Black Mass: The Irish Mob, the Boston FBI, and a Devil's Deal (36 page)

But a few weeks of public clamor about the deal was more than enough for the low-profile landlord. He suddenly folded, settling the suit. Brown called it a pragmatic decision to pay less in the long run. “I am a businessman, and it is not my job to pursue investigations,” he said. He never uttered another word about it.

Despite his defiant public stance, the controversy around the skyscraper at 75 State Street was an intense ordeal for Bulger. When the furor was at its height, the senate president was briefly stalked “by the black dog of melancholy.” At the end of 1988 he slipped out of the State House and walked over to Boston Common, where he sat glumly on a park bench. He watched people eating lunch on nearby benches and, in his disconsolate reverie, became angry at their indifference to media misconduct. He thought: “Don’t any of these people walking our streets or the paths in our parks . . . see what the media are doing in this city?” The episode passed quickly as he realized that strangers had no reason to be aroused by his problems. The angst departed, and he headed back to his office “with a lighter step, ready for whatever awaited.”

Bulger filed an affidavit stating that he borrowed money from Finnerty without knowing its origin. Over time Billy’s version of the scandal became an accepted part of his bloodied but unbowed image in South Boston. Once again Billy Bulger had stood up to outsiders and been victimized by the media for it. As always, he came out on top.

But Bulger’s brief on 75 State Street holds up only if the facts are discarded. Bulger was not the innocent victim. The slumlord was. And just as the FBI had protected Whitey Bulger for fifteen years, the bureau stepped in to keep William Bulger out of harm’s way.

During a federal review of several downtown developments, including 75 State Street, investigators uncovered records that shattered the senate president’s claims. The documents—which remain buried in federal files—show that Bulger actually kept a full share of Brown’s money. Although Bulger “repaid” the loan, Finnerty washed the money back to Bulger through other law firm accounts. Through this circuitous route, Bulger received about half of the original $500,000 down payment.

Moreover, Bulger did not get anywhere near the $267,000 fee he said stood behind the loan as collateral. The law firm records show that he received less than half the claimed amount, or $110,000.

The records would not prove extortion, but they destroyed his tale of borrowing money to fix the car and roof for Mary. Instead of putting the money into household improvements, Bulger invested it in a tax-free bond fund. If this got out, it would not sit well with Southie. After all, Billy would not be Billy if he took the money. Taking the money would be shades of Whitey.

BUT Bulger had some help within the FBI. Despite the public clamor, the Brown extortion claim was already a closed matter in the bureau. The same John Morris who had protected Whitey Bulger and taken money from him was now on the case as supervisor of the squad overseeing public corruption crimes. In 1988 Morris moved quickly to head off damage to Billy Bulger by shutting down the case a few days before the
Boston Globe
published a front-page story about the deal behind the skyscraper.

Once again, Morris had to wrestle with his conscience. The persistent Brown case was another in a lengthening line of decisions that required him to calculate the risk of doing the right thing against the certain wrath of a ruthless crook who had bribed him multiple times and slowly seduced him with fine wine and a curious camaraderie. But Morris knew Whitey Bulger would not hesitate to use his weakness against him. Indeed, at the most recent dinner party Morris held for the informants (a small gathering at Debbie Noseworthy’s apartment in Woburn), Whitey upped the stakes. After John Connolly and Stevie Flemmi had left the apartment, Morris saw that Bulger was hanging back by the coat rack. “As he was putting his coat on,” Morris said, “he pulled out an envelope and gave the envelope to me. He said, ‘Here, this is to help you out,’ and walked out the door.” Inside the envelope was $5,000 in cash.

With this recent exchange in the background, Morris closed the 75 State Street file. But the skyscraper story lumbered on, especially after it was learned that the FBI had never even questioned Billy Bulger. Massachusetts attorney general James Shannon called for a renewed federal effort to clear the air.

Enter John Connolly. With Billy Bulger now squarely on the firing line, Connolly took Morris aside and pressed him on whether the senate president should agree to be interviewed. Morris recalled that “Connolly approached me and asked me what the senate president should do, that he’s been asked to submit to an interview and what did I recommend that he do?” Morris told him that Bulger should do it because the uncorroborated Brown allegations made for a soft case. “I didn’t feel that the case was very strong,” Morris continued. “I didn’t think that he could hurt himself. I thought it would be to his advantage to submit to the interview and put an end to the public clamor.” The premise for the renewed investigation became Bulger’s best interest rather than no-holds-barred work in the trenches.

