EVERY YEAR AT THE MCCAIN INVESTIGATIONS'S Christmas party, held right there in the office on Fulton Street, big Joe and the fellows pushed the desks against the wall, laid out an array of catered food on garnished silver trays, and hired a bartender for the night. Meanwhile, Lori Hays, pretty much the agency's most vital employee, and Joe's niece Lynn Harrington, a crackerjack undercover investigator, shopped for $700 or $800 in gifts, wrapped them at Lori's desk, and then big Joe, dressed as Santa Claus, delivered them to children with AIDS at the local homeless shelter. Returning to Fulton Street, he'd pose for photographs with the early arrivals and then change back into his shirt and tie and the annual Yuletide festivities would commence.
If Charles Dickens had grown up in Somerville, this was the sort of gathering the old scribbler would've reveled in: cops and ex-cops and feds and bail bondsmen in green jackets and red silk ties, their wives dressed in gaudy Christmas sweaters. Defense lawyers in Santa Claus hats, parolees, pizza shop owners, former pugilists, and white-haired judges accompanied by their Ivy League wives. Helen McCain and Al and Mary Seghezzi and professional snitches with three pagers clipped to their belts, gabbling in an undifferentiated mass and eating little meatballs speared on toothpicks. Mark Donahue and his wife, Maureen, talking to Joe Jr. and his wife, Maureen, the younger McCain wearing his trademark black T-shirt accessorized by a leather Renegade Pigs vest for such an auspicious occasion. Laughing and beaming and palming his glass of Chivas, big Joe presided over them all, his arm around Helen and his eyes watching the door for the arrival of his favorite guest.
Leo Papile always made a grand entrance, often accompanied by a retired pal or two from Quincy, who acted as his comic foils, as gofer and chauffeur. Upon sighting his old partner, Joe McCain raised his glass and called out, but Leo needed to make his rounds first, kissing all the wives and girlfriends, flattering them, whispering that he was available if their plans for the evening didn't work out. Leo inevitably made a scene when he stopped at the bar, complaining that Joe was too fucking cheap to stock this or that, whereupon he settled for the usual: a whiskey and soda.
Approaching his host, Leo would say something like “Where'd you get that tie, Joe— off a corpse?”
“Yeah,” said Joe. “And that sweater matches those pants like nobody's fucking business.”
In his trademark hoarse voice, Leo would turn to his buddies from Quincy and say, “How many times I saved this guy's ass and now he's insulting me? Merry Christmas, everybody. Hey, fuck you.”
It would go on like this for a few minutes, and then Joe Doyle would announce that he was leaving, or the firm's landlord and principal client, Mike Kettenbach, would come through the door and Joe McCain would be called away. But he always felt better when Leo was there, flirting with the ladies and belittling the men, forever the star of his own traveling show.
Joe McCain had a number of partners over the years, and he got a kick out of each and every one of them: the hefty and soft-spoken Dick Horrigan, looking like some 1970 Telly Savalas sidekick cop; Jack Crowley, bearish and jovial, with a quip for every occasion; and the “kids” from Special Investigations, Gene Kee and Dennis Febles and Mark Lemieux, each a fixture at the annual holiday gathering and indelible in his own right. But Leo Papile was Ward Bond to McCain's John Wayne; he was Buzz Aldrin to Joe's Neil Armstrong. Second banana, perhaps, but first in his colleague's heart and beloved despite his quick temper and blunt manner of speaking. When they worked together all those years in Revere, clearing out the bars, Leo talked a lot and threatened to use his fists or the stick; Joe said very little and meted out punches like an accountant doling out pennies: why use two if one is enough?
In the most typical scenario, some beady-eyed wiseguy at Hurley's Palm Gardens or the Ebb Tide would cross the line, pushing and shoving or uttering a threat. Then Leo would rush forward, barking obscenities, his raincoat bunched around his shoulders and the veins popping in his neck. In the end, either Joe held Leo back, or Leo held Joe's coat.
After his wife died Leo got a little wild, drinking in the joints down on the beach. Whenever possible, Joe would go keep an eye on him. One time a club owner offered Leo “a little pipe job” from a showgirl and some of Boston's best chicken cacciatore.
