Joey The Hit Man - Hit #29: Based on the Killers Own Account

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Hit #29

Based on the Killers Own Account

Joey the Hit Man with David Fisher

PLANNING THE PERFECT HIT

When you plan a job, its not so much a murder as it is a game. It is when the planning ends that the so-called deadly game begins.

You realize that you are about to become the most important man in the victims life, for you are going to be the last thing he sees before he dies.

It is mostly a wonderful feeling.

Joey

My interview with Joey was one of the most hair-raising experiences I have had in my 32 years of broadcasting. We checked him out through reliable sources and know he is authentic.

Alan Douglas,

NBC Radio

Joey is a son-of-a-bitch, alive and a functioning member of our sick society.

Chris Borgen,

CBS-TV Crime Reporter

CONTENTS

HIT #28

Hit number 28 was a public execution. It took place in a crowded, noisy Italian restaurant in Brooklyn. The restaurant was my only opportunity because the intended knew he had been placed on the bullseye and had holed himself up pretty good. His employers, and mine as well, resolved that problem by inviting him out to dinner and then telling me to make him the main course. I never actually found out what it was that he had done wrong, although I later heard a rumor that he had just been caught with his hand in the numbers take once too often.

It was what could be termed a classic kill. I walked into the restaurant about a quarter after nine and went directly into the mens room. On my way through the place I took one quick, very good look and saw where my man was sitting. Naturally enough, as anyone who has seen a lot of crime movies will tell you, he was sitting toward the rear of the place, facing the door. Of course, I was now coming from the mens room, which was on the side and in the rear. Which goes to show you how much you can depend on crime movies.

When I got into the mens room I had to wait until one individual got out of the toilet, then I locked myself in and checked my .38. I put it back in my belt and returned to the restaurant.

He never saw me coming. I walked right up behind him and blasted him three times in the back of the head and neck, blowing parts of his brain into his veal marinara, and causing blood to run into the spaghetti sauce, ruining it completely. As usual, the loud noise of the .38 going off sent everyone diving under the tables. Im sure a few people had both the time and opportunity to get a quick look at me, but Im just as sure the memory of seeing my mans head sprawled in his spaghetti is going to keep them from remembering too well. Scared witnesses have a way of confusing details, and I had just created a restaurant full of scared witnesses. If the police tried to put together a composite drawing from the descriptions of this crowd, they would have ended up searching for the Loch Ness monster.

I left the restaurant by a door on the sidequickly, but I didnt runand got into the stolen car I left parked outside. I drove five blocks and parked in a perfectly legal spot and abandoned the car. I walked over two more blocks and got on the uptown subway. By the time I picked up my own car, disposed of the gun and got home, it was nearly 2 A.M.

Hit number 28 earned me one paragraph on page 26 of the New York Daily News and $20,000 hard cash money. I liked the money better.

There were absolutely no recriminations. I was never picked up, never questioned, never bothered. In short, a perfect, professional job. It was, in fact, too easy, which is where my problems began.

Normally, after doing a hit, I stay away from heavyweight work for at least a couple of months. This way, if the coppers do have anything on their minds or police blotters, I give them every opportunity to find me and speak to me about it. Secondly, if you start knocking them off too quickly you tend to get careless. And mine is a profession in which anything less than perfection isnt easily tolerated. One mistake is all it takes to make you a state boarder. So, when it comes right down to it, I never should have taken job number 29.

Of all the hits Ive done, number 29 was the strangest. More things went wrong with it than any I did before or after. Part of the reason was my own fault. I knew I should have waited before taking another job. But 28 had been such a breeze and 29 originally came from a man I regard as a friend. And then there were these horses that took just a few seconds more than I thought they would to get from start to finish. I wasnt in debt, but I wasnt rolling in money either, so I took the contract on number 29. Because I knew I had broken my normal pattern, a bad thing for a hired gun to do, I was super-careful, too super-careful. I saw potential problems where there werent any, and missed some of the simple ones I should have seen. Everything combined to make number 29 the most dangerous, and the most interesting of my career. It is the textbook case of how not to make a hit.

SAY IT AINT SO, JOE

Number 29, from beginning to end, took place in New York City between the months of October and November, 1968. Obviously I wasnt there for every part of it, but I can fill in any blanks because I know how these things work. And I know people who know people, so I can keep pretty good track of what transpires when I need to. In this case, since I believed there was more involved than a simple contract, I felt I needed to. The whole thing started with a simple robbery which actually was not so simple. And, pure coincidence, it started the night I finished number 28.

Joseph Tiger Maresca is a pretty well-known numbers controller in the Bronx. For the uninitiated, the numbers is the biggest betting game in New York, and maybe in the nation. To play, an individual places a bet of any size, from a penny to whatever, on either a three-digit number or, in single action, on one number. If your number winsthe number is usually determined by the last three digits of the total betting handle at a local trackthe payoff is 600 to 1 on a three-digit number and 8 to 1 on single action. The guys who take the bets off the people on the streets are the runners. The man in charge of the runners, that individual who collects from the collectors, is the controller.

For example, Joseph Tiger Maresca. Hes worked the same section, first as a runner, then as controller, for maybe 20 years and everybody knows him and everybody likes him. Ive known him since I was a kid just getting started in the business. I know he has a wife and some children, and I know that basically he is a pussycat. In fact, Im told that he got the nickname Tiger because hes so soft, like a tall guy whos called shorty, or a weak guy becomes muscles. At one time he probably was pretty tough, he had to be to work himself into his very lucrative position, but at this point he depends more on the reputation of a man we will refer to as the Fat Man than his own dwindling muscle. This is okay though because the Fat Man, an individual who still controls most of the numbers in the Bronx and Westchester, has a substantial reputation. It is said he has planted more men in the ground than the National Forestry Service has put in trees.