Brutal: The Untold Story of My Life Inside Whitey Bulger's Irish Mob (32 page)

He looked a little anxious, like he had something on his mind, but I told him Jimmy wasn’t around. When he asked for Stevie, I told him he wasn’t around, either. We made some small talk before he said, “Then I’ve got to talk to you.”

The two of us headed down to the walk-in beer chest and walked inside. This was the perfect place for a private conversation since it would be hard to bug because of the dampness, along with the humming of the fans and the whirring noise of the compressors. And we would also be out of sight of anybody hanging around down there.

“The indictments are imminent,” he told me as soon as I closed the door to the chest. That wasn’t exactly a surprise. We’d known for months that a grand jury had been sitting in Worcester considering the extortion of the Jewish bookmakers, like Chico Krantz and Jimmy Katz, who were paying rent, another word for protection money, to Jimmy and Stevie. We knew the indictments would be for bookmaking, extortion, gambling, and money laundering. “They’re trying to put them all together over the holidays,” Connolly continued. “That way they can pinch them all at once.”

That made sense. Stevie would be at his mother’s and Jimmy at Theresa’s over the holidays. They could scoop them both up, and whoever else might be around visiting their families, on the same night. Obviously, they were trying to put whoever else was named in the indictments in position over the holidays and arrest them. But I wasn’t certain exactly who the others might be.

And I wasn’t worried about my involvement in the case, since I had nothing to do with the Jewish bookmakers. I also knew that for the past year or two, Jimmy and Stevie had been receiving weekly updates about what was going on with the grand jury, which had already received a couple of extensions. They knew what people were saying there from their sources in law enforcement, as well as from people who had been summoned there. They’d held the grand jury out in Worcester to try and cut down on leaks, but it wasn’t working. In all the information they were getting, my name had never been mentioned. Jimmy knew the whole cast of characters involved, the bookmakers and everyone else the grand jury was targeting, as well as the witnesses they were calling in. And he’d been maintaining a lower profile than before. Normally, Jimmy was pretty elusive, but he’d been even more so for the past year and a half. He’d also been taking more trips than usual, getting out of town when the heat was turned up.

In 1993 and 1994, before the pinches came down, Stevie and Jimmy were traveling through the French and Italian Riviera. The two of them traveled all over Europe, sometimes separating for a while. They’d be gone two or three weeks at a time. Sometimes they took girls; sometimes just the two of them went. They would rent cars and travel all through Europe. It was more preparation than anything, getting ready for another life. They didn’t ask me to go, not that I would have wanted to.

Jimmy had prepared for the run for years. He’d established a whole other person, Thomas Baxter, with a complete ID and credit cards in that name. He’d even joined associations under Baxter’s name, building an entire portfolio on the guy. He’d always said you have to be ready to take off on short notice. And he was.

Stevie, however, was, as usual, all over the place. He wasn’t curtailing any of his activities or anything. Over the past two years, Jimmy had been especially upset with Stevie’s traveling back and forth to Cambridge and Brookline, meeting with Frank Salemme at the Busy Bee restaurant. Frankie went back to the 1960s with Stevie and had made a successful bid in the late 1980s to take over the New England Mafia. Recently, however, Frankie had taken off after he and his son got indicted for some scam in Hollywood on a movie production. But for years before Frankie went on the lam, Stevie had headed to the other side of town during the day and then came back over to meet with us in Southie around four-thirty in the afternoon.

Jimmy kept saying, “What are you doing? You’re over there with him and then you come over to us. You make it look like one big gang and you’re the liaison between Frankie and us. You’re making us one big target.”

“No way, Jimmy,” Stevie said. “I’m just staying on top of things.”

“Are you making money with this guy?” Jimmy asked him. “Do you have anything going with him?”

“No,” Stevie said.

“Then why are you over there?” Jimmy asked.

“We’re friends,” Stevie told him.

“Yeah, well, they’re getting pictures of you and Frankie together, and then the feds are taking pictures of you leaving and meeting with us here,” Jimmy said.

But it had been useless for Jimmy to talk to Stevie. He continued moving around, not changing any of his activities just because a grand jury was investigating him. Stevie wasn’t as keenly attuned to the law as the two of us were. Many times they were on him for days and he didn’t have a clue.

