Black Mass: The Irish Mob, the Boston FBI, and a Devil's Deal Read Online Free PDF Page A

obvious reasons, such a deal had proven advantageous for Flemmi. He also liked how Rico did not treat him like some kind of lowlife gangster. Rico wasn’t the pompous G-man ready to spray the room with disinfectant immediately after he’d left. He was more like a friend and an equal. “It was a partnership, I believe,” said Flemmi.
    Eventually the criminal charges against Flemmi were dropped, after key witnesses recanted, and in May 1974 Flemmi was able to end his fugitive life and return to Boston. With the help of the FBI, he’d survived the gang wars and outlasted the murder and car bombing charges. But Flemmi had no intention of going straight. Once back in Boston he’d hooked up with Howie Winter and gone back to what he knew best. And now he was standing alongside Whitey Bulger at Marshall Motors. “Should I meet him?” Bulger had asked. Flemmi thought for a moment. He had been back less than a year, and it was obvious to him that things were in flux. It was clear that some new arrangement was in the works. He’d even met on his own with Dennis Condon, a short meeting at a coffee shop where he was introduced to John Connolly. Flemmi regarded all the huddling as a kind of “transition,” with Connolly being set up to take over now that Paul Rico was transferred to Miami and nearing retirement. Over time, of course, Flemmi had experienced a strong upside to his FBI deal. But he was just Stevie Flemmi, not the already legendary Whitey Bulger.
    Flemmi cautiously opted for a short answer. It was an answer soaking in subtext, but short nonetheless.
    “It’s probably a good idea,” he told Bulger. “Go and talk to him.”

    CONNOLLY wasn’t in any rush to make his pitch. “I just want you to hear me out,” he told Bulger in the car along Wollaston Beach. Connolly carefully played up the double-barreled threat that Bulger and his Winter Hill gang presently faced from Gennaro Angiulo’s Mafia. “I hear Jerry is feeding information to law enforcement to get you pinched,” he told Bulger. They talked about how Jerry Angiulo definitely had an advantage over the rest of the field, able to call on a crooked cop to do him a favor. “The Mafia has all the contacts,” Connolly said.
    Then Connolly moved along and stoked the vending machine dispute. Word on the street, observed Connolly, was that Zannino was ready to take arms against Bulger and his friends in the Winter Hill gang. “I’m aware that you’re aware that the outfit is going to make a move on you.”
    This last remark especially caught Bulger’s attention. In fact, the LCN and Winter Hill had always found a way to coexist. Not that there weren’t disputes to work out, but the two groups were closer to being wary partners than enemies on the verge of a war. Even the vitriolic and unpredictable Zannino, the Mafia’s Jekyll and Hyde, could one moment angrily denounce Winter Hill and promise to mow them down in a hail of bullets and then suddenly turn operatic and proclaim lovingly, “The Hill is us!” Truth be told, Gennaro Angiulo was at this time more concerned about threats he was receiving from a runaway Italian hothead known as “Bobby the Greaser” than he was about imminent war with Winter Hill. But for Connolly’s purposes, it was better to play up the beef percolating between the LCN and Winter Hill over the vending machines, and Connolly could tell right away he’d hit a hot button with the fearless Bulger when he mentioned the potential for violence. Bulger was clearly angered.
    “You don’t think we’d win?” Bulger shot back.
    Connolly actually did think Bulger could prevail. He fully believed Whitey and Flemmi were much tougher than Angiulo and his boys—“stone killers” he called Bulger and Flemmi. But that wasn’t the point.
    “I have a proposal: why don’t you use us to do what they’re doing to you? Fight fire with fire.”
    The deal was that simple: Bulger should use the FBI to eliminate his Mafia rivals. And if