"I Heard You Paint Houses", Updated Edition: Frank "The Irishman" Sheeran & Closing the Case on Jimmy Hoffa

by Charles Brandt

I reached out for Jimmy on Sunday afternoon, July 27, 1975. Jimmy was gone by Wednesday, July 30. Sadly, as we say, gone to Australia — down under. I will miss my friend until the day I join him.

The first words Jimmy ever spoke to me were, “I heard you paint houses.” The paint is the blood that supposedly gets on the wall or the floor when you shoot somebody. I told Jimmy, “I do my own carpentry work, too.” That refers to making coffins and means you get rid of the bodies yourself.

The U.S. Senate had subpoenaed Giancana to testify about the CIA hiring the mob to assassinate Castro. Four days before his appearance Giancana was taken care of in his kitchen in the back of the head and then under the chin six times, Sicilian style, to signify he was careless with his mouth.

“I gotta urge you to take along your little brother.” He knew what I meant, a gun, a piece, not the peace prize, a peacemaker. “Precautionary.”

“All right, Irishman,” he said, as if he was trying to make me feel better, even though he’s the one that asked me when I was getting in to Detroit in the first place. As soon as he asked me when I was getting in, I knew what he wanted. “How about you take a little ride and meet me there on Wednesday at 2:00? They’re coming at 2:30.” “Precautionary. But however, you can rest assured, I’ll bring my little brother. He’s a real good negotiator.”

I don’t care how tough you are or how tough you think you are, if they want you you’re theirs. It’s usually your best friend that walks up to you talking about a football bet and you’re gone. Like Giancana got it frying eggs and sausages in olive oil with an old friend he trusted.

But the farmers weren’t any too happy with our ideas about sharing in nature’s bounty. Some nights they’d be waiting for us with shotguns. Some farmer would chase me, and I’d jump over the fence and get hit in the butt with birdshot. One of my earliest childhood memories is getting birdshot picked out of my backside by my mother, Mary. My mother would say, “Tom, how come I’m always picking this stuff out of Francis’s behind?” My father, who always called her Mame, would say, “Because the boy doesn’t run fast enough, Mame.”

Hansen. My mother was about 5’10’’ and never weighed less than 200 pounds. She ate a quart of ice cream every day. I used to go down to the ice-cream parlor for her every night. You would bring your own bowl and they would give you so many dips of ice cream. They knew to expect me. My mother loved to cook and make all her own bread. I can still smell the aroma of her roast pork, sauerkraut, and potatoes simmering on the coal stove. My mother was a very quiet woman. I think she showed her love for us through her cooking.

My brother was thirteen months younger than me, and my sister was thirteen months younger than him. We were what they used to call Irish twins because the Catholic Irish popped those babies out so close together.

We’d be in a new section of Philadelphia where they didn’t know us too well yet and he’d go in a speakeasy and bet somebody that he had a ten-year-old kid who could lick any fourteen- or fifteen-year-old boy. He’d bet some kid’s father a quarter for beer, and us kids would have to fight it out in front of all the grown men. If I won, which was almost always the case, he’d toss me a dime. If I lost he’d cuff me hard on the back of the head.

By the time the war was over the Army told me I had 411 combat days, which entitled me to $20 extra pay a month. I was one of the lucky ones. The real heroes, some of them with only one combat day, are still over there.

While I was waiting to be shipped overseas they had me at Camp Patrick Henry in Virginia, and I gave some lip back to one of those Southern sergeants, so they put me on KP (kitchen patrol) peeling potatoes. First chance I got I bought some laxative at the PX and put it in the giant coffee urn. Everybody wound up with bad diarrhea, including the officers. Unfortunately, I was the only one who didn’t report in sick at the infirmary. They had that caper solved before they put in a requisition for extra toilet paper. Can you guess which brilliant criminal ended up on his knees scrubbing bathroom floors?

We had no intention of taking them back down the mountain, and we couldn’t take them with us as we advanced up, so we gave them shovels, and they dug their own shallow graves. You wonder why would anyone bother to dig their own graves, but then I guess you cling to some hope that maybe the people with the guns would change their mind, or maybe your own people would come along while you were digging, or maybe if you cooperated and dug your own grave you’d get a good clean hit without any brutality or suffering.

You developed a hard covering, like being encased in lead. You were scared more than you’d ever been in your life. You did certain things, maybe against your will sometimes, but you did them, and if you stayed over there long enough you didn’t even think about them anymore. You did them like you might scratch your head if it itched.

figured everybody is put here with two dates already determined for them; a date for when they’re born and a date for when they go. You don’t have any control over either one of those dates, so “what will be will be” became my motto.

I had too many jobs to remember. One job I do remember was taking hot blueberry pie mix coming out of a cooker onto an ice-cold aluminum conveyor. The more I raked, the cooler the blueberries got before they went into the Tastykake pies. The job pusher kept on me to rake harder. He said, “You’re a little lax on that rake.” I tried to ignore him, and he said, “You hear what I said, boy?” I asked him who the hell did he think he was talking to. He said: “I’m talking to you, boy.” He said that if I didn’t put more effort into the job he’d stick the rake up my butt. I told him I’d do him one better and stick the rake down his throat. He was a big black guy, and he came at me. I tapped him and put him on the conveyor belt unconscious. I stuffed blueberries in his mouth. That took care of him. The cops had to take me out of there.

