The Art of the Heist

Five

Over the winter of 1965-66, working on a series of tips that I have no doubt originally came from Degrassi, the police and the Suffolk County district attorney’s office slowly built a case implicating me in the Forbes robbery and in a fabricated plot to steal a Rembrandt from the Fogg Museum at Harvard University. By February they had amassed sufficient “evidence” to justify a search of my apartment.

Though I hadn’t committed any museum robberies since my visit to the Children’s Museum, I’d continued to add to my collection of art and antiques, which by this time included a number of significant Asian porcelains and bronzes, dozens of priceless Japanese swords, and other, more unusual weapons. I’d bought many of these pieces at auction, but others had been acquired through much less legitimate means. Some, of course, were from the Forbes and the Children’s Museum. Others, including a pen gun and some counterfeit money, I had purchased, though not legally. Like the weapons, the counterfeit bills were curiosity pieces, and I had no intention of trying to pass them.

On a cold evening in February my then-girlfriend, Bonnie Sue Garian, and I were sitting on the couch in my apartment in Revere, listening to music and doing what men and women do, when the door suddenly burst open and a dozen cops rushed inside, guns drawn. Garian, a Catwoman look-alike with an attitude to match, was entirely unfazed by the interruption. Rising from the couch, she stepped between me and the cops.

Never one to hesitate, I quickly took advantage of the momentary distraction to dive out the second-floor window and into a snowbank below. Barefoot, wearing only jeans and a lightweight shirt, I fled into a nearby residential neighborhood, where I eventually managed to steal a coat and boots from the mudroom of a stranger’s house.

Fortunately, the bulk of my collection was stored at my mother’s house in Milton. Nonetheless, I’d left behind a treasure trove of stolen artifacts in the Revere apartment, including a number of pieces I’d taken from the Forbes Museum, as well as the illegal weapons and the counterfeit money. It was enough ill-gotten gains to send me away for a good long time. Only I wasn’t going, at least not without a fight.

For the next three months I lived as a ghost, sleeping on friends’ couches or in drug squats, never staying in the same place for more than one night, often disguising myself. I had several close run-ins with the law, all of which received coverage in the Boston papers, who soon took to calling me the “Phantom of the North Shore.” One particularly amusing incident involved Al Dotoli.

Al and I had taken to meeting up at the granite quarries behind Cunningham Park in Milton. The quarries were an ideal place to hide out from the cops. Al and I had both been going there since we were kids, and we both knew the labyrinth of fire roads, overgrown hills, and precipitous granite pits like the backs of our hands. More often than not Al would bring a picnic-generally his mother’s homemade broccoli and macaroni, of which I was especially fond-and we would sit at the top of Quarry Hill and shoot the breeze.

One weekend, craving more excitement than the quarries had to offer, I proposed that we rendezvous in Boston instead. I had some business to take care of with a friend, Peter, who lived in the Back Bay neighborhood. Peter worked at MIT, but in his spare time he dabbled in making silencers. I always enjoyed talking to him about his craft.

“Let’s meet at Symphony Hall,” I suggested. “The back entrance.”

Symphony Hall was right around the corner from Peter’s place on Gainsborough Street, but logistics weren’t my only reason for choosing to meet there. By this time, every cop in Boston was on the lookout for me. If I was going to go into the city, I would need a good disguise, one that would allow me to blend in with my surroundings. I’d recently acquired a Thompson submachine gun, which I’d taken to carrying in an old viola case. With the case as a prop, I figured, I could easily pass myself off as a musician, while at the same time having the comfort of knowing I could defend myself if necessary. I also figured I could have some fun with Al.

That evening, carrying the viola case in one hand and a cane in the other, my red hair concealed by an old tam-o’-shanter, my shoulders in an octogenarian’s hunch, I set off for our meeting. As I approached Symphony Hall, I saw Al waiting on the sidewalk just outside the performers’ entrance. He glanced my way as I made my way across the street toward him, his eyes skimming across me without the vaguest hint of recognition.

Chuckling to myself, I hobbled right up to him. “Excuse me,” I said, putting on my best Irish brogue. “Could you tell me where Symphony Hall is?”