“Well . . . ,” said Leo.
Big Joe grabbed his partner and shoved him toward the door. “Are you out of your fucking mind?” he asked. “They'll have you on video, and then they'll put Ex-Lax in the cacciatore.”
Despite the trouble Leo could get them into, he was loyal, and Joe McCain prized loyalty above all else. And when they were busy putting away heavies like Joe Barboza, Nick Angiulo, and the Bear, one of the nastiest criminals they encountered was a shooter and home invader named Richard Smith, who was once accused of cutting off a woman's finger to get her diamond ring. Smith was chummy with eighteen-year-old Myles Connor, later to become a shifty art thief and mastermind but in those days the front man for a rock 'n' roll band that played the clubs on Revere Beach. Looking for Smith on a home invasion warrant and expecting him to show up, McCain and Papile staked out a joint called the Beach Ball, and sure enough, near midnight Richard Smith appeared in a stolen car and the two Mets gave chase but he escaped down Ocean Avenue.
Joe and Leo returned to a side street near the club. “I'll bet you he comes back on the train,” said Joe.
Leo laughed. “Nobody's that fuckin' stupid,” he said.
The detectives walked over to the Beachmont Station and melted into the shadows. When the last train rolled in, Smith sauntered over the platform with a rolled up paper bag under his arm, and Joe and Leo approached him as he crossed the street.
“Hey, Smith,” said McCain, and the bad guy wheeled around.
Joe grabbed Smith, and the two men fell to the pavement, wrestling over the paper bag. It got tossed aside, and a number of guns clattered over the asphalt. Leo picked them all up, and by the time help arrived, Joe had the bad guy trussed up in a pair of handcuffs and Leo gripped Smith by the back of his neck and the seat of his pants.
By now a crowd had gathered, and rushing Smith toward the open doors of the paddy wagon, Leo said, “In you go, scumbag,” and propelled the crook over the threshold with a swift boot in the ass.
Richard Smith was indicted in Suffolk District Court and tried on several counts of home invasion, as well as possession of unlicensed firearms. A large gallery observed the opening of the trial, where Smith was expected to plead guilty but instead received a continuance. In the hallway afterward he emerged with his lawyer, Al DeFelice, and stood waiting among a large group of people for one of the two elevators.
Spotting Leo Papile nearby, Smith smirked as the first elevator arrived. “Hey, there's Mr. Kick,” he said, nudging his attorney.
McCain and Papile were dressed in suits and ties, and very few people in the corridor knew they were police officers. “You fucking asshole,” Leo said, lunging toward Smith.
Just then the door of the second car opened, and Joe, wary of Leo's temper, pretended they were strangers. “Hey you, cut that out,” he said, shoving Leo into the vacant elevator. “Behave yourself.”
At the annual McCain Investigations's Christmas party, Leo “behaved” by quarreling with Joe, spilling the requisite number of drinks, and perhaps even saying something indelicate to somebody's wife. Then, at what he deemed the appropriate hour, he would drag a chair into the middle of the room, stand on it, and wave his arms. “I need everyone's attention. Listen up. Hey, fuck nuts, listen to me,” said Papile, frowning at Mark Donahue or one of the other young investigators. “Many years ago, I served in the United States Marine Corps, which were the proudest years of my life. My good friend Joe was in the Navy, and that's very good, but fuck him and fuck the Navy.”
In the midst of Joe's laughter, Leo would take off his shirt and stand there in the middle of the crowded room, bare-chested and smiling at the judges' wives. “I am now going to sing the Marine Corps Hymn. Most of you do not know the words,” said the old jarhead. “Do not try to sing. I will sing the song.”
After two verses and a cacophony of jeers and applause, Leo buttoned his shirt and put on his coat, engaged in some final repartee with big Joe, then gathered up his pals from Quincy and hustled out. North End bookies could've set the line at 2 to 1 that Leo would arrive late at the annual shindig and leave early; his personality required an audience, and he didn't like to drive at night. But the pulse of the gathering always fell after Leo's departure, and soon the washed up boxers and rival P.I.'s and tipsy DEA agents were looking at their watches and calling for taxis.
