"Pretty soon, before anyone even realized it, they had come within a few points of the lead. As the clock began the final countdown, our guys tried to pull back, but by then the Holy Cross players went cold. Our guys are just standing there, but Holy Cross couldn't hit from anywhere on the court. Then the other Boston College players, the ones who weren't in on our scheme, started scoring from all over. They must have smelled an upset. It was awful. Of course Holy Cross finally won, but they only won by 3 points instead of the 7-point spread, and Jimmy and I went down the tubes.

    "Jimmy went nuts. He was furious. He put his foot through his own television set. I know he lost about fifty thousand dollars all by himself. I finally got Perla on the phone and he said that he had talked to Kuhn right after the game and that Kuhn had said they just couldn't bring themselves to lose by too much against Holy Cross.

    "That was it. No more. The end of the point-shaving scheme. Jimmy was so mad at losing the cash that he said he wanted to shake those kids up. At one point during the night he said, 'Let's go up to Boston and put their heads through hoops,' but we never went anywhere. By then Jimmy had bigger problems than money."

=SIXTEEN=

HENRY WAS OUT OF PRISON only two months when he first heard about Lufthansa. His bookmaker pal Marty Krugman first told him about the possibility of the Lufthansa score. Marty and his wife, Fran, had come by to see Henry and Karen's new house, in Rockville Centre. It was a three-bedroom brick ranch house with a sunken living room, but Marty hardly looked at a wall. He kept motioning for Henry to talk with him on the side. Marty was so distracted during the visit that he kept grimacing at Henry to cut the house tour short whenever their wives were not looking. Finally, when Fran and Karen were in the kitchen making sandwiches, Marty told Henry about Lufthansa. He said that there were millions upon millions of dollars in untraceable fifty- and hundred-dollar bills sitting out there in a cardboard vault at Kennedy Airport just waiting to be robbed. He said it was the ultimate score. A mountain of cash. Marty said that the money, which was flown in about once a month as part of the routine return of U.S. currency that had been exchanged in West Germany by American tourists and servicemen, was sometimes stored overnight in the Lufthansa cargo vaults before it was picked up by armored trucks and deposited in banks.

    Marty's information had come from Louis Werner, a pudgy, forty-six-year-old Lufthansa cargo supervisor, who owed Marty about $20,000 in gambling debts. According to Marty, Lou Werner was one of those long-shot bettors who had spent the past eleven years trying to support an estranged wife, a girl friend, a loan shark, three children, and a $300-a-day gambling habit on a $15,000-a-year salary. Like many airport bookies, Marty Krugman had carried Werner on the rim for months in the hope of a jackpot tip on a hijacking score.

    Henry, Jimmy, and the crew at Robert's had picked up thousands of tips from 'Kennedy's indentured cargo handlers over the years, but Lou Werner's tip to Marty was unique. Werner's information held out the promise of more money than anyone in the crew had ever robbed before. And Werner was so desperate to get started that he actually had a plan. He had methodically worked out the details: how many men would be needed, the best time for the heist, how to bypass the elaborate security and alarm system. Werner had even figured out where the holdup men should park. Most important, the score was in cash—clean, easy-to-spend, unmarked money. For professional crooks that kind of cash is better than diamonds, gold, or even negotiable securities; it doesn't have to be cut, melted down, recast or resold. There are no treacherous middlemen, insurance adjusters, or wiseguy fences involved. A guy can spend it walking out the door.

    After meeting with Marty, Henry became obsessed with Lufthansa. The timing was perfect. Jimmy Burke was about to be released from Allenwood and temporarily assigned to the Bureau of Prisons' Community Treatment Center, a seedy hotel that had been converted to a halfway house on West Fifty-fourth Street, near Times Square. Jimmy would sleep at the center, but he would be free to roam around the city during the days and evenings. Tommy DeSimone was also due to be released to the halfway house at about the same time. Henry realized that he, Jimmy, and Tommy could beat by ten times their glorious $480,000 Air France score of 1967. It was the best welcome- home present any of them could ever receive.

    There was only one problem: Jimmy Burke hated Marty Krugman. Jimmy had not trusted Marty since the early 1970s, when Marty was just starting out as a bookmaker and owned For Men Only, a men's hair-styling shop and wig salon next door to The Suite, Henry's Queens Boulevard nightclub. Marty did well enough in the wig business to star in his own late-night television commercial, in which he would be seen swimming vigorously across a pool wearing his wig while an announcer proclaimed that Krugman's wigs always stayed put. Henry always found Marty Krugman amusing, but Jimmy saw him as a mark. He felt that Krugman was booking out of his store and paying nothing in tribute or protection. Jimmy kept insisting that Henry shake down Marty for at least two hundred dollars a week, but Henry kept trying to placate Jimmy with stories about how Marty wasn't doing well enough yet to be shaken down. The situation was exacerbated by the fact that Jimmy was a part-time insomniac, and when he couldn't sleep he turned on the television. Whenever he saw Marty's wig commercial at four in the morning he felt duped. "That fuck has the money to go on television," he would complain to Henry, "but no money for anybody else?" Eventually Jimmy had Tommy DeSimone and Danny Rizzo work over one of Marty's employees as a warning, but instead of giving in, Marty threatened to go to the DA.

    "Jimmy never trusted Marty after that, so when I finally got to run the Lufthansa thing down for him I emphasized how much money was involved, and I made sure I put in all the zeroes before I said the tip came from Marty Krugman. As I expected, Jimmy lit up over the idea. Still, he didn't want anything to do with Marty. He said he'd think about it. All he thought about was the money. After a week he finally told me to bring Marty down to Robert's.

    "Jimmy was at the bar drinking, feeling good, and he had Marty run the score down for him. Jimmy was friendly and kept smiling and winking at Marty. When Marty had finished, Jimmy got me on the side and told me to get Lou Werner's telephone number from Marty. Jimmy was still so suspicious of Marty that he didn't even want to ask him for Werner's number. That's when I realized that during their meeting Jimmy hadn't said more than a couple of words. He just let Marty talk. In the old days, before we both went away, Jimmy would have been up to his elbows in the heist himself. He would have had Werner sitting in Robert's drawing pictures on the bar. Looking back, I think it was my first sign that Jimmy was a little different. A little more cautious. One step removed. But why not? Marty had never been his buddy. And, anyway, Marty was so keyed up just leaning his elbow on the bar at Robert's with Jimmy Burke that he didn't notice a thing.

    "Jimmy started running the Lufthansa heist right out of Robert's. He'd go to the halfway house at night and then get picked up every morning by one of the guys, who drove him to Robert's. It was Jimmy's office. He first called Joe Manri, who was also known as Joe Buddha because of his big belly, and told him to take a look at Lou Werner's plan. Joe Buddha came back all excited. He said that Werner's plan was great. He said there might be so much money involved that we'd need two panel trucks just to carry the bags away.