Then he turned and looked at me, “It’s a lot of money.”
“It is.”
“But Joe made me a better offer.”
“Better than twenty-five G’s?”
“Much.” Hagan looked out the window again; the fan made a dancing ghost of the curtains. “He said he’d let me breathe.”
Chapter Ten
In the Caucus Room gallery of the Senate Office Building, known as the S.O.B., several witnesses who might have been similarly characterized waited to present their testimony. Teamsters president James R. Hoffa — the focus of much of what the Rackets Committee was looking into — was one of the three-hundred capacity audience in that vast red-carpeted rectangle. A beautiful August day, warm but not hot, was sneaking in the gilt-ceilinged, cream-marble-walled, black-marble-floored chamber by way of three tall sun-slanting windows that made of the large crystal chandeliers ice sculptures that refused to melt. The same could not be said for the senators, witnesses and audience, who despite the air-conditioning were subject to the punishing heat of the lights required for the TV and movie cameras.
The witness on deck right now was sweating as if subject to the worst Third Degree tactics, but in fact he was smiling and even chortling and doing quite well under the irritated questioning of Robert F. Kennedy.
The young Rackets Committee chief counsel looked trim and composed, his striped tie snugged, his suit crisp, his dark brown hair longish but perfectly barbered. His boyish blue-eyed face seemed perfectly calm. But his voice had an edge that sometimes quavered.
Bob, for whom I’d done considerable work last year for the committee, seemed thrown by the clowning of this current witness, and annoyed by the room’s amused response to it.
The big man at the witness table — a distinguished-looking white-haired attorney at his side — weighed less than four hundred pounds but not much. Yet he’d somehow managed to find a sport coat and trousers large enough to swim in, his brick-pattern tie loose, the collar points of his soaked white shirt sticking up like noses waiting to be thumbed. His eyebrows rode high over the close-set light blue eyes, projecting an inaccurate air of stupidity, his small head sitting on the huge six-four frame like the mistake of a careless God.
“Mr. Baker,” Bob said into his microphone, “it would seem you’ve been reluctant to appear before this committee.”
Barney Baker sat hunkered over the table, hands flat before him, as if he were waiting for a poker hand to be dealt.
“No, sir,” he said. “Here I am, right now.”
Barney’s baritone was surprisingly rich and expressive; amplification only helped it, whereas Bob’s voice seemed thin, reedy, nasal.
“You avoided our subpoenas by twice checking into weight-loss spas.”
Barney raised his plump hands as if in brief surrender. “I am down twenty pounds, sir.”
Howls of laughter.
Not from Bob, though, who next asked the witness about a shooting in Manhattan in 1936, in the parking lot of the Hotel New Yorker.
“All I heard was a lot of noise,” Barney said. “I hit the pavement. They shot myself and Mr. Joe Butler.”
“And what was the outcome?”
“I survived.” Laughter from the gallery. “Mr. Joe Butler passed away.” A little more. Gallows humor was going over good this morning.
Bob’s eyes tightened. He had clearly hoped to expose a brutal thug. Instead he was providing the audience with a rollicking character out of Damon Runyon.
“You knew several men involved in the killing of Anthony Hintz,” Bob said. “I’ll remind you that Mr. Hintz’s job was to pick which longshoremen would work on a given day.”
“That’s called the Shape-Up, sir.”
“Thank you for the information, Mr. Baker. Perhaps you also know that the hiring practices of New York City piers at that time required kickbacks — money from hardworking men to go into the pockets of gangsters. And when Mr. Hintz would not go along with this practice, it got him killed.”
Barney just looked at his interrogator as if about to drop off to sleep.
“Mr. Baker?”
“Oh, was that a question?”
More laughs.
Bob pressed on. “Did you know ‘Cockeyed’ Dunne, Mr. Baker?”
A shrug rolled across his shoulders like a wave into shore. “I didn’t know him as Cockeyed Dunne. I knew him as John Dunne.”
“Where is he now?”
“He has met his maker.”
“And how did he do that?”
“I believe through electrocution in the City of New York in the State of New York.”
That got laughs, too. Electric-chair humor to go along with gallows. And I had to admit, Barney’s delivery was good. Jackie Gleason couldn’t have done better.
“And what of Andrew Sheridan, sir?”
“He has also met his maker.”
“How did he ‘pass away’?”
“Same as Mr. John Dunne.”
“Sheridan also was electrocuted by the state?”
“Yes, sir.”
“He was a friend of yours?”
“Yes, sir, he and John both.”
Bob was machine-gunning now: “A third man involved in the Hintz killing — a Danny Gentile — where is he now?”
Barney had to think about that, or anyway pretend to. “I believe he’s in jail. Implicated in a certain case.”
“Yes, this Hintz killing we’re discussing. And you were friends with these people, Mr. Baker, two electrocuted and another in prison?”
“Yes, I knew them real well.”
Reading off a sheet, Bob said, “I have some names here. Joe Adonis. Meyer Lansky. The late Benjamin ‘Bugsy’ Siegel. ‘Trigger Mike’ Coppola. I could go on the rest of the morning. Are these also friends of yours?”
“Some who passed away are fond memories. Those who are still with us, sir... sure. They’re friends of mine.”
Bob showed his teeth. “You seem to be friends with every big gangster and hoodlum in these United States.”
A quick one-shoulder shrug. “I know a lot of people.”
“Did you ever try to choke a hotel manager in Chicago in a dispute over a bill?”
“I don’t remember nothing in the choking department.”
Chuckles came from many of the attendees, including one named Hoffa, waiting his turn, who threw me a quick, discreet wink.
Bob’s eyes bore down on the witness. “You’re associated with leading gangsters and racketeers all over America, so it’s not so shocking to think you might be involved with taking the Green-lease money.”
Controlled anger came rumbling out of the witness. “Mr. Kennedy, it’s ‘shocking’ you would even suggest I could be involved with that kind of blood-taint money... and I don’t go for that, Mr. Kennedy! I don’t go for that kind of action.”
The chief counsel’s words continued their rat-a-tat-tat. “You could have avoided that kind of action many years ago by disassociating yourself from Joe Costello, could you not?”
“Whhhhhhy, Mr. Kennedy?” Barney seemed to stretch the word “why” out endlessly — and into it he put hurt and disappointment and indignation. “Why would I do that?”
Bob’s rage was barely reined in. “Every place you go — we’ve checked your telephone records — finds you calling known gangsters.”
Barney’s expression oozed brotherly love. “Mr. Kennedy, what happened in the past lives of people, like Mr. Costello, is no concern of mine. They may be nice people now.”
“You arranged for Lt. Shoulders’ son to work for the Teamsters Union in St. Louis. Lt. Shoulders who went to prison for perjury over the Greenlease money.”