Hitman (18 page)

As he sometimes did when writing about Flemmi, Rico quoted Stevie as “informant” as he described his own plans.

Informant advised that FLEMMI and SALEMME will probably take out Bennett because they have much better connections and information on Billy's activities than he has on their activities.

Stevie and Frankie had an ace in the hole. After the murders of his two brothers, Billy trusted almost no one in the underworld, but he remained close to two hoods named Richard Grasso and Hugh “Sonny” Shields, whom he recruited for his mission of revenge. In a section of an FBI report that was later heavily redacted, Rico wrote that one of them, probably Grasso, “has made a mistake and is out to ‘clear himself.'”

Hugh “Sonny” Shields did not age well during the gang wars of the 1960s.

Namely, by setting up Billy Bennett. Which Grasso did on the day after Rico filed his report about Billy Bennett's imminent murder. It was almost Christmas, and Billy was seldom venturing outside his modest Mattapan home, but this snowy evening, Grasso picked him up in his car. Wearing a shoulder holster with a loaded .38, Billy hopped in the front seat. Sonny Shields sat in the back. Following behind at a discreet distance was another car, with Flemmi and Salemme. They had a plan—they would let Grasso and Shields shoot Bennett and then they'd all head out to Hopkinton for yet another unceremonious burial. That way, they used to joke, the Bennetts could all play bid whist together.

They were also planning to kill Grasso and Shields. What better way than for Grasso to “clear himself” of whatever he'd done than by being shot to death?

According to testimony in a later murder trial, the plan went awry as Grasso was driving Billy Bennett through Mattapan. Bennett spotted Shields pulling a gun out of his coat, and tried to jump out of the car. According to prosecutors, as Bennett opened the door, Shields fired, killing him. The force of the bullet pushed Bennett's body out of the car, into the street, and up against a snowbank. A cab was coming in the other direction, which left Grasso no choice but to drive off, leaving Bennett's body in the street. There would be no third Bennett brother for that ghostly bid-whist game out in Hopkinton.

In that same state murder trial, a witness would testify that while Bennett's body was still lying in the street, Stevie Flemmi called a Boston cop, the same one who five years earlier had gotten the warrant to go into the attic at Luigi's to find Margie Sylvester's body. The witness said Stevie wanted the cop to confirm for them that Billy Bennett was dead.

But the cop would later be acquitted, as would Sonny Shields. Grasso didn't live long enough to stand trial. Grasso ended up shot twice in the head, his body then thrown into the trunk of his car—the Billy Bennett death car. Grasso's car was then dropped off in Brookline, in Norfolk County—a clever ploy designed to ensure minimum police interest in the murder.

From experience, the gangsters understood that if possible, it was always a good idea to dump any corpse in a different police district in Boston than where the murder had actually been committed. It was even better to unload the stiff in a different city or town, and best of all to leave the body in a different county—that really created a jurisdictional nightmare for law enforcement, trying to figure out where the murder had been committed, which determined who would be stuck handling the dead-end investigation. It could get messy, and the last thing cops and prosecutors want is a mess, especially in an organized-crime murder case.

Once Grasso's body was found in Brookline, the Boston cops pretty much washed their hands of the murder. Stevie Flemmi had expected nothing less. This was what he paid them for.

*   *   *

WITH BILLY
Bennett dead, only one piece of unfinished business remained with the Bennetts. Stevie Flemmi wanted the brothers' shylocking records. If Stevie had the ledger books, that would prove that he, and not the Bennetts, was the loan shark of record. He could continue collecting in Wimpy's name. It would be a score worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. Stevie knew that Billy had gotten the books from Walter before either of them had been murdered, but the question now was, how could Stevie spirit them out of Billy's house?

Billy's wife, Louise, stricken with multiple sclerosis, would never open the door to Stevie, or Frankie. It would take someone above reproach to get inside to grab the ledgers.

It would take H. Paul Rico of the FBI.

Rico showed up on Louise Bennett's doorstep in Mattapan, immaculately dressed as always, offering his condolences to the grieving widow. It was imperative, he told her, that she immediately hand over any records that could be used to implicate her in the nefarious criminal enterprises of her late brothers-in-law, not to mention the fact that it just wasn't safe to keep such records around with the likes of such a notorious killer as Stevie Flemmi still at large.

But Billy had carefully instructed his wife: trust no one, especially cops, even the FBI. Especially the FBI. So she told Rico that she had nothing to turn over, that she had no idea what he was talking about. Rico worked it from every possible angle, until he finally gave up and left, without leaving behind a business card. No paper trails for Rico.

It was one of the few times Rico ever failed his friends in the underworld. But by now he had more pressing matters to attend to. His new star witness, Joe Barboza, was about to begin his career as a mob canary. First he could testify against Raymond Patriarca down in Providence, then against Jerry Angiulo in Boston, and finally, in the Teddy Deegan murder case.

But before the Deegan trial could even start, Stevie Flemmi got himself beaten up at Basin Street South.

 

5

Bwana Johnny

LAWYER:
When you met [Hubert] Smith and killed him, you got into a car with him. Is that right?

MARTORANO:
Yes, I did.

LAWYER:
There were two teenagers with him, isn't that right?

MARTORANO:
When I met him in Roxbury, there was three people in the car, and I took it to be three guys. It was the middle of a snowstorm at two in the morning.

LAWYER:
How far away were you from Mr. Smith when you shot him?

MARTORANO:
A foot.

LAWYER:
And people in the car were right next to him, isn't that right?

MARTORANO:
Was the middle of winter. They were dressed in winter clothes, and I just got in the car and started shooting.… He was supposed to be alone. I saw three—what I took—what I believed was three men, and I said to myself I better shoot fast because they may have the same thing on their mind for me as I have for them.