One October afternoon in 1994, a few months before the indictments, Stevie picked me up at the variety store just to take a ride. I hopped into the car with him, and we drove downtown toward Andrew Square and took a left onto Boston Street. As we did, I turned the visor down so I could look in the mirror and immediately picked up four cars following us: a van, a Trans Am, a red Camaro, and a Ford LTD. We hadn’t gone more than three blocks from the store when I picked up the law behind us. As we pulled into a gas station on Columbia Road, two of the cars started to pull over, one across the street from us, one behind us, while the other two kept circling up and down the block.

“Look at those cars, Stevie,” I said as I pointed out all four to him.

“Holy shit,” he said. “I didn’t see one of them. You have good eyes.”

I said nothing. He drove me back to the store. I got out.

“Only four people in the FBI office know about these indictments,” Connolly went on to tell me that December afternoon in the beer chest. He’d heard it from Dennis O’Callahan, the SAC, or Supervising Agent in Charge, of the Boston office. “So, where are Stevie and Jimmy?”

After I talked to Connolly for a while to make sure I had it right, I told him I’d beep Jimmy and try to get hold of him. By then it was three-thirty. When Connolly left, I went next door to the variety store and beeped Jimmy. He called me back a couple of minutes later and told me he was going shopping with Theresa. I told him to swing by and pick me up. In a few minutes, he picked me up in his blue Ford LTD and I got into the back seat and the three of us drove to Neiman Marcus in Copley Plaza. Always aware the car might be bugged, I didn’t say a word about the indictments or Connolly while we were in the car.

When we got to Copley Plaza, Jimmy told Theresa he was going to talk to me. She stood by the entrance to Neiman Marcus while Jimmy and I walked toward the back of the car, which he had parked illegally at the sidewalk. I told him exactly what Connolly had told me. There was no change in his facial expressions as I explained how O’Callahan had told Connolly that the feds had plans to arrest him and Stevie over the holidays. And how only four people in the FBI office knew that.

“Have you gotten hold of Stevie yet?” he asked me and I told him no, that he was the first one I’d called. He said he’d call Stevie and I should, too. Then he called over to Theresa, who was still standing in front of Neiman Marcus. The two of them talked privately for a few minutes, and then the three of us drove off and he dropped me off at Preble Street near the variety store. “I’ll call you later,” he said before the two of them took off, and I went into the store. I realized he might be gone for a while. Things were changing.

Around five-thirty, Stevie finally showed up at the variety store. He looked the same as always, black leather jacket, black gloves, dungarees. I told him the same thing I’d told Jimmy. Jimmy hadn’t reached him, so it was the first time he’d heard about it. I also told him that Jimmy had already gone. Stevie didn’t seem panicked. “My guy is right on top of it,” he told me. “I’ll be hearing from him.” He left the store, assuring me he had plenty of time. I repeated that only four people knew and that maybe his guy wasn’t one of them.

A week later, Stevie came back in the store and I said to him, “What are you doing? Stevie, you’ve got to take off.”

“My guy is right on top of it,” he told me again.

“Stevie, I told you there are only four people who know. Take off for a couple of weeks. If anything comes down, you’ve got a head start. If nothing happens, you had a vacation.”

Stevie got a little upset, and we started arguing. He kept telling me his guy knew everything and I was telling him there were only four people who knew. Finally he said he had a couple of things to do and then he would take off.

I heard nothing from Jimmy that week or the next, but I felt more interest in me, obviously, since I was the only one left in South Boston. I continued doing my loan-sharking and my usual business activities, but there was no ignoring the stronger presence of the law. Before the indictments, Jimmy and I had always joked about FBI agent John Gamel, a former Worcester weatherman, six-eight, with black hair, thick glasses with oversized black rims, and a mustache, a real geeky kind of guy who always wore the same brown trench coat and tried to blend into a crowd. But he looked like a huge bookworm, a big goof. At Castle Island, Jimmy and I would be watching him and laughing because he stood out like a giraffe walking among people.

