"I Heard You Paint Houses": Frank "The Irishman" Sheeran & Closing the Case on Jimmy Hoffa (39 page)

He Needed a Favor and That Was That

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During that first year when he got out, Jimmy had to get permission to go anywhere. He was not allowed to go to union conferences, but he’d get permission to go to California or wherever for some other reason. He’d stay in the same hotel as all the other guys, and he’d run into them in the lobby. I guess you might say Jimmy was lecturing and teaching.

Jimmy was doing a lot of under-the-table campaigning, not that he had to. He was doing a lot of stuff on the telephone. It was more like keeping everybody in line and letting them know he was coming back so they didn’t get tempted to go over to Fitz.

I flew down to Florida to see Jimmy for a couple of days at his condominium. I called him from the airport while I was waiting for my rental car. He told me Jo wasn’t down there with him and that I should pick up some chili dogs from a Lums along the way so we could have a treat.

After we ate our dogs, we talked about John Mitchell resigning as attorney general to run Nixon’s reelection campaign. With that CREEP [Committee to Reelect the President] angle going for them, those boys were going to have a license to print money.

Jimmy told me he was going to get even with Fitz and Tony Pro for that restriction. He said he was definitely coming back. He was already lining up a lawsuit against the restriction, and I told Jimmy I wanted to be a party to the lawsuit. I told him that John McCullough with the roofer’s union and some other people in Philly were putting together a testimonial dinner for me. I asked him if he’d be the featured speaker. Jimmy asked me to get them to hold off on the testimonial until he was off paper and then he’d be honored to speak.

At this time Jimmy assumed that he was very strong with the alleged mob. He had Russ, Carlos, Santo, Giancana, Chicago, and Detroit. While he was in Lewisburg he got close with Carmine “The Cigar” Galante, from Queens, the boss of the Bonnano crime family. Galante was very rough. He took no prisoners.

Jimmy thought the only problem he had with their culture was with Tony Pro on account of their beef in school. He figured Pro was supporting Fitz so Fitz would help Pro get his lump-sum settlement with the pension fund and get his mil. Speaking mostly about Pro and Fitz, Jimmy said, “They will pay.” Jimmy told me he was going to send a message to Fitz. Jimmy told me he was going to have Pro taken care of. He didn’t specify, but I assume that taking care of Pro would be Fitz’s message.

“Something has to be done about Pro,” he said.

“You get the go ahead and I’ll do his house,” I said. “I got a good man who can drive me. The Redhead.”

“I’ll be the driver,” Jimmy said. “I want him to know it was me.”

When he said he’d be the driver, he took the serious part out of the subject. After he said that, I thought he was puffing, just letting off steam. You don’t use a driver that’s got a face as well known as Milton Berle’s.

The Redhead already had proved himself as a stand-up guy when it came to driving. A little while before I sat down with Jimmy in Florida that spring of 1972 and ate chili dogs, The Redhead drove me on a matter.

Late one night I got a call from Russ to get my little brother and go up to see The Redhead. The little brother was a gun. For something like this I’d have two little brothers. I’d have one in my waistband and a backup piece in my ankle holster. You’d use something like a .32 and a .38 revolver because you wanted more stopping power than you could get with a .22. You certainly didn’t want a silencer, which mostly only goes with a .22. You wanted to do some noisy stray shooting all over the place to send the witnesses for cover. But not the kind of noise that a .45 makes, which you could hear in a patrol car blocks away. So you wouldn’t use a couple of .45s, even though a .45 has first-class stopping power. Besides, a .45 is not accurate beyond twenty-five feet.

When I hung up the phone and got in my car I didn’t know who Russ had in mind, but he needed a favor and that was that. They don’t give you much advance notice. They have people that follow a guy. They have people that call in tips. They have people that tap his phone, and they figure out when he’s likely to be on the street in a vulnerable situation. They don’t want a lot of bodies around between the guy and the street.

