Early on Wednesday, January 4, 1995, Fred Wyshak gave me the call. “We’ve got the warrants,” he said. It was go. Get Whitey, Flemmi, and Salemme. I was in Framingham at the time. “Hey, Pat, let’s go!” I shouted up the hall to Greaney. Then I called Gale and Patty. They were out on the street, doing Flemmi. “It’s now. We’ve got warrants. You got him?”
“He’s slipped us,” Gale told me. She was with Patty in the North End. “We’ll get him, Tommy,” they radioed back. “Don’t worry. He’s here someplace.”
By now Scanlan and Johnson were headed to Florida, and I’d had to put a couple of young troopers on Salemme instead. Best I could do. The rest of the unit—Tutungian, Duffy, and the rest—were already out on the street. Then we went out to the parking lot, our breath like smoke in the icy January air. We brought along Lieutenant Kevin Horton, for an extra pair of eyes—in charge of catching violent fugitives, he had the desk next to me at SSS—and the three of us jumped into Pat’s Crown Victoria. With Pat at the wheel, I rode shotgun so I could work the radio and try to coordinate everybody. It was like a military operation, a convoy in strange territory. We roared down the turnpike into Boston, and then, with Patty and Gale hovering in the North End, we fanned out to the other places we knew Flemmi liked to go.
A guy like Flemmi doesn’t jump out at you. Mid-fifties, medium height, stocky, dark hair, severe looking. There must have been thousands of middle-aged men in Boston just like him. Lately, though, Flemmi had been going with a pretty Asian girl who’d help us make him if it came to that. Flemmi’d been living in Milton in a big house with a tennis court in the back. He’d shared it for years with a harsh-looking brunette named Marion Hussey, but he’d always had a girl on the side, starting with that teenager Debbie Davis, the one who disappeared later at twenty-six. Like her, Flemmi’s girls since had always been slim and pretty, and much younger than he was. Patty and Gale had been shadowing Flemmi for a while, and they had the Asian pegged at about twenty-five. “She doesn’t usually show until evening,” Patty had reminded me on the radio. “And he doesn’t sleep in.”
We knew their hangouts, but we didn’t know which one they’d hit today. Tutungian and Doherty hunted for Flemmi at some of Whitey’s places in Southie, and we’d try Milton, a nice suburb south on 93, about the last place you’d expect to find a mobster. People are creatures of habit, and mobsters are no different. They go someplace once, they’ll be likely to go there again. But now we tried the usual places and got nothing. No action at Flemmi’s house in Milton. No sign of his car there either.
We toured through the North End, working our way down Hanover—colorfully lit for the season—and some of the side streets, then around again. Then it was back to Milton again, and around once more.
Nothing.
That first day came and went. I returned late to Worcester that night. Dead tired, I crawled into bed beside my wife, but I scarcely slept. I tried to keep my breathing smooth. My mind was still in Boston, trying to pull Flemmi’s face out of the dark.
Quinn assured me he had Whitey. His man, Gamel, was clamped down on him. I worried about that, of course. By now, I’d realized that the truth and what the FBI told me didn’t have much to do with each other. I concentrated on our own search. The longer it took to grab Flemmi, the less likely it was that the secret would hold. Where was he? Was he still around? We all felt increasingly edgy when we went out to search the same places, only to get the same results. Had he gotten word, and left?
If you’re trying to find someone in a city like Boston, you have to make choices. We concentrated on the most promising spots, and we were thorough. We positioned our search cars so we could see everyone coming and going—without anyone seeing us. Sometimes you can feel when you’re getting close, before you know just why. I had a good feeling that afternoon that we were finally on the scent.
Just then we got a call from the FBI. “We’ve lost Salemme. We had him, and now we don’t. Can you help us out here?”
“Jesus,” I said. “OK.” We depended on the feds to take the lead. They’d acted like they were all over him, and they’d made a big deal of deploying a surveillance plane for this, plus an elite surveillance team.
