CHAPTER 5

CAESAR MONTEVECCHIO WAS SMILING, TOO, WHEN THE OHIO cokehead arrived at “The Sports Page” bar a few minutes late.

The drug deal was another potential alibi, that is, if he should actually need a second one, but scoring coke for the guy was barely an afterthought on this night. For his part as the hit’s arranger, Montevecchio would collect $10,000. The shooter would get $20,000.

Funny, the shooter had wanted the money before the hit.

“Put the money up front. Sure I’ll do it. Why not?” the killer told Montevecchio.

But later, when Montevecchio met with the Erie businessman who Caesar maintained ordered and engineered the hit, that request was quickly nixed.

“I’ve got someone, but he wants the money upfront.”

“Fuck him,” Caesar recalled the businessman telling him. “When it’s done, he gets paid.”

The killer had agreed, especially after learning there was another $10,000 in it for him if he also killed Raymond Ferritto at the same time he whacked Dovishaw. Another Erie wise guy had put up the bonus cash for the Ferritto hit. Two birds with one stone, so to speak. End the Dovishaw/Ferritto partnership once and for all. All the more gambling money to split up for those who remained.

Montevecchio had another drink with the cokehead from Ohio. He tried phoning his cocaine contact. The contact’s daughter answered.

“Daddy’s not home,” she said when she recognized Caesar’s voice. “But he’ll be home shortly.”

“Okay, honey. Tell him I called. I’ll call back.”

Turning to the cokehead, he simply said, “No go.”

A few minutes later, the two left “The Sports Page.” But Caesar had a sudden premonition that something just might be amiss. It was a premonition that would be confirmed, as Montevecchio would soon learn.

“Follow me in your car,” he instructed. “I need to make one stop at the Station Restaurant. Just take a minute.” The premonition paid off. At least for that night.

Traffic wasn’t as heavy as the killer expected on the usually crowded upper Peach Street, the main approach to Erie’s huge retail shopping mall, actually situated outside the city limits in the adjacent Millcreek Township. It took only a few minutes to get from Bolo’s house to the Station Restaurant.

Swinging the huge Caddy into the normally popular night spot’s parking lot, he quickly realized the area was virtually empty. It was Monday night. Erie folks weren’t big at dining at fashionable restaurants on weeknights, he thought. Maybe a good thing. Why have too many people around?

The killer’s mind focused just once on Bolo. The dumb shit was still wearing rubbers on his shoes, too fucking lazy to even take them off before eating his disgusting meatball submarine sandwich. The keen-eyed killer spotted the telltale scrappy remains of the sub here and there on the living room table near the front door. He smiled that sardonic smile and thought, Some last supper, Bolo.

Those images of Bolo did not last. His new thoughts were of something far more important. His $20,000 payday. He easily guided the big car into a space in the middle of the lot, turned off the engine, climbed out and peered around at his lonely surroundings.

Where the fuck was Caesar?

He’d soon find out. And, he’d learn Caesar wasn’t alone.

When Caesar Montevecchio arrived at the Station Restaurant a short time later, he didn’t immediately spot the killer in the empty, darkened parking lot. But soon after finding his own parking space, his eyes adjusted to the dim light. First he spotted Bolo’s green Cadillac and thought, Ah, everything’s going perfectly!

Then he spotted the killer. He fits the profile, Montevecchio thought to himself. Just standing there in the cold, not moving, eyes narrow and piercing. But without emotion. Just waiting. Icy as the weather itself.

Caesar got out of his car and approached the shooter. But before they even began to speak, the Ohioan spotted the cokehead – a man he knew to be also from Ohio – as this new intruder got out of his car and began walking toward them. The killer was upset, but not enough to kill again, mostly just irritated.

“What the fuck is he doing here?” the killer demanded.

“On a coke deal,” Montevecchio replied. “Never the fuck mind about him. What happened with Bolo?”

Now the second man was upon them, and, being more than moderately curious, he wanted to know what was going down between Caesar and the killer.

“Bolo is dead,” the killer almost dead-panned the words. “Here are the fucking keys.” He handed both safe-deposit box keys to Caesar.

