Big Stick-Up at Brink's! Page 5

  In 1932 Richardson received his first jail sentence, a year at the House of Correction for carrying a weapon. His record at this time totaled nine offenses, including three drunkenness charges, one robbery while armed, one larceny of auto and one breaking and entering at night.

  On the morning of October 2, 1934, Miss Alma Salvi, twenty-one, had finished collecting rents for a series of buildings in West Somerville and was starting for her car when two men approached. One poked a gun in her ribs while the other snatched away a brown folder containing $1,633 in cash and $426 worth of checks. The pair dashed off with Salvi in screaming pursuit. Another woman shoutingly joined the chase. The pair of robbers jumped into a sedan, and a third man at the wheel gunned away from the curb. As the car sped off, rent checks and $71 in cash were thrown from its windows.

  Less than an hour later a patrol car sighted a tan sedan traveling at breakneck speed, gave chase and managed to force it to a stop. Apprehended were thirty-year-old Thomas F. Richardson and twenty-six-year-old James Ignatius Faherty. No money or guns were found. Sandy and Jimma were arraigned in Somerville Court. Both pleaded not guilty. Each was granted a two-week postponement and released on $1,000 bail. Both jumped bail and disappeared. Faherty was seized in New York during the spring of 1936. Richardson was apprehended five months later. Faherty pleaded guilty and took the stand to say that Richardson was innocent. Sandy pleaded not guilty. On September 26, 1936, Richardson, accompanied by Faherty, entered Massachusetts State Prison to serve five to seven years on one count of armed robbery. On January 6, 1938, Tony Pino joined them.

  It was a ritual they had performed before, a language they had spoken or hadn’t spoken from the earliest of days, something they had done and would always do without realizing they did it. Richardson drove in the early Friday morning darkness, asking for a final destination. Pino rode beside him, steadfastly, if not coyly, refusing to reveal the whereabouts of the “whip cream,” giving directions block by block while they were mobile, remaining mute as he led the way on foot.

  “Anthony, enough of your games,” Sandy declared once they were seated in the recessed Pearl Street doorway Pino had used the morning before.

  “Just open your bucket and eat an apple, Mr. Richardson,” was the counterdemand.

  “I’m doing nothing until I know what we have.”

  “I’m telling nothing so you can see things happen like I seen things happen.”

  Sandy flipped open the top of his lunch pail and, in fact, took out and bit hard into an apple.

  “Is your apple tasty, Mr. Richardson?”

  “Go screw yourself.”

  “Well, if you’d like a little cream to sweeten the flavor, just raise your eyes and tell me whacha see.”

  “A hole in the ground,” Richardson snapped, referring to the construction site where the new telephone company edifice would be erected.

  “And on the other side of that hole?”

  “For the love of God, Tony.”

  “Whacha got on the other side?” Pino persisted, grinning down into his lunch pail.

  “The Chamber of Goddamn Commerce building.”

  “Well, don’t let it get away from you, ’cause that’s where the whip cream factory is.”

  Sandy surveyed the looming structure. Lights glared in the ground-floor marble corridor. Scattered windows were lit on floors above.

  “How far in did you get?” he asked Pino.

  “I been no further than right here.”

  “Then how do you know it’s a score?”

  “Eat your apple.”

  Richardson cocked a finger at Pino, was about to let loose, sighed, shrugged, tore the wrapping away from his sandwich. A rumble arose off to the right. A set of bouncing headlights dotted the blackness up Congress Street, grew in size and intensity and passed under the streetlamp. Sandy discerned the silhouette of a square high-carriaged truck. The vehicle turned into the unlit parking lot, circled wide, stopped, resonantly reversed gears, backed up and came to rest several yards short of the Chamber of Commerce building. A shadowy figure jumped down, appeared to be locking the cab door, then strolled forward and crossed into the outer perimeter of light splash. The man was wearing a uniform of gray, sharply creased trousers, a flared jacket and a chauffeur’s cap. Cinching the jacket was a gun belt and holster. The man pushed through one of the glass doors, strode up the marble corridor, stopped and picked up a wall phone, almost immediately replaced the receiver, continued up the corridor, slanted right and stepped from view.