For years FBI director J. Edgar Hoover had assured America that no such organization existed, and he deployed the FBI’s greatest resources to investigate suspected Communists. But as a result of the publicity foisted on the mob in 1957, even Hoover came on board. The organization was dubbed “La Cosa Nostra,” meaning “this thing of ours,” a term heard on government wiretaps.

Ironically, the publicity-shy Russell Bufalino had something to do with the mob’s unwanted publicity in 1957. Russell Bufalino helped organize the famous meeting of godfathers from around the nation at the town of Apalachin (apa-lake-in), New York, in November 1957.

The day I met Russell Bufalino changed my life. And later on, just being seen in his company by certain people turned out to save my life in a particular matter where my life was most definitely on the line. For better or for worse, meeting Russell Bufalino and being seen in his company put me deeper into the downtown culture than I ever would have gotten on my own. After the war, meeting Russell was the biggest thing that happened to me after my marriage and having my daughters.

Later on when we got to know each other he told me that the first time he saw me he liked the way I carried myself. I told him that there was something special about him, too, like maybe he owned the truck stop or something, or maybe he owned the whole road, but it was more than that.

“Good. That’s good. This fucking Whispers put you on the fucking spot, my young fellow. Now it becomes your responsibility to make this come out right.” I nodded my head and said, “Whatever I gotta do.” Angelo whispered, “It’s your responsibility to take care of this matter by tomorrow morning. That’s the chance you get. Capish?” I nodded my head and said, “Capish.” “You gotta do what you gotta do.”

The next morning it was front page. He was found lying on the sidewalk. He had been shot at close range with something like a .32, the kind of gun the cops used to call a woman’s gun because it was easier to handle and had less of a kick than even a .38. Being a smaller caliber it didn’t do the damage a .38 does, but all you need is a little hole if you put it in the right place. The good feature is that it makes a little less noise than a .38 and a whole lot less noise than a .45. Sometimes you want a lot of noise, like in the middle of the day to scatter bystanders; sometimes you don’t want a lot of noise, like in the middle of the night. What do you want to go around disturbing people’s sleep for?

At one point Hoffa told Bobby Kennedy regarding the tapes, “To the best of my recollection, I must recall on my memory, I cannot remember.”

Women found me attractive and I liked the feeling. I was single. But what was it all about? Ego, that’s all. There was no love there. Just a lot of drinking and a lot of ego. Both of them will kill you.

Bill was about 5’8’’ and was known for his ability with candy, not the kind you eat, the kind you use to blow things up with — dynamite.

Anytime you read in the paper about a masked gunman, rest assured the gunman had no mask on. If there are any eyewitnesses on the street, they always say the gunman had a mask on, so everybody on the shooter’s side of the thing knows the eyewitnesses didn’t see a thing and the eyewitnesses don’t have to worry about a thing.

Carlos used to have a sign in his office that said that three people can keep a secret if two of them are dead.

I put the bag in the backseat of my big Lincoln. I already had put the seventy-five-gallon gas tank in the trunk, so that if the Feds followed me they’d have to stop for gas and I could just hit a switch and go to the extra tank and keep on cruising.

He stood up holding the suitcase. I said to him, “Don’t you want to go somewhere and count it?” He said, “If I had to count it, they wouldn’t have sent you.” He knew his business, that man.

Sometimes you actually would go to the bathroom first as long as you didn’t have to pass the person to get there. It gives you a chance to make sure nobody’s tailing you. It gives you a chance to look the thing over. It gives you a chance to make sure there’s nobody in the bathroom you have to be concerned about. It also gives you a chance to go to the bathroom. You don’t want to have to take a leak if you’re trying to outrun a couple of cop cars.

Following Hoffa’s announcement of the legal challenge and his plans to run in 1976, Frank Sheeran gave his friend and mentor a colorful endorsement,, “I’ll be a Hoffa man ‘til the day they pat my face with a shovel and steal my cufflinks.”

“You’re dreaming, my friend. If they could take out the president, they could take out the president of the Teamsters.”

They asked me to go out to their car with them. I did and one of the agents said they had me for two life sentences and 120 years. I said, “How much time do I get off for good behavior?” The agent said that if I wore a wire against Russ and Angelo I would be guaranteed to be back out on the street in ten years. I told him, “This must be another case of mistaken identity.”

He had expressed remorse for parts of his life and told the man that after he did something he wondered if he “did the right thing or not.” Although it’s not on the video, he actually ended his conversation with the man by saying, “If I did all the things they allege I did and I had to do them over again I would not do them.”

However, even when a murderer displays a desire to confess, it’s the heart and soul that want to confess. Meanwhile, every cell in the body doesn’t want to. That’s because it’s the body that will end up in jail or strapped to a gurney. There are often at the same time these opposing pulls at work inside a mind full of guilty knowledge.