The Art of the Heist

Eleven

If rock and roll was easy money, the Dedham job was embarrassingly so.

Ralph didn’t offer any specifics about how he’d come by his information in the first place. It was clear to me that we were merely doing the grunt work for someone higher up the food chain, that our buyer was the one who’d tipped us to the haul in the first place. Conveniently, they’d even lent us a large commercial van for the job. Knowing Ralph’s affiliation with a certain criminal organization, my money was on them, but I knew better than to say anything.

On the night of the heist Ralph picked me up at my mother’s house in Milton and we drove together in the van to Dedham. As a rule, I’ve never been one to give the consequences of my actions much thought. Perhaps because of this I rarely get nervous about jobs. If things go smoothly, I always figure, it’s all well and good. If not, I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it.

It was the wee hours of the morning when we pulled into the Dedham freight yard. The sky was clear, the half-moon low on the horizon. The season had turned and there was a sharp chill in the air. We had dressed for the cold, in dark wool peacoats and knit caps.

“You ready?” Ralph asked, brazenly pulling the van up right beside the tracks, cutting the engine.

I nodded, feeling an electric rush of adrenaline. We weren’t expecting any drama. In fact, neither of us was armed. Still, my heart was hammering the way it did before a gig. It was not an entirely unpleasant sensation. “Let’s go.” I said, popping the passenger door.

Hefting the bolt cutters he’d brought with him, Ralph opened his door and climbed out, his shadow looming in the slanted glare of the yard’s floodlights. I stepped out after him, and we moved stealthily toward the freight cars, squinting to read the markings in the semi-darkness.

“This one,” he said, finding what he was looking for at last, waving me closer, wrangling the heavy bolt cutters.

There was a loud crack as the metal lock broke. Ralph and I slid the car’s heavy door open and clambered up inside. With the cold as encouragement, we worked quickly, transferring the freight by hand, moving silently from the boxcar to the van and back again. By dawn we had finished and were back in the front seat, heading for the Roslindale warehouse where we’d arranged to deliver our haul.

We were happy with our share of the Dedham score, and Ralph’s friends in Roslindale were equally pleased. I don’t remember the exact figure they paid us, but I do recall that it made the pittance I took home after a gig look like pocket change.

Ralph soon had another job for us, this one involving a semitruck-load of fur coats. We had found our niche. As the jobs continued to roll in we quickly realized that we needed at least one more pair of hands. Eventually Ralph’s brother, Sal, joined our crew.

In the spring of 1974 Ralph’s contacts approached us with a particularly lucrative proposal: they wanted us to clean out a Quincy warehouse that had just received a large shipment of leather coats. As usual, we agreed to take on the job.

On the night of the heist we met at Sal’s place in Dorchester. Sal was a married man, one of the few of us not to be living with his parents, and his wife was particularly sympathetic to our line of work. As a result, we often gathered at their apartment.

Our past successes had made us perilously cocky, and we were in high spirits as we set out for Quincy. Ralph was driving the truck that had, as usual, been supplied to us by his contacts, while Sal and I rode along, windows open to let in the warm spring air. We arrived at the warehouse and parked around the back of the building, pulling the truck right up to the loading dock. Ralph jimmied one of the windows with a pry bar and the three of us crawled through it. I was the last one in.

“Sometimes I’m embarrassed at how easy this is,” I commented as I joined Sal and Ralph on the floor of the darkened warehouse. They smiled back at me, two Cheshire cats, the white half-moons of their teeth catching what little light was shining through the windows.

Suddenly, as if answering my boast, a siren wailed in the distance. We all stopped to listen. The whine of a police siren wasn’t exactly a rarity in Quincy, and we were all hoping the same thing: that this one had nothing to do with us. But it quickly became clear that this was not the case. The first siren was answered by a second and a third, all moving closer by the instant.

“We must have tripped a silent alarm,” Ralph said.

I glanced out the back windows and saw the whirl of revolving lights on the brick wall of the warehouse directly behind us. “Head for the front of the building and scatter!” I told my partners.

Ralph and Sal disappeared into the sea of coats. I quickly followed suit, clambering out a window near the front of the warehouse. I hit the ground running, spurred on by the sound of yet another approaching cruiser, and ducked into an alleyway.

No sooner had the sirens begun to fade behind me than I heard the unexpected sound of Barbra Streisand singing “The Way We Were.” Up ahead in the darkness I could just barely make out a parked car, lights out, engine purring quietly.

To tell you the truth, I’ve never been a big Streisand fan. Her songs are just too sappy for me. “The Way We Were” was a huge hit that winter, and I’d been forced to listen to it more times than I cared to. Normally I would have been supremely irritated at having to hear it one more time. But her voice that night was a welcome beacon in the darkness.