We also knew that since the grand jury had first been convened, they had round-the-clock surveillance on us. There were three different teams, each one working eight hours on us. We got to know lots of their faces. It didn’t matter how many different cars they drove, we remembered their faces. South Boston is a small community, so it wasn’t that hard to spot the undercover cops. People overestimate the law. They figure that once they’re on you, you can’t do anything. But that’s not true. It’s not that they’re so great at what they do, it’s just that the criminals can be lazy at what they do. And if a criminal makes one mistake, he’s gone. Most criminals don’t put enough effort into not being caught. The law can make a thousand mistakes, and they still get their check every week. And time is always on their side. They have all the time in the world.

But I’d gotten really good at losing the law whenever I wanted to. I’d hop on the T, go one or two stops, then hop on another train and go a few more stops before getting off and getting into a waiting car. Or I’d make my way through the projects on foot, snake through a few buildings and tunnels, come out the other side, and jump into a car I’d parked there earlier. Or I would drive down a one-way street, hop out, and have another car waiting. When they had a plane on me, I would drive to Logan Airport where there was restricted airspace and their plane couldn’t follow me.

Sometimes Jimmy and I would be flying down the highway in the left high-speed lane, and we’d suddenly swing over three lanes and fly off an exit at high speed. Other times, we’d be in the right lane on the highway, going 25 miles per hour. Anyone who is behind you who is not following you would get upset and swing by and pass you. But the law would slow down and try and stay behind you at a distance. Or they’d get ahead of you and wait at a rest area for you to pass. Those were just things we learned over the years. Like how the law would use magnets to try to put transmitters underneath the car’s bumper, sort of an early form of LoJack. But we’d always check the bumpers and find them. Then we’d take out the battery and leave the empty transmitter in place there. When I think about all the work Jimmy and I put into not getting caught, I can barely imagine how much money we could have made legitimately, probably with a lot less effort. But with Jimmy gone, I wasn’t curtailing my activities, and was basically living the same life, although without his presence. But no matter where I went, I felt the presence of the law.

On Thursday night, January 5, 1995, I was down at the L Street Tavern, which my friend Bobby Cox owned, playing whist with some friends. This was the place used for
Good Will Hunting,
where Matt Damon always hung around. In the movie, Damon had the middle booth. But the end booth was my booth, right next to the jukebox. When I walked in, anyone sitting there would get up so my friends and I could play cards at our designated card table. Anyhow, that night, Stevie’s younger brother Michael walked through the door and motioned to me. As the two of us walked outside together, he told me, “They just pinched Stevie.”

“What’s he doing still around, Mikey?” I asked him. “I told him to take off two weeks ago.”

“I know, I know,” Michael said.

“Jesus, what was he thinking?” I said. “He should have taken off.”

“I know, I know,” Michael kept repeating.

When I started to look around, all I could see were all sorts of new cars driving around. The faces in the cars were all staring at me as the undercover agents kept circling the bar. It was an even stronger presence than I’d had in the past two weeks since Jimmy took off. “Mikey, you brought the law with you,” I told him as I started to point out the circling cars to him. “Just look at them. I’ll catch you later.”

I walked into the bar, grabbed my jacket, and walked out the side door. A friend met me at L and Seventh streets and gave me a ride to another friend’s place. I wanted to get hold of Jimmy and let him know what was happening. I hadn’t had any reason to contact him for the past two weeks, but now I did. I kept beeping him from my friend’s apartment in Southie at G and Broadway, and finally, around midnight, he called me back. “How you doing?” he asked me.

“Fine,” I said, “but they just pinched Stevie. And red’s all around.” Red was the universal warning sign for danger. When we used it, it meant the law was around. “And they’re looking for someone else.”

“I heard it on the radio,” he told me. “I just got back to Massachusetts, but now I’m making a U-turn. I was coming back tonight.” He was probably taking Theresa home for a visit. We talked for a couple of minutes about nothing much and then he said, “Call you later,” and he was gone.

As it turned out, Stevie was actually indicted on Monday January 9. He’d been arrested on Thursday night on a complaint, and was charged with something just to hold him and prevent his taking off till the indictment was handed down. On January 9, the indictment came down for Jimmy, too, as well as for six others, including Bobby DeLuca, Jimmy and Johnny Martorano, Frankie Salemme and Frankie Salemme Jr., and George Kaufman. Now that he’d been indicted for racketeering, extortion, money laundering, and gambling, Jimmy was officially wanted and in the wind. He was gone.