9. At the Red Fox
Copyright © 2000 by Dan E. Moldea
The following day, August 4, with a credit card and only two dollars cash in my wallet, I flew to hot and humid Detroit and hitchhiked thirty miles north of the Detroit airport to the Machus Red Fox restaurant in Bloomfield Hills where Hoffa had been last seen on July 30.
I really had no specific plan after that. I simply assumed that the Red Fox would be filled with news people who might be interested in my work and information.
When I arrived at the restaurant in a golf shirt, blue jeans, and cowboy boots, I saw a sign near the front door, noting a dress code--that men must wear a coat and tie. That was bad news. I was still bandaged after my dog-bite experience in Eagle River, and I didn't have a tie. I did have a wrinkled sports jacket folded up in my backpack. But, when I put it on and walked into the Red Fox, the maitre d' told me to go home and put on the proper attire.
As I stepped back outside, I saw a priest wearing a small Eastern Orthodox crucifix on his jacket, standing near the door and appearing to be waiting for someone--just like Hoffa a few days earlier. I struck up a conversation with him, noting the summer heat and the fact that I, too, was a member of the Eastern Orthodox Church.
Then I said to him, "Father, I need to get into the restaurant, but I'm not dressed properly. May I accompany you in there? I don't think that the management will say anything if I'm with a priest."
The priest smiled and walked into the restaurant, holding me by the arm. When the maitre d' looked up at me this time, I simply said, "I'm with him," pointing to the priest. He smiled and let me pass.
Needing something to happen very quickly, I spotted the bow-tied NBC News correspondent, Irving R. Levine, my favorite on-air economics and labor reporter, walking down the stairs. I thanked the priest for helping me, shook hands with him, and then took off after Levine.
Downstairs, I saw the famous correspondent on a pay phone, making a call. When he glanced at me, I nodded, pointing at him and then at me.
"May I help you?" Levine asked before finishing the number he was dialing.
"Mr. Levine, you need me," I blurted right out.
"I need you?"
"You need me for the Hoffa case."
Giving me a once over, Levine inquired, "Do you know something about the case?"
"I've done a lot of reporting about the Teamsters, and I helped with the research for the Wall Street Journal series last week."
Placing the phone back on the hook, Levine asked, "Are you that graduate student from Kent State?"
Assuming that he had heard about me from Kwitny or someone who had talked to him, I grinned and spread my arms apart, saying, "That's me!"
As we shook hands, Levine asked, "Do you have plans for lunch?"
"No, sir, I don't."
Without making his call, Levine put his arm around my shoulder as we walked back up the stairs. "Then join us for lunch," he said.
When I saw the maitre d', I pointed at Levine and said, "Now, I'm with him." This time, the maitre d' laughed out loud.
Levine and I walked to his table where we joined several members of his NBC crew and Bob Toombs, an NBC field producer assigned to the Hoffa case. Levine introduced me, adding that I was the graduate student who had worked for Jon Kwitny on the Wall Street Journal series.
As Toombs and I shook hands, he asked me if I was working with any news organization. I told him that I was an independent writer, "unaffiliated at present."
"Are you looking for work?"
Surprised that he wanted to get right down to it, I responded, "Yes, sir. I've come to Detroit to work on the Hoffa case."
Toombs, who was on my right, looked over at Levine, on my left. Levine just smiled and said, "Go ahead." Toombs then started giving me a trivia quiz about the Teamsters.
When they were satisfied that I knew something about the union, we started talking seriously about Hoffa and his background.
* * *
Born in Brazil, Indiana, in 1913, Hoffa, a former dock worker for a grocery-store chain, became an organizer for Detroit's Teamsters Local 299 in 1937, rising quickly to lead his local, as well as Detroit's Joint Council 43, the Michigan Conference of Teamsters, and the Central Conference of Teamsters. Creating a fiefdom for himself in the Midwest, Hoffa founded the union's major health and welfare and pension funds with the cooperation of Chicago labor racketeer Paul Dorfman and his stepson, Allen Dorfman. With the approval of Hoffa and the Dorfmans, these funds were bilked by the underworld.
The Kefauver Committee had targeted Hoffa during its investigation in 1950-1951. The year after the hearings ended, Teamsters general president Dave Beck appointed Hoffa as an international vice president. After feeding Beck to the Senate Rackets Committee in 1957, Hoffa, who routinely supplied information about his enemies to the committee, succeeded him as the union's general president.