“I couldn’t lift that big fat fuck. So I left him there.”

Montevecchio felt his heart skip a beat. He was incredulous!

“What?” It was more of a exclamation than a question. “What the fuck!” he could only shake his head. “Jeezus, you fucked everything up!”

“What the hell do you want from me?” the killer finally showed defensive emotion. “I should have brought help. I couldn’t lift him, that’s all. But I covered him with a rug and clothes. We’re all right.”

What followed was a quick conference that culminated with the unanimous decision to get the killer and the other Cleveland man out of town as quickly as possible. But first, they would have to dispose of Dovishaw’s car, all present readily agreed.

With the killer behind the wheel of the green Caddy and the second man from Ohio following in his own wheels, they drove off toward the Holiday Inn South. The hotel was situated on Interstate 90, a major east-west thoroughfare just south of the City of Erie – and the most direct route from Pennsylvania to Cleveland, Ohio. With Bolo’s car hidden in the parking lot behind the popular hotel for travelers and locals alike, the two men departed Erie for Cleveland on that cold winter night in the cokehead’s car.

Driving as fast as they dared without attracting the attention of the Pennsylvania State Police, they headed westward.

Erie, Pennsylvania, is often referred to as the nation’s biggest small town. Or, America’s smallest big town. Its civic leaders are less than progressive, its natives often lacking the vision and foresight required to move the city forward. Whatever the locals call it, however, folks are happy to generally get from most anywhere in town to anywhere else in the lakefront city within five or ten minutes.

It had taken Caesar Montevecchio only minutes from the Station Restaurant to reach a Laundromat on West 38th Street. In those pre-cell phone days, he dropped a quarter into the slot at the corner telephone booth and dialed the number he had long ago memorized. When a man answered, Montevecchio uttered only four words.

“I’m at the Laundromat,” he said. Then he hung up.

Within minutes, an Erie businessman with a dark complexion, seemingly well-tanned, arrived, or so it would be recounted by Montevecchio later. Despite the “tan,” Caesar would later say he knew the man hadn’t been on a cruise or a Caribbean vacation. It was his natural coloring, the coloring of descendants of those who arrived during the early part of the century from Mediterranean nations. And, it was how the businessman got his nickname.

“Take the bank-box keys,” Montevecchio said before breaking the unwelcome news about the dead Bolo Dovishaw’s whereabouts. “Bolo is dead. But he’s still in the house,” Montevecchio simply explained. “Couldn’t move him.”

The businessman blanched – and almost lost his tan-like look. He was as unnerved as Montevecchio had been with the killer when told the body was left behind in the basement.

“We’re all going to wind up in jail, you know that!” the businessman stammered in disgust, it would later be alleged. But Caesar Montevecchio had had just about enough for one night of fuck-ups.

“Look, you’ve got the fucking keys. Just go do your thing and let me worry about Bolo.”

When the men departed the secret meeting site, the Laundromat was empty. In silence, they drove away in different directions.

Perhaps at the exact moment Montevecchio and the businessman were parting company at the Erie Laundromat, the two Ohio men were some 50 miles west of the City of Erie, and about 30 miles into the so-called Buckeye state. When they reached Interstate 90’s Youngstown exit – considered by most to be the halfway point between Erie and Cleveland – the passenger tersely directed the driver to veer southeast onto Ohio’s State Route 11.

They drove in silence into Mahoning County, home to many of the Northeast’s most notorious underworld figures. As the car crossed the Meander Lake Bridge, not far from Youngstown and the famous Niles, Ohio, night life strip, the driver slowed to a crawl. Traffic on the secondary highway was almost non-existent late that Monday night.

The killer rolled down the passenger window. And, with a mighty toss, he first hurled the .32 caliber clip, and then the weapon itself into the black, still unfrozen water of Meander Lake.

Thrown separately, both bullet magazine and pistol instantly sank to the lake’s bottom, now part of the infamous and unofficial weaponry underwater graveyard depository that included hundreds of guns and knives and shell casings. Most of them, not surprisingly, were wiped down of fingerprints.

The two men continued their drive west in silence. They drove into the dark, cold night without exchanging a word. True to form in their business, they never looked back.