BOSTON — Straight from federal prison, former Providence Mayor Vincent A. Cianci Jr. stepped into the public eye for all of 13 seconds yesterday in a graffiti-scrawled alley behind the halfway house where he will likely spend the next three weeks.

This image from video shows former Providence Mayor Vincent A. Cianci Jr. arriving at a halfway house in Boston yesterday morning, after being released from a federal prison at Fort Dix, N.J.

WPRI-TV via AP

Cianci spoke but two or three words during a subdued reentry that was anything but the vintage Buddy of yore. Absent were the outsize persona, the trademark quips and barbs and playing for the cameras that marked his decades as the city’s longest-serving mayor, before he began serving his sentence for racketeering conspiracy at Fort Dix, N.J., nearly 4½ years ago.

While Providence and Boston media staked out the front door of Coolidge House at 307 Huntington Ave., Cianci stepped out of a gray Lexus SUV and into the cobblestone back alley off Gainsborough Street shortly after 9:30 a.m. He wore a blue shirt and tie, a blue baseball cap, sunglasses, and carried a blue blazer over his arm.

“Hey,” he said, barely nodding at the three or four waiting TV cameras and one still photographer.

“How are you?” said a voice off camera.

“Good,” said Cianci.

A Coolidge House staff member held open a steel door, and Cianci stepped quickly into the five-story building hemmed in by brownstones, above the Boston House of Pizza. For now, his view will be of the Greater Boston YMCA and Northeastern University.

Not quite a free man, Buddy Cianci is expected to spend his next three weeks sharing space with some 120 other ex-convicts at Coolidge House, and perform his work-release at Fifteen Beacon Hotel, at the foot of the Massachusetts State House. Somewhere behind the marbled foyer, Cianci will market the hotel’s top-shelf accommodations.

Cianci will start his hotel job on Monday, according to George Regan, public relations spokesman for Fifteen Beacon owner Paul Roiff.

During a live radio talk show on WBZ-Boston last night, Regan said Cianci “will come in just like any other employee.” Regan also reported that Roiff spoke with Cianci yesterday, and offered him a full-time job, but Cianci declined.

“He’s very nervous. This is a big first step for him,” said Regan.

Cianci is expected to return to Rhode Island once he completes his work-release, and remain on home confinement at the East Greenwich home of his nephew, Brad Turchetta, until July 28, when his prison term officially ends.

Federal Bureau of Prisons officials confirmed that Cianci left Fort Dix at 3 a.m. for the six-hour plus drive to Boston. Turchetta drove, accompanied by Cianci’s daughter, Nicole.

“He was in a great mood. He was happy to be out,” said Nicole Cianci, who spoke briefly to reporters outside the halfway house.

Turchetta said Cianci “is happy to be near home,” but not quite ready for interviews.

“He’s got lots to say to you guys — at the end of July,” Turchetta said.

Until then, apparently, Cianci plans to keep his life as he has during his years at Fort Dix, free from public consumption.

While TV crews spent fruitless hours waiting for another glimpse of Cianci, worker Bob Aiello greeted the former mayor on the third floor of Coolidge House, where Aiello and his crew were installing new bathrooms.

Aiello said he recognized Cianci — even without the infamous hairpiece.

“He shook my hand,” said Aiello, who wore a Building Wreckers Local T-shirt and bandanna during the brief encounter.

“He was on his way to his room, with his caseworker. He said, ‘Hello, how we doing?’ I said, ‘Great. How are you doing?’ and he said, ‘Great.’ That was pretty much it. Short and sweet.”

Passersby asked about the fuss. Many were familiar with the former mayor; others had no clue.

Danny Sason, who makes coffee at a nearby Starbucks, guessed incorrectly.

“I saw the news stations out front — I really thought it was one of the Red Sox at the pizza place,” he said.

Kirkwood Adams III, who works at the nearby Boston Museum of Fine Arts, also guessed incorrectly.

“Correct me if I’m wrong, but there was some kind of scandal involving drug use?” Adams asked.

Told that Cianci’s prison term had been for racketeering conspiracy, he said, “Well, there certainly is a lot of hullabaloo outside.”

Others were quite familiar with the 66-year-old ex-mayor and his tumultuous life.

“Who’s in town?” said a taxi driver who slowed down in front of Coolidge House.

“Oh, Cianci!” he said. “Yeah, Buddy.”

Another driver spoke to reporters who sat on a grassy divide between Huntington’s traffic lanes.

“I have no comment. But he’s obviously done a lot,” he said, noting that Cianci “deserves a second chance.”

As the longest-serving mayor in Providence, Cianci ruled the city from 1975 to 2002, save for a six-year interruption following his conviction for assaulting his estranged wife’s alleged lover — a period during which he rebounded as a popular radio talk-show host.

He put Providence on the map as “the Renaissance City,” and put “The Mayor’s Own Marinara Sauce” on supermarket shelves for a scholarship fund.

Then, in 2002, came his conviction for running a corrupt administration. As Chief U.S. District Judge Ernest C. Torres remarked at Cianci’s sentencing, Cianci is, on one hand, “a skilled charismatic political figure, one of the most talented Rhode Island has ever seen,” who at the same time “committed an egregious breach of the public trust,” by operating a city that he was supposed to serve, “as a criminal enterprise to line his own pockets.” It was a setback that not even Cianci’s resilience could remedy.

What his future holds is unclear. WPRO station manager Paul Giammarco told The Journal last month that he wants to hire Cianci as a radio talk-show host and said he’d cleared a time slot for him, but declined to elaborate.

As for what reception he might receive in Providence, opinions are running hot and cold in hundreds of replies to a projo.com survey on Cianci’s work-release job. Shameless thief, beloved martyr. Welcome home, go away.

“Cianci is nothing but a thug and he should do all Rhode Islanders a favor and just GO AWAY FOREVER!!!” wrote one reader.

Another wrote, “if he could run again [for mayor], he’d probably win.”

With reports from staff writer Mike Stanton

kziner@projo.com