It was just after ten the same night when the four agents from the New York Organized Crime Task Force arrived at the house on Tredeau Street, just about a block from the South End Recreational Center in Hartford's Little Italy. Two agents went around back and the second pair knocked loudly on the front door of the darkened house. The pounding went on for about three minutes before a light came on in the foyer of the old home. Half a minute later, a disheveled elderly man with snow-white hair, wearing a torn bathrobe and worn out slippers opened the door.
"Giacomo Venezia, FBI. We have a warrant for your arrest. We also have a warrant for your cousin Nicholas Sinatra," the agent in the gray suit announced.
"It's the feds, Nickie. Come on down," Jackie hollered in a surprisingly strong voice.
"We want lawyers," the old man said to the two agents standing on his front stoop.
The agents each showed open warrants as they pushed past the ancient mobster and into the vestibule of his home.
"Our warrants name the two of you as material witnesses in a murder investigation. We also have a search warrant. Is there anyone in the home except for you and your cousin?" the agent asked.
Venezia shook his head.
"Just us," he said.
The search took about forty-five minutes. The agents found five handguns and an assortment of driver's licenses with various names and from different states. Little attempt had been made to conceal any of the seized items.
The telephone lines were burning. As soon as Danny got word that Sinatra and Venezia had been arrested, he called Phil.
"I need a plane to fly these guys from Connecticut to Shreveport," Danny had said.
Phil had only begun his conversation with Maria when the base operator broke in.
"I have an urgent call from Washington, Assistant Attorney General John Brinker. May I put him through?" she asked.
"Bye," Maria said hastily.
Phil hung up the phone and the instrument rang almost immediately.
"Hello, Judge," Phil said to his boss.
"This looks like the best one yet," John Brinker said.
"I just got off the phone with the head of the New York Organized Crime Task Force. He's got your two hit men in one of his cars and he wants to hold them in New York. I understand you're trying to fly them to Shreveport. What do I tell him?" the assistant attorney general asked.
"Tell him, these guys will get the death penalty in Louisiana. After we get our state convictions in Shreveport, he can have them back in New York for all the trials he wants. Tell him these old men killed my best friend," Phil answered instinctively.
"Jeez," Phil's boss said.
"From what little I've heard about these guys, they're too old to live long enough to be executed."
"That might be true, but why not get a couple of death sentences on the books for them just in case they turn out to be medical marvels?"
Phil knew he had won the argument when he heard his boss laughing on the other end of the telephone.
"Get Maria on the phone and have her arrange a charter out of New Haven for Shreveport. I don't want to waste any time waiting for the Air Force to find us a ride, time that the guys in New York might use to go over my head on this," John Brinker said.
Thirty minutes later, the two old men were pushed back into the plush seats of a King Air lifting off the runway at Tweed-New Haven Airport. They were accompanied by two of the agents of the New York task force. The feds were not exactly sure where Shreveport was and Jackie and Nickie weren't talking.
Eb wasted no time building murder cases against Venezia and Sinatra. Even before the plane had landed, using the list of drivers' license names the FBI provided, the special prosecutor dispatched detectives from the Bossier and Caddo Parish Sheriffs Offices to Dallas and Little Rock to check airline passenger manifests and show photos of Nickie and Jackie.
The Caddo deputies struck pay dirt at the Hertz rental counter at Love Field.
"When did the customer return the car?" one of the detectives asked.
"I don't know. I remember the rental, two small guys, old men who talked funny. Hold on a minute," the clerk said.
She turned, went through the door and returned in a couple of minutes carrying a manila folder.
"The account has gone to collections," the woman wearing the company uniform said.
"This is strange," she continued.
"They didn't return the car here. Didn't actually return it anywhere. The car was towed out of a no stopping zone at the New Orleans airport two days after it was rented."
"How did they pay?" the second deputy asked.
"They left a one hundred and fifty dollar cash deposit, not nearly enough to cover what they did, especially with the towing and storage fees. That's why it went to collections.
"Wait, here's a note from New York. When someone from the Manhattan office went by the address, it was a dry cleaners and no one there had ever heard of the man who rented the car."
"What was the address?" the detective asked.
"Three-twelve West Twenty-First Street," the clerk answered.
The rental clerk smiled with every response to every question. She had only displayed a slight frown when she read from the note about the towing and storage fees.
The deputy who had spoken first, checked the drivers' license list and confirmed that the name on the rental agreement matched a fraudulent license with the same name and phony address. He picked up a cheap brown attache case and clicked it open, removed an oversized envelope and spread six photographs on the rental counter.
"Do you recognize any of these men?" he asked.
The clerk immediately picked the photos of Sinatra and Venezia.
"Who are they?" the smiling clerk asked.
"Their real names are Nicholas Sinatra and Giacomo Venizia," the detective answered.
"Who did they kill?" the rental clerk joked.