He motioned to the building behind him, still not realizing it was me. Then, slowly, his eyes widened in recognition. “You asshole!” he exclaimed. No longer able to keep a straight face, I burst out laughing.

The summer of love was still a good year away at that time, and the term hippies had yet to become a household word, but the crowd at Peter’s apartment, a fifth-floor walk-up in one of the neighborhood’s many Victorian town houses, definitely fit that description. Brotherhood was in the air, as well as the sweet odor of marijuana smoke and the tang of unwashed bodies.

Al and I were given a warm, if somewhat low-key, welcome, and more than one person offered us a joint. Several people asked me for an impromptu concert, but I quickly demurred, saying the viola was sensitive to heat and I couldn’t dare expose it to the elements. It was an excuse that would have aroused suspicion anywhere else, but the freethinking hippies took it in stride. Clearly, these were my kind of people: they knew how to have a good time and didn’t ask too many questions.

Not long after we arrived, however, I started to get a bad feeling. I had nothing concrete to go on, just the sense that we were in the wrong place at the wrong time.

“Let’s get out of here,” I told Al. “Now.”

Quickly excusing ourselves, we started down the narrow staircase.

No sooner had we passed the third floor on our descent than a phalanx of Boston police officers came rushing up the stairs. I couldn’t help it; as they ran past I pointed in the direction of the fourth floor. “They’re up there,” I said, scowling in disapproval of whatever was going on in the apartment.

After busting their way into the apartment, the cops were eventually informed by someone in the startled crowd that an old man with a viola had just left. Realizing they’d walked right past me, the men rushed down the stairs, but they were too late.

Understandably, the police were not amused by this incident, or by any of the other near misses that winter. With each close call, their frustration and, consequently, their hatred of me grew.

No one understood this more then my father. On a cold night in March I met with him in the backyard of his house in Milton. A cop himself, he knew it was only a matter of time before my luck ran out.

“They’re talking about shooting you, Myles,” he said, pleading with me to give myself up.

It was a heartbreaking appeal, coming from the father I loved and the cop I respected above all others, but I wasn’t yet willing to admit defeat.

“They’d better be prepared to kill me,” I told him. “If they do catch up with me, they’re going to have a hell of a fight on their hands.”

I would soon get the chance to follow through on my promise.

On the night of April 27 I was again with Bonnie Sue Garian, this time at her apartment in the Back Bay. Situated just west of the oldest part of the city, bounded on the north by the Charles River, the Back Bay neighborhood consists mainly of elegant, five-and six-story Victorian brownstones. Bonnie’s apartment was in one of these buildings, not far from the Public Garden.

Just before eleven o’clock that night I left Bonnie’s place to make a call from a phone booth on Beacon Street. It was chilly out, the weather typical of early spring in New England. There had been a mixture of sleet and light snow on and off all day, and the streets and sidewalks were wet with slush. As I stepped out of the phone booth and started back down Beacon Street I saw an unmarked cruiser drive by.

Seeing the cruiser slow, knowing instantly that I’d been made, I reached for my gun, a Smith and Wesson.38 I carried in a waist holster, and slipped into the doorway of a nearby building, intending to make my escape. But before I could do so I heard a voice behind me.

“Drop your weapon!”

Turning, I saw three plainclothes cops with their weapons drawn. We faced one another in a standoff.

“Not until you drop yours!” I retorted, remembering what Farese and my father had told me, certain I would be shot in cold blood if I did as I was told.

One of the cops, who I would later learn was a state police corporal named John O’Donovan, nodded in acknowledgment. He held his gun out, as did his colleagues. I returned the gesture, preparing to drop my pistol, but as I did so one of the cops who were with O’Donovan took advantage of the situation and fired, aiming right at my head.

The bullet whizzed past my ear, just barely missing its mark. Panicked, O’Donovan raised his gun to fire. Our eyes met and I looked at him as if to say, I don’t want to do this, but I have no choice.

I fired on him, intentionally aiming to knock him down, not to kill him, then turned and fled into the building, taking the stairs down into the basement, then out a rear entrance that led to a narrow common alley between Beacon and Marlborough Streets.

After radioing for help for an ambulance for O’Donovan, the two other men, both Boston Police Department detectives, gave chase, eventually catching up with me as I clambered up a fire escape to the fifth-floor roof of a Marlborough Street brownstone.

