"I Heard You Paint Houses": Frank "The Irishman" Sheeran & Closing the Case on Jimmy Hoffa (22 page)

But what Cohen didn’t know was that Bill and Sam were encouraging me on orders from Hoffa. Cohen was big in the International. He was one of the three trustees. But Cohen was the kind of guy that backed Jimmy on the outside publicly but bucked Jimmy on the inside when Jimmy wanted to get something done. For example, he was against Jimmy’s biggest dream of a nationwide trucker’s contract, the Master Freight Agreement. Cohen was an embarrassment, and he ended up getting indicted for embezzlement, and they eventually got rid of him.

Jimmy had a loyal supporter in Puerto Rico named Frank Chavez. But however, Frank Chavez was a definite troublemaker. He was very hotheaded. He’s the one who sent Bobby Kennedy a letter from his local in Puerto Rico the day John F. Kennedy got assassinated. He told Bobby that in honor of all the bad things Bobby Kennedy had done to Jimmy Hoffa, his Puerto Rican local was going to put flowers on the grave of Lee Harvey Oswald and maintain them and keep them fresh. That still has to make you cringe a little. Let the dead rest in peace. You honor the dead, especially that man. He was a war hero who saved his own men in that PT boat incident. Bobby was a son of a bitch, but the man had just lost his brother and he must have known it was all connected with him and that it was his own fault, besides.

Frank Chavez was in a jurisdictional dispute with big Paul Hall’s Seafarers International Union in Puerto Rico. Paul Hall was in the AFL-CIO, and they wanted to represent the drivers down on the docks who carted away the ship’s cargo because they were on the waterfront. But because they were drivers, Frank Chavez wanted them as Teamsters. Hoffa and Hall hated each other. Paul Hall was one of those in the AFL-CIO that threw the Teamsters out, and now Jimmy Hoffa believed that Hall was trying to do whatever he could to bring Jimmy Hoffa and the Teamsters down. It was a bloody war. Both sides had their own hit squads.

One night I got a call in Philadelphia from Jimmy to grab a flight the next morning to Puerto Rico to straighten a couple of matters out, and then to fly to Chicago and straighten a matter out, and then to meet Jimmy at the Fairmont Hotel in San Francisco at 8:00
P.M
.

Only in the movies or comic books do people say they want you to go and hit somebody. All they ever say is that they want you to go straighten a matter out. They say they want you to do whatever you’ve got to do to straighten a matter out. When you get there the people there have it all set up and you just do whatever you have to do, and then you’d go back to whoever sent you to give your report in case there was anything more they had to order to be done. It was like a report you might make in combat after you got back from a night patrol. Then you’d go home.

All in one day I flew to Puerto Rico and took care of two matters. Then I flew to Chicago and took care of one matter. Then I flew to San Francisco and stopped at a bar for a couple of glasses of wine, because I knew I wouldn’t get anything to drink when I got to the Fairmont to meet up with Jimmy and give him the report. I walked into Jimmy’s hotel room at exactly 8:00
P.M
. and he yelled at me for keeping him waiting.

“I’m on time, Jimmy,” I said. “It’s 8:00.”

“You couldn’t have been early,” Jimmy yelled.
”

Later that same year John F. Kennedy was elected president by a thin margin. The first thing he did was appoint his brother attorney general of the United States. This put Bobby in charge of the Justice Department, all of the United States attorneys, and of the FBI and the FBI director, J. Edgar Hoover. And the first thing Bobby Kennedy did was turn against the very men who helped elect his brother. For the first time in American history an attorney general committed his office to the eradication of organized crime.

Toward that end, Bobby Kennedy formed a squad of lawyers and investigators within the Justice Department, and he put in charge of that squad his old right-hand man during the McClellan Committee hearings, Walter Sheridan. Bobby Kennedy chose the members of the squad himself. He gave the squad a very limited job to do and gave the squad a very subtle name: “The Get Hoffa Squad.”

“
Everything, and I mean everything, came as a result of that.
”

 
chapter fifteen
 

Respect with an Envelope

“
When I was home working out of Local 107 every once in a while I would go around my old Darby crowd and around my parents. That was the only time that I had a chance to smile a little for the Irish Catholics because Jack Kennedy was going to be sworn in. Back in the old Darby neighborhood, hanging with my old pals like Yank Quinn, this new Irish president John F. Kennedy was a little bit of a treat. He was the first Irish Catholic ever to get to be president. Not to mention he had done his time in the war just like us. When I was only a kid there was one other Irish Catholic politician around, named Al Smith, who tried to get to be president. He was out of New York. Al Smith was the one that made the saying, “I’d rather be right than president.” Only at that time segments of the country were concerned that being a Catholic, Al Smith would take his orders from the pope. They say that’s why the man lost the election.

It goes without saying that when I was around Jimmy Hoffa, I wouldn’t bother to say a word about Jack Kennedy that was good. I would not bother to even mention the man’s name after Jack Kennedy announced that he was going to make Bobby the attorney general. Jimmy knew even before that announcement that Kennedy’s election was going to be bad for him, but Jimmy and Russell and everybody looked at this announcement as a really low blow from old man Joe Kennedy to his old friends. Jimmy knew that it was just a matter of time before the legal action against him would get worse and worse.