"We just want to talk to them about an investigation we're conducting in Shreveport," the second deputy explained.
"Well, they certainly looked harmless to me," the clerk volunteered, "like a couple of old grandpas. To be honest with you, I was surprised that either one of them still had a driver's license.
"Oh," she paused, "but I guess the driver's license wasn't real since it didn't have his right name on it, huh?"
The clerk was still smiling.
"Thank you very much. Oh, one more thing. Does that rental sheet have a flight number on it?" the first detective asked as he stuffed the pictures back in the envelope.
The clerk took a quick look.
"Nope," she said, "just an airline, Braniff."
"That's very helpful," the deputy said before the two officers turned to make their way back to the Braniff counter, where previously no one had recognized either Nickie or Jackie's picture.
It only took two minutes to find that a Braniff flight from Kennedy airport had landed at Love Field about twenty minutes before the car was rented at Hertz. None of the names on the manifest matched any of the drivers' license names, but there was something curious. Two men named Jones had sat next to one another in first class. Their first names were listed as Nick and Jack and the ticket had been purchased from a travel agent in Chicago's Loop. A quick phone call revealed that the man who had bought and picked up the tickets had paid cash.
"Good work," Eb told the deputies when they called in to report.
"See if you can get me the names and addresses of the stewardesses on the flight. If any of them live in Dallas, track them down and show them the pictures," the special prosecutor added.
The deputies found one member of the cabin crew at home in her apartment on Bryan Street in Dallas. She immediately picked Jackie and Nickie's pictures.
"They were cute," the stewardess said.
"They only drank one glass of red wine each. Hardly touched their lunches.
"I hope they're all right?" she asked.
"They were very sweet."
Using the date the rental car was towed, Eb asked Danny to send a couple of agents to airline counters at Moisant, New Orleans' international airport on Airline Highway in Jefferson Parish. Three hours into their search, the agents found a friendly Eastern Airlines ticket agent who had sold two first class tickets to Nick and Jack Smith of Brooklyn. She identified pictures of Venezia and Sinatra and said they paid in cash.
"They had beautiful smiles," the agent remembered.
"They are brothers. They had been here attending the funeral of an old Navy buddy," she added.
The crew from that flight was based in Miami and the FBI would track them down, but Eb had enough. That afternoon, Eb presented his evidence to the special grand jury and they immediately voted capital murder indictments naming Nicholas Sinatra, aka Nick Jones and Nick Smith and Giacomo Venizia, also known as Jack Smith and Jack Jones. The old men were charged with killing Sheriff Aubrey Braud and Trooper Billy Fitzmorris.
Deputies and city police officers were quickly showing photos in bars and convenience stores in Bossier Parish, looking for anyone who had come into contact with the Connecticut hit men. In Chicago, task force agents appeared at the travel agency in the Loop hoping to identify the man who had bought the tickets for the flight to Dallas. Their theory was that by identifying the man who paid for the tickets, the investigators might be able to trace the money back to the Outfit. It was a long shot, but at least worth a try.
"Funny thing just happened at the jail," Eb said in a phone call to Phil just after ten o'clock that night.
"When we pulled Nickie and Jackie into a room so Johnny Pisanti could tell them about the murder charges, our killers refused to talk to Johnny. As soon as he introduced himself, they stood up and said 'get us out of here. We want a public defender.'"
"What'd you do?" Phil asked.
"We had no choice. We got someone over from the public defender's office. They only asked one question.
"Who's the best criminal defense lawyer around here. When the public defender's man answered, they stood, shook his hand and thanked him for his time. Now Charles Casey is on the case.
"What do you make of that?" Eb asked.
"I'm not sure," Phil answered, "but it's not good. I'm afraid we're missing something."
Phil knew what it was when he awoke at three the next morning. Except for Vinny, Phil's new gangster friends were used to staying up late and sleeping in mornings. Phil asked to be notified when Silvio was awake.
Silvio was led into the conference room for breakfast. Phil, who had not been able to go back to sleep, was suffering from too much coffee and held his hand over his almost empty cup when Silvio moved to pour it full.
"I've already had more than I need," Phil responded with a smile.
"What's wrong?" Silvio asked, his mouth mostly filled with a huge bite of omelet.
"It seems unlikely that our two guys from Connecticut could have killed Aubrey and Fitzmorris by themselves," Phil replied and waited patiently to hear from the Chicago mobster.
"Too old and too small? Is that what you're thinking?" Silvio suggested.
"By all accounts, their age isn't a problem of itself, but there was a fair amount of physical strength required to make the crime scene appear the way it did," Phil answered.
"Do you think Tommy the Moose went along to help?" Phil asked.
Silvio ate several more bites of his breakfast while he considered the question.
"Only way you're ever gonna know is if the old guys tell you. Have you thought they might have gotten help from one of Morello's guys or brought a third hitter in from somewhere else?"
