THE FOLLOWING IS A transcription made from tape recordings of a conversation that took place in Elvira’s, an Italian restaurant at 96352 Hammacher Street, Brooklyn, New York, during the early morning hours of 26 June, 1968.
At the time, these premises were under electronic surveillance by at least four, and possibly more, law investigation agencies. Apparently there was no cooperation between these agencies.
A great variety of miniaturized electronic devices was utilized, including telephone taps, bugs implanted beneath certain tables, in the bar, and in both the gents’ and the ladies’ rooms. In addition, the new Sonex Nail-head 158-JB microphone transmitters had been surreptitiously installed in the baseboards of the kitchen.
Elvira’s, a popular and successful restaurant in the Flatbush section of Brooklyn, had for many years been known to law enforcement officers as an eating and meeting place for members of the Angelo family. The restaurant was fire-bombed on 15 October, 1958, during what was apparently a gang war between the Angelo family and a rival organization known as the Snipes Brothers. The bombing resulted in the death of a waiter, Pasquale Gardini.
On 3 February, 1959, Anthony “Wopso” Angelo was shot down in the front phone booth of Elvira’s while making a phone call to persons unknown. His killer entered through the glass door, after apparently seeing Angelo go into the phone booth from an outside observation post. Four bullets of .32 caliber were fired into Angelo. He died instantly. His killer has not yet been apprehended.
Present at the meeting in a small, private back room at Elvira’s on the morning of 26 June, 1968, were John “Duke” Anderson, Anthony “Doctor” D’Medico, and Patrick “Little Pat” Angelo. These men have been positively identified by voice prints, interior and exterior evidence, and by paid informers present at the scene.
Patrick “Little Pat” Angelo was born in 1932 in Brooklyn, New York. His father, Patsy “The Hook” Angelo, was killed in a waterfront fracas two months before Patrick’s birth. Patrick’s education was financed by his grandfather, Dominick “Papa” Angelo, don of the Angelo family. Patrick Angelo was 5 feet 8 ½ inches tall; 193 pounds; blue eyes; thick gray hair worn long, combed straight back, no part. Physical scars: scalp wound above right temple (bullet); depressed wound in left calf (shrapnel); and excised third right rib (grenade). Subject was a graduate of Walsham School of Business Administration, and had attended one year at the Rolley Law Academy. Enlisted in U.S. Army in 1950 and after training was sent to Korea with the 361st Assault Battalion, 498th Regiment, 22d Combat Division. At war’s end, he had risen to rank of major (battlefield promotions) and had earned the Purple Heart (3), Silver Star, and Distinguished Service Cross, in addition to decorations from the South Korean and Turkish governments.
Subject resigned from the Army in 1954 with letters of commendation. He then organized and became president of Modern Automanagement, 6501 Fifth Avenue, New York City, a management consultant firm. In addition, he was an officer of record for Sweeteeze Linens, 361 Forbisher Street, Brooklyn, New York; vice-president of Wrenchies Bowling Alleys, 1388 Grand Evarts, the Bronx, New York; and secretary-treasurer of the Fifth National Discount and Service Organization, Palm Credit Co., Inc., and the Thomas Jefferson Trading Corp., all of Wilmington Delaware.
Subject had no criminal record.
Subject was married (to Maria Angelo, a second cousin) and was the father of two teen-age sons currently students at Harrington Military Academy in Virginia. He also had a four-year-old daughter, Stella.
Supposition: Patrick Angelo will succeed Dominick “Papa” Angelo as don of the Angelo family upon the death of Dominick, who was ninety-four years old.
Due to mechanical difficulties and heavy external noise, no single tape recording contains the entire conversation given below. This is a transcription of parts of four different tapes made by four law enforcement agencies. (At their request, portions of the transcription have been deleted as they concern investigation currently in progress.) This is the author’s transcription GO-110T-26JUN68. The time was 1:43 A.M.
D’MEDICO: … don’t believe you’ve met Pat Angelo. Pat, this is Duke Anderson, the man I told you about.
