The Art of the Heist

Four

The outcome of my dramatic escape from the Hancock County Jail was not entirely unhappy. Once back in custody, I was taken first to the local hospital and then to a larger jail. In October I was convicted and received a two-year sentence for the jail break and Sullivan heist. But with the help of a good attorney I was soon released pending appeal.

News of what had happened in Maine, including the fact that I’d fired on a sheriff’s deputy, quickly made the rounds of the Revere Beach boardwalk. I had left Revere a young rock-and-roll singer with a penchant for mischief, but I returned a known criminal with a reputation for total disrespect of the law and those sworn to uphold it. To the boys at the Lewis Room I was a hero. To the local cops I was a menace, and also a possible meal ticket for anyone with the balls to bring me in.

My exploits caught the eye of one man in particular, a Metropolitan District Commission (MDC) detective named Robert Deschamps, who soon appointed himself my unofficial shadow. Tall and beefy, Deschamps was a classic crooked cop, humorless and power-hungry, with a wicked mean streak. He often bragged openly about shooting suspects in the back after setting them up in sting operations, generally armed robberies that were engineered by informants. A womanizer with a predilection for underage girls and runaways, Deschamps fancied himself the James Bond of the MDC tactical squad. He even claimed extensive knowledge of the martial arts, boxing, long-range photography, and scuba diving. As if all this wasn’t enough, his hobby was raising Dobermans.

The MDC’s official job was to police the state’s beaches and parks as well as certain sections of roadway, including U.S. Route 1 in Chelsea and Revere and Interstate 93 in Boston and Milton. They also shared concurrent jurisdiction with communities throughout greater Boston. Their offices were in a big brick fortress right on Revere Beach, but Deschamps, who was part of a countywide task force, spent most his time trolling the clubs along the boardwalk, harassing the patrons and the staff, just putting on a general show of making his presence known. I had nothing but contempt for the man, and I wasn’t shy about making my feelings known.

I was sitting at the bar in the Lewis Room one evening when Deschamps walked in and sauntered right up to me. He quickly made it known that he’d heard some of the things I’d been saying about him, including my observations that he was a bully and a blowhard. Would I like to step outside, he asked, so we could settle this like men?

Absolutely, I told him.

The most basic laws of physics clearly favored Deschamps, who outweighed me by almost a hundred pounds. But while Deschamps held the advantage in size, I clearly held the advantage in skill.

Once outside, I easily threw the man. I tagged him two or three times, and down he went. Needless to say, he was humiliated.

I’m never one to regret my actions, and I certainly don’t regret standing up to Deschamps. But if I had known the kind of trouble that would dog me as a result of our encounter, I might have thought twice about answering his challenge.

I’d made an enemy, and a powerful one at that.

Not long after the first incident with Deschamps I was again in the Lewis Room when Rolo Degrassi, the nephew of a major organized crime figure, and a Lewis Room regular, came to me with an urgent request. The cops were breathing down his neck, Degrassi explained, and he needed somewhere to stash a package for a few hours. Normally, I might have thought twice before making such an arrangement, but because of the guy’s pedigree and my friendship with the Italians, I agreed to help him out.

Not long after I had secured the contraband in my apartment, Deschamps and some of his buddies from the MDC showed up at my door. I’d been set up: the cops knew exactly what they were looking for. They muscled their way inside, found the package, and placed me under arrest.

Later that night Deschamps pulled me out of my cell at the county lockup and offered me a choice: turn on my friends in Revere and agree to become a regular informant, or pack my bags for the Suffolk County jail on Deer Island. This was before the days of search and seizure laws, and even my attorney had told me jail time was a foregone conclusion. But if Deschamps thought the specter of Deer Island was enough to scare me, he was sorely mistaken. I immediately told him to get lost, in no uncertain terms.

My attorney at the time was a man named Al Farese. Farese was an old-school mob lawyer, employed and respected by some of Boston’s highest-ranking organized crime figures, with the connections to prove it. After bailing me out, Farese quickly confirmed my suspicions. Degrassi, he said, was a known informant. What’s more, Farese added, Deschamps had been bragging to anyone who would listen about his plans to put six bullets in me at our next encounter.

This news did not sit well with me.

After leaving Farese’s office, I headed straight to the Suffolk County courthouse on Pemberton Square, where I knew the offices of Deschamps’s task force were located. I quickly located Deschamps and his partner, a state police detective who was also on loan to the task force, and proceeded to tell them what I’d heard from Farese, adding that if anyone planned to put six bullets in me, they would do well to keep in mind that I would be returning fire at every step.

Then, taking a hundred-dollar bill from my wallet-which in those days was no small amount of money, especially for a public servant-I slapped it on Deschamps’s desk and informed him that if he wanted to make good on his promises, I would be happy to settle our differences right there and then. The man left standing, I added, could keep the money.

