In October 1990, I got a call from Colonel Charles Henderson, the new superintendent of the entire State Police. He said he had a problem, and he needed my help.
“And what’s that?”
“It’s about my old unit,” he said. The Special Services Section that had been created when Henderson’s original OC group had merged with Mattioli’s version, the Intelligence Unit that I’d been part of. “It’s been falling apart, and I need to pull it back together.”
I’d heard that there’d been some lingering tension between Henderson’s people and Mattioli’s, like what went on with Naimovich, and that morale had suffered. The SSS used to be an elite unit and a choice assignment, but now it was having trouble attracting the people Henderson needed to make it work.
“It needs a new commander, somebody experienced who can pull the thing back together.” He paused for a second. “I’d like you to do that for me,” he said.
“Wait—me?” I’d been out of it so long, I had trouble picturing this.
“You’d be perfect.”
Still, I was thinking: hell no. I was really happy with what I was doing, I loved being close to home, and I was sick of all the BS with the FBI.
“I’m sorry, Colonel, but I’m afraid I am going to have to decline,” I told him.
There was silence on the line for a moment. “Tommy, you don’t understand,” Colonel Henderson corrected me. “You can’t decline. This is happening. We need you to do this.”
“Oh.” It was an order. A knot formed in my stomach. “I see. OK. Right.”
“Good. Now the question is: what would you like to do?”
I didn’t want to go back. But when I started to think about what I might like to do at SSS, my thoughts returned to where they’d been a few years before when Mattioli asked me the same question. It was the only thing that made sense.
“I’d like to get Whitey Bulger,” I told him. “Him and Steve Flemmi.”
There was a long pause on the line while Henderson chewed on that. “Well,” he said finally. “That’s ambitious.”
“Sir. It’s past time.”
“That is true enough.”
“So—that’s OK with you, Colonel? Bulger and Flemmi? You’ll back me on that?”
“Yes,” he said. “We have a deal. Do it.”