For the next forty-eight hours we raced around Boston investigating reports of sightings of Bulger and Salemme, but we didn’t find a trace of either of them. By Monday, it was clear they were gone. If it had been hard to find them in Boston, it would be nearly impossible to find them anywhere else. Whitey had plenty of money, even more ingenuity, and a powerful reason to disappear. He could have gone to New York, or farther down the coast, or to the other side of the globe. Nothing was beyond the realm of possibility.
It was beyond frustrating. For years, we’d busted our asses to get Whitey and now we’d reached out and grabbed only air. The most vicious criminal in Boston’s history, and the FBI had let him go free. It was insanity. If I hadn’t known better, I would have taken the elevator to the eleventh floor of the McCormack Building, charged into Quinn’s office, and had it out with him.
But I knew that wasn’t the way. In this business, like most businesses, you have to stay cool. I carried the fury with me for a few days, but inside. If I let it out, I’d be the problem. That was what the feds wanted: to infuriate you, and then, if you should actually get mad, wheel on you for being unprofessional, claim you are impossible to work with, and push you off a cliff. I might be burning inside, but I was going to make like I understood entirely why the FBI had let a psychopathic killer go. Anybody would.
Even though I did my best to act the same, everything changed for me with the FBI. No longer would I give the feds the benefit of the doubt on anything. Whatever they said, I’d believe the truth was anything but that, unless I had solid proof otherwise. No more “innocent mistakes.” To hell with that. There had been way too many examples. The mistakes were on purpose, and the purpose was to kill off our investigation.
Now, why? How could the FBI possibly benefit from that? It obviously didn’t help the Bureau’s image to obstruct the efforts of another law enforcement agency, especially not one that it had joined up with, and certainly not in an effort to put away the most terrifying mobster in Boston’s history. And for what?
Well, the answer was inescapable. The FBI was trying to protect Whitey Bulger. That was more important than anything else, and it influenced everything the feds did, whether it meant exposing our stakeouts or revealing our wiretaps or lying to us about all of it. But why? Why protect Bulger, of all people? Again, the answer was staring me in the face. It had hung over the FBI for years; it had even been hinted at in a Boston Globe article a few years back claiming that Bulger had a “special relationship” with the FBI. And that was code for only one thing.
Whitey Bulger was an FBI informant, and Flemmi was, too. Had to be. It was the only thing that made sense. The FBI had informants everywhere; the mob landscape was thick with them. Why not Whitey and Flemmi? They were feeding the FBI information, probably in exchange for protection from prosecution for their crimes. Hence Charlie Gianturco’s remark about “This thing of ours.” It was a joint venture. The FBI and Bulger and Flemmi. One hand washed the other. Partners in crime. Call it whatever you liked. It was lunacy, but it was there, as obvious as it was astounding.
It didn’t really make sense on any level. Everyone in law enforcement knows that when you enlist an informant, you never take the top guy. Ever. Make the top guy an informant and you’ve given him superpowers—you’ve made him invulnerable to prosecution, and, to the extent you share inside information with him, you’ve made him almost omniscient besides. So you have taken the most dangerous criminal you know, and made him a whole lot more dangerous. If the idea is to reduce crime, this is a ridiculous way to go about it. No, you want to inform up, not down, since down isn’t worth it, and there are plenty of better ways to get down. And, for that matter, you’ll never get good information sideways either about the Mafia, for example. High-level informants keep that information for themselves, and use it for leverage. Aren’t the kingpins likely to know more about crime? Yes. But they won’t tell you. They are likely to receive far more information from you than they give you back, and they’ll enjoy the protection to boot. Worse for the FBI, once an informant like Whitey starts committing serious, unforgivable crimes like murder, and the FBI has helped hide them, then Whitey has the FBI as a buddy for life, for the feds can’t walk away from a relationship they have to conceal. The FBI might as well be a coconspirator, as guilty as the triggerman. And each new crime gives it one more reason to protect Whitey from prosecution.
In its mounting desperation, the FBI had come through for Whitey big-time, by tipping him off to our arrest. But that was just the latest favor. The informant status was why neither he nor Flemmi had ever been arrested for anything since 1965, why all investigations against them came to nothing, and why the feds were determined that ours wouldn’t come to anything either. The FBI had placed Whitey and Flemmi inside a zone of safety. They could touch you, but you could never touch them.
For the feds, Whitey had changed everything—and he changed everything for us, too. It was like he had tipped over the McCormack Building where the FBI had its offices, so that nobody there knew anymore which way was up. I can’t imagine that Quinn wanted to lie to me, over and over, but he had to. I doubt he and his colleagues wanted to knock out our wiretaps, foil our surveillance, and all the rest. Truth didn’t matter anymore; it was all about self-protection. The FBI was in too deep to do it any other way. If the facts got out, the Bureau would never be the same.