Jimmy would say things like, “That weasel Bobby knows full well the only reason he’s attorney general is his brother. Without the brother he’s nothing. Bobby was right there licking his chops when the votes were being counted their way. They’re the worst kind of hypocrite. Our friends in Chicago were drinking idiot juice when they decided to be suckers for that Hollywood glamor and that Frank Sinatra crap. I tried to tell Giancana. Rat pack is the right name. A pack of no-good rats.”

Russell himself had no great use for Frank Sinatra. I know Russell was no sucker for the Hollywood glamor. Russell wouldn’t put up with Sinatra’s loudmouth wise-guy routine. Frank Sinatra behaved himself around Russell Bufalino. One night at the 500 Club in Atlantic City I heard Russell tell Sinatra: “Sit down or I’ll rip your tongue out and stick it up your ass.” If he had a drink in him Sinatra was an asshole. He’d put on a gorilla suit when he got drunk. He’d go to fight some guy knowing somebody would stop it. He was a bad drinker. Me, if I drink, I want to sing and dance. I guess he figured he was already a singer and a dancer.

Bill Isabel told me that Jimmy was never the same after Bobby Kennedy crossed his path. It’s like that old story about the guy who keeps chasing the white whale. Only with Bobby and Jimmy they both were the guy chasing the white whale. At the same time they both were the white whale being chased. Actually, one thing Jimmy did love to do, Jimmy used to love to go deep-sea fishing. The International kept a forty-foot fishing boat in Miami Beach for Jimmy. It had a full-time captain and bedrooms so that six people could sleep on it. Jimmy asked me to go deep-sea fishing with him once and I told him, “I don’t go anywhere I can’t walk back from.”

One night in 1961 when I was in Philly I had dinner with Russell. I know it was way before Easter because every Easter and every Christmas you would meet with the particular boss at a party and you showed your respect with an envelope. Russell had done a lot for me that year, and I had given him the Christmas envelope at the party, and I hadn’t given him the Easter envelope yet. In fact, it was probably no more than a few weeks after the Christmas party. The next year Russ stopped taking any envelopes from me. Instead, he started giving me gifts—like jewelry.

On this particular night Russell and I were having dinner alone at Cous’ Little Italy restaurant, and Russell told me that President Kennedy was supposed to be doing something about Cuba. I already suspected from carrying notes—verbal messages—between Jimmy and Sam Giancana that something was going down in Cuba.

Russell told me during Prohibition old man Kennedy made a dollar on every bottle of scotch that came into the country. He told me the old man controlled the president, and he was supposed to get the president to help them in Cuba and help get the McClellan hearings stopped and get the government off everybody’s back.

Looking back now, I’ve got to think the old man told President Kennedy to go ahead on this Cuba matter to pay off Sam Giancana for helping him in the election. Cuba would be a way to show respect for what was done for them; to give the envelope. Kennedy would look like he was helping the people get back their casinos and racetracks and other businesses they had down there. They had everything—shrimp boats and legitimate businesses.

Russell had a cataract problem and he didn’t like to drive. If he had to drive a long distance and I was in the East, I still drove him places because I had a fair amount of free time. Local 107 in Philly didn’t always have something for me to do. And if they did have something, Raymond Cohen didn’t trust me to do it. At 107 at that time I was more like a fireman waiting for the fire to happen. In Chicago and Detroit when I was there it seemed like there was always a fire. Local 107 got hectic a couple of months later.

Russell would get in my Lincoln and he’d doze right off. Russ was good with sleep. He was disciplined about it. It was like medicine for him. He’d take a nap in the afternoon. He’d try to get me to do it, but I could never do that. After the war I never got more than three or four hours’ sleep a night. The war conditioned me to get by on less sleep. You had to learn how to do that over there, because you were always having to wake up and jump off. Whenever Russell spent the night at my apartment near the Philadelphia racetrack, we’d watch the fights, and at 11:00 he’d go to his room and he’d go straight to bed. I’d be up just listening to the radio, drinking wine, and reading until after two in the morning.

One night Russell asked me to drive him to Detroit. He got in the car and went right to sleep before I pulled out of the driveway. I had a CB radio and I kept an ear out for roadblocks or troopers. It was a quiet night, so I did 90 to 100 the whole way. When Russell woke up he opened his eyes and he was in Detroit. He looked at his watch and said, “Next time, I’ll take a plane.”

For as long as I knew him, Russell liked me to drive him out west to the Pittsburgh area and visit his very close friend Kelly Mannarino in New Kensington. They would both cook the tomato sauce, but they called it gravy, and it would cook all day and sometimes through the night. At dinner you had to eat what Russell cooked and you had to eat what Kelly cooked. You couldn’t eat one meal without eating the other one’s meal. Then at the end you would never be too full to dip your bread in the gravy on your plate. Russell made a good prosciutto gravy. Kelly was no slouch either. It was like a contest. But the winner was always the homemade wine and the relaxation. They both had a terrific sense of humor and they would joke about what the other one was cooking. Russell treated me like a son. He and Carrie never had any children. I don’t know if I was a son to him or not. I know he liked having me around or I wouldn’t be sitting here now. I’d be long gone.

The only time I saw Russ show any emotion was when Kelly got cancer in 1980, just before my first trial in Philadelphia. In six months Kelly went to 100 pounds, and Russell cried just looking at him.