Seeing me on the ladder, the two detectives immediately opened fire. I was hit several times in the ensuing barrage, with my shoulder sustaining the worst of the damage. Despite the excruciating pain, I managed to keep climbing, finally making my way to the rooftop, where I took shelter behind a chimney.

By now every law enforcement officer in the greater Boston area had been called to the scene. As I hunkered down on the roof, taking stock of the situation, I could hear a general commotion in the streets and buildings below: the wail of sirens and the crackling of police radios coupled with the barking of police dogs. My initial plan had been to make my escape over the adjoining rooftops, but I soon saw that this would be impossible. The buildings on either side towered a full story above the one I was on. It was a height I could not have scaled on my best day and certainly could not manage in my wounded state.

I was trapped and I knew it. I also knew it was only a matter of time before the police tracked me to my hiding spot.

Just after midnight I heard substantial activity on the adjoining rooftops. Not long after, the Emergency Service Unit’s klieg lanterns snapped on, flooding the scene with light, revealing a dreamscape of crimson. My own blood provided the grisly record of my movements as I had crisscrossed the roof looking for a way off. Drainpipes, glass transoms, skylights: everything bore my smeared imprint. Up on the adjacent rooftops a hostile crowd had gathered, the silhouettes of at least a dozen cops in sharp relief.

Suddenly, a figure leaped onto the rooftop and rushed toward me. Not a man, but a police dog. I fired once, aiming just in front of the animal. The bullet found its mark, sending a geyser of gravel into the dog’s face. The creature quickly turned tail and ran, slipping over the side of the roof and back down the fire escape to where his handlers were waiting.

Finally accepting the fact that there was no good way out of the situation, I contemplated my next move. I’ve always been a firm believer that surrender is never an option. Earlier I had spotted a car parked directly below the roof. It occurred to me that if I jumped, the vehicle might provide just enough cushioning to break the five-story fall. If not, I reasoned, I would at least die trying.

Rising from my crouch behind the chimney, I made a mad dash for the edge of the roof. Immediately, a fusillade of gunfire erupted from the buildings on either side of me. A bullet caught me in the right side of my abdomen, sending a wave of pain through my body. I would later find out that the bullet had penetrated several major organs before blowing my spleen apart, smashing into my spine, and ricocheting backward into my left kidney.

Getting shot hurts like hell, no matter where the bullet hits. But my earlier wounds were nothing compared to the agony I now felt. The liver, spleen, and kidneys are all heavily enriched with pain sensors, and I had been hit badly in all three places. Momentarily incapacitated by the searing pain, I dropped my gun, sending it skittering across the rooftop.

Fortunately, I wasn’t the only casualty of the shooting barrage. The klieg lights had been disabled as well, plunging the rooftop into darkness again. Once the shooting stopped I began to hear tentative voices calling out.

“Myles? Are you okay?” They were worried not about me but about themselves, what I might still be capable of.

Taking shallow breaths so as not to exacerbate the pain in my abdomen, I rolled under the eaves of a nearby gable and waited. As my eyes adjusted to the darkness I could see figures slipping down onto the roof and creeping cautiously toward me. They didn’t appear human, crabbing gingerly forward on all fours like aliens.

“Myles? Are you hit, Myles?” one of them called.

Finally, someone spotted me, and a cry went up. “Over here!”

One of the three cops from the Beacon Street shootout pulled me out from beneath the overhang and, after searching me for weapons, quickly cuffed my hands and ankles.

I rolled over onto my back to see at least a dozen cops standing over me, including the other Beacon Street officer and my old friend from Revere, Robert Deschamps. As soon as I saw Deschamps’s face I knew I was in trouble, but I couldn’t have possibly imagined how serious my situation was about to become.

“How’s the cop I shot?” I wheezed.

“Did we hit you again?” one of the men asked, ignoring my question. “Twice,” I managed.

“Where’s your girlfriend?” another cop demanded.

“Go fuck yourself,” I shot back, not about to give them Bonnie’s whereabouts. “I only talk to my attorney, Al Farese.”

This final impudent comment pushed the men, already seething over the fact that I’d shot one of their own, over the edge. Someone kicked me hard in the groin, initiating a frenzy of rage.