Phil had been thinking of little else since his early wake up. Eb had done an amazing job tracking the movements of Jackie and Nickie, but there was really nothing to tie them to the murder except the expert speculation of Silvio Amalfitano. There was also the news from Eb that Sinatra and Venezia had hired Charles Casey and had refused to speak with Pisanti. Phil knew any jury in Shreveport would convict, but he had to admit there was a real possibility that a judge or an appeals court would kick the indictment if some more substantial evidence weren't available. A few minutes later, Phil was back on the phone with Eb, talking about his concerns.
"I don't think we've got any trouble at the arraignment this afternoon," the special prosecutor reassured.
"Casey has certainly already been down the same path you've taken, but my guess is it's too soon for him to fire that cannon. Even if he gets the indictment dismissed this afternoon, and I don't think any judge in Caddo Parish would want to do that. But even if he does, he knows he can't get around the material witness warrant, so his clients are going to stay in jail.
"My biggest concern is what these old men know things that we don't. From what I hear, they weren't all that surprised when the FBI showed up at their place. Why did they want an independent lawyer? That's what we've got to figure out and I don't have a clue," Eb said.
"I think it's fair to assume that they don't want to close the door on a deal," Phil suggested.
"Yeah, but that's far out on the last resort scale. They know they are unlikely to live long enough to actually be executed."
"We need to go to New York," Danny suggested in a phone call a few minutes later.
"It's time for you to work some magic on the task force guys up there. They're far and away the best in the country. You also have to reassure them. They busted two of the most important hit men in the world for you and you flew 'em off to someplace they've barely even heard of.
"Show 'em you're a big time player and I think there's a pretty good chance they can find answers to your questions," Danny challenged.
As usual, Phil's next call was to Maria to make travel arrangements. In the middle of that conversation, Maria passed on a message.
"The Judge thinks you're making exactly the right move," she said and Phil knew that his boss was standing over Maria's shoulder as they talked.
"Why doesn't he come along with me?" Phil asked, revealing that he probably had some doubts about how the New Yorkers would react to this kid from nowhere.
Phil heard his boss laugh in the background.
"He says you don't need him," Maria answered in a voice that led Phil to picture her grandmotherly smile.
The facts that Phil needed two bodyguards to keep him alive and that he was willing to go to any length to find the people who killed his best friend and another law enforcement officer gave Phil instant credibility with the agents assigned to the New York Organized Crime Task Force and their boss. The group of experienced federal cops was surprised at how quickly they were able to put Phil's very young age out of their minds once the conversation began.
It had been Danny who had recalled at the time of Aubrey's murder that there had been a similar mob killing near Chicago a few years earlier. But Danny found it interesting that there had been a very similar hit in New Jersey that also closely resembled the attack on Aubrey Braud and Billy Fitzmorris about six months before the two Louisianians were killed.
"We picked up an interesting tidbit from a bug we had planted in a social club," an agent named Edward offered.
"The vic was disabled with a high concentration of ether sprayed from a Windex bottle. Once they got the guy unconscious, they put him in the car, poured whiskey all over him and torched the car just like they did in your case," the agent said.
"Did you suspect our guys Venezia and Sinatra in that case?" Phil asked.
"Not until just now," Edward replied, his answer producing a round of laughter in the room.
"Maybe you want to get blood and tissue samples to Quantico," one of the supervisors suggested to Danny, who nodded his agreement.
Phil turned his attention back to Edward.
"So if the old men from Connecticut were involved in your New Jersey hit, they probably had the help of someone from New York who might have been more physically up to the task of moving the unconscious victim into the staged position of the crime?" Phil asked.
"That makes sense," the agent agreed.
"Do you have an identity for the voice of the guy who told the story?" Phil asked.
"No, but we can back-check to make sure no one recognizes the speaker. If I remember right, we didn't have any visual surveillance of the club at the time this particular tape was made. I just recall it because it was interesting, out of the ordinary," Edward answered.
"I think you also have to consider that it's probable that your two perps picked up a helper from nearby, some local thug who came to them from the Morello family," the supervisor suggested.
"True," Danny agreed, "but we think it could also be a Chicago captain who goes by the name Tommy the Moose."
"We'll get to our contacts on the street to see if anybody else has heard the story about the Windex man. Could help our case and yours if we turn anything," Edward said.
But a possible break came from closer to home in a phone call Eb made after a Caddo Parish deputy passed along a tip from a gas and grocery store owner. Gerald English had recognized pictures of Jackie and Nickie on a television newscast.
"They sat in the backseat of the car," the grocer told Eb when he called.
"I'm sure it was the guys on TV."
"Who was the driver?" Eb asked the store owner.