Seated in a chair somewhere, his tie loosened and an empty glass in his hand, Joe McCain would nod and smile and take part in abstracted conversation, but his face bore a wistful expression and his gaze kept wandering to the door where Leo had gone out. This went on for over a decade, until Joe got sick and died, and then Leo passed away and the office parties at McCain Investigations came to an end.
HELEN MCCAIN WAS WORKING A THREE to eleven shift on the floor at Somerville Hospital on the cold, gray afternoon of January 29, 1988. Around five-thirty Helen's supervisor approached with a worried look in her eyes and asked for a quick status report on each of Helen's patients. Immediately after fulfilling this strange request, Helen spotted Leo Papile coming toward her in the hallway.
“Leo, what are you doing here?” she asked.
Leo put his hand on her shoulder. “There's been an accident,” he said.
“Was it a car accident?”
“No,” said Leo.
“Is he dead?”
“No.”
Leo drove Helen straight to Brigham and Women's Hospital in his detective's car. Joey, then twenty-six years old and recently discharged from the Marines, entered the hospital lobby at the same time, and mother and son looked at each other and began to cry.
Every hour through the night a surgical nurse would come out and tell Joey and Helen that Joe was still on the table and holding his own. At 5:30 A.M. the surgeon, Dr. Theodore Pappas, came down to the family room.
“We do not expect him to survive,” he said.
After a couple of hours at home, Helen returned to Brigham and Women's. Police Commissioner Mickey Roache sought her out in the family room and asked if he could do anything to help. She had one very important request. “I want Leo Papile to be my chauffeur,” said Helen. And Roache saw to it.
In their heyday, Joe and Leo encountered situations that ranged from the tragic to the comic, and even a few cases that encompassed both. During the gangland wars, after the murder of Bernie McLaughlin and when their partnership was fairly new, big Joe and Leo were investigating the star-crossed Joynt brothers from Union Square. “Ox” Joynt was a friend of McLaughlin's and a heavy drinker, and one night in the Capitol Café the bartender told him not to sit in a particular seat, which belonged to McLaughlin's purported assassin, Buddy McLean.
“Fuck him,” said Ox Joynt. “He ain't gonna be around much longer, the lousy fuckin' killer.”
The story Joe McCain heard was that McLean and his henchmen waited until later that night, when Ox Joynt was good and drunk, and rousted him up and led him staggering from the Capitol. They drove him to a swampy location in Wellington Circle and made Ox dig his own grave, whereupon they shot him and buried him there. Within a short time the word was passed down that Ox's brother Bobby, a bricklayer and tough kid, was going around town with a stolen gun looking for Buddy McLean. In a place like Somerville, Joe McCain knew that he wouldn't have to wait long or work hard to find Bobby Joynt.
Driving along the McGrath Highway, Joe and Leo received a general radio call about a stolen car, and sure enough, a while later they spotted Bobby Joynt in a vehicle that fit the description, taking a left-hand turn onto lower Broadway. Joe threw the bubble light on the dashboard, and Leo jammed the accelerator to the floorboards and they gave chase. The two cars flew up and over Winter Hill past Paul Revere Park, and on the downslope Bobby Joynt stuck a gun out the window and fired a couple of shots in the direction of his pursuers.
When they made a right onto Main Street down near Cousin's Gym, Joynt skidded wide on the turn and Leo broadsided him, knocking the stolen car into a house and tearing off the front porch. Dazed and trapped in the wreckage, Joynt put his hands up and surrendered to the Mets, admitting that he was trying to find Buddy McLean. McCain actually felt sorry for him, realizing that Bobby Joynt's anguish over his brother and his penchant for booze had compelled him to do it.
At the police station Joynt said the gun, which was a police revolver, had been stolen from a Boston cop and given to a young prostitute named Mary Anne for safekeeping; Joynt wouldn't say how he'd ended up with it. Acquiring a search warrant, Joe and Leo headed for Brookline to interview Mary Anne at her apartment.
Mary Anne lived in a well-kept, three-story brick building in a quiet, leafy neighborhood. Unsure what they would find, Joe and Leo crept up the staircase accompanied by two Brookline cops.