ANDERSON: Pleased to make your acquaintance, Mr. Angelo.
ANGELO: Duke, I don’t want you to think I’m giving you a fast shuffle, but I’ve got another meet tonight. Then I’ve got to drive home to Teaneck. So you’ll understand if I make this as short as we can. Okay?
ANDERSON: Sure.
ANGELO: I’ll tell you what the Doc told me. See if I got it straight. If not, you correct me. Then I’ll start asking questions. You got a campaign. It’s a house on the East Side of Manhattan. You want to take the whole place. He advanced you three G’s. That’s out of his own pocket. You been looking it over. Now we’re at the point where we decide do we go ahead or do we call the whole thing off. Am I right so far?
ANDERSON: That’s right, Mr. Angelo. Mr. D’Medico, I have a complete list of my expenses with me, and you have three hundred and fifty-nine dollars and sixteen cents coming back on your advance that wasn’t spent.
D’MEDICO: I told you, Pat! Didn’t I tell you?
ANGELO: Yes. Let’s get on with it. So what have we got, Duke?
ANDERSON: I have a report here. It’s a handwritten original. No copies. For you and Mr. D’Medico. I think it looks good.
ANGELO: How much?
ANDERSON: Minimum of a hundred thousand. Closer to quarter of a mil, I’d guess.
ANGELO: You’d guess? What the hell are you talking about? What? Retail value? Wholesale value? Resale value? What we can get from fences? What is it? Spell it out.
ANDERSON: It’s jewelry, furs, uncut stones, a valuable coin collection, rugs, maybe drugs from two doctors, cash, negotiable securities. These people are loaded.
[Lapse of five seconds.]
ANGELO: So you’re talking about original retail value?
ANDERSON: Yes.
ANGELO: So take a third of what you estimate. Maybe thirty G’s if we can unload it. Or possibly eighty G’s tops. Is that right?
ANDERSON: Yes.
ANGELO: Let’s figure the bottom—thirty G’s. How many men?
ANDERSON: Five.
ANGELO: Five? And one of ours. Six. So you want six men to put out for five G’s each?
ANDERSON: No. I want my men to be paid a flat fee. Whatever I can settle for. But no share. I figure I can get the five for a total of eight thou tops. I don’t know what you’ll pay your man. Maybe he’s on salary. But figure ten G’s tops for employees. That leaves twenty G’s for a split. Absolute minimum. I’m no gambler, but I still think it’ll run closer to eighty G’s. The total, that is.
ANGELO: Forget what you think. We’re working on the minimum. So we have twenty G’s left for the split. How do you figure that?
ANDERSON: Seventy-thirty.
ANGELO: Seventy to you, of course?
ANDERSON: Yes.
ANGELO: You’re a hardnose, aren’t you?
D’MEDICO: Pat, take it easy.
ANDERSON: Yes, I’m a hardnose.
ANGELO: Tennessee?
ANDERSON: Kentucky.
ANGELO: I thought so. Duke, put yourself in my place. You want me to okay this thing. You guarantee us about six or seven thousand if we agree to your terms. All right, all right—it may run as high as twenty G’s if the take is as big as you guess it might be. I can’t figure with guesses. I got to know. So I’m figuring on six G’s. Anything over is gravy. All this for six thousand dollars? We can take that legit in one day from our biggest horse parlor. So what’s the percentage?
ANDERSON: So what’s the risk? One muscle? He’s expendable, isn’t he?
[Lapse of eight seconds.]
ANGELO: You’re no dumdum, are you?
ANDERSON: No, I’m not. And I got to keep repeating that seven G’s is the absolute minimum. It’ll run more, much more—I swear it.
ANGELO: Put your cock on the line?
ANDERSON: Goddamned right.
D’MEDICO: Jesus, Pat.…
ANGELO: He’s a hardnose—like I said. I like you, Duke.
ANDERSON: Thanks.
ANGELO: For nothing. Have you started thinking about operations?
