The Market Inn was more than a Washington meeting place in Frank Sheeran’s account: it functioned as a discreet exchange point where money could be left for collection, and where packages could pass between people without an overt meeting. Sheeran described it as both a hiding place and a drop point, and recalled using it in dealings involving union figures, Russell Bufalino, John Mitchell, and Jimmy Hoffa. Across these episodes, the restaurant’s significance lies in the ordinary cover it offered to transactions whose participants wanted their connections to remain less visible.

A discreet place for money

Sheeran explained that a “dry spot” was a place where money was hidden, comparable to a safe house but used for cash rather than sheltering a person. A safe house, he said, would be a civilian home on an ordinary street with no visible connection to the people using it; a dry spot could be temporary, holding money until someone came to retrieve it. The Market Inn also served as a “drop spot”: a package could be left with the maître d’ and collected later, without requiring the employee to know what it contained.

Sheeran described the arrangements as suitable for relatively small sums, not half a million dollars, but amounts below roughly fifty thousand. He recalled senators, congressmen, and others entering to collect packages left for them, and characterized the Market Inn as a prominent place in “the old days.” The distinction between a hiding place and a drop point matters in his account: the restaurant was not simply somewhere to meet, but part of a method for separating the person delivering a package from the person receiving it. Sheeran believed the establishment might still have been operating on E Street when he recounted this, but he did not know whether it was still used for such transactions.

A payment arranged through Russell Bufalino

One specific use followed Sheeran’s release from jail after his arrest in connection with the DeGeorge murder. He said he asked Frank Fitzsimmons for expenses and was refused. Jimmy Hoffa, he recalled, would have made sure he was provided for, but Fitzsimmons did not. Sheeran then called Russell Bufalino, who made a call and secured money from Fitzsimmons for him.

Sheeran said that thirty-five thousand dollars was left for him at the Market Inn, which he called a dry spot. To make up the total of fifty thousand dollars, he went to New York for another fifteen thousand, collected from lawyer Jacques Schiffer’s office. The episode gives the restaurant a precise role in the chain: it was the location for one portion of a payment obtained through Bufalino’s intervention, while the rest came through a separate collection. Rather than describing a direct exchange with Fitzsimmons, Sheeran recalled a sum left at the restaurant for him to retrieve.

The Washington Hilton handoff

The Market Inn also appears in Sheeran’s account of a much larger delivery connected to Nixon’s reelection. He described driving from Philadelphia to Washington with a suitcase, then meeting John Mitchell in the lobby of the Washington Hilton. Mitchell made small talk about the weather and the drive, and asked whether Sheeran was in the union. Sheeran told him he was president of Teamsters Local 326 in Wilmington, a position he had won in the 1970 election by a three-to-one margin.

Mitchell took the suitcase. When Sheeran asked whether he wanted to go somewhere to count the money, Mitchell replied that if he had needed to count it, they would not have sent Sheeran. He then said, “Nothing comes cheap.” Sheeran’s account places the Market Inn within the same network of discreet Washington transactions as this hotel-lobby exchange, although he does not say that this particular suitcase was delivered or collected at the restaurant. That distinction is important: the Market Inn was one known point in the system, not necessarily the destination for every package or payment he described.

The affidavit delivery

In October of the same year as a later episode he recalled, Hoffa sent Sheeran to see the Redhead at the Branding Iron, where Sheeran received a suitcase containing $270,000. He drove to the Market Inn and, he said, did not even stop for a drink. An unfamiliar man approached him and said he would take him where he had to go. They drove to a large house, where Mitchell answered the door. Sheeran handed over the bag; Mitchell gave him an envelope containing an affidavit.

This delivery differed from the earlier dry-spot arrangement. Sheeran did not describe leaving the suitcase with the maître d’ for an unknown recipient to collect. Instead, the Market Inn served as the starting point for a guided transfer to Mitchell’s house, and the return journey carried a document rather than cash. Sheeran drove back to Philadelphia, met Russell Bufalino at a restaurant, and said Bufalino read the affidavit and took care of it afterward. The Market Inn’s role in this transaction was therefore a discreet rendezvous from which Sheeran was directed onward, linking a money delivery to the acquisition and subsequent handling of a sworn statement.

Hoffa’s packages and the place’s narrative role

Later, at the Warwick Hotel, Hoffa handed Sheeran a small, unmarked satchel and asked him to take it to the Market Inn. Hoffa said that whoever it was for would know enough to come for it. The recipient was not identified in the account, and Sheeran did not explain what the satchel contained. The episode nevertheless echoes his earlier description of the restaurant as a drop point: a package could be left without naming its intended recipient, on the assumption that the person who needed it would know to retrieve it.

Sheeran also recalled making another drop for Hoffa at the Market Inn and calling him afterward to say it had been done. He could not say whether that package contained money because he had not looked inside. He added that he grew wary of having too many conversations with Hoffa, since he would have to repeat them to Bufalino. The restaurant thus marks not only the movement of packages but also the divided loyalties surrounding them: Sheeran carried out a task for Hoffa while remaining accountable to Bufalino, and the contents and recipient of a delivery could remain deliberately uncertain even to the messenger.

Taken together, these recollections make the Market Inn a recurring piece of practical infrastructure in Sheeran’s narrative. Its public setting, the maître d’s role, the possibility of an unmarked package, and the separation between drop-off and collection all allowed transfers to be described as routine movements through a restaurant. The place does not resolve who ultimately received every package or what each contained; its importance is precisely that it enabled transactions to proceed while leaving those details, and the relationships behind them, partially concealed.