A couple of days before the July convention in 1971, where I put Jimmy’s picture inside the convention center, Crazy Joey Gallo got a nut from Harlem to kiss the Colombo family boss, Joe Colombo. This matter was done during an Italian-American Civil Rights League rally at Columbus Circle, and poor Joe Colombo lingered in a coma for several years. On top of everything else, Joe Colombo was hit in front of his own family and his own relatives. Handling the matter that way is something that violates protocol. No doubt Gallo had approval to kiss a boss like Colombo, but not that way, in front of his family. I guess that’s why they called the man Crazy Joey.

As I understand it, the Colombo thing got sanctioned because Joe Colombo was putting too much attention on the alleged mob by all these rallies and the publicity they brought, and he wouldn’t listen to anybody and stop doing them. So he had to go. If Russell had been on the commission I am most certain he would have voted against it. Russell had his own chapter of Colombo’s Italian American Civil Rights League in upstate Pennsylvania. They gave me the man of the year award. I got the plaque up in my room.

Now along comes the man who did a lousy job of kissing Colombo, and now he’s running around in New York with all the big shots in show business. He’s getting himself in the papers all the time. He’d be out with this movie star or that writer or going to a play with the New York nightlife crowd, and the photographers would be having a field day. Crazy Joey was drawing big-time attention and publicity. That’s what they didn’t need. He was doing worse things as far as publicity than Joe Colombo ever did. Colombo liked attention and Gallo liked attention even more than Colombo. When you look past all of that, I heard he was shaking down a restaurant in Little Italy so he could afford the lifestyle of the rich and famous that he was running around with, like he was Errol Flynn. Messing around with Little Italy was definitely out.

John Francis, The Redhead, had a stack of pictures of Crazy Joey Gallo from the New York newspapers. I had never met the man, but now I would know what he looked like. John had a diagram of Umberto’s Clam House, including the corner door, the Mulberry Street door, and the men’s room. The place was owned by a very prominent boss who had his own brother running it. It’s moved since those days, but it’s still in Little Italy.

Gallo was out on the town for his birthday, and somehow whoever wanted this done had a good idea he was going to end up his night at Umberto’s, and they had a good idea where he was going to be sitting—off to the left when you walk in from the Mulberry Street door. Maybe some people had invited him to end up his night there. It was the only joint open at that time of the early morning anyway.

The planning was well done, but it required a good shooter with accuracy. Crazy Joey Gallo would be there with his bodyguard and some women relatives, including his new wife and his sister. Shooting Gallo is one thing. Shooting women is another thing. So you needed very good accuracy, because you wouldn’t get closer than about fifteen to twenty feet, and you wouldn’t want to hit any women in his party.

There was no way you could get any closer than fifteen feet to the man, or the bodyguard would have his piece in his hand. Gallo had to be suspicious somebody was looking for him. He knew he’d stepped on people’s toes and he knew the people he was dealing with. Gallo had to be on his own toes. But he personally wouldn’t be carrying a piece. He was a convicted felon and he would never take that chance. New York had a tough gun law, the Sullivan Law. You wouldn’t expect any of the women to be holding a piece for him in their purse because these women weren’t dates. These were family relatives. There wouldn’t be anybody sitting nonchalant at another table looking out for him, or John Francis would have been told that there was another man that was traveling close in the party that night. That means the only one that most likely had a piece on him was the bodyguard. You’d want to take him out first. You had no reason to mortally wound him, so you’d look to shoot him in the back or the seat of his pants and avoid an artery in the neck or his heart. You just wanted to disable him. You most definitely needed a good shooter with some skill here in this matter. And you had to go in alone or you’d have a Wild West shoot-out. And to go in alone, you couldn’t use just anybody.

I didn’t look threatening or familiar in any way. I looked like just a broken down truck driver with a cap on coming in to use the bathroom, which was not far from the door. I have very fair skin. I don’t look like a Mafia shooter.

Another aspect is that you don’t do a hit on a man in front of his family. But the thing is, that’s the way Gallo did it to Colombo. Right there in front of his family; they turned the man into a vegetable. So that’s the way it was going to be for Crazy Joey. He was a fresh kid.

