"I Heard You Paint Houses": Frank "The Irishman" Sheeran & Closing the Case on Jimmy Hoffa (45 page)

To Paint a House

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The pilot stayed put in the plane. I stepped in. The pilot turned his head away even though I knew him. He’d been around the block enough times with our friends to know not to look at my face. I looked out the window at the grass airstrip at Port Clinton, Ohio, and saw my black Lincoln with Russell sitting in the passenger seat. Russell had already started to nod off to sleep.

Port Clinton is at the southern tip of Lake Erie. It’s a fishing village just east of Toledo, a little over 100 miles from the city of Detroit by car. To drive around the lake to the Georgiana Motel in Detroit could take almost three hours back then if you stretched it and took a little bit of a roundabout route. To fly over the lake and land near Detroit would take maybe an hour.

If you want to know what I felt sitting in that plane, I’m sorry to admit, but back then I felt nothing. It wasn’t like I was heading into battle. The decision was made to paint the house and that was that. Sure, I don’t feel good about it if I think about it now. I’m in my eighties. Back then, you start feeling too much and no matter how much nerve you have the nervous tension builds up in you and you get confused. Maybe even act stupid. The war taught me how to control my feelings when it was called for.

The sad part of it is that the whole matter could have been stopped by Jimmy any time he wanted, but he kept sailing into the storm. He could have sunk a lot of people in the same boat with him if he kept going in that direction. We all told him what it is. He thought he was untouchable. Some people are like that. Like my father thought he was untouchable when he tossed me the boxing gloves.

But everybody bleeds.

Was I still concerned for my own health and Irene’s health the way it crossed my mind last night at Brutico’s when Russell told me what it was going to be today? Not even a little bit. They had only two choices. Kill me or put me in the thing. By putting me in the thing they got a chance to make sure they could trust me. By being there to take part I could never do anything back to them. I would be proving, in the best way you could prove it, that it had never been my intent to go out and kiss Tony Pro or Fitz for Jimmy. Russell understood these things. He saved my life over and over again. I had seven contracts out on me over the years and Russell was able to square every one of the beefs.

Even though he was a boss, Russell himself had to do what he had to do. They took care of bosses, too. I didn’t sleep at all that night at the Howard Johnson’s, pondering these things, but I always came up with the same answer. If they had decided not to use me in the thing Jimmy would have been just as dead and no doubt in my mind I’d have been dead along with him. They even told me that later on.

After what seemed like a quick up and down I got out of the plane the way I got in, alone, with the pilot looking the other way.

My wife, Irene, Russell’s wife, Carrie, and Russell’s wife’s older sister were in Port Clinton at a restaurant having coffee and smoking cigarettes while they thought Russell and I had gone to do some of Russell’s business. We already had done some business on the way out and we would stop to do more business on the way home. Among other things, they knew Russell always had his eyepeice with him to look at diamond jewlery. When we got back together in three hours they would never think I could have driven to Detroit and back in three hours, when it would take three hours one way by car just to get to our motel in Detroit.

It wasn’t something that entered my mind, but there was no doubt about my boarding this plane again safe and sound when I was done with my errand. There’s no way they would put the women in the middle of an investigation if something unnatural happened to me in Detroit. I’d be hooking back up with my black Lincoln in Ohio and Russell and I would pick up the women. You might analyze it that the women being in Port Clinton was insurance and gave me a psychological comfort zone, but that kind of thinking never entered my mind.

Besides, I had a piece in my back under my belt. Even today at my age in a nursing home, there’s still nothing wrong with my second finger.

I landed at the Pontiac airfield, a small one just north of where everything was going to take place. It’s gone now; if I’m not mistaken it’s a housing development. You didn’t need a flight plan to land in those days and they kept no records.

There were two or three cars in the lot. One of them was a Ford with the keys sitting on the floor mat just like Russell said. It was plain and gray and a little dusty. You would never expect to find a flashy car that would attract attention in a situation like this. It was a loaner. Cars would be taken off lots and the owners would never know about it. Hotels were good. Long-term parking at airports was good. An inside man could make himself a nice note here and there providing loaners for cash customers.

