collsier (2015-08-05 01:41:46)

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The first time Robert Kennedy met Jimmy Hoffa they almost came to blows.

It happened in Detroit back in the summer of 1956, when Kennedy was Chief Counsel on the McLennan Committee and Hoffa was Vice President of the Teamsters Union. Kennedy showed up at the Detroit offices of Teamsters Local 299, with Pierre Salinger and Carmine Bellino. They turned up with official warrants to search the premises.

Hoffa was in a meeting with his shop stewards, when Kennedy began hammering on the door. A gruff voice cursed loudly, a chair pushed back, and then a thickset tough looking guy in his forties opened the door. Three men stood before him, led by a young guy in a crumpled white suit

“What the hell do you want?” Hoffa said. “I'm in a meeting with my stewards."

"It'll have to wait," said the guy in the white suit. "We're coming in right now."

Kennedy moved forward.

"Like hell you are!" said Hoffa, standing his ground.

Kennedy tried to push by the stocky guy before him, but Hoffa pushed him back out into the hall. Kennedy came straight back at him, and again Hoffa pushed him back. When they came together a third time, both men looked ready for a fight. But it was not to be; another man appeared behind Hoffa and said in a calm voice:

"What's the problem, Jimmy?"

“This guy’s the problem, George.”

George stepped forward.

"I'm George Fitzgerald; I'm an attorney, what's the problem?"

The young guy pulled a document out of his inside pocket.

Fitzgerald began to look at the document. The McClellan, officially known as the Senate Committee on Improper Activities in the Labor - Management Field, had been set up by the Senate to look into the alleged illegal activities in the Union Movement. It was better known as the Rackets Committee.

Kennedy and the two other men began to move into the office, the young guy in the white suit began yanking open the drawers in the filing cabinets. Jimmy shoved him away and banged the drawers shut.

"What the hell do you think you're doing?" roared Jimmy.

Kennedy turned back to Fitzgerald.

"Who the hell is this? Tell him we've got a subpoena; we've got a right to take away all your books, records and other documents."

"That gentleman," said Fitzgerald, "is the Vice-President of the Union, Jimmy Hoffa, and this subpoena isn't worth the paper it's printed on. It's no good."

"What do you mean, it's no good?"

"This subpoena is too broad. It has to be more explicit; it has to explain just what it is you want and why. So exactly what is it you're looking for, Mr. Kennedy?"

"I don't know."

"What do you mean you don't know?"

"I'm trying to find something."

"What?"

"Evidence."

"Evidence of what?"

"Of your criminal activities and your dealings with the Mafia."

Fitzgerald laughed.

"I think," he said, "that you should get out of here."

Kennedy sized up the situation and his eyes focused in on Hoffa. The two men locked eyes, staring hard, and neither backing down. Then Hoffa winked and Kennedy looked away.

"We'll see you in court," he said and then left.

"What the hell was that all about?" one of the stewards wanted to know.

"Nothing," said Jimmy. "Nothing at all."

He couldn't have been more wrong.

This was the beginning of it all; the first in a series of events that eventually led to both men’s demise. Robert Kennedy shot to death at the Democratic convention in 1968, killed by the mob some said, on orders perhaps of Jimmy Hoffa himself; and then Hoffa, seven years later, suddenly disappears off the face of the planet, and is probably buried somewhere beneath it. Some say he got too full of himself, some say he was a relic of the past, an embarrassment to an organization that was changing its image.

Not long after that first meeting, Hoffa was called before the Senate Committee. It was headed by Senator John L. McClellan. Other members included John F. Kennedy, and his younger brother, Robert Kennedy had been appointed Counsel for the Committee. Its main target was The International Brotherhood of Teamsters, and it launched a thorough investigation into the believed criminal activities committed by the union's organization. Their first success was the Union President, Dave Beck, who was charged and convicted of tax fraud. Now the Committee's attention was turned to the Vice-President, and the obvious successor to Beck, the man from Detroit, Jimmy Hoffa.

