Boston Mob by Marc Songini

Author:Marc Songini
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781250021311
Publisher: St. Martin's Publishing Group

22.

THE HAT TRICK

“If it’s bad business, it’s everybody’s business.”

—Raymond Patriarca

Robert Palladino, age thirty-two, was a sad-faced “small-time hoodlum” facing a dead-end career, as well as death itself. He’d one feat of note to his credit. Reportedly, on November 3, 1960, while dressed as a priest, he kidnapped bookmaker Abe Sarkis’s wife and children in their home. He threatened to burn them unless Sarkis opened his trap (secret valuables cache). Not surprisingly, Sarkis’s family resigned itself to death—but Palladino found enough money to make it worth his while to release everyone.

Never rising above the criminal bottom, in 1965, Palladino appeared before a grand jury to talk about his onetime girlfriend, the late Margaret Sylvester. In 1964, she’d been murdered in Luigi’s bar—then the property of one Andy Martorano, the father of Johnny and Jimmy Martorano. Someone in the Martorano circle had killed the woman, possibly for personal reasons. Then, apparently, the Bear had begun to dispose of Sylvester in an attic, before the police, acting on a tip, swooped down and discovered the body.

Now investigators were squeezing Palladino, and John Jackson, the bartender at Luigi’s the night of the killing. In response, Wimpy and Stevie Flemmi pulled Johnny Martorano into the back of Stevie’s grocery store at Dearborn and Dudley Streets in Roxbury. “Palladino and Jackson,” Wimpy said.

“They’re saying bad things,” Stevie chimed in. Johnny Martorano realized Palladino and Jackson might implicate his younger brother Jimmy. He considered intervention an elder Sicilian son’s “obligation.” For just such a mission of this knight-errant, one of Johnny’s lady friends had loaned him an emerald green Cadillac El Dorado with white leather seats. By Johnny’s own admission, this was a conveyance appropriate for a pimp—but it served to take him and a companion to one of Palladino’s hangouts.

The target was unruly the night of November 14, 1965, claimed an informer. Palladino argued with a North End loan shark, and even swung at this Mafioso, who prophetically announced, “You are dead.”

Johnny corralled Palladino into his El Dorado to confront him. At that point, Palladino drew a gun and fired at Johnny’s partner. Johnny claimed he then drew his own weapon and fired it at point-blank range, ending Palladino’s short and unpleasant life. The killing was unplanned, and so was the disposal of the body. Johnny drove to the corner of the Beverly Street and Causeway Street exit ramp near North Station and dumped Palladino’s earthly remains. No one was there at this time of the morning—except perhaps those dumping stiffs.

Palladino became memorable for two things—one, his body made a famous photograph in a national magazine. Two, he was the first of Johnny Martorano’s official twenty or so victims. After Palladino, killing became easier for Johnny Martorano. “Well, it’s sort of like a lawyer trying his first case,” he said. “It’s difficult but the next case is easier.”

* * *

The morning Johnny dumped Palladino’s body, a group of at least five men—almost certainly including the Bear and Joe—drove to a Medford residential neighborhood looking for a Raymond DiStasio.

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