ANDERSON: A little. Just a beginning. It should be on a holiday weekend. Half the people will be gone to the beach or on vacation or at their summer places. July Fourth would have been good, but it’s too late for that now. If you say okay, we should aim for the Labor Day weekend. We cut all communications. Isolate the house. We pull up a van. We take our time—three hours, four hours, whatever we need.
ANGELO: But you haven’t thought it out?
ANDERSON: No, I haven’t. I got this report here. It’ll give you a rundown on who lives there and where the stuff is and where we should look and how it can be done. But if you say okay, we’ll have to dig a lot deeper.
ANGELO: Like what?
ANDERSON: Habits of people in the building. Schedules of the beat fuzz and squad cars in the sector. Private watchmen. People who walk their dogs late at night. Location of call boxes and telephone booths. Bars that are open late at night. A lot of things. …
ANGELO: Were you ever in the military?
ANDERSON: Marine Corps. About eighteen months.
ANGELO: What happened?
ANDERSON: I got a dishonorable discharge.
ANGELO: What for?
ANDERSON: I knocked up a captain’s wife—amongst other things.
ANGELO: Yes. What did you do? See any action?
ANDERSON: No. I made corporal. I was an instructor on the range at Paris Island.
ANGELO: You’re a good shot?
ANDERSON: Yes.
D’MEDICO: But you’ve never carried a piece on a job—have you, Duke?
ANDERSON: No. I never have.
ANGELO: Christ, I’m thirsty. Doc, get us another bottle of that Valpolicella, will you? But if this campaign goes through, you’ll have to pack a piece. You realize that, don’t you, Duke?
ANDERSON: Yes.
ANGELO: You’re willing?
ANDERSON: Yes.
ANGELO: When you were a corporal of Marines did you ever get any instructions on the technique of a raid? A quick hit-and-run?
ANDERSON: A little.
ANGELO: Did you ever hear about that campaign in Detroit on … We hit the … We used about … What we did was to create a diversion. It pulled off all the precinct buttons to … and while they were … And it worked perfectly. Something like that might work here.
ANDERSON: It might.
ANGELO: You don’t sound very enthusiastic.
ANDERSON: I got to think about it.
D’MEDICO: Here’s the wine, Pat. Chilled just a little … the way you like it.
ANGELO: Fine. Thank you, Doctor. So you want to think about it, do you, Duke?
ANDERSON: Yes. It’s my cock.
ANGELO: It surely is. All right. Supposing Papa gives the go-ahead. What will you need? Have you thought of that?
ANDERSON: Yes, I thought of that. I’ll need another two thousand to complete the sweep.
ANGELO: The reconnaissance?
ANDERSON: That’s right. To figure how we’ll handle it.
ANGELO: Operations and deployment. And then what?
ANDERSON: You’ll get a final shakedown on the whole bit. Then if you okay, I’ll need the loot to pay off my five men. Half in advance, half when the job’s finished.
D’MEDICO: About two thousand for looking, and then another four or five for your staff?
ANDERSON: That’s about it.
D’MEDICO: All advances and expenses out of the take before the split?
ANDERSON: Yes.
ANGELO: I’ve got to get out of here and over to Manhattan. I’m late as it is. Duke, I want to talk to the Doctor. You understand?
ANDERSON: Sure. I appreciate you giving me this time.
ANGELO: We’ll get in touch with you—one way or the other—in a week or so. I’ve got to talk to Papa and, as you probably know, he’s ailing. We should all live to be ninety-four and ailing.
D’MEDICO: Amen.
ANDERSON: Nice to meet you, Mr. Angelo. Thanks, Mr. D’Medico.
D’MEDICO: A pleasure, Duke. We’ll be in touch.
[Lapse of seventeen seconds.]
D’MEDICO: How did you know he was from Kentucky, Tennessee—around there?