The committee tried everything to get Jimmy Hoffa. To those watching it was clear that this was a battle of wills, a personal fight between Hoffa and Robert Kennedy. But whatever he tried, Kennedy couldn't seem to find any concrete evidence that would convict Hoffa.

#

In March 1957, far from the main arena in Washington, at the house of Joey Mitchell, a union official working out of Detroit, silence had finally fallen over the neighborhood. Mitchell had come home late. There'd been the usual shouts and arguments coming from inside the house, slammed doors and crying, but now things seemed to have settled down.

Joey's young wife, Jenny, left her husband sleeping in bed; the liquor on his breath, the make-up on his shirt, indication of his wayward habits. They'd only been married for two years, but things had never gone well. She went into the bathroom and looked at her fat lip and the bruised eye and anger grew inside her.

Nobody had ever hit her before, not till Joey. The few friends she'd confided in didn't seem to think it was such a big deal. She knew her father would have beaten Joey if he'd been around to know, but one year ago he'd been killed in a car crash. Plus if her dad had touched Joey, Joey's friends at the union would have helped him out. Once her dad was gone, it was as if Joey thought it was open season. She stood there looking into the mirror and wished her dad was still alive, and wished she'd never met Joey Mitchell. Everything was wrong.

It slowly dawned on her that she had nothing left; that this life that she was living wasn't worth waking up for. But Jenny was tough, she wasn't about to end it all. Instead it was how she was living this life that she would end.

She quickly dressed and went downstairs, went out to the garage, climbed into her car and started it up, but then sat there thinking. She opened her purse and counted her money. Twelve dollars wouldn't get her too far.

She went back in the house, listened for movement from upstairs, but there was nothing. She went into Joey's study. On the wall above the desk was a framed photograph of Joey standing with Dave Beck and Jimmy Hoffa. She took it down from the wall and exposed the hidden safe. She knew the combination; she'd watched him open it enough times.

Inside there were two piles of cash, and a small notebook full of scribbled accounts and loose receipts. She took it all, rushed out to the car and drove away before she changed her mind, before commonsense stopped her from doing this very dangerous thing; for leaving her husband was one thing, but taking money that didn't belong to her or Joey was another; and the people who the money belonged to would not be pleased, not pleased at all. But what choice did she have? She needed money, and now she needed to disappear.

Sooner or later, she knew, they'd come looking for her, but not till the morning, not till Joey woke up. She drove south out of the city along old US 6 towards Cleveland, but she wasn't going to Cleveland, she was going to Toledo. At Toledo she drove to the train station. From there she could head south to Columbus, east to Cleveland, or west to Chicago. She bought a ticket for Chicago. The reason being that the Chicago train was the next train, but also it departed at almost exactly the same time as the train north to Detroit; and that was the train she got on board, back the way she'd come, back to Detroit.

When she got back to Detroit, she took a cab to the bus station and caught a bus north to Bay City, where she arrived just as the city was beginning to wake up. She hid out at a diner for a few hours, then went across the street to the large Albion Hotel and booked in under the name of Miss Spenser.

#

When the phone rang, Joey thought, hoped, that it was Jenny. It wasn't.

"Hey Joey, this is Len."

"Hey."

"He needs you."

"Okay."

"You know the trouble they're having with those laundries?"

"Yeah."

"He needs you to meet the owner, a guy named Ellis. He'll give you something. You just make sure you put it in the right account."

"Yeah."

"Is everything okay, Joey?"

"No. It's Jenny. She's gone."

"I told you to go easy with her. I ain't surprised she left you."

"It's worse than that."

"What?"

"She cleaned out the money from the safe before she left."

"That don't sit too well, Joey."

"Don't worry I'll get it back, but that's not all she took.'

"Joey?"

"Well, here's the thing. I ain't so good at keeping track, and I don't want to get it wrong and put things in the wrong account. So I keep track of it."

"What do you mean?"