The apartment had two doors leading into the hallway, and Joe and the Brookline captain of detectives lined up in front of one entrance while Leo and the uniformed sergeant positioned themselves near the other. On the count of three, they charged across the hallway, and the force of big Joe and the hefty Brookline detective knocked the door right off its hinges. It flew into the room and landed on the bed, just missing the most beautiful young woman Joe McCain had ever seen and coming to rest beside her trick, a tall, gangling MIT professor clad only in a pair of red bikini underpants. On a tripod beside the bed was an elaborate camera system, on which the randy professor had been documenting his adventures.
Curled up like a kitten and registering only mild surprise, seventeen-year-old Mary Anne was a buxom, green-eyed lass with tawny skin and long, golden brown hair streaked by the sun. Leo and the other cop had knocked in the main door, and even with four strange men gaping at her, Mary Anne didn't blush or blink an eye but remained naked on the bed, smiling at her antagonists.
“Let's go, you two,” said Joe, trying not to stare. “Into the other room.”
“Whatever you say, Officer,” said Mary Anne.
Rising from the bed, the lovely young prostitute waltzed into the living room and sat naked on the couch with her long legs crossed at the knees. Light streaming in the picture window accented the contours of her body, the freckled shoulders, perfect upright breasts, and trim little hips.
“Is this the best you can do?” she asked Joe, keeping her eyes on his. “Aren't there any other criminals out there? The gangsters who shoot people.”
“Actually, we're here to talk to you about a gun,” Joe said. “Who gave— ”
Just then the intercom buzzed, and Joe asked Mary Anne if she was expecting anyone. “Yes, a guy by the name of Gallo,” said Mary Anne.
“Gallo? Not the deputy chief?” asked Joe.
Mary Anne smirked. “No,” she said. “His brother.”
Joe and Leo glanced at each other and shrugged their shoulders. “Are you sure?” asked Joe. The intercom buzzed again, and he motioned for the young prostitute to remain quiet.
“Yeah, what is it?” asked McCain, pressing the button on the speaker.
A man's voice broke over the intercom. “What's going on?” he asked.
“Come on up,” Joe said. “I'm just leaving.”
Joe went into the hallway and started down the stairs. Making a turn onto the first landing, he encountered a short, broad-shouldered man dressed like a Quincy Market fruit peddler: a long, grayish white jacket with a round brown collar and khaki pants. Gallo looked at McCain, arching his eyebrows, and big Joe smiled, raised his thumb, and jerked it over his shoulder without saying anything.
The peddler mastered the last flight of stairs, turned into the hallway, and stood dumbfounded at the entrance to the apartment. The front door was gone. He looked in, and there was Mary Anne naked on the couch, waving to him. Meanwhile, big Joe had followed Gallo up the carpeted stairs and was standing a foot behind him.
The fruit peddler glanced over his shoulder at McCain and looked back at Mary Anne, who was now accompanied by Leo Papile, and his shoulders fell. “Step inside,” said Joe, and Gallo trudged over the threshold.
The Brookline detective patted Gallo down and took his ID and motioned for him to sit down. “Oh, shit,” said the fruit peddler, dropping his head into his hands. “I was just up here to deliver— ”
“Deliver what?” asked Joe, indicating that Gallo was empty-handed by thrusting his own palms outward and upward.
Leo laughed at the downcast fruit peddler. “Don't lie. You're up here to get laid,” he said. “She's only a teenager, you fucking degenerate.”
“Officer, I am— ”
Leo cut him off. “A horny fucking fruit peddler. Who are you kidding? Cut a hole in one of your watermelons and fuck it next time, if they serve watermelons up at Walpole.”
Gallo took the abuse without another word. When Leo was finished, and the other cops had nearly choked on their laughter, he threw the man's wallet back at him and made a gesture that included the MIT professor, who had put his clothes back on.
“Get lost,” said Leo.
The fruit peddler gulped twice. “Am-m I al-lll right?” he asked.
“Get the fuck out of here,” Leo said.
The professor stopped near the gaping doorway, clutching his tripod and camera. “Can I have my pictures back?” he asked.