This was before cell phones, so once we left for the thing everything could change by the time we got there. The place could be crowded or he could have left. But he was out celebrating his birthday, drinking, and getting careless. Fighters, when they’re drinking, their skills get diminished. And from what I understand, Gallo had a lot of heart. He could scrap. No doubt people were buying him drinks to make sure he stayed put. Then, when the people figured we’d be getting there soon, they would have called it a night and slipped out. Meanwhile, he would have champagne and drinks lined up for him to finish and whatever food he had.

Crazy Joey Gallo had to feel somewhat safe and comfortable in Little Italy. You’re not supposed to do any hits in restaurants in Little Italy because a lot of the people are silent partners in the restaurants, under the table. This particular Italian seafood restaurant was outright owned by very important people and it had just opened. And it’s bad for the tourist business in Little Italy if people think it’s unsafe to go there. Plus tourists might not know how to be good witnesses, and they might not have sense enough to tell the cops that there were eight midgets about three feet tall and they all had masks on.

Anyway, the people had rules, but they were always a little bit ahead of their own rules. Let’s say they had the power to waive their rules. They would consider doing a hit in a Little Italy restaurant if they had to. And this was very close to after hours, anyway. By law the bars close at four most nights in New York, and this was either after hours or pretty close to it, so there would not be many tourists from Idaho to worry about. Gallo would not have been an easy man to get to at any other time of day, because everywhere he went at a normal hour there could be newspaper photographers nearby on the prowl angling to get a good picture. Maybe that’s why the man went for all that celebrity publicity. It gave him safety. The photographers were better than bodyguards.

John Francis dropped me at Umberto’s Clam House on the corner of Mulberry Street and Hester Street in Little Italy. The way something like this worked is John would drop me off. While I went to the bathroom the Redhead would circle around the block, and I’d come out just when he was back. If I wasn’t there he’d wait a couple of minutes, but if I didn’t come out I’d be on my own. If he ever turned on me, all that John could ever say about the matter is that he dropped me off to go to the bathroom. The Redhead wouldn’t see whatever went on inside. He only knew up to a point.

Sometimes you actually would go to the bathroom first as long as you didn’t have to pass the person to get there. It gives you a chance to make sure nobody’s tailing you. It gives you a chance to look the thing over. It gives you a chance to make sure there’s nobody in the bathroom you have to be concerned about. It also gives you a chance to go to the bathroom. You don’t want to have to take a leak if you’re trying to outrun a couple of cop cars.

But in a thing like this with witnesses right there at the table, you might take a chance on nobody being in the bathroom. You might want to be able to count on the witnesses at the table not seeing anything if it went fast enough without a lot of procrastination. You might just head in the direction of the bathroom and if things looked right you might just go to work. The bartender and the waitresses in a place like this would already know enough not to see anything or they wouldn’t be working for these owners. At this hour, the tourists from Idaho would all be in bed.

Anyway, all John could say was that I was going to the bathroom. If you’re taking care of a matter outdoors, right on the street, your driver has to be parked right there waiting for you, and he can see what it is. Sometimes you need him to be standing out there right on the sidewalk to dispose of the piece or to scare the witnesses, but indoors, like inside doing a house, you want to work alone. That way, at the worst, you can always claim self-defense. My whole time with the people, I never trusted anybody enough that I would take care of a matter with another person in the room. A driver only knows as much as he knows, and that’s good for everybody, including the driver himself. A guy’s facing the electric chair and he’s liable to break down and weaken. If you do it yourself you can only rat on yourself.

There were some alleged mob figures hanging out on the corner whose job it was to greet Crazy Joey and his party when they arrived. It would make Joey less suspicious if somebody walked in the door. When they saw our headlights they dispersed. Their part was done. None of these Little Italy people or Crazy Joey and his people had ever seen me before. When we came to New York, Russell and I would be uptown at Vesuvio’s or at Monte’s in Brooklyn with the Genovese people.