When the feds told me where they’d last seen him, near the waterfront in South Boston, I knew where he was going. To Eastern Pier Seafoods, a restaurant he liked by the waterfront. It was a big place in the middle of a parking lot. I swung in there, and sure enough. Right in front of the restaurant, a big, obvious guy talking to a younger man who looked dangerously thin, almost gaunt. I knew who that was, too: his son, Frank Jr. We knew from intercepts that Junior had contracted AIDS—he claimed from a prostitute, but who knows? He didn’t have long to live. If Frank Sr. had any idea that the arrest warrants were coming, this would make for a pretty heavy good-bye.
I called in the location to my guys, who passed it on to the FBI surveillance team, and then returned to the hunt for Flemmi. We were at it the rest of the afternoon until it started to get dark around five, five-thirty. Time was running out. I couldn’t let this go another day. I checked in with everyone, and we decided to concentrate on a restaurant called Schooner’s, down by Faneuil Hall, the tourist hangout. It was a hunch, but I’ve learned to trust hunches. I had reasons: it was owned by Stephen Hussey, the son of that longtime live-in of Flemmi’s, Marion Hussey. Stephen was Debbie’s brother. Debbie was virtually Flemmi’s stepdaughter; he had known her nearly since infancy and he’d assaulted her when she was a child, then started in on an affair with her when she was in her teens. She’d started to do drugs, then danced in the Combat Zone, and then, at twenty six, she was gone. Still, Flemmi remained tight with her brother, and Schooner’s was about his favorite hangout. Stephen had been rehabbing the place, trying to turn it into something, and the work was finally done. I guessed that, if Flemmi was planning to run, he’d stop by to see Stephen there first.
Patty and Gale were watching from the sidewalk, trying to stay warm, and Doherty and Tutungian watched the place from the other side in their car. Greaney, Horton, and I hovered in the North End, maybe a quarter of a mile away, checking around there, just in case.
“Anything?” I asked Patty.
“Not yet. Lotta people around, though. Looks like things are heating up.”
“John?”
“Nothing here. We’ve got the side door, though, and an angle on the front.”
“Well, hold, guys. Let’s give it some time.”
So much of surveillance is just waiting, but we were all getting frustrated.
A little after six, Duffy radioed that he wanted to pack it in. “Nothing happening here. We’re wrapping up.”
“Negative, Duff. This is our best shot. Hang in.”
A little before seven, Patty called me by radio. “We think we see him.” Excitement in her voice, but she was trying to tamp it down. “Front door, Schooner’s. Baseball cap, Asian with him. Anyone confirm?”
“Out front?” Doherty asked.
“Affirmative.”
“Oh, yeah. That’s him.” It was Patty Gillen.
Doherty and Tutungian followed Flemmi and the girl back to a side street where they’d parked Flemmi’s white Honda. He unlocked the car, opened the side door for the girl, then swung around to climb into the driver’s side. That’s when Doherty and Tutungian roared up, pinned the Honda in place, and then jumped out with their guns drawn, pointing them two-handed at Flemmi. Doherty screamed, “DEA! Steve Flemmi, do not move! Stay right where you are!” And the two of them closed in on the car. Flemmi dived under the dashboard, but the girl stayed frozen in her seat. Danny rushed the car, ripped open the door, and thrust his gun inside.
“Steve Flemmi, you are under arrest. Put your hands up on the dashboard. Now. Put them where I can see them.”
Doherty pressed the point of the gun up hard against Flemmi’s temple. “Hands on the dashboard,” he repeated. “Or I’ll blow your fucking head off. Now! OK, out of the car, Stevie. Real slow and easy. Any quick move and you’re dead.” He kept his gun pressed tight against Flemmi’s head to let him know he meant it.
On the other side of the car, the Asian girl could barely breathe. Tutungian was there, and, his gun on her, he got her out and patted her down.