ANGELO: I recognized him the minute he walked in. Not him, but the type. A mountain man. God knows I saw enough of them in Korea. Kentucky, Tennessee, West Virginia. Rough boys. As rough as the Southerners … but they never bugged out. Sometimes you get some freaky Southerners. I never saw a freaky mountain man. They’re all born piss-poor. They got nothing but their pride. I had some mountain men who never had a pair of new shoes until they got in the army. This Anderson … Jesus Christ, he reminds me so much of a guy I had. He was from Tennessee. Best shot I ever saw. I was a First Looey then. I had this patrol, and we were going down a dry creek bed. This mountain man was point. The target. We went through three points in three days. They fired on the point and that’s how we knew where they were.
D’MEDICO: That’s nice.
ANGELO: Yes. So this Tennessee mountain man was point, about twenty yards or so ahead of me. A gook comes out of the bushes and charges at him. The gook has a kitchen knife tied to a long pole with string. He was probably hopped up. He comes charging out screaming. My guy could have shot him dead—one, two, three. Like that. But he didn’t. He laughed. I swear to God, he laughed. He had his blade on his rifle, and he waited for the gook to come to him. It was classic. Jesus, it was classic. I had been through all the bayonet stuff: advance, parry, thrust. Book stuff. And this was right out of the book. Classic. They could have taken pictures of it for an army manual. My guy took the position, shuffled forward, and when the gook shoved at him, he parried, got his stick in the gook’s stomach, withdrew, stuck again into his balls, turned the blade, withdrew, shoved the bayonet into the ground to clean it, and turned and grinned at me. He liked it. There were guys like that. They liked it. They enjoyed it. War, I mean.
D’MEDICO: What happened to him?
ANGELO: Who?
D’MEDICO: Your guy.
ANGELO: Oh. Well, the company went back to Tokyo on leave. This Tennessee guy got caught raping a nine-year-old Japanese girl. He got racked up.
D’MEDICO: Where is he now?
ANGELO: Still in Leavenworth as far as I know. So tell me about this Anderson. What do you know?
D’MEDICO: He came out of the South about ten years ago. A helluva driver. I think he was driving alky for Solly Benedict down there. Anyway, he sliced someone and had to come north. Solly called me about him. About the same time my cousin Gino had a hustle planned. Did you ever meet Gino?
ANGELO: No, I don’t believe I ever did.
D’MEDICO: Christ, my face is killing me. Well, it was a warehouse job. Drugs. Pep pills, I think they were. It was cased perfect, but someone tipped the Safe and Loft Squad. We took care of him later. Anyway, I recommended Anderson as the driver, and Gino says okay. The plan was for Gino and two muscles to pull up in his car, Anderson driving. Park a block away. Anderson is told to stay there until Gino returns. The idea is that they’ll break the warehouse, the two dumdums will drive the truck out, and Gino will return to where Anderson is waiting in the car.
ANGELO: So?
D’MEDICO: So everything goes wrong. Floodlights, sirens, bullhorns, riot guns, barkers … the whole bit. The two muscles get cut down. Gino takes a bad one in the gut and staggers around the corner. He’s told Anderson to stay there, and with all this going on, Anderson is still there.
ANGELO: A mountain man.
D’MEDICO: Yes. He didn’t cut. Well, he gets Gino into the car and gets him to a sawbones. It saved his life.
ANGELO: What’s he doing now?
D’MEDICO: Gino? He’s got this little candy store in Newark. He takes some numbers, handles a few loans. Penny-ante stuff. He’s not too good … but he’s alive. I feed him what I can. But I never forgot. Duke sitting there while the shit hit the fan. He’s some man.
ANGELO: I figured that. Then what happened with him?
D’MEDICO: He didn’t want any jobs. He wanted to freelance. He cleared everything with me first, and I gave him the go-ahead. He did very well. He’s a smart boy, Pat. He learned fast. He hit some East Side apartments for a bundle. Ice, mostly. Never carried a stick. Got clever. In and out so fast and so smooth they could never figure how. He was doing all right. Maybe three or four jobs a year. Always made his contribution and never screamed. I kept track and found out he was bent, sex-wise.
ANGELO: How do you mean?
D’MEDICO: Whips … you know.
ANGELO: Which way is he? This is important.