Cautiously, I approached the car, peering in through the open windows. Two figures were sprawled in the backseat, writhing against each other. I couldn’t help laughing. Apparently I’d stumbled across some sort of lover’s lane.

“Excuse me,” I said, bending down toward the open window.

Startled out of their sexual reverie, the couple glanced up at me.

“I’m sorry,” I repeated, producing my Smith and Wesson as proof of the seriousness of my request, “but I need to borrow your car.”

The woman moved quickly, tucking her shirt in as she lunged for the door. But the man, still groggy from the wash of hormones, blinked up at me, stunned.

“Get out of the car,” I told him urgently, waving the gun for emphasis.

“Jesus, John!” the woman yelled, reaching into the backseat and grabbing the man’s arm. “Didn’t you hear him? Get out of the fucking car.”

Finally, John obeyed.

I slid into the front seat and peeled away, but not before turning the radio off, catching Babs in midphrase.

Ralph’s friends’ jobs were highly lucrative, and I was able to start adding to my collection once again. But as profitable as the contract work was, the three of us soon began to talk about branching out on our own. I’ve never liked working for other people, even when the work is of an untraditional nature. Helping someone else get rich just doesn’t make good financial sense.

Early one morning, as Ralph and I were driving through Roslindale, I suddenly had an idea.

“Pull over!” I shouted.

“What?” Ralph asked, nervously glancing in the rearview mirror. “Is there someone following us?”

I shook my head, motioning to a parking lot on our right. “I want to show you something.”

Ralph cut the wheel sharply and we skidded into the lot. “Christ,” he swore, “you scared the crap out of me!”

“There,” I said, pointing out a low-slung brick building on the opposite side of the street.

“You mean the bank?” Ralph asked.

“Yes, I mean the bank. And her.” What had caught my eye was the lone figure of a woman strolling from her car to the front door of the bank. “Opening time,” I observed as we watched her fish a ring of keys from her purse and unlock the front door.

Ralph smiled. “It’s a shame she’s all by herself.”

“My thoughts exactly.”

The Roslindale heist would be our first full-fledged bank robbery. Ralph, Sal, and I took our time preparing for the job, casing the place from our post across the street, as we had that first morning. We soon discovered that an armored truck made regular stops at the bank to pick up cash three mornings a week. It didn’t take us long to conclude that our best opportunity for a big haul would be to hit the bank on one of these days, when the money was literally bagged and waiting for us.

With a few minor exceptions the bank’s opening routine varied little from day to day. The woman-the manager, we assumed, for closer observation had confirmed that she was also the one to open the vault-always arrived fifteen to twenty minutes before the other employees. It was a brief window of opportunity, but if we moved quickly, we could make it work.

The only remaining question was how we would get into the building.

“How about the roof?” Ralph suggested as we sat in his car one morning waiting for the manager.

I laughed. “Sure. We’ll just bust a hole and lower ourselves inside.”

Ralph shrugged. “Why not? I’d say a couple of sledgehammers would do the trick.”

I scanned the flat roofline. It wasn’t the most subtle approach, but it might just work. There’d be no covering up for ourselves. But then, once we had the cash and were gone, what did that matter? In fact, I found the thought of the cops walking in to find a gaping hole in the ceiling of the bank quite amusing.

Just after midnight on the morning of the heist Ralph, Sal, and I met in their parents’ garage in Roslindale. Dressing the part is always important. If nothing else, in our black clothes and work boots, we looked like seasoned professionals. Each of us was armed with a pistol, in my case a Walther 9 mm that would accompany me on countless future jobs. I had brought ladies’ stockings to serve as masks, and I handed one to each man as we made our final preparations.

Ralph had stolen a painter’s ladder for the job, as well as a pickup truck in which to haul it and our other tools. Borrowed might have been a more accurate word, as we planned to abandon both the truck and the ladder at the bank. We finished loading our provisions and set off into the night, with Sal driving the truck while Ralph and I rode together in Ralph’s Lincoln. It was after 2:00 A.M. when we finally arrived at the bank. We parked at the back of the building, which was well hidden from the street, unloaded our supplies, and scrambled up the ladder to the roof.

My biggest worry was that someone would hear us. The bank was located in a mainly industrial neighborhood, which meant there wouldn’t be many people around at that time of night. But it was an extremely noisy undertaking and I was nervous nonetheless. I kept watch at the edge of the roof while Ralph and Sal did the physical work. Much to my relief, it didn’t take them long to accomplish their task. Within a matter of minutes they had broken through the roof.

Ralph lowered himself into the building first while Sal and I passed down the remaining gear. Once the three of us were inside we quickly scouted the interior of the bank, finalizing our script before settling in with a deck of cards to wait for morning.

