“You went down there several times to case it?”
“Yes. Then when we went to pull the job, Mede and Silva got cold feet, so we turned round and come back.”
“How do you know it was Braintree?”
“We called it Braintree, where two railroad lines crossed.”
“Couldn’t it have been Bridgewater?”
“No, it was nearer than that.”
I could see the shrug of DiCecca’s shoulders. “A matter of a few miles one way or the other. You didn’t know any of those places well. It could have been Bridgewater.”
“I don’t think so,” Sammarco said reflectively. “They kept saying it was Braintree. Anyhow, nothing happened. I went into the Navy after that. I was overseas. When I come out they said Jimmy was in jail for holding up a factory in Cambridge. After I took the rap for killing the cop I see Jimmy in Charlestown. He tells me that story about him and Silva. All Jimmy did was take the Braintree trip we made before the war and make it sound like it was Bridgewater afterward. He asked me to string along with his story, so I was dumb enough I says at first I’d go along for a gag. All the Big Chief wanted was to see what he could shake out of Moore. Moore said he’d help him get a pardon and gave him some money. Moore had a lot of money. After he got out Moore was paying him to investigate things in New York until they drove him out of there.
“Ferrari, the state detective, when he heard it, give it to me good. He’s still alive, down at the track now. Talk with him and he’ll tell you about me and Jimmy Mede. When that piece of Silva’s in the Outlook come out he come and hit me in the face with it. ‘What are you holding out on me for?’ he says. ‘I never had nothing to do with it,’ I told him. Afterward I wrote a letter to Commissioner of Correction Sanford Bates and told him so.”
“Now,” said DiCecca, steering him back, “were you offered any money by anyone to say you had taken part in the Bridgewater holdup?”