subjects of the murals on the spackled plaster walls. Music was provided by the Donegal Fiddlers.
On March 7th the official opening again featured the Donegal Fiddlers and drew one hundred and thirty-two paying customers. Business picked up after that; Friday, the eighth of March, showed a gross of $3,591.75.
For the next nine years, The Friary prospered. The luncheon menu, served from opening at 11:00 A.M. until closing at 1:00 A.M., offered six-ounce hamburgers with a variety of improvements and side dishes that appealed to many. Clam chowder, heavily floured, and simple fish plates kept hot in steam tables, satisfied customers uninterested in quiche or omelettes. The Friary was closed on Sundays, but by popular demand maintained during the week a blackboard updated daily with listings of Las Vegas odds on NFL football games in the autumn, NBA basketball and NHL hockey games in the winter, and major league baseball in the spring and summer. There were pools on the Boston Marathon, the Stanley Cup, the All-Star Game, big fights, Olympic matches, college football, the World Series and the Super Bowl. A prominent member of the Massachusetts State Senate was arrested for driving under the influence on his way home after one of many political fund-raisers held at The Friary. A second-string running back for the Boston Patriots was sued for battery by a young man; he alleged that the athlete had slugged him in a dispute concerning the chastity of the young man’s female companion.
Joseph Nichols was the chairman of the 1974 Handicapped Games, held at Boston College’s Alumni Field. Interviewed by Channel 49, which carried the games live, he said: “Look, we all know Ethel Kennedy’s got her thing going there, with the Special Olympics and all. And it’s good. She should do that. Bobby, you know, would’ve liked it. But we also got, we got a lot of kids around this town that don’t get involved in that, in anything that’s got ‘Kennedy’ on it, one reason or another, which reason is usually busing and how Teddy stood on that, and they ought to have fun too. So, we’re doing this.”
Joseph Abbate was the subject of a Boston Magazine profile in a series about the city’s eligible bachelors; he was quoted as saying: “I’m thirty-six years old, right? I had a wife already. A wife is what sits up ’till two and asks how come you’re late, when you’re running a saloon. Sandy’s a nice kid. I’m not lying to her. She asks the question, I give her the answer. Woman’s entitled to that. ‘I was getting laid, all right? That’s why I am late.’ She didn’t like it. She divorced me. I don’t blame the lady, right? I’d do the same thing. But getting married again? Uh uh. Not in this life here. Joe and I’re on a roll. We know what we’re doing now.”
MAY 5, 1977
8
Peter Walmsley, 29, of 73 Walk Hill Street, Jamaica Plain, unlocked The Friary back door opening on the alley off 34 Randolph Street at 9:45 A.M. on Monday, May 5, 1977, as usual forty-five minutes late for his work as clean-up man, and confident as usual that Nichols and Abbate would not show up until at least 11:00. The lunchtime cook, Janet Iverson, would be in around 10:15; she would know that he had not reported on time because the dishwashers would still be hot and full. But Peter knew Janet would not tell because he also knew that she was having an affair with one of the waitresses, Diana McKechnie; Nichols, who hated queers, would fire both of them if he found out. Walmsley locked the alley door behind him and groped through the dim passageway between the cases of liquor until he reached the light switch on the partition next to the interior door leading into the main room. He switched on the light, opened the door, and went into the dim public space. He turned on the lights. Later he gave a statement to Boston Police, which he repeated for reporters.
“Everything looked just the way it always does. I didn’t see a single thing that tipped me off that something must be wrong. And at the same time, you know? I knew that something was. It was like, it was like you could smell it. That something was definitely wrong. And I didn’t know what it was. I looked at the bar thing they got there, with the glasses inna racks over your head, and like usual it was pretty empty, because all the glasses naturally’re in the washers, right? And I think: ‘No, that’s not it. Must be something else.’ And I go around behind the bar, and all the time I’m sniffing, you know? Gas leaking or something? And it isn’t that. And I look, I look down at the floor there, when I get behind the bar, because I’m expecting, maybe, I will see water there. And I don’t see any water, like I would’ve if we had a leak or something from the pipes, or Rickie left his towel in the sink or something, and he didn’t shut the water off when he got off work. And it isn’t that.
“Now I’m like, you know, really I am baffled. ‘What the hell is wrong here?’ That’s what I am thinking. And I go around and I check all the booths, you know, see if maybe someone’s in them, maybe sick or something. And there’s nobody there. I’m thinking of all kinds of things, like maybe rats got in, ate the wiring or something and the place is going up. And still I don’t see nothing, don’t smell nothing, don’t hear much — except for the refrigerator and the freezer there, which always hums.
“I go inna Men’s,” Walmsley said. “Nothing there. I go in the Women’s, and also
nothing there. Not even faucets running or the flushes might’ve clogged. Just: Nothing, you know? Nothing. Nothing out of line. And still I know that something is. Something’s out of whack. Something isn’t like it should be. I can, like, sense it, right? I can tell that something, something’s definitely wrong. And then, all of a sudden, I know what it is. It’s Walter and Frieda. The two fuckin’ dogs. Usually, always when I come in, the first thing I got to do is calm down Frieda and Walter. Two big fuckin’ German Shepherds. Because the first thing they want to do is eat me. And they’re not around. So: where the fuck are they?
“I go in the office, and I see that I am right. Something’s definitely wrong. I knew that right off. Inna first place, well, I hadda, hadda hit the door. Because it wouldn’t open, all right? When I turn the knob. And naturally it wouldn’t, right? Because Nick Nichols is against it and I guess he must’ve crawled there, trying to get out. And I seen them all in there, the five that was in there. It wasn’t until afterwards, when the cops get here, they go into the freezer and they find the other two. Along with the goddamned dogs. I didn’t see them other two. I didn’t see the dogs. I didn’t want to, either. All I saw was those five that they killed inside the office. All of them was on their stomachs, and their legs’re bent. Except for Nick, who like I said was up against the door. And there was not a lot of blood, which sort of surprised me, you know? Because I knew they were dead. They had, there was a smell in there. It wasn’t very nice. There was definitely a smell, and if I don’t smell that again, it will be all right with me.”
Suffolk County Medical Examiner Charles J. Fox, MD, with Stephen M. Fratus, MD, Assistant Medical Examiner, conducted autopsies on seven corpses received at the Southern Mortuary on May 5, 1977. Their findings were reported to Det. Lt. Insp. John D. Richards of the Massachusetts State Police, at his office at 20 Ashburton Place in Boston. The findings read in part:
Outlaws (Vintage Crime/Black Lizard) Page 7