Deep as the FBI was in, it had just gone deeper still. I knew what had happened. Someone deep in the Bureau had tipped Bulger off to the coming arrests. Just like back in September. All three had fled then, but this time only Whitey had gotten out scot-free. Salemme had wriggled free, but Flemmi waited too long.
Still, it was astounding to think of Bulger as a snitch. That was yet another consequence of his reputation as a vicious, bloodthirsty killer: everyone agreed with whatever he said. Who’d ever argue? Loyalty may not be pervasive in the mob, but everyone hates rats, and no one more than Bulger. He feasted on them. Whether this was because Bulger didn’t really think of himself as one, or because he wanted to show he couldn’t be one, he was infuriated by anyone who ratted on him.
And he wanted to get that word out. Everyone seemed to know the story of the mob-connected deckhand, John McIntyre, who Whitey tortured beyond endurance for telling the DEA, Customs, and the Quincy police about a cache of weapons that Whitey’d sent the rebels in Northern Ireland. (Whitey had a soft spot for Irish militants.) Acting on a tip, Irish authorities intercepted the weapons off the Irish coast. The leak drove Whitey into a further frenzy when thirty-six tons of his marijuana were seized by Customs as the shipment entered Boston Harbor. Bulger, Flemmi, and Weeks were supposed to get $1 million each from the proceeds.
The DEA was one of the law-enforcement agencies that had flipped McIntyre to get the information about the shipment. No one knew how Whitey figured out it was McIntyre. Now it’s obvious—DEA to FBI to Whitey. Then it was a complete mystery.
A few weeks later, McIntyre was invited to a house in Southie for a party. He arrived at the door with a case of beer under his arm, and pressed the buzzer. But there was no party. There was only Whitey Bulger, ready for him with some chains, a heavy rope, and a pair of handcuffs. He threw McIntyre down into a chair, chained him tight to the chair, and cuffed his wrists behind the chair back. Then he leaned in, close enough that McIntyre must have smelled Whitey’s breath. “I know you’re a snitch, you piece of shit,” he told McIntyre. He teased McIntyre with the thought that maybe he’d let him off with a one-way ticket to South America. But then he reconsidered. He had a better idea, and brought out the rope. He looped it around McIntyre’s neck and slowly pulled it tight. McIntyre kicked and bucked in his chair, straining for air. His face turned beet red as he struggled in agony. But he would not die. Hard as Whitey squeezed, McIntyre managed to draw in a little air and hang on. Finally Whitey relaxed his grip, pulled out a revolver, and cocked it in front of McIntyre’s eyes. He bent down to whisper to him in his raspy voice, “Do you want me to shoot you in the head?”
“Yes, please,” McIntyre mumbled, his eyelids fluttering in distress.
Whitey obliged. The bullet knocked McIntyre’s chair back onto the floor, but somehow didn’t kill him. So Whitey bent down and fired several more rounds point-blank into McIntrye’s face.
Then he took a pair of pliers and a knife, reached deep into the back of McIntyre’s mouth, grabbed his tongue tight, and ripped it out from the back of his throat.
That’s what Whitey thought of informers.
Of course, the FBI must have known of this crime, too, but it never said a word.
I choked down my anger about the FBI on this truth: having Whitey off the streets was almost as good as having him in custody. He wouldn’t be around to scare off anyone who wanted to come forth with information about him. Every day that the rumors spread, Whitey was less a criminal mastermind and more a snitch. And the rats would start lining up to return the favor. And I was sure the revelations would add up, way beyond the racketeering and bookmaking we had him for, and deep into drug dealing, extortion, and murder. If we could make those charges stick, Whitey was gone forever. And in the meantime, Boston had one less mobster roaming the streets.
That was my thought, but that wasn’t how my guys saw it. They wanted me to go straight at the FBI for what it had done. Several of the guys came into my office to tell me so.
“I know, I know. I feel just like you do. But I keep telling you guys. Now is not the time. We don’t have the manpower right now. We’ve got to stick to the plan. We’ve got to stay focused. Just wait, OK? More and more stuff will come out on Whitey and Stevie, and the FBI will have to come clean eventually.”
They weren’t buying it, and I couldn’t say I blamed them. But it was the truth. We had to be patient, and we had to wait. We had no choice. But one thing was true. With Flemmi in a holding cell right now, pondering his choices, I didn’t want to be the FBI. Still, my health wasn’t so great, slowing me down to half speed some days. And my guys were struggling, too. Chuck Hanko had called it quits, burned out by the long hours, the stress, and the craziness with the FBI. Mark Caponette would be able to handle the tech stuff, so we wouldn’t lose too much there. The versatile John Cahill soon followed suit. I could tell that some of the others were thinking there had to be an easier way to make a living. And if they weren’t making good money, at least they should have the satisfaction of seeing Whitey in handcuffs, a state trooper on either side holding his arms. I tried to bring in more fresh blood, but this kind of work requires a certain personality, and often that was difficult to find.