Legends of Winter Hill: Cops, Con Men, and Joe McCain, the Last Real Detective by Jay Atkinson

Author:Jay Atkinson [Atkinson, Jay]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Detectives, Police, Political Freedom & Security, True Crime, Criminology, Law Enforcement, Crime, Private Investigators, Massachusetts, Political Science, Biography & Autobiography, General, Somerville, Biography, Social Science
ISBN: 9781400050765
Publisher: Three Rivers Press
Published: 2005-01-02T06:00:00+00:00

EIGHTEEN

The Return of Billy Dennett

AROUND THE TIME THAT JOE BARBOZA was using Revere Beach as his headquarters, and Black Jimmy nearly got killed by James “the Bear” Flemmi, Jimmy's old shortchanging buddy from the South End, Billy Dennett was implicated in the disappearance and murder of a small-time hoodlum named Tony Veranis. Veranis was last seen above a bar called Walter's Lounge on Dudley Street, playing poker with Dennett, the Bear, and several other known criminals. Rumors circulated that Veranis was beaten and killed after he insulted someone in the game— and there were a number of suspects, as many of the cardplayers were known to have short fuses. The murder was said to have occurred a short while after Veranis was shoved into the passenger seat of Dennett's '66 Thunderbird and driven away from Walter's Lounge.

All this came as a surprise to Joe McCain, who considered Billy Dennett one in a troupe of happy-go-lucky con artists, not violent men at all and certainly not a bunch of shooters. But acting on a tip, McCain found Veranis's body in a remote section of the Blue Hills, left in a kneeling position with bruises on his face and neck and two entry wounds in his head. The practical-joke-loving Dennett was long gone, heading west, McCain heard, in the company of someone else who had been at the card game, a vicious thug named William Geraway.

At the autopsy, the medical examiner waved Joe McCain closer so he could take a look at Tony Veranis's brain. An ex-boxer, Veranis was a tough, well-built, but not very bright twenty-eight-year-old kid from Dorchester. He had been badly beaten and shot twice in the head at close range, and the M.E. had laid open the skull, halving it like a cantaloupe. Taking up a stainless steel probe, McCain measured the depth of the wounds.

“Joe, have you ever seen a skull that fucking thick?” asked the M.E. McCain noted that the bone wasn't thick enough to stop a .38.

At first there were very few leads in the case. But as McCain was to find out later, Billy Dennett had stolen identification from the president of Gulf Oil, forged a driver's license to match, and he and Geraway were passing checks at a string of banks in Michigan. They had over $100,000 in the trunk of the T-bird, and with Dennett at the wheel and Geraway passed out beside him, the fugitives ran a stoplight and were pulled over by a black policeman.

Wearing a suit and tie, Dennett was polite and cheerful to the Michigan cop, handing over his license with a smile. “I'm very sorry, Officer,” he said. “Where I'm from, the lights are on the corners and I drove right under that one and never saw it.”

The cop was about to let Dennett go when Geraway began to stir. Scratching at himself, he looked over at Billy Dennett and then past him to the cop, who was leaning in the window. “C'mon,” Geraway said. “Give the nigger a sawbuck and let's go.

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