“Hey, guys, c’mon,” Flemmi said when he was against the car, like he could talk his way out of it. “C’mon now. What’s going on here? Hey!” Danny paid no attention, snapping the cuffs shut tight.
Flemmi spread his legs and Doherty patted him down. He pulled out a hunting knife Flemmi had tucked under his belt and a can of Mace.
As soon as Doherty had stuffed Flemmi into the backseat of his car, he called me.
“We got him,” Doherty said.
“Great work.”
The FBI had given Salemme to its Special Operations Group. Sometime after I’d provided Salemme’s location, the feds lost him again. They assured me their surveillance plane would pick him up, but that’s not so easy in the dark, and their cars didn’t do any better, and Frank Salemme disappeared into the last of the rush hour traffic.
Then there was Whitey. Although the FBI was supposed to move on Whitey the moment we had Flemmi, when I arrived at the South Boston address they gave me for the arrest team, I found no action at all. John Gamel was sitting in his car with a couple of other agents on Silver Street, a row of vinyl-sided houses, many of them still strung with Christmas lights, not far from the center of the neighborhood. If Gamel was trying to look inconspicuous, he wasn’t doing a very good job. At six-six, he was way too big for his FBI-issue sedan, and he had that unforgettable mustache, and it looked like the three of them had been sitting there for hours.
I tapped on his window, and he rolled it down.
“What are you doing?”
“Watching that house up there.” He nodded toward a two-story house a few numbers up the narrow street. It still had a wreath and some reindeer out front.
“Why?”
“It’s his girlfriend’s, Theresa Stanley.”
“You sure? Doesn’t look like it. I thought her house was farther down.”
“That’s our information. We’ve had it under surveillance.”
“So why are you waiting? We’ve got Flemmi. Let’s go.”
He stepped out of the car, and together we approached the house. Most of my team had gathered by now, but I had the rest of them stay back on the sidewalk with a couple of the FBI agents, to make sure Whitey didn’t slip out the side while we went in the front. Gamel and I went up the steps together. For something like this, you need to be prepared, but you don’t want to overdo it by sticking a gun in someone’s face. I pressed the bell.
Nothing happened—and then a hallway light switched on. Not what Whitey would do, surely. Finally, the door swung open and an elderly woman stood before me. Not Theresa Stanley. And the taller man beside her wasn’t Whitey either. I introduced Gamel and me.
“We have a warrant to search the house for Whitey Bulger,” I told her.
“This house?” The woman looked startled.
“Isn’t this the home of Theresa Stanley?”
“Oh, no, officers. Hers is down the street.” She stepped out onto the landing, and pointed. “There. That’s hers. Four doors down.”
We still glanced around inside for a moment and saw that the woman was obviously telling us the truth. As we left the house, I shot Gamel a look.
At Stanley’s house, there were no Christmas lights, and all the windows were dark. By now, seeing all the law enforcement officials about, some neighbors had crowded onto the street. This time, Gamel and I positioned ourselves on either side of the door to have some protection in case Whitey burst out, guns blazing. I pressed the buzzer. I could hear it chime inside, but no lights came on. I tried again but got nothing.
We stepped around to the rear of the house and found a back door. Tutungian went back to his car to get out a battering ram from the trunk. Tutungian drove it into the door, and smashed the door in. I stepped inside, my gun out. “State Police!” I shouted. “We’re here to exercise a warrant on Whitey Bulger. Whitey, if you are in here, come out now.” I added that anyone who assisted him would be subject to arrest as well. The house remained silent, except for the ticking of a clock on the wall. No one emerged from the shadows.
Inside, I snapped on the lights and found a spare kitchen, which gave way to a bleak hall. There were four or five of us, and, guns out, we went slowly through the house, room by room, flipping on lights, checking behind couches, under beds, and in closets. We saw no sign of anyone, and, stopping periodically to listen, we heard nothing.
There was a crawl space by the stairs. We peered deep inside with a flashlight, but found nothing except boxes and old clothes. I ventured downstairs into the dark basement, looked into corners, looked behind the furnace. Nothing.