I had the address and the directions from Russell. I knew Detroit pretty good from working for Jimmy, but these directions were real simple. I was to get on Telegraph Road, which is Route 24, a main artery into Detroit. It was a sunny day, hot enough for the air conditioner. On my right I drove past the Machus Red Fox Restaurant, which is on Telegraph Road. I took a left off Telegraph Road onto Seven Mile Road. I drove a half-mile on Seven Mile, crossed a roadway bridge over a small creek. I made a right and down that road there was another roadway bridge, then a footbridge nearby, and then I made a left and there was the house with brown shingles, a high backyard fence, and a detached garage in the back. The houses in the neighborhood weren’t far away but they weren’t on top of each other either. I checked the address. I’d been driving just a few miles.

Like I said, on the way to the house, going south on Telegraph Road, I passed by the Machus Red Fox Restaurant where Jimmy would be waiting in vain for me to show up for our 2:00 appointment. The restaurant was set back quite a way in the parking lot. When I passed it I wasn’t concerned that Jimmy would spot me. Because of my size and the good posture I still had in those days before I got bent over by the arthritis, I sat with my head up close to the roof of a car, and people had to take a close look to see my face. Nobody ever identified me in this matter.

I was supposed to be sitting there in the restaurant when the two Tonys showed up for their 2:30 appointment with Jimmy. Only Tony Jack was getting a massage at his health club in Detroit. Tony Pro meantime wasn’t even in Michigan. He was in New Jersey at his union hall playing Greek rummy, with the FBI no doubt sitting across the street from the union hall keeping an eye on him.

The house was just a few miles from where Jimmy’s remains would go. Everything was going to be very close to everything else, all of it a straight shoot. You most definitely couldn’t go driving around any kind of distance and making lots of turns with Jimmy’s body in a car. The writers that claim I shipped the package in a fifty-five-gallon drum to a dump site in New Jersey or to the end zone in Giants Stadium never had a body on their hands. Who in their right mind would transport such a high-profile package a block longer than was necessary, much less across the country?

And this theory that somebody hit Jimmy inside Tony Jack’s son’s car is another idea that is just plain crazy. You kiss somebody in a car and you never get the smell out of the interior. It becomes a corpse car. All the body chemicals and body waste gets released into a small space. The death smell stays in the car. A car is not like a house in that respect. A house doesn’t retain the death odor.

The house with the brown shingles was another loaner. Could be some old lady lived there by herself and never knew her house was being borrowed for an hour. People like chiropractors would know when people would be out of town so that burglars could unload their houses. Might even be that somebody in the Detroit outfit had a chiropractor who treated an old lady who lived there alone. They would know she wouldn’t be home, and they would know her eyes were so shot she would never notice anybody had been there when she did get home, much less smell anything. The house is still there.

When I pulled up to the house, I could see a brown Buick at the end of the single-lane driveway. I pulled in and parked my Ford in the driveway behind the Buick.

I went to the front and walked up the steps. The front door was unlocked and I walked in. Sally Bugs was already in the small vestibule inside the front door, looking up at me through his Coke-bottle glasses. He had thick, curly black hair. I closed the door behind me. We shook hands.

All the books say the New Jersey brothers Steve and Tom Andretta were involved. I heard one of them is deceased now and one of them is still alive. Two young good-looking Italian guys were in the kitchen at the back of the house. They both waved to me then turned their heads away. One of the kids down the hall was the Andretta brother who’s gone now. No need to use the other kid’s name. They both had good alibis anyway.

The way I remember it, on the left in the hall there was a staircase to the upstairs. On the right there was a living room and a dining room that had rugs on the floor, not wall to wall. There were no rugs in the vestibule or the long hallway leading from the vestibule to the kitchen. Probably they had picked up the rugs if there were any. There was just a piece of linoleum in the vestibule. I don’t know how it got there.

