Hitman by Howie Carr Page A

friend were expected at Angiulo’s headquarters, the Dog House—immediately. It was an invitation they couldn’t turn down.
    Once they sat down, Jerry Angiulo got right to the point. They’d dumped the body too close to 98 Prince Street, maybe five blocks away.
    â€œThe fuck is it with youse guys!” he yelled. “Ya leave a fuckin’ stiff in my fuckin’ backyard! What the fuck was ya thinking?”
    â€œJerry,” said Johnny, “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

 
    3
    Gang War
    LAWYER: Were you ever known as Bwana Johnny?
    MARTORANO: No.
    LAWYER: Machine Gun Johnny?
    MARTORANO: No.
    LAWYER: You don’t recall that being your nickname when you were running with Barboza?
    MARTORANO: No. I never had a machine gun when I knew Barboza.
    LAWYER: You just got those later?
    MARTORANO: Wasn’t when I was with Barboza.
    FBI AGENT H. PAUL Rico’s assigned task was to destroy the Mafia in Boston. His hobby—his obsession—was wiping out the McLaughlin Gang. With La Cosa Nostra, it was just business, another assignment from “the Director,” J. Edgar Hoover. With the McLaughlins, it was personal. They were barroom brawlers, up from the docks. Two of their brothers had been killed in World War II. They were old-line shanty Irish. When somebody died, they didn’t have the wake at a funeral home. They’d put the casket in the front parlor, passing beers back and forth across the bier. They didn’t like cops, and they hated homosexuals, which they assumed Rico was.
    Rico knew this because Hoover had instructed his agents to install “gypsy” wires—illegal taps on phones as well as hidden recording devices, known as bugs—anywhere hoodlums did business. Having no warrant, the FBI couldn’t directly use any of the information they obtained from the gypsy bugs as evidence in court, but that did not prove to be an insurmountable problem. All the G-men had to do was attribute the information to an anonymous “source,” and then they could go to a judge and obtain a legal search warrant.
    The feds put a gypsy wire on a phone in some McLaughlin hangout, right around the time Rico made his occasional pilgrimage to D.C. to pick up a crime-fighting award and token cash bonus from the Director. Every year, the Record-American would dutifully run the photo of Rico at FBI headquarters, shaking hands with J. Edgar as Hoover’s top deputy, while another confirmed bachelor named Clyde Tolson looked on.

    Punchy McLaughlin, murdered by Stevie Flemmi and Frank Salemme in 1965.
    On the day the Record was carrying its annual story about Rico’s visit to Hoover to pick up his latest commendation, the agents were listening. And they heard Punchy McLaughlin sneering to another gangster about the Boston FBI office.
    In his 2003 testimony, the mobster Frank Salemme recounted for a congressional committee what Rico had once told him about this one bugged conversation between the McLaughlins.
    â€œThey were always on the phone, according to him, and … the feds would pick up the McLaughlins and the Hugheses casting aspersions on Paul’s manhood and his relationship with J. Edgar Hoover, and J. Edgar Hoover was, excuse me again, a fag, and that Paul used to go down there and have a relationship with Colson. They had a ménage à trois with a guy by the name of Colson, I think—”
    The prosecutor interrupted: “I believe the name was Tolson.”
    â€œSo Paul naturally didn’t like that,” Salemme continued. “He was always on their case, Paul was.”
    Rico often hung out down at the Roxbury gang’s two garages, on Dudley Street in Roxbury and on Hancock Street in Dorchester. Wimpy Bennett stopped by daily, as did Stevie Flemmi and Salemme. George Kaufman ran the actual business, with some help from Salemme, a tall hoodlum from Jamaica Plain who had had some vocational training as