By now the entire floor of detectives had gathered around us. As I finished, I saw all heads turn toward Deschamps.

I’d always known Deschamps was a coward, but even so, the next words out of his mouth surprised me.

“Y-You’re listening to the wrong people, Myles,” he stammered. “I never said those things, and I certainly don’t want any problems with you.”

Once again I had humiliated him, only this time the slap, coming on his home turf, must have stung all the worse.

Soon he would get his chance to strike back. But not before I delivered one final blow.

Back at the Lewis Room I quickly learned that I wasn’t the only person in the neighborhood to have fallen victim to Degrassi. Not long before, the Italian had set up another friend of mine, Artie Doherty, with a hot pistol that had been used in a murder. Doherty had managed to slip away from the police and hide the gun, but he was sure it was Degrassi who had tipped them off, since he’d sold him the piece in the first place.

After commiserating, Artie and I quickly devised a plan to get back at both Deschamps and his informant.

A few days later I ran into Degrassi, who offered his condolences, shaking his head in poorly acted disbelief at the “bad timing” of the cops’ raid on my apartment. I played along, laying the bust off as bad luck. But, I went on to inform him, I had moved the rest of my stash, including a kilo of heroin and an arsenal of automatic weapons, to a different apartment in Revere, where I had hidden the drugs in an air vent in the living room. Only he and few other trusted friends knew about this, I assured him. To add credence to my story, I then took Degrassi out to my car and showed him a kilo bag of “heroin,” which was actually a mixture I’d made from flour and bitters. I even let him taste some of it on his finger.

Of course, the entire story was a lie. There was no arsenal and no drug stash. Degrassi was the only one I’d told about my new hiding place. If he was in fact a snitch, I’d soon have all the proof I needed.

To my surprise, the bastard had the balls to warn me about being too trusting.

“There’s a lot of bad guys out there, Myles,” he said. “You shouldn’t be telling people about this stuff.”

“Sure,” I agreed. “But I know I can trust you.”

“Of course,” he answered without missing a beat.

Degrassi was such an easy mark that as I drove off, supposedly to stash the remaining heroin, I actually felt a twinge of guilt.

After leaving Degrassi, I drove to Artie’s house, where my friend was waiting for me with two women, a half dozen bottles of expensive champagne, and a lavish spread of sushi and sashimi he’d ordered earlier from my favorite Japanese restaurant. Thus provisioned, we drove to a nearby hill overlooking the apartment to which I had directed Degrassi.

No sooner had we parked than a dozen marked and unmarked cars, including Deschamps’s signature Lincoln, pulled up in front of the apartment. A swarm of cops then descended on the building, knocking the front door down with a battering ram before disappearing inside.

Grinning with delight, I turned to Artie and the women. “We shall now conduct a double-blind champagne-tasting contest,” I announced, uncorking a bottle of Dom Pérignon, “to see who will have the honor of making the ‘angry neighbor’ call to the local press. I’m sure they’ll be interested to see our tax dollars at work.”

Seeing Deschamps and Degrassi humiliated was revenge enough for me. But Artie wasn’t finished with the snitch. Several nights later Degrassi again made an appearance at the Lewis Room. Not long afterward Artie slipped out the front door, only to reappear after twenty minutes with a Cheshire cat’s grin on his face.

I knew something was up, but it wasn’t until an hour or so later, when Degrassi strolled out of the club, that Artie’s demeanor began to make sense. As Degrassi put his hand on the door of his car he was instantly surrounded by ATF men, who leaped from parked cars and from the other side of the seawall into the street. Within seconds the officers had a gun to Degrassi’s head and were pushing him down onto the ground.

Methodically, they searched Degrassi’s car, slashing the seat cushions and ripping out anything that wasn’t bolted in place. The search turned up a large parcel of pharmaceuticals, as well as two illegal firearms, both with particularly bad histories.

Artie had gotten his revenge. But as much as I hated Degrassi, I felt uncomfortable with what had happened. Setting a man up like that, even an asshole and a rat, is a dirty business.

Much of my dirty feeling stemmed from the fact that I knew Degrassi and Deschamps would soon trace the tip-off back to me. One of the guns, a sawed-off shotgun, was a weapon Degrassi knew I’d had access to. There’s nothing more dangerous than a snitch facing jail time. Nothing, that is, except a crooked cop with an ax to grind.

Not long after the incident outside the Lewis Room, Degrassi took a fatal dive off a rooftop. Word around Revere was that it was his conscience, and his fear of what would happen to him now that it was known that he was a snitch, that had sent him over the edge. I had absolutely nothing to do with the Degrassi’s death, but Deschamps was convinced I’d murdered his informant, giving him yet another reason to hate me.