  “What is your candid idea of the wonders we’re beholding, Mr. Richardson?”

  “On the positive side, Anthony, definitely on the positive.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “Unless my tired eyes deceive me, I would say that the individual we are peeking drives what a crook would call a money wagon. In addition and forthwith, he is presently engaged with a twofold intention. He is either going to deliver a load of whip cream or take some out.”

  “Dollars to doughnuts it’s take out, Mr. R. Give you seven to ten he’s taking it right out from the dollar factory.”

  “Whose factory?”

  “It’s printed plain on the side of the truck.”

  “I can’t see a thing the way it’s parked, and before I get mad and walk out of here, I suggest you tell me.”

  “Pickle, Mr. R?” Pino held out a jar.

  Some minutes later a uniformed guard carrying a long weapon emerged in the marble corridor, sauntered forward through the glass doors and took up casual sentinel in the shadows near the back of the truck.

  “Is that a rifle or shotgun he’s holding?” Sandy asked, peering hard across the construction site.

  “A gas gun.”

  “I’ve seen as many gas guns as you’ve ever seen gas guns, and I’ve never seen one that looks like that.”

  “And I’ve never seen a rifle or shotgun that looks like that.”

  “Which doesn’t make it a goddamn gas gun.”

  The spectacle of a portable cloth hamper being wheeled down the marble corridor by the driver and another uniformed guard ended debate. The hamper was pushed past the glass doors and up to the rear of the truck. The sentinel guard moved forward, pulled open a door in the vehicle’s rear, then, lowering his weapon, stepped back. The third guard climbed up inside the truck. The driver began lifting small sacks out of the hamper and passing them into the open door.

  “What would you say them lovely items are, Mr. Richardson?”

  “Pouches, Anthony. Pouches not unsimilar to those used for the safe and rapid delivery of payrolls.”

  The driver stood to the side. The sentinel guard came forward, closed the door in the back of the truck with the third guard apparently still inside and leaned down as if he were fitting a key into a lock.

  “How many pouches would you say were loaded, Mr. Richardson?”

  “Sixteen, Anthony. Exactly sixteen.”

  “How do you account for the fact I counted seventeen?”

  “That’s because you always exaggerate. There were sixteen. Three had a lot of smash (coins) inside. The two biggest were the lightest, which means, hopefully, all cash.”

  The sentinel guard climbed into the cab just as the truck’s starter began to whine. Not until the third try did the engine kick over.

  “Unbelievable,” Sandy muttered.

  “How unbelievable?”

  “Conservatively, I’d say a boy of five with a water pistol coulda grabbed her off.”

  “That easy, huh?”

  “Those guards were rather elderly gents.”

  “I couldn’t see their faces from here.”

  “Neither could I, but they weren’t moving like any twenty- or thirty-year-old. I’d say they were well up in their forties and maybe beyond.”

  “Keep a peek when she passes the lamp and maybe you’ll see who it belongs to.” Pino indicated the streetlight across the construction site on the near side of Congress. The truck drove under. Unlike the vehi
cles of the previous morning, the side of the white armored vehicle bore no name.

  “All right, Anthony, which company is it?”

  “Don’t feel there’s nothing unpatriotic about taking them?”

  “I am merely a neutral and curious bystander—and anyway, money carriers are insured to high heaven. The sloppy way this outfit behaves, they deserve to be knocked off. It’s a disgrace.”

  “Kinda appetizing disgrace, don’t you think?”

  “Which one?”

  “Tell you over dinner.” Pino rose.

  “We’re having dinner?”

  “I need something hot.” Pino started off up the street. “Meet you around at Bickford’s.”

  Richardson made off down the street, cut back, reached the restaurant to find Pino at an isolated table devouring a house special of liver, mashed potatoes, string beans, deep-dish apple pie, bread, oleomargarine and a side order of baked beans—but not particularly in that order.

  “Who?” Sandy said sitting down.

  “The biggest?”

  “Brink’s?”

  “You won yourself an apple pie,” Pino said, sliding the deep dish across the table.

  “You’ve got to be crazier than I thought.”

  “Don’t getcha.”