I knew of these people as Pro’s people, but I had never met them before that day. These were not my social friends. There was no reason to talk. Later during the different Hoffa grand juries we got to see each other a little bit. I walked down the hall to the kitchen. I looked out the back door just to get a feel for the backyard. The high fence and the garage gave the backyard some privacy.

I walked back down the hall to Sally Bugs in the living room. He was peeking through the curtains. “This Chuckie is late,” he said in that north Jersey accent.

Jimmy Hoffa’s foster son, Chuckie O’Brien, and I were going to be part of the bait to lure Jimmy into a car with Sally Bugs, Tony Pro’s right-hand man. Sally Bugs was a squat little guy. Even with a piece in his hand, Sally Bugs was no match for me. Without being told I knew that there was no reason for Sally Bugs to get in Chuckie’s car other than to keep an eye on me. To make sure I didn’t spook Jimmy not to get in the car. Jimmy was supposed to feel safe with me in Chuckie’s car so he’d go to this house with brown shingles and walk right in the front door with me as his backup.

“Here’s a car. Is that Chuckie?” Chuckie O’Brien had long sideburns and a paisley shirt with a wide collar and lots of gold chains on his neck. He looked like he belonged in
Saturday Night Fever.
Chuckie was an innocent bystander. If Chuckie knew anything to hurt anybody, he’d have been gone to Australia the next day. No way would they have him in that position. Chuckie was known for bragging and boasting. He used to make himself bigger than he was, but he had to look between his legs to find his balls. He could not be trusted with anything worth knowing. If he suspected anything he’d be too nervous when we picked up Jimmy and Jimmy would sense it. All he knew was that he was taking us to pick up Jimmy—a man who helped raise him, a man he called “Dad”—and then driving us all back here to an important meeting with important people. He would just be at ease with Jimmy, acting normal. I always felt sorry for Chuckie O’Brien in this whole thing and I still do. If anybody deserves to be forgiven it’s Chuckie.

My presence there would be the thing that would start out putting Chuckie at ease so he’d act normal with Jimmy. Chuckie was driving Tony Jack’s son’s maroon Mercury, not the kind of car that spells trouble. That familiar car would put Jimmy and Chuckie both at ease. Jimmy was expecting Tony Jack and so his son’s car would be normal. Chuckie picking me up at the house where we were going to come back for the meeting would also put Chuckie at ease.

Everybody being at ease was an important feature, because Jimmy was as smart as they come at smelling danger from all his years in bloody union wars and knowing the people he was dealing with. He was supposed to meet Tony Jack and Tony Pro in a public restaurant with a public parking lot. Not many people change a public meeting place to a private house on Jimmy Hoffa—even with me in the car. Even with his “son” Chuckie driving.

I said, “That’s him.”

Chuckie parked in the street at the front door. The two good-looking guys stayed at the back of the house, down the hall in the kitchen. Sally Bugs got in the backseat of the four-door maroon Mercury right behind Chuckie, introduced himself, and shook Chuckie’s hand. I sat in the front passenger seat. Jimmy would be sitting behind me. Sally Bugs would be able to see us both.

What was going to happen to Chuckie after all this was over? Not a thing. He’d keep his mouth shut about what little he did know out of fear and embarrassment. Chuckie was never known for sticking his neck out. He was the only one in the Hoffa family to keep his job under Fitz.

“What the fuck is this?” Sally Bugs asked. He pointed to the floor in the rear. “It’s wet back here.”

“I had a frozen fish,” Chuckie said. “I had to drop off a fish for Bobby Holmes.”

“A fish, how do you like that?” Sally Bugs said. “The fuckin’ seat is wet back here.” Sally Bugs took out a handkerchief and wiped his hands.

We got there in less than fifteen minutes.

The parking lot was clearing out. Most of the lunch crowd had finished and were gone already. We saw Jimmy’s green Pontiac off to the side on our left as we pulled in. There were trees along Telegraph Road in those days that gave the lot a little privacy.