Soon after Hoffa's election, the AFL-CIO expelled the Teamsters. Then, the federal government placed the union under the supervision of a court-ordered Board of Monitors. Later, Hoffa ravaged the monitors and won the union's independence in 1961. He immediately rewrote the union's constitution, centralizing power in his own hands and giving himself the ability to throw dissident locals into trusteeship.
Meantime, Hoffa had been indicted and acquitted in separate bribery and wiretapping cases. Also, federal prosecutors indicted him in a third case for his role in a land-fraud scheme in Florida; that case was dropped.
Senator John Kennedy, a member of the Senate Rackets Committee, was elected president in 1960, defeating Vice President Richard Nixon, whom Hoffa had supported. The new president appointed Robert Kennedy, the president's brother and the chief counsel of the Senate Rackets Committee, as attorney general. The two brothers immediately declared war on organized crime and its associates, like Hoffa.
After a lengthy investigation, the Department of Justice indicted Hoffa for extortion, stemming from the earlier aborted prosecution for the land-fraud scheme. However, the trial ended in a hung jury. The Justice Department then indicted him for his role in a successful jury-tampering effort during the extortion trial.
Hoffa was finally convicted in Chattanooga for jury tampering in 1964. That same year, he was convicted in Chicago for pension fraud. He was sentenced to a total of thirteen years in prison. While appealing his convictions, he was reelected to a five-year term as union president in 1966.
Hoffa entered Lewisburg Penitentiary on March 7, 1967. He selected his long-time friend, Frank Fitzsimmons, as his day-to-day caretaker of the union. But, soon after, Hoffa and Fitzsimmons had a falling out.
While Hoffa was in prison, Fitzsimmons became his own man and quickly began to decentralize power in the union to members of his general executive board, who created their own fiefdoms around the country. In return, they, along with their allies in the Mafia, became fiercely loyal to Fitzsimmons.
At the July 1971 Teamsters convention, Fitzsimmons was elected general president, officially replacing Hoffa. Near Christmas 1971, with Hoffa out of power, Richard Nixon, who was elected president in 1968 and had become a close friend of Fitzsimmons, commuted Hoffa's prison sentence--with the proviso that he not engage in union politics until 1980. If Hoffa violated this restriction, he would be sent back to jail to finish his term. Hoffa accepted this at first but then blamed Fitzsimmons and others for pushing him out of the union.
At the time of Hoffa's disappearance, he and Fitzsimmons, along with their supporters in and out of the Mafia, were locked in a bitter dispute--as Hoffa and his attorneys attempted to overturn the commutation restrictions in court.
After he vanished, nearly everyone assumed that Fitzsimmons's allies in the underworld had murdered Hoffa in an effort to end his bid to regain the presidency of the union.
* * *
After lunch at the Red Fox and our lengthy discussion about Hoffa, Bob Toombs said to me, "We have a few interviews to do this afternoon. Why don't you join us? Maybe we can work something out."
Driving around Detroit with the NBC people, I tried to get a feel for the politics between Levine and Toombs. Clearly, Levine, the big-name correspondent, was the star, but producer Toombs made things happen before, during, and after the interviews. Even though Levine had brought me into this situation, I decided, at least until I officially received a job, not to speak to him unless he spoke to me. Instead, I stayed close to Toombs. If Levine missed a specific question with someone he was interviewing, I didn't tell him directly. Instead, I quietly told Toombs and let him pass it on to Levine.
By the end of the day, I knew that I had made a real contribution to their reporting. I also knew that Toombs appreciated the deferential treatment I had given to him, and that he and Levine recognized me as a team player.
When we arrived at their hotel, the Southfield Sheraton, they asked me to come in with them. Standing in the lobby and having no idea where I was going to stay that night, I saw Levine and Toombs talking. After a few moments, Levine give Toombs a pat on the back, as they both turned and smiled at me.
Toombs went to the registration desk and talked to a clerk who handed him several keys. Then, Toombs walked over and handed one of them to me, saying, "You're staying here with us. We'll give you a hundred dollars a day, plus all of your expenses. Tomorrow, we'll rent you a car and get you an office downtown with us. . . . Agreed?"
"Agreed!" I replied with considerable relief.
"Welcome aboard, kid," Toombs declared, shaking my hand. "Don't fuck up."