"I write it down in a little notebook, so that I don't forget what goes where. I keep it in my safe along with the money. I figured it would be okay if I kept it there."

"My God, Joey!"

"She took it with her. Jenny took the book."

"! Do you know what you've done? How can you be such a moron? Wait there I'm coming over."

"What about Ellis?"
"Forget Ellis, Joey. Goddamn it. Do you know what you've done?"

#

Steve Brown was a private detective, working out of two rooms on the third floor of a small office building on the edge of downtown Chicago. He worked out of the front office, and lived in the back room. It had been a tough day, grinding out a living on 2 bit cases that even a monkey could have solved. But Steve Brown didn't care, just as long as he could afford to keep company with Jack Daniels.

It was six o'clock; he'd locked the door, left his paperwork sitting on the desk and slipped into the back room. He took off his tie, poured himself a glass full, sat back on the sofa and turned on the television, the only luxury that still remained from his life previous to November 7th 1956, the only thing left that his wife and he had bought together. It had been one of the last things they did together before her appointment with Craig Steffler and his little shooting spree down at the convenience store on the corner. The one that left the owner Benny Moran and Lisa Brown dead from single gunshot wounds, before police ripped Steffler in two with a hail of bullets.

It had been four months now and Steve Brown had managed to return to some sort of normality, if you could call what he had now normal. Two months ago he'd given up the apartment, there didn't seem to be any point in keeping it. He got rid of everything, except the television; and when he sat in front of it, sometimes he didn't feel so alone. He sat watching the NBC newscast and the latest round in the Hoffa/Kennedy bout from Washington.

Kennedy said: - Did you say, "That S.O. B., I'll break his back."?

Hoffa replied: - Who?

Kennedy: - You.

Hoffa: - Say it to who?

Kennedy: - To anyone?

Hoffa: - Figure of speech…I don't even know what I was talking about and I don't know what you're talking about.

Kennedy: - Uh…Mr. Hoffa, all I'm trying to find out, I'll tell you what I'm talking about. I'm trying to find out whose back you were going to break.

Hoffa: - Figure of speech…figure of speech.

#

At about the same time, Len got the call from Washington.

"Any news, Lenny?"

"Yeah. We just got word from one of our guys down in Toledo. They found her car at the train station there."

"She took a train?"

"The guy in the ticket office remembered her - good looking girl, blonde, black eye, fat lip."

"WHAT!"

"Yeah. Seems Joey coped her one, maybe that's why she ran."

"Goddamn that Joey."

"I think he was boozed up. They said in the club that he'd been fooling around with one of the girls."

There was silence on the other end of the line. Then the voice said, "Where did she get a ticket too?"

"Chicago."

"Right, get hold of Glimco in Chicago."

"I'll do that."

"And Lenny."

"Yes Boss."

"Tell Glimco to use whatever he needs; our guys, independents, whatever. We need to find her, Lenny."

"Yes Boss."

"And Lenny. Take some time to explain to Mitchell the importance of family."

"I will."

#

Eddie Mars was given the east side of downtown Chicago. Glimco told him how important it was to find her. He told him to use whoever he needed, pay whatever.

"All we have to do is tell Detroit where she is. It's a family thing, Eddie, a dispute between husband and wife; we're just helping out."

If all he had to do was find her, then there was only one person that Eddie knew who could find her for them. It had been a few years now, but Eddie had seen lights on in Steve Brown's office, so he was sure he was still around. Steve Brown had helped Eddie dig up the dirt on Jeff Harding, the boss of the Harding Grocery chain. Having that information on a person like Harding certainly made it easier to negotiate a deal with him.

#

Depending on whom you believed, John Cye Cheasty was a lawyer working for Mr. Hoffa, or was an investigator employed by Robert Kennedy. Either way, when Hoffa met Cheasty and Cheasty passed over McClellan Committee documents, Hoffa was unaware that their meeting was being photographed by the F.B.I.

On March 13th 1957, after one of these meetings, Hoffa returned to the Dupont Plaza Hotel in Washington, where he was staying, and was about to get on the elevator when he was approached by five men.