At eight-thirty, half an hour before the bank opened, we took our positions behind the front counter. Not long after, we heard the sound of a car pulling into the parking lot, followed by the staccato ticking of the manager’s pumps on the sidewalk. Her key rattled in the lock and then she was inside, humming the tune to the ABBA hit “Honey, Honey” as she crossed the lobby.

I lowered my makeshift mask in preparation for confronting the woman, while Ralph and Sal did the same. In moments like this, I have found, it is better not to think, but to focus solely on the task at hand. In this case, what mattered most was keeping the woman calm so we could be in and out before the rest of the staff arrived.

How you thrill me, ah-hah

Nearly kill me, ah-hah…

The woman rounded the corner of the counter and stopped short, the next words catching in her throat, the sound high and tight.

“We’re here to rob the bank,” I told her matter-of-factly. “Do what we ask and you won’t get hurt.”

She glanced at the three of us, her brain working overtime to process what she saw. Involuntarily, her gaze shifted to the panic button at a nearby teller’s station.

I shook my head. “The safe,” I told her, motioning with the Walther.

She nodded, slowly, resolutely. Trying, I knew, to get a handle on her fear so she could do as we asked. Like any reasonable person, she was not about to defy three men with guns.

“Move it!” Ralph barked, conscious, as we all were, of the moments ticking steadily away.

The urgency of his tone spurred the woman to action. Silently, she made her way to the safe and dialed the combination with shaking hands. The door swung open, revealing several large bags of cash, bundled and ready for the armored truck.

Ralph and Sal grabbed the bags while I led the woman into a nearby office and tied her to a chair. It was an oddly intimate act, my hands on her wrists and stockinged calves. Up close I could see that she was older than I had first guessed, her skin beneath her makeup slightly flawed. There was a sour smell coming from her, the tang of fear in her sweat.

“No one’s going to hurt you,” I told her, glancing at my watch. It was nearly nine o’clock. At least she wouldn’t be tied up for long.

Leaving her, I sprinted out the back door to find Sal and Ralph waiting for me in the Lincoln. As I slid into the backseat, Ralph gunned the engine and the car leaped forward, streaking the blacktop behind us with twin ribbons of hot rubber.

Our haul from the bank was well over $100,000: not a bad day’s work for a day that began and ended before most people punched their time clocks.

Even as we counted out the money in Ralph’s bedroom, with the smell of his mother’s fried eggs and ham wafting from the kitchen, I knew the Roslindale heist would not be our last.

As gratifying as the money was-and believe me, it was-the attention the heist received was equally so. There was a story about the robbery in the Boston paper, along with a photograph of the ragged hole in the bank’s roof: our handiwork in black and white, a slap in the face of every cop in the area.

It felt undeniably good, and I wanted more.

Ralph, Sal, and I split the proceeds from the Roslindale bank heist evenly. I used part of my share to buy a rare Muramasa samurai sword I’d had my eye on for some time. Sengo Muramasa was a Muromachi-period (sixteenth-century) swordsmith whose blades were famous for their sharpness. An extraordinarily skillful smith, Muramasa was known for his insanely violent temper. According to Japanese legend, Muramasa’s blades took on their maker’s brutal characteristics, urging anyone who wielded them to either kill or commit suicide. For this reason, in the early seventeenth century they were banned by the shogun Tokugawa Ieyasu. As a result, many Muramasa blades had their signatures altered or removed, making the ones that survived even more valuable to collectors. Acquiring the sword was a feather in my cap.

I also bought myself a sweet little TVR Griffith coupe, a custom British-made sports car. Mine was a beautiful specimen, green-light green, with a butter-soft leather interior, a V-8 engine, and a delicate racing frame, one of only several hundred in existence. Affectionately known as a coffin on wheels because of its tendency to pulverize any unlucky soul who happened to get into an accident in it, the Griffith was the fastest thing money could buy at the time, topping out at 160 miles per hour. Just sitting behind the wheel was a rush.

The best thing about the Griffith was the speed with which it allowed me to make the trip up to Northampton. Martha, who was still at UMass, where she was studying art history, spent most of the week at her parents’ house. But I drove up nearly every weekend, either to stay with her there or bring her to Boston or wherever I happened to be playing. Thanks to Al Dotoli, who was a skilled manager, my band and I continued to enjoy regular gigs at clubs and colleges around New England.

Martha’s interest in fine art easily rivaled mine, and we spent much of our free time together visiting museums. Over one of her vacations we drove down to New York City and spent several days wandering through the collections at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The trip was nothing short of a religious experience for me. Muslims have Mecca, Christians have the Vatican, and serious collectors like me have the Met.

But even as I wandered in awe through the hallowed halls of the great museum, I was pondering the best way to rob it. I couldn’t have imagined how soon I would return to do just that.