  “No one loots that company. No one’s ever gotten five cents from them as long as anyone remembers. For the love of Jesus, Tony, those—”

  “Tony?” Pino muttered with his mouth full. “What became of Anthony?”

  “That outfit has the best precautions ever put together. They spend millions on it.”

  “I thought you told me a five-year-old little kid could score her.”

  “Well, they probably got something on those trucks we don’t know about.”

  “They got it, I’ll beat it. Don’t you like your pie, Mr. R?”

  “Not the pie or the whip cream.”

  “I ain’t gonna press the matter no more, Mr. R. Let your conscience be your guide.”

  It was a reversal of roles they had played before. During the balance of the meal and while Richardson drove him to Dorchester, Tony was uncharacteristically quiet; when he talked, he never mentioned thievery of any type. Sandy, as he rarely did, kept bringing up crime, made a reference or two to Brink’s.

  “I can’t say that I wasn’t intrigued with the idea of grabbing Brink’s—what dishonest man wouldn’t be?” Richardson asks. “What honest man wouldn’t be? I didn’t think Anthony had come up with the score just to sucker me in. He knew what I knew. I was suckered enough already by that truck, the sloppy guards—weak soul that I am.

  “I knew that when I went back on the bend, it would be for good. I wanted that to be my choice, not Anthony’s. Anthony played me just right. The less he had to say about Brink’s the more my curiosity got the better of me.

  “Around the time I got to Dorchester I said, ‘I realize your predicament (i.e., with deportation), Anthony. If it’s any help, I’ll look the joint over again and give my opinion—but it’s not a commitment!’

  “Anthony said, ‘Sure thing, Mr. R. What say we make it next Thursday, so you can see it like I saw it the first time?’”

  At approximately 5:30 A.M. the metal box rolled into view in the marble corridor and was pushed forward and out through the glass doors by two Brink’s guards and on up to the rear of the parked armored truck, where another guard—his rifle or gas gun leaning against the wall—stood. One of the guards who had rolled the metal box disappeared up into the back of the armored vehicle. The other guard and rifleless uniformed man squatted, seized the metal container at the base, called out something to each other, lifted with all their might, struggled to lift higher and just barely managed to hoist it onto the truck.

  “See anyone around?” Pino asked from the darkness of the doorway on Pearl Street.

  “Not within a hundred miles,” Sandy replied.

  “Thinks she’s a touch?” Pino began peeling an orange as the rifleless guard took up his weapon and headed for the cab of the truck with a second guard.

  “Perhaps on some far future date a group of desperadoes might have themselves quite a time.”

  “Stick her up with guns, huh?”

  “You’ve been seeing what I’ve been seeing?”

  “You was right the first time, Mr. R. It’s too goddamn dangerous going in with guns. They probably got something secret and nasty on that truck that’ll get us pinched just thinking about her.”

  “Anthony, what are you angling after?”

  “I was just thinking why risk our ass on one punky load when we can walk away with the whole kaboodle. See up along there?” Pino asked, pointing.

  Richardson stared up at the line of lighted windows in the Chamber of Commerce building.

  “Lay you fifty to two that’s where their vault is, Mr. R., and if it is, that’s where we’re going. And we ain’t waiting for no war to end neither. We’re walking right in and cleaning them out thorough and complete. Not leave ’em one lousy dime to even buy coffee with.”

  “Anthony, you’re definitely a menace to yourself.”

  “Menaceful and cooking. Honest to Christ, Sandy, I ain’t felt this good since before Rhodes Brothers.”

  “Let’s take a walk.”

  It was a dialogue they had before, a debate on the merits of armed robbery as opposed to safe theft. Richardson, as they strolled across Post Office Square at dawn, championed hold-ups. He maintained, as he had usually maintained, it was a fast and efficient method of operation, didn’t require a plant or burglar tools or the long and perilous time inside the premises.

  Pino, as he usually did, voiced opposition to the use of guns. Being caught on the street with burglar’s tools was bad enough, but should a weapon also be found on your person, the resultant penalty could be all the harsher. Being apprehended on premises was a simple matter of breaking and entering; being seized on premises carrying burglar’s tools was breaking and entering with intent to commit robbery plus possession of burglar’s tools; being arrested while in the process of cracking a pete was burglary and/or safe theft. But, again, should firearms be detected in any of these instances, the subsequent penalty might well be longer. Should you be trapped and use your pistol, attempted homicide or even murder might be the verdict. And Massachusetts was a bad state for weapons to begin with. Being found in possession of a machine gun was a mandatory life sentence.

