“Yes, Moore come to see me a couple times in Charlestown. He says if I’d confess to the Bridgewater job he’d give me ten thousand and he’d see I got a gun and a getaway car on the way to court.”
DiCecca’s voice crackled with annoyance. “Look, Joe, a story like this is too stupid for anyone to believe. A sharp lawyer like Moore offering you a gun and a getaway car. That’s plain silly. No one would swallow that. Moore wasn’t a fool.”
“That’s what he said,” Joe persisted. “I told him I wouldn’t. Even if he meant it, what the hell could I have done with a bunch of guards round me with shotguns!”
DiCecca turned to me. “It sounds crazy, all right. But Joe told me exactly the same story the other night when he was here. That’s why I say you need a lie detector on this thing.”
“All I can think,” I told him, “if it’s really true—and it certainly sounds fantastic—is that Moore would have said anything, promised anything to get Joe to talk. Moore was a brilliant man, but he thought this whole thing was a frame-up from beginning to end, and he was willing to do or say anything to get his clients off.” Then I asked Joe, “Did Thompson ever offer you money?”
“Him? No. He just talked legal. I guess in the end he knew I had nothing to do with it. He never bothered me none. Jimmy brought him in with some other lawyers one day and said in front of them, ‘Joe, I want you to give this man the real lowdown on Bridgewater—and then kind of under his breath he says quick, ‘No dice nienta questa no bon paga’—‘Don’t say nothing, they won’t pay.’ I never see Mede again in jail after that. The Big Chief looks tough but he’s yellow. After I got out in fifty-three I went to see him in his joint in Revere and I told him what he was to his face. Afterward I see Silva in a bar on Hanover Street and he says ‘You should of stuck with us, you could of made ten or fifteen grand!’ I told him what I thought of him right to his face. He’s dead now.”
“But why,” I asked him, “would Mede go to the governor afterward with his story and lose his boxing license?”
Joe’s voice was scornful. “Ah, that’s not why he lost it. He lost it for stealing a load of booze. He was never on the level in nothing he done.”
“Vanzetti,” I said. “You knew him in prison. If Mede and Silva were lying, do you think he was part of the Bridgewater gang?”
“No,” said Joe emphatically, “he wasn’t any stick-up guy. I was in the next cell to him awhile. I used to work in the number plate shop with him. People always coming to see him, old Boston ladies bringing him books and candy and things. He’d give me some. He used to read all the time. I always knew he wasn’t guilty.”