D’MEDICO: Both ways, from what I hear. Then he pulled this job and was waiting on a corner for this Jew bitch he had to pass the stuff to—it was only about a block away—when some lucky probationary patrolman decided he didn’t like his looks and shook him down. That kid is a Dick Two now. So Duke went up. The woman wasn’t touched; he never mentioned her. I heard she was late for the meet because she was at her stockbroker’s.
ANGELO: Beautiful. You been keeping in touch with her?
D’MEDICO: Oh, sure. Since Duke brought up this campaign we been checking her out. She’s got a record, and she’s hustling right now—shmeck, tail, abortion—the whole bit. She works in a dance hall Sam Bergman owns. We can lean on her any time we want to.
ANGELO: Good. How did Anderson get on to this thing on the East Side?
D’MEDICO: He’s pronging a woman who lives there. We don’t know how he met her. But he’s in and out of the place at least twice a week. A big dame who looks like money.
ANGELO: All right. I guess that’s about it. Christ, have we finished another bottle? My God, I’ve got to get to Manhattan.
D’MEDICO: Pat, how do you feel about it?
ANGELO: If it was up to me, I’d say no. Look, Doc, we’re in restaurants, hotels, banks, linen supply, insurance, trucking, laundromats, garbage disposal—all nice, clean, legit things. And the profits are good. So why do we need this bang-bang stuff?
D’MEDICO: Still … you’re interested?
ANGELO: Yes … I guess I am. It’s a military problem. Look at me … I’m a businessman, my gut is swelling, my ass is sinking, I’ve got a wife and three kids, I belong to four clubs, I play golf every good weekend, I go to the PTA with my wife, I worry about crab grass, I’ve got a poodle with worms. In other words, I’m a solid citizen. But sometimes I look at myself in the mirror—the belly, the jowls, the fat thighs, the soft cock, and I think I was happier in Korea.
D’MEDICO: Pat, maybe you’re one of those guys you were telling me about—the guys who enjoy war.
ANGELO: Maybe. I don’t know. All I know is, I hear of something like this and I get all excited. My brain starts working. I’m young again. A campaign. Problems. How to figure it. It’s really something. But I wouldn’t decide without talking it over with Papa. First of all, I owe it to him. Second, of all, he may be bedridden with maybe a fat boy now and then to keep him warm, but his mind is still there—sharp and hard. I’ll lay it out for him. He likes to feel he’s still needed, still making the decisions. Jesus Christ, we got a thousand lawyers and CPA’s making decisions he couldn’t even understand—but a problem like this, he can understand. So I’ll lay it out for him. If he says no, it’s no. If he says yes, it’s yes. I’ll let you know within a week or so. Is that all right?
D’MEDICO: Of course. Got anyone in mind for the sixth man?
ANGELO: No. Do you?
D’MEDICO: A guy named Sam Heming. A nothing. All muscle, no brains. But he’s one of Paul Washington’s boys.
ANGELO: A smoke?
D’MEDICO: He is, but he passes.
ANGELO: Why him?
D’MEDICO: I owe Paul a favor.
ANGELO: Linda Curtis?
D’MEDICO: You don’t miss much, do you?
ANGELO: No, Doc, not much. Heming is okay with me if he’s solid.
D’MEDICO: He’s solid.
ANGELO: Good. Papa will want to know. I’ll tell him you go for this guy. Okay?
D’MEDICO: Yes … if it’s necessary.
ANGELO: It’s necessary. Jesus Christ, Doc, you’re twitching like a maniac. Can’t you do anything about that face of yours?
D’MEDICO: No. Not a thing.
ANGELO: Tough shit. I’ve got to run. Thanks for the dinner and vino.
D’MEDICO: My pleasure. I’ll hear from you on this in a week or so?
ANGELO: Sure. Oh … by the way, Doc, keep an eye on Fred Simons.
D’MEDICO: Anything wrong?
ANGELO: Not yet. But he’s been hitting the sauce hard lately. Maybe talking a little more than he should. Just a friendly tip.
D’MEDICO: Of course. Thanks. I’ll call it to his attention.
ANGELO: You do that.