LAWYER:
And you didn't look to see if the people—

MARTORANO:
I just shot three times. After the first flash, it was just shadows.

WHEN STEVIE FLEMMI
got excited, he would stutter. His speech would dissolve into sentence fragments, as if he were too angry to put together a coherent thought. On the morning of January 6, 1968—early in the day for Stevie to be up—he was stuttering and spitting out his words.

He was talking on the phone to Johnny Martorano, and he was in a rage.

“Basin Street … down there looking for you … got a beating … that big nigger Smith … motherfucking nigger … your fuckin' place, Johnny … they held me down … what the fuck.…”

At first Johnny couldn't believe such a thing could happen at Basin Street. All through the '60s, the club kept changing hands, going back and forth between the Martoranos and the Lamattinas. In early 1968, it was the Lamattinas' club. But as far as everybody in the city was concerned, Basin Street would always be Johnny Martorano's place. He still hung there, it was where you went first if you were looking for him. And Johnny still owed Stevie—at least that was the way Johnny figured it, and that was how Stevie saw it, too. Stevie had tipped Johnny that Palladino and Jackson were going to testify against his brother Jimmy. Of course it wasn't true, but Johnny Martorano wouldn't know that for another thirty years.

“Motherfucker held me from behind, Johnny … give me a beating … sapped on the head … Johnny, your place.”

Johnny told Stevie he would take care of it. All day, he could think of nothing else. He didn't really know this Smith. Smitty, everybody at Basin Street called him. Lived in Dorchester, about forty-seven years old. Johnny would have to figure out what had happened, and there was only one way to do that. He would seek out Smitty and ask him directly. That night, a Friday, Johnny met up with another of his buddies, Steve Brucias—Steve the Greek. The Greek lived on Dudley Street with his two teenaged kids, whom he was raising alone. He owned a piece of a bar out in Hyde Park. Johnny filled him in on what had happened the previous night.

The next day, a detective from the BPD vice squad would file a report about the scene at Basin Street South a few hours before the murders: “I see Smitty in Basin Street every night. I get there between 1:15 and 1:30
A.M.
He was drinking Friday night which is very unusual. He is usually on the door but Friday night two young colored kids were on the door, dressed in sport jackets like the band.”

The detective saw Johnny Martorano there, too—“dressed in a black cloth coat, white shirt and a tie. I have seen Martorano in a 1967 or 1968 black Pontiac two-door H.T. [hardtop].”

Even though snow was forecast for after midnight, Basin Street was hopping. When Johnny arrived, he spotted Smitty sitting by himself at the bar, sipping a drink. Johnny told Brucias he needed to talk to Smitty alone, so Brucias went down to the other end of the bar while Johnny parked himself on the stool next to Smitty and bought him a drink, then another, and another.

“I said to him, ‘I heard Stevie was in here last night and he got a beating.' And he says, ‘Yeah, yeah.' I says, ‘What happened?' And he says, ‘Stevie was way outta line.' That's all he said, ‘Way outta line.' I says to him, ‘This is a friend of mine, Stevie, he comes down here and you give him a beating?'”

What Johnny didn't know, what Stevie hadn't told him, was that the reason it wasn't such a big deal to Smith was because he'd just been following orders—from Rocco Lamattina and John Cincotti, the two Mafia soldiers who at that moment ran Basin Street. When he pinned Stevie's arms back, Smitty had just been doing what he was told to do.

What I find out later is, Stevie's been shylocking to Rocco's son. Now, Rocco is a loan shark himself. Stevie shouldn't be doing this. And now he's down in Rocco's own place—which is what Basin Street was at that point—looking for Rocco's kid, over 300 bucks. I didn't know this, but it was actually Stevie who was out of line, not Smith. Smith was a big guy, so he grabbed Stevie's arms while Rocco and Cincotti worked him over. And of course Stevie is humiliated, but he can't do nothing about the two Mafia guys, so he blames it all on the black guy. That's when he calls me.

An FBI informant later recounted the incident in vague terms, perhaps not realizing the connection to the three murders:

Informant stated that recently STEVIE FLEMMI had been beaten up over $300. FLEMMI had tried to collect and met some fast talk. FLEMMI later went back to a bar where he was beaten up by a Negro bartender … Informant stated that STEVIE FLEMMI was in pretty bad shape; however, stated that he would take care of the matter himself.

By calling Johnny Martorano again.

At Basin Street that cold Friday night in January, Johnny Martorano continued pumping Smith for information, asking him the same questions over and over again. Smith either didn't think it was that big a deal, or he believed that he shouldn't be talking about the Lamattinas' family business. He was observing the underworld code, and it was about to cost him his life.

“He kept giving me all the wrong answers,” Johnny Martorano said. “He didn't give me any respect. All he had to do was say, ‘I didn't know he was your friend. I'm sorry.' That's all he needed to say. It would have been a whole different ballgame.”

Finally Johnny drifted away, back to the other end of the bar, where the Greek had been watching them silently, drinking steadily. Over the din of the band and the drunken conversation, Johnny recounted to the Greek what Smitty had told him.

The Greek was drunk, so his instant recommendation was to kill Smith. Johnny agreed. Now he had to figure out a way to get Smith alone so that he could kill him. A new after-hours card game had just started in Roxbury, so Johnny went back to Smith and asked him if he was going over there after last call.

Smith nodded, sure. Johnny said he'd never been there, wasn't sure exactly where it was. Why don't I meet you somewhere, he said to Smith, and then we can go over together. Smith agreed, so Johnny told him he'd catch up with him on Normandy Street, but first he had to pick up some money for the game.