"Rough lookin' fella. Must've been six foot tall. Had kinda reddish-brown wavy hair, a gold tooth, I think. He had some old scars on his face. You could tell he was no stranger to a bar fight. He bought two bottles of Ten High Bourbon, a six pack of Schlitz, cigarettes and ten bucks worth of gas. Then he went out to use the payphone in the booth close to the highway. Figured he must've wanted privacy, 'cause there's another payphone on the wall inside the store," Gerald English said.
"We're getting a sketch artist from Shreveport PD up there right now," the special prosecutor told Phil in another phone conversation a few minutes later.
Phil called Sam Boerne to get him back to Shreveport.
"Where's the store?" Sam asked Phil.
"On Highway Seventy-One at Mears Road, about ten miles from where we found the car," Phil answered.
"Do you think our driver could have been one of the Dixie Mafia guys?" Phil asked the Shreveport homicide detective.
"But there's another possibility," Sam suggested.
"The Morellos've got contacts in Dallas. Our hit men could have picked him up there. Might be good to get the sketches over there to see if anyone recognizes him, especially at the rental car place."
By nightfall, Danny was on a plane for Dallas. Phil, Mo and Ben flew to Washington where they hitched a ride with the Air Force back to Idaho.
"Guess who knew our boy in the sketch?" Danny asked Phil in a phone call after lunch the next day.
"Someone at the Hertz counter," Phil tried.
"Nope," Danny said.
"None other than Captain Will Fritz, the famous Dallas homicide detective."
"I know him," Phil said.
"He remembers you and he's been following what you've been doing with your life. Right now, he's got three teams out looking for our man. His real name is Wilfred Bozarth. They called him Bozo in the joint and the name stuck. Captain Fritz says he's handled him so many times he's lost count. Our man Bozo's known to hangout with Morello's friends up here. He last did time for manslaughter, beat a guy to death in a fight in a bar on Greenville Avenue," Danny said.
"Small world," Phil mused.
"Captain Porter's on his way over here. He's going to pick up Sam at Love Field," Danny said.
"We have Gerald English in protective custody?" Phil asked.
"He wouldn't hear of it. He put the shotgun he usually keeps under his counter on top, right next to the register. There's a sheriff's deputy sitting at the front door with a shotgun in his lap and another deputy around at the back door keeping guard from his cruiser with his shotgun," Danny answered.
"Any chance Bozarth will waive extradition?" Phil asked.
"I suspect he's a whole lot smarter than that. My guess is we're going to be here a while," Danny said.
"I'm coming down," Phil told his friend.
"Better stay where you are. You can run things by phone," Danny responded.
There was silence for a time before Phil conceded.
"Well, at least I'm going to get Buster over there. We need an experienced legal eye watching everything we do," he said.
"Good idea," Danny agreed.
"I think he might also be able to help Sam with the Shreveport media. We'll probably also see the Chicago papers and TV stations open a second front over here as well."
Phil laughed.
"You're probably right," Phil admitted.
Mo had pieced things together from what he heard on the Idaho end of the conversation.
"We're not going to Dallas?" he asked Phil
Phil shook his head.
Mo smiled before he spoke.
"I guess it's for the best. I'd probably shoot the scum right there in the middle of the detective bureau. And I guess that wouldn't be good, because we're going to need his testimony to fry Sinatra and Venezia, aren't we?" he asked.
A few minutes later, Patty and Angela Angelleli showed up.
"What wonderful news," Patty called in from the door, unable to contain her glee.
"We should celebrate," Angie announced, entering the room between Patti and Ann Marie , Patty's deputy marshal.
When everyone had left the party at the Officers Club, Phil went looking for Silvio.
"We can't find Musso," Phil began.
"The guy can be a ghost. There are a bunch of places they use as hideouts in Wisconsin. The agents in Chicago may not know all of 'em. Get me a map of Wisconsin and I'll try to lay 'em out for you as best as I can remember. No promises, though. We only saw this guy when he wanted to be seen. I think even Sam's scared of him.
"So he wasn't in Shreveport for the hit?" Silvio asked.
"Not likely. This punk from Dallas, Bozarth, probably was all the help the old men needed," Phil acknowledged.
"And the cops got him?" Silvio asked.
"Yeah, Captain Fritz's boys brought him in less than an hour after I got the first call," Phil said.
"Those guys in Dallas who claim they're connected, they're a bunch of clowns," Silvio said, not attempting to conceal his disdain.
Phil laughed.
"What?" Silvio asked.
"Know what this guy's prison name is?" Phil asked.
Silvio shook his head.
"Bozo," Phil replied, an announcement that brought laughter from both men.
Phil looked over to see Mo signaling that he had a phone call.
"Nita," he mouthed from across the room.
There is no charge for reading this novel. If you like it, please refer your friends. Feel free to highlight, paste and print one copy for your private use. This novel is protected under U.S. Copyright and all rights are reserved. My email address is oakley.phil@gmail.com.
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