The only hint of Whitey was a picture of him on the mantelpiece. He is standing with Stanley by the sea someplace. He is glowering at the camera. She is smiling.
And this was where the feds were convinced they’d find Whitey? If Gamel felt any embarrassment, he didn’t show it.
When I came out of the house, lights were on and up and down the street, and along the sidewalk, people were gathering, talking eagerly among themselves. A TV reporter, Ron Golobin, had gotten word of the Flemmi arrest and was set to run with it on the eleven o’clock news. That was still fifteen minutes away, but the station had run a teaser at ten-thirty, and it seemed that everyone in Southie had gotten word. When I got back into my car, it was like someone had thrown on the master switch for all of South Boston. Lights came on, traffic picked up, the bars filled up, and the sidewalks were jammed with people going in all directions.
Desperate to make the most of our last chance, we rushed over to a town house in Quincy, the home of Whitey’s other girlfriend, Catherine Greig. She didn’t show much delicacy. As we pulled into her driveway, she emerged from her front door in a heavy coat to meet us on the front steps. A sturdy blonde, she crossed her arms across her chest and spread her legs slightly to let us know she was in charge. Just as Whitey would have. Then she demanded to know if we had a warrant to search her house. When we said we didn’t, she threw us off her property. “Go fuck yourselves,” she said.
That was where our last best chance to arrest Whitey Bulger ended.
Duffy called me on the radio as soon as I got back into the car. “You won’t believe it,” he said.
“What?”
“The Feds. Jesus Christ. What they do.”
“What?”
When the feds heard about the arrest of Flemmi, they’d rushed to the scene, and they planned to take Flemmi to the FBI office downtown for booking. Duffy and Decaire had hurried to provide backup, and Duffy checked with me while I was racing to South Boston to grab Whitey, and I thought screw it. I told Duffy, “Go ahead.” So long as Flemmi was in custody, I didn’t care who held him. We needed to concentrate on Bulger.
Now Duffy was calling me to say that Quinn wanted to keep Flemmi, not just book him.
“That’s ridiculous,” I told Duff. “They don’t even have a facility.”
“That’s what I told him, but they worked out some deal with Braintree PD.”
So I called Quinn and asked him what the hell was going on.
“We’re taking Flemmi into custody in Braintree,” he repeated, as if this were fact.
“Ed, no. Sorry, but we arrested him, we have a facility of our own in Framingham, we’ll be taking him there, and that is all there is to it.”
For once, Quinn had nothing to say back, so that’s how we left it.
I called Duffy back, and told him to take Flemmi to Framingham.
“Will do,” he said. I could hear the relief in his voice.
A little later he called back. “There’s something else, Tommy.”
“And what’s that?” Duffy didn’t usually require any encouragement, so I knew this was troubling him. It turned out that while the FBI had Flemmi, Duffy saw an agent, Charlie Gianturco, take him aside and speak quietly to him. Now, Charlie was the brother of Nick Gianturco, my FBI buddy who worked with me on the Oreto and Naimovich cases. I’d seen Charlie around, but I’d never warmed to him. Nick had been fun for a while, but Charlie struck me as too slick.
“You’ll never guess what I heard Charlie say,” Duff told me.
“What?”
“He was there with Flemmi in the holding area they have. Just the two of them, off to one side. Charlie was quietly speaking to him, and this is an exact quote. ‘This thing of ours, Stevie, it is no more.’” He let me think about that for a second. “This thing of ours, Tommy. That’s La Cosa Nostra. That’s like what it means.”
“Yeah, I know.”
“So what do you make of it?”
“I have no idea.” But of course I did. It was too much to say. Gianturco and Flemmi, they had a bond of some kind. It wasn’t just the words but the way he spoke them. If Gianturco was in that tight with Flemmi, he’d have to be in with Whitey, too. Tighter than he would ever be with us, in any case. Now I had to wonder: Just how deep was the FBI in with the mob?