“Sure,” said Leo. He took the handful of photographs and tore them into small pieces, and flung the chemical-covered bits in the direction of the hallway, where they fluttered to the carpet. “Is there anything else we can do for you?”
The professor bit his lip and followed Gallo down the stairs. Joe and Leo began their questioning.
It turned out that a shady customer named Goldstein had given Mary Anne the .38 for protection. Another trick stole the gun from the young whore and passed it along to Bobby Joynt, who meant to kill McLean with it.
Leo and Joe saved Buddy McLean from Bobby Joynt, but they were only a couple of cops, not his guardian angels. One night just a few months later McLean was with “Suitcase” Fiddler's wife, Helen, and Tony “Blue” Agostino, coming out of Pal Joey's on Winter Hill, and Connie and Stevie Hughes jumped out of an alley between the nightclub and the Capitol Theatre. McLean bolted into the street, but they gunned him down, right there, in the middle of Broadway.
OFTEN, JOE MCCAIN AND LEO PAPILE'S hard work and timeliness prevented such bloodshed. It was simple: people knew they could be trusted and would tell them things they might not tell other cops. An old neighbor of Joe's from Marshall Street, Peggy O'Malley, was never the prettiest girl on Winter Hill, but she was one of the nicest. Part of a hardworking, respectable family that lived on the top floor of a triple decker, O'Malley was rarely on the street after dark and limited her conversations with the young Joe McCain to what was polite and proper. But after having fallen out of touch for several years, McCain recognized the voice and the name when O'Malley telephoned him one night, stammering that her husband was in trouble.
She was married to an Armenian named Nazelian, a bailiff in the Essex County Courthouse, and the couple had two teenage sons. Apparently Nazelian had accepted $18,000 from a man seeking a court officer's job. The sum, which represented a year's pay for an officer of the court, was a “fixer's fee.” In exchange, Nazelian promised to grease the man's application, a common practice in those days.
Nazelian kept the money but failed to deliver on his promise. The aspiring court officer took his complaint to mob kingpin Jerry Angiulo, the man he probably should've turned to in the first place. Angiulo said he would get the money back for a 50 percent fee and assigned the collection to his principal leg breaker and enforcer, a thug named Richard “the Pig” DeVincent. Six foot four and heavyset, DeVincent was a known shooter and intimidator, complete with the typical black, velvet-collared overcoat, homburg hat, and a big, smoldering cigar.
When the Pig appeared on the Nazelians' stoop demanding the $18,000, Peggy O'Malley's husband went rigid with fear. In a shaky voice Nazelian replied that he didn't have the money right then but would get it by the next day. DeVincent flung his cigar away and said he'd be back.
The phone calls started that night, hang-ups mostly, and a few that threatened to burn the house down and made pointed reference to O'Malley's children. Before the appointed hour, Nazelian ran off without saying where he was headed or when he would return. Peggy O'Malley was left to face DeVincent alone and when the Pig discovered that the money wasn't there, he flew into a rage.
“I'm coming back tonight and if it ain't here, I'm gonna stick dynamite up your ass,” said the enforcer, gesturing to indicate the two teenagers, “and the kids' asses, and blow this fucking place up.”
When Joe and Leo heard all this, they told O'Malley to tell DeVincent that her husband would meet him that night at the Red Coach Grille on the Lynn Fells Parkway at nine o'clock and that he'd have the money. With other cops watching the restaurant, DeVincent appeared but left immediately after figuring out that Nazelian wasn't there. He drove to a phone booth and called O'Malley, while Joe McCain listened on the extension. It was a brief conversation.
“Who the fuck do you think you are?” asked the Pig. “When I get my hands on you, I'll fucking kill you.”
McCain had coached his old neighbor to insist it was a mix-up, and to tell DeVincent to come to the house: the money was all there, in an envelope, waiting for him. An hour later, when the Pig arrived, the Nazelians' lights were off and the shades were drawn. The street was empty and quiet, and emerging from his car, DeVincent strode up the front walk and pulled at the bell.
O'Malley answered the door. “Come in,” she said. “I have the money.”
“You better fucking have it,” he said, brushing past her.
“It's right in there,” O'Malley said.