"F.B.I.," one of them said.

"Big deal," Hoffa said. "What do you want from me?"

"You're under arrest."

"Under arrest for what?"

"Just come along with us."

Hoffa started to get mad.

"Like hell I will. I'm going up to my room to make a phone call. Then I'll go with you."

The five men closed in on him.

"Hold it," said Hoffa. "Don't try to roust me. If you want trouble you can have a whole lot of it. Most of these people here in the lobby are my people. You guys make a fuss and we're gonna have one hell of a big fight."

The agents backed off. Hoffa called his lawyer, Edward Bennett Williams, and then went with the F.B.I.

As they drove to the precinct headquarters, an F.B.I. agent said to Hoffa, "You know we've got you dead to rights."

"You're full of ," said Hoffa.

"You'd better tell us the whole story."

"Listen. You go play your games of cops and robbers but don't get cute with me. I don't have a damned thing to say to you. My lawyer will do the talking."

When they got to the station house Robert Kennedy and his loyal wife, Ethel, were there, along with a whole gang of news guys.

"We finally got you, Hoffa," said Kennedy.

"You haven't got a goddamn thing."

Hoffa was photographed, fingerprinted and booked on bribery and conspiracy charges in the Cheasty case.

Kennedy announced the details to the press and said, "If I don't convict Jimmy Hoffa in this case, I will personally jump off the Capitol Dome."

#

Eddie Mars found Steve Brown early next morning, unshaven, hair messy, sitting in his office staring at the clock.

"Man you look like you could use breakfast."

"Sounds good to me, Eddie; what you got for me?"

"I'll tell you over breakfast."

The two men stepped across the road to a diner, where Eddie got a coffee and watched Steve demolish bacon and eggs and three pieces of toast; and after he washed it all down with a cup of black coffee, Eddie noticed the light come back on in Steve's eyes.

Eddie filled Steve in on the search for Jenny Mitchell.

"What makes you think she's here in Chicago?"

"We found her car at the Toledo rail station. The clerk there said she bought a ticket for Chicago."

"Why do you need to find her?"

"It's personal, a misunderstanding between husband and wife. He's worried about her; she's been having some depression problems. So we said we'd help out our friends in Detroit."

Steve didn't believe Eddie for a moment. But it sounded more interesting than anything he'd done in a long time, and Mars said that there was no restriction on expenses, so Steve accepted.

The first thing that had struck him was that perhaps Eddie and his pals from the Teamsters had been too quick to assume that she had come to Chicago, so Steve packed a bag and headed to Toledo.

#

Edward Bennett Williams had a private meeting with James Hoffa, and assured him that they would win their case. Williams was an excellent lawyer, an orator who could convince a jury that his client was an innocent misunderstood individual; whether he was or not. When Williams looked at the evidence that Kennedy and the prosecution had against Jimmy Hoffa he laughed.

"This'll be like taking candy from a baby, Jimmy, candy from a baby."

They both laughed.

What the case boiled down to in the end would be one man's word against another. But there was a book somewhere, a small notebook that contained entries and receipts, names and figures; a book full of evidence that would be so damning to those named inside, that if it ever reached prosecution hands, not even a lawyer like Edward Bennett Williams would be able to save the defendant.

#

Steve Brown drove his car to Toledo. It was good to get out of the city for a while. What struck Steve the most was the horizon. In the city, his horizon was the tenements across the street, and the sun set at least an hour before it began to get dark. But out here the world was flat and the sky was large; a man could feel exposed in this emptiness, for there was nowhere to hide, no city to lose oneself in, just a few clapboard farmhouses in a land that was dazzling white with the snow. Yet this altered awareness, this different perspective of the world, let you see things a little differently, let you believe that there was more than one way to live a life.