Whack! Punch! Stomp! The first blow was quickly followed by another and then another as the men took turns punching and kicking me, some going so far as to rip my clothes to better target my wounds. One cop even stuck his finger into the entry wound in my side, all the while giggling and laughing in an orgy of high-spirited sadism.

As I lay on my back, shackled and unable to defend myself or even shield my body, praying for the blow that would deliver me to sweet unconsciousness, I was reminded of Dante’s devils, flogging the damned in the city of Dis. Clearly, the figures who surrounded me were no longer men but wrathful and sadistic demons, their faces hideous and macabre caricatures. Gleefully they danced around me like disjointed marionettes, rotating in and out of the frenzied circle as they grew tired, stepping back so others could take over for them.

It’s odd, the details the brain chooses to hold on to. I can’t recall that night without remembering that someone in a nearby apartment was playing “Monday, Monday” by the Mamas and the Papas. To this day, hearing that song takes me back to that Marlborough Street rooftop.

I don’t know what sustained me up there, what exactly it was that kept me alive. As I have said, I am not a religious man, but I have always been a spiritual being. I firmly believe that my survival, wounded as I was, can’t be explained simply by scientific means. In my moments of deepest despair that night I felt the presence of my maternal grandmother compelling me on.

My silence must have been goading to them, especially to Deschamps, who, during a lull in the frenzy, stepped forward. Reaching down, he unzipped my pants and grabbed my genitals with one meaty hand. He lifted me off the ground like this, then threw me down again and proceeded to punch me savagely in the scrotum while the other cops looked on.

Several sets of hands grabbed me then, and I felt myself being dragged toward the edge of the roof. This is it, I realized. The bastards are going to throw me off. Worse, they’ll write in their reports that I fell, and no one will ever know the truth.

Recognizing that I was about to be murdered, I suddenly came to life. “These motherfuckers are throwing me!” I yelled to the large crowd of onlookers and reporters gathered below on Marlborough Street. “I’m not falling!”

As they hesitated, a voice spoke up from the darkness. “Pull him back and kill him up here or we’ll be hounded by these goddamn news people for the next decade.”

With those words I was hauled back onto the roof, but not to safety. The men began to kick and beat me again, even more savagely than before. I truly believe they would have killed me had not fate, in the form of a fire captain, finally intervened.

The fire department had been working for some time to get a ladder up to the rooftop. When they at last succeeded and the fire captain saw what was going on, he became enraged.

“Knock that shit off!” he bellowed. “He’s shot to shit and you don’t have cause to do that.”

“Go fuck yourself!” one of the cops yelled back.

The captain hesitated a moment. He was a big burly guy, his stature further exaggerated by the fireman’s gear he was wearing. I could tell by the look on his face that he was seething. “I’m a captain,” he announced, effectively saving my life. “I outrank you by the rules of civil service, and if you don’t knock that shit off, I’ll report you and have your badges.” Then he stalked back to the edge of the roof and waved for a basket stretcher to be brought up.

By the time the fire department lifted me off the roof I was as close to death as the living can come. In fact, I was pronounced dead by the firemen, who were unable to discern my pulse. Still, Deschamps wasn’t about to let me out of his sight. As they slid me into the back of an ambulance the detective climbed in beside me.

“Boston City?” the driver asked Deschamps, naming the charity hospital.

Deschamps thought for a moment, then shook his head. “Nah,” he said. “Mass General’s closer. It’s been a long night and I want to get home.”

It was a fateful decision for both of us. The trauma center at Massachusetts General Hospital was one of the best in the country. I am convinced that Deschamps’s choice meant the difference between life and death for me.

“Christ,” one of the EMTs commented as the doors were closed and we pulled away. “I’ve never seen anything like this. What the hell did you guys do to him?”

Deschamps looked up. “He’s a bad, bad actor,” he said, “and I’m going to church tonight to pray he dies.”

These aren’t words a man soon forgets. When we finally arrived at Massachusetts General and I was safely surrounded by hospital staff, I snapped to life.

“You’d better hope I die,” I snarled from my gurney. “If not, when I get out of prison I’m coming for you and I’m gonna put a bullet right between your fucking eyes.”