=EIGHT=
THE FIRST ACCOUNTING of cargo thefts at Kennedy Airport was released in October of 1967; it revealed that $2.2 million in cargo had been stolen during the preceding ten months. The amount did not include the hundreds of hijackings of airport cargo stolen outside the airport, nor did it include thefts valued at less than one thousand dollars. The total also did not include $2.5 million in nonnegotiable stock taken from Trans World Airlines. The $2,245,868 worth of cargo stolen during the ten-month period had been grabbed right out of the storage bins and security rooms of the Air Cargo Center. At the time, the Air Cargo Center was the largest such facility in the world. It was a thirteen-building complex of warehouses and truck-loading ramps spread over 159 acres. Space in the buildings was leased to twenty-eight airlines, air express agencies, customhouse brokers, federal inspection services, and carting companies. Each of the airlines kept its own valuables in specially guarded security rooms, some of them enclosed by steel or cinder blocks, others by wire cages. In addition, the airlines all had their own guards or hired private detective agencies to protect valuables at the twenty-four-hour-a-day facility.
Besides the airline security personnel, the Port Authority had 113 policemen on duty during the average day. There were also customs inspectors, FBI men, and police from the 103rd Precinct roaming through the facility on a fairly regular basis. But during the ten-month period pinpointed by the survey forty-five major robberies were committed there, including thefts of clothing, palladium ingots, pearls, watches, musical instruments, hydraulic pumps, cigarettes, phonograph records, drugs, wigs, and diamonds—and $480,000 in cash, which was stolen shortly before midnight on Saturday, April 8, from the locked and guarded security room at the Air France cargo building.
"Air France made me. No one had ever pulled that kind of cash out of the airport before, and I did it without a gun. It began around the end of January in 1967. I had been selling cigarettes out at the airport. I had a regular route, and one of my best stops was at the Air France cargo dock. Bobby McMahon, the cargo foreman, was one of my best customers. He also used to come across stuff once in a while, and we'd buy perfume, clothes, and jewelry from him. Bobby McMahon had been with Air France for so long his nickname was "Frenchy," and there wasn't too much about the whole cargo operation he didn't know. He could tell by looking at bills of lading and freight- forwarding orders what was coming in and what was going out. Since he ran the whole operation at night, he could go anywhere he wanted and pick up anything he needed. Nobody watched anybody out there anyway, but Frenchy had carte blanche. Once he came across a small 24-by-48-inch box of silk dresses, which Jimmy unloaded at the garment center for eighteen thousand dollars and which Frenchy got a piece of. Frenchy always got a piece of anything he brought us or pointed us toward.
"Then one day I'm there and Frenchy tells me about money coming in. He said they were building a new strong room with cement blocks where the old wire cage room had been, and in the meantime they were storing all the valuables in the cargo office right up front as you entered the cargo warehouse. Frenchy said the money was in sixty-thousand-dollar packages in large white canvas bags with big red seals over the side flaps. He said there were usually three or four of the canvas bags dropped off by planes coming in from overseas and that they were usually picked up in the morning by armored trucks. Three or four guys with pistols could easily take the load.
"I was really excited. I drove over to Robert's and told Jimmy. He knew Frenchy had great information, so that weekend Raymond Montemurro, his brother Monte, Tommy DeSimone, and me go over to stick the joint up. Johnny Savino and Jimmy were going to wait for us at Jimmy's house. We do the usual thing about getting rented cars and putting on bum plates. We go right up to the cargo office, and immediately we see there are too many people. There must have been about twenty-five, thirty people wandering around. We looked at each other and tried to figure out how we could round them all up, but it was no use. The office was in front, but, then, behind a loading platform there was a whole warehouse full of cargo resting on pallets and crates and boxes piled ceiling-high. There was just too much activity and too much going on we didn't know about. We decided to forget the stickup. We had all gotten a look at the canvas bags. They were just stacked up against the wall where they were building the safe room. All those pretty little bags full of money. Just the sight of it drove me nuts. It was so good we didn't want to blow anything. We did the smart thing and took off.
"When I met with Frenchy I told him we needed another way. He said it was tricky, because he never knew exactly when the money was coming in. Sometimes it wouldn't come in for a couple of weeks, and then there'd be two deliveries at once and they'd leave for the bank the same day. The money came from American tourists and soldiers who converted their American cash into French money. The French would then send all that cash back to the United States and get credited for it in American banks. It was usually in hundreds and fifties, and it was untraceable. It was a dream score.
"Meanwhile, every time I went to the airport to sell cigarettes, I'd stop by and talk with Frenchy. As we talked I'd watch the workmen get closer and closer to finishing the new storeroom, and then one day the storeroom was finished. There were two keys. Frenchy? No such luck. They gave one of the keys to a guard from a private agency; he had a crewcut and took his job very seriously. He loved being a cop. He loved guarding doors. The guy never let the key out of his sight. If Frenchy had to put something in the room, the guard would never give Frenchy the key— he'd open the door and wait until Frenchy was done and then he'd personally lock the door himself. He wore the key on a key ring attached to his belt. The only other key we knew about belonged to the supervisor of the entire operation, and he worked days.
"The problem with just sticking the guy up and taking his key was that we never knew when the money would be there. We had to have a key of our own so that we could get in there at a moment's notice from Frenchy. If we stuck the guy up and got the key, they'd just change the locks, and we'd also alert them that we knew about the money. I figured we had to get the key, so I asked Frenchy to start making up to the guy. Buy him some drinks. Bullshit a little Meanwhile Frenchy gave me the guy's address. He lived in a furnished room on Rockaway Boulevard, near Liberty Avenue, across from the White Castle hamburger joint. One day when the guard was off, Raymond Montemurro and I waited all day for him to leave, and when he did we burglarized his apartment, looking for the key. The plan was to get the key, make a copy, and put it back so no one knew. Then, when the money arrived, we'd have the key to a fortune.
"We went in and out of every drawer in the place and we couldn't find the key. The sonofabitch must have carried it around with him even on his day off. I couldn't believe it. I had a fortune waiting for me and I'm stuck with a hundred-dollar-a-week nut job for a guard. The other problem was that Jimmy was getting impatient. He was beginning to say the next tune Frenchy tells us there's something in the room, we snatch the guy and take the key. I was pretty sure that meant Jimmy would have whacked the guy too. It all made me try harder.