He reached Toledo around dusk, and went straight to the station. The clerk who had sold Jenny Mitchell the ticket had just come on duty. Joey showed the clerk Jenny's picture and the clerk told him what he had told Lenny before, that she'd got a ticket for Chicago. He also told Steve that Jenny had a black eye and a fat lip, and that confirmed Steve's suspicions. But he also knew that this girl would have realized that they would have come looking for her, and this trail of breadcrumbs that she'd left them to Chicago was a little too obvious. Of course she could have thought that Chicago was a big enough city to lose herself in, but Steve had a hunch that that wasn't the case here. She could have gone in any direction from here, not just Chicago, but towards Cleveland or south to Columbus.

"Did you see her get on the Chicago train?"

"No, but after the train had gone the platform was empty. Why wouldn't she have got on it? She bought the ticket for Chicago. It stands to reason, doesn't it?"

"Does that train make any stops?"

"No, straight through to Chicago."

"And that's as far as it goes?"

"Yeah, terminates at La Salle Street in Chicago."

"So she was there on the platform, then the Chicago train came along and after it left the platform was empty."

"Yes, that's right. I didn't see her get on because the Express to Detroit blocked my view."

"The Detroit train?"

"Yeah! It leaves here the same time as the train to Chicago."

"Thanks."

Steve went back to the car. It was clear to him now. Head back the way you came, it was the last thing they would think of. He bought himself some dinner, filled up with gas, and then headed for Detroit.

As he drove he began to think what he would have done in her situation. Yes, the heat would have been off in Detroit, they would be looking for her elsewhere, but it was still not a safe place to hide out; somebody might see her by accident. No, if he was her he would have kept going. He worked out what time she would have arrived in Detroit. It would have been still early; not too many people about.

He drove to the station in Detroit, out by the Ambassador Bridge, but nobody remembered seeing her buy a ticket from there. Perhaps she had ended her journey there, or maybe she'd rented a car - no, too much information needed for that. What about buses?

Steve headed downtown over to the bus station on Howard Street. It was busy, and it took him a while, but eventually he got what he was after. A blonde wearing sunglasses that early in the morning, may have disguised her bruised eye, but it brought attention to her nonetheless. She'd bought a ticket for Bay City.

#

When Jenny opened the bag and counted the money, she became very frightened. $17,500 was a lot of money, her husband’s friends at the union were not going to be pleased about losing that.

The ice had brought down the swelling on her lip, and make-up had managed to make her black eye not look so dramatic, so that she had felt brave enough to venture out and eat her meals at the diner across the street. There was an older waitress there called, Ann, who had befriended her, and Jenny really could use a friend just about now.

She hadn't really given her new life too much thought. What was she going to do, settle here? She knew it would be a long time before they stopped looking for her. What if she sent the money back? She knew they'd still look for her, but maybe not so hard. Maybe Ann could help her get a job at the diner, and then she wouldn't need the money.

When she got to the diner, she sat in a cubicle and Ann came over. She poured Jenny a cup of coffee.

"Hi Sugar! What will it be tonight?"

"Oh! I don't know. I guess I'll take the eggs."

"Say honey, I thought you said you didn't know anybody here in Bay City?"

"I don't."

"Well there was a guy here earlier asking about you."

Jenny's heart stopped beating.

"Did you tell him anything?"

"I told him that you'd been in."

"Did you tell him where I was staying?"
"I couldn't, Sugar, because I don't know where you're staying. He seemed like a

nice guy. Hey are you alright?"

Jenny left a few notes on the table and scrambled out of the diner and back across the street. She didn't wait for the elevator, but ran up the stairs and along the corridor. She unlocked the door to her room and rushed inside. She was panting heavily. It was then that she realized that the light was on. She turned around and there he was. He was sat in a chair waiting.

"Hi Jenny," he said.

Jenny began to make for the door.

"No, no," said Steve, and he got out of the chair and shut the door, locked it and took the key. "Don't be in a hurry to leave, Jenny, we've only just met."

"How did you get here?"

"I bribed the maid to let me in. I told her that I was your brother and I wanted to

surprise you.

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