Jimmy Hoffa simply disappeared.. No one knows what happened to him. It was as if that current amazing magician, Mind Freak, had walked into the Machus Red Fox Restaurant on the outskirts of Detroit and uttered a few soft spoken word and the next thing you knew, Hoffa was gone. That was in July of 1975.

I saw him several times in the 60’s at the Fox, both his and our favorite eatery. “Our” being myself and Carol, my longtime love and new wife. The first time I saw him was shortly after Specs Howard and I had arrived in Detroit to launch the Martin and Howard Show on WXYZ. There has never been a more dramatic entrance than the one he made at the Fox, the first day I saw him. Actually, I saw very little of him that first time in the mid 60’s, but the first time pecks at my cerebrum like none other. A story goes with it..

Carol and I were finishing up a couple of salads when the front entrance exploded. First through the door rushed my old KYW strike “colleague” Babe Triscaro the boss of the Cleveland Teamsters, Some say he was a Mafia Capo, but not me, boy. I was willing to settle for Cleveland Teamster boss, and all around good hood.. (Read the last two chapters about me and Triscaro.)

Last week, I told you that Triscaro had run into the restaurant, spied Carol and me having a quiet lunch and tried to hustle us out of there. Babe had been trying to avoid our seeing Hoffa enter, but. too late… Jimmy thundered in like a Pamplona bull. In fact, had we not been nimble, Carol and I would have been trampled.

He was doing everything but snorting steam the way you see those bulls in the cartoons. But, this wasn’t funny. We were witnessing the opening salvo of a now historic vendetta between Hoffa and a blood foe, Anthony “The Pro” Provenzano, who had been seated in a dark corner of the restaurant. Tony The Pro was a New Jersey labor leader and a made member of the Genovese Family.

“The Pro” was there to dissuade Hoffa from trying to regain his presidency of the Teamsters after his upcoming term at Lewisburg Federal Pen.. Hoffa fought bitterly against this. In trying to reconstruct that event, we figured that Triscaro was there as a peacemaker, also to prevent mayhem between the two, if mediation failed.

Our own personal snitch was one of the bartenders, who had become a casual friend and ready gossip over the few weeks that we had started eating there. He explained that Tony Pro had been convicted, along with Hoffa of various malfeasances, and was to join Jimmy at Lewisburg Prison, a federal pen that housed a number of scoundrels.

Hoffa had been sentenced to 8 years, and had run out of appeals. This was to be one of their last face to face meetings. It wasn’t all one-sided. Hoffa had unfinished business with Tony “Pro, because he blamed him for ratting him out to the government about his “loaning” Teamster funds to the Mafia, one of the principle charges against the Teamster boss.

Our bartender “informant” told us that the day Hoffa showed with eyes blazing, he had indeed been restrained by our former KYW strike colleague, Babe Triscaro, the Cleveland Teamster boss. Like I told you in a prior chapter, Triscaro was a former national amateur Flyweight champ, no one to mess with.

Hoffa loved to rumble. He had a standing challenge to duke it out with Bobby Kennedy, the Attorney General who had put him away, but Bobby demurred. So did Hoffa when he saw Triscaro standing between him and Tony “Pro.”

He railed against his fellow inmate, Provenzano, all the time he was in Lewisburg to the embarrassment of the “establishment.” In the Mafia there is what is called Omerta. Loosely translated it means, “keep your mouth shut.” Hoffa could not contain himself, so in July 1975 after his early release from prison, Rumor has it that the gang “contained” him in a 55 gallon drum and disposed of him.

Our informant still worked at the Red Fox on that ill-fated day when Hoffa was spirited away by evil looking men. There were dozens of scenarios about what happened to Hoffa. One of them is that he was probably garroted during that famous last ride and later melted down in a fat rendering plant owned by one of the boys. They had soap made out of him and washed their hands of Hoffa. The principal theory is that Tony Pro tired of being blasphemed and put Hoffa on his s-hit list.

It is well known that such people have no regard for human life. In our society, such dark phenomena becomes part of the lore, and finally morphs into humor. There are some things so grim that you just have to laugh.

Reminds me of the one about the two hoods, Vinny and Sally who went hunting when suddenly Vinny grabs his chest and collapses to the ground. He doesn’t appear to be breathing and his eyes are rolled back in his head.

Sally grabs his cell phone and calls 911. He gasps to the operator, “I think my pal, Vinny, is dead. What shall I do?

The operator tries to calm him down. “First of all” she says. “Don’t panic. First, make sure he is dead”

There is a silence. Then, a shot is heard.

Sally comes back on the line, and says to the 911 operator, “Okay, now what?”

But, I was supposed to tell you what Jimmy Hoffa and I have in common. It is that we both disappeared mysteriously from Detroit. I can’t match Jimmy’s story but, mine was decked in despair, trapped in tragedy and sated with satire. And yet, virtue triumphed. It was like……Divine Intervention..