  A stickup required no more or less casing than safecraking—to Pino’s way of thinking—but it did involve more planning and split-second timing in its perpetration: arriving on the dot, scoring on the dot, making your getaway.

  Tony Pino preferred the leisure of a safe theft, breaking in at a time of your own choosing and, if need be, spending all night peeling or cracking open the pete, casually slipping away with loot.

  “And no one knows what the hell’s gone on till the next morning, see what I mean?” Tony said. “They come into their office the next morning and open their door and find they been wiped out. You’re at home sleeping and they’re shouting into an empty pete.

  “So anyway, I got Sandy arguing about which one is better. I’m being psychological, see? The madder I make Sandy, the more hooked he gets. I been doing it all my life with him. He’s the fella that calms me down when I go cuckoo. Sometimes I go cuckoo ’cause I can’t help it. My ideas run away with me. So now I go cuckoo on purpose. Sandy thinks I ain’t up to no big piece of work. And I know better than him I ain’t, only he don’t know I think that. He kinda suspects it, but he don’t know for sure.

  “So I know Sandy’s drooling inside over Brink’s—who ain’t? I gotta convince him I’m going right in and screw it all up. I tell him crazy things about freezing their pete with liquid oxygen and using them secret gases to put the whole building to sleep—wild stuff. I do my cuckoo act for him—make my eyes get big and wide and slobber on my chin.

  “Sandy takes the bait and says, ‘Anthony, don’t you think we oughta find out where the goddamn pete
is to begin with?’

  “Well, I knew that all along, but I made him think I forgot. So I says, ‘I’d rather hold the guy out the window and make him tell us.’

  “So, Sandy gets madder at me, and the first thing you know, we go right into the lobby of the Chamber of Commerce building. It’s morning rush hour, and Mother of God, armored trucks from two or three companies is lined up and down on Federal [Street]. We’re holding our buckets, and he takes downstairs, and I take upstairs; I work the lobby, and he works the arcade down below.

  “Let me give you the layout, okay? You come in from Federal, go through the glass doors so you’re facing down at the doors on the Congress Street side.* Now right as you come in there’s a marble staircase to your right and one to your left. The one to your left goes downstairs to the arcade. The other goes upstairs. Then on each side of the lobby is the elevators. Maybe four or five of them on each side of the lobby, facing one another. Then you come to more marble staircases—one going up and one going down.

  “So when we come in off of Federal, I don’t concentrate on the staircase going downstairs to my left. Sandy goes down it, and I keep walking past. I keep looking to the elevators to my left ’cause that’s where we saw the Brink’s guards head for and come from. I go over to the bulletin board. I look at all the companies that live in the buildings, and I find Brink’s. Brink’s has got a couple of floors, so you figure their safe’s gotta be on one of them. But it could be in the basement, too. Over near that bulletin board I see a wall phone—the phone we seen a Brink’s guard call on.

  “So now Sandy comes up in the lobby and I go down into the arcade. The arcade is full of them little shops where they gyp hell out of you. I come up, and I spot Sandy down at the other end of the lobby. I give him the signal saying I ain’t found where the pete is, and he gives me the same thing back. Then I give him the signal saying let’s get outta this joint. Too many detectives live around this place for a couple of desperate characters like us to be hanging around too long. Sandy’s over near Federal, so he goes right out them doors. I come up in the lobby to follow. Now I’m about ten feet from the glass door and whodaya think I see coming off the street and right at me? A Brink’s guard pushing a cart. A handcart. I bend right down and tie my shoelaces. Keep tying and untying. And the cart passes right under my nose, and so does what’s in it—long, thin brown packages. Well, I ain’t been a thief all my life for nothing. I know those packages are straight from the Federal Reserve Bank down the block and full of brand-new money. I spent a lotta time, before I went away, looking over the Federal Reserve.