Off the main foyer a single lamp illuminated the dining room, and there on the polished oak table was an envelope filled with hundred-dollar bills. Spotting the cash, DeVincent crossed the hall and as prearranged, O'Malley went straight through the house and out the back door.
There were two entrances to the dining room; Joe was hidden behind one door and Leo the other. The Pig walked into the room without so much as a glance to either side and as he reached for the envelope, Joe stepped out from behind him, cocked his pistol and rested the muzzle against the back of DeVincent's head.
“So long, Richie,” he said.
Suddenly, there was a hissing sound, and the powerful stench of urine filled the room: DeVincent had pissed himself. Leo came out from behind the other door, his gun raised, laughing. “You're not such a big shot now, are you?” asked Papile, bending the mobster's arms behind his back to apply the handcuffs. “The big o.c. guy. A fucking pussy.”
The Pig wasn't carrying a gun, but he had a small, incriminating slip of paper that represented the marker for the debt. While patting him down, Leo also discovered a leather cigar pouch in DeVincent's coat pocket. Inside the pouch were two giant Cubans, and Leo held them up where Joe could see them.
“Joe, what does Red Auerbach do when the Celtics win a big game?” asked Papile.
McCain shrugged his shoulders. “Has a cigar?”
“Here, Joe,” said Leo, handing him one of the Cubans. “Light up a victory cigar. The best fuckin' pinch we ever made.”
Richard DeVincent was convicted of extortion and received eight to twelve years in prison. Up on Winter Hill several years later, in front of a used car lot owned by two disgraced MDC cops, Joe McCain was driving the cement mixer for Boston Sand & Gravel when he spotted Richie the Pig on the sidewalk. Barreling toward him, McCain inched the great heavy bulk of the mixer over to that side of the road. Closer and closer to DeVincent, looming high above the street, Joe downshifted and laughed to himself. At the last instant he nudged the massive tonnage of the cement mixer, its tires as high as a man's head, to where a slice of cheese wouldn't have fit between his bumper and the back of DeVincent's shoes.
Watching in his mirrors and snickering, Joe saw DeVincent throw his arms up like a bullfighter and then sprawl forward, onto the hood of his car. Joe kept going up and over Winter Hill, feeling justified that, for all the harm DeVincent had caused Peggy O'Malley's two sons by barging into their home, he could've dragged the Pig's body halfway to Lechmere Station.
That wasn't the last time Joe saw Richie the Pig. While in private practice, McCain investigated a homosexual murder in Everett, and the information he gathered was useful in clearing DeVincent's son in the crime. (The younger DeVincent later died of AIDS.) In 1990 Joe attended the wake of a heroin-addled young woman, the daughter of a former Met cop. Passing through the funeral home, McCain encountered several ex-cops, and out of respect for the deceased, he made small talk with his former colleagues, then turned to leave.
“Hey, Joe,” called a man's voice. McCain looked back as he went out the door: it was Richard DeVincent.
Joe stuck his hands in his pockets; he didn't have a gun. His and Leo's testimony against DeVincent more than fifteen years earlier had been brutal, and from what he'd heard, the Pig had returned to his old ways since getting out of Walpole. Lines of sweat began running down Joe's back as he stood on the green-carpeted stairs, and the Pig descended toward him. It was dark on the street and the two men were alone.
By now DeVincent was right on top of him, and Joe squared his shoulders. “What do you want?” he asked.
DeVincent extended his hand. “I want to thank you for helping out my son,” he said, shaking Joe's hand.
“Your son?”
DeVincent nodded, looking at the ground. “Over in Everett . . .”
“Oh yeah, right,” said Joe.
Extricating himself from the handshake, Joe made another vacant remark and walked away under the giant elm trees that overhung the sidewalk, relieved that DeVincent had nothing more in mind.
A short while later Richie the Pig was murdered, and they draped his body over a little granite monument in Medford Square; he died the way he had lived. But that night, as he'd groped in his pockets watching Richie come toward him in the dark, Joe McCain realized it wasn't his gun he was missing the most. It was Leo.
For despite his reputation as a guy who got things done, in his own way, on his own terms, Joe McCain knew he was only as good as the people he surrounded himself with.
And some of these people were a little shady.