Having covered up for Whitey to the point of warning him about other FBI informants, Connolly now swooped in to run interference for brother Bill—his real hometown hero. Whitey was mostly business. But Billy was something of an idol. Over the years Connolly had masked his relationship with Whitey, but never his friendship with Billy—Connolly wore that on his sleeve, exulting in his ties to the altar boy from St. Monica’s. Connolly believed that his friendship with Billy had convinced Whitey to become an informant. He called Billy a “lifelong friend . . . a mentor . . . a very close friend.” And Connolly worked the relationship hard inside the FBI, parading agents through Bulger’s senate office to meet the president in person. Bulger once introduced him to his fellow senators during a session, and Connolly was given a standing ovation. Knowing that many agents are like aging ballplayers who fear life after the glory years, Connolly often told colleagues that Bulger could help them get high-paying jobs when they retired. No way was Connolly going to allow a hostile FBI interview of Billy, let alone a no-holds-barred probe for the truth.

In these circumstances, it was not surprising that the second FBI investigation consisted solely of an interview with Bulger in his lawyer’s office. Prosecutors and an FBI agent listened to a two-hour speech from Bulger in which he denied any connection with Brown and stuck by his loan and fee story. He said that Finnerty “swore” to him that he never invoked Bulger’s name to gain an advantage. And Bulger added a new twist to the loan. This time around it was not about meeting household expenses but about taking preemptive action because he didn’t trust Finnerty to give him his full share of the fee. Bulger simply wanted his money while the getting was good.

BULGER’S friendly FBI interview became the basis for shutting down the investigation forever. Jeremiah O’Sullivan, who had become interim U.S. attorney, said the case showed power brokering but did not rise to the level of extortion. Asked if he was leaving the impression that wrongdoing had occurred without being addressed, O’Sullivan said it wasn’t his job and that further action should come from state authorities.

Despite his behind-the-scenes interventions for Whitey Bulger, O’Sullivan did not recuse himself. He had looked the other way on race-fixing and alerted the FBI to the state police surveillance at Lancaster Street. He’d played a key role in saving Bulger from Sarhatt’s internal FBI review and then was the one who banished the doomed and desperate Brian Halloran from the witness protection program. Now the cocksure prosecutor proclaimed the Bill Bulger case dead on arrival, not even a close call. It would be O’Sullivan’s valedictory from law enforcement.

One of the matters that O’Sullivan discarded to lesser agencies was the downside of Bill Bulger’s stay at the State House. Belying Bulger’s public persona of rock-solid rectitude were steep legal fees for dubious services. For example, in addition to the $250,000 in Brown money funneled back to him by Finnerty, Bulger had split fees with a State House lobbyist who brought him influence-seeking clients. The lobbyist was Richard McDonough, the son of a legendary political rogue, Patrick “Sonny” McDonough. Although the son lacked Sonny’s gruff charm, he was a street-smart hustler who had learned well the byways of the State House. Indeed, it was Dickie McDonough who had originally brought Bulger the magical case from the contractors in need of the $2.8 million bank loan. And it was Dickie who received $70,000 in return for the referral. He also brought Bulger another client, a California weight loss company that sought assistance in getting one of its products off the Food and Drug Administration’s carcinogenic list. The company thought that Bulger could help with the FDA, but all he could do was get an appointment with minor bureaucrats in a different agency. Despite the lack of results, Bulger and McDonough split a $100,000 fee.

In their interviews with federal investigators, neither Bulger nor McDonough could produce paperwork to support the fees. McDonough knew next to nothing about the work done for clients that indirectly paid him $120,000.

Two months after O’Sullivan slammed the door on any further investigation, the senate president was the guest speaker at a retirement party for FBI agent John Cloherty. Cloherty had handled press relations when the bureau closed its review of 75 State Street. He was also a former member of the Organized Crime Squad under Morris and a friend of Connolly’s. It was a rollicking good time.

ABOUT a year after Bill Bulger and Tom Finnerty split up $500,000 from the state’s largest landlord, a small South Boston realtor received an offer he couldn’t refuse. Once again money allegedly was demanded under duress, but the terms were starkly different in Southie. Raymond Slinger’s alternative to paying $50,000 was to get blown away by a shotgun.

Slinger thought he might be on to something good when his dealings with Whitey Bulger began in the fall of 1986. Bulger stopped by his office unexpectedly for a short primer on how to cash in on the suddenly surging local real estate market. They chatted for about twenty minutes, and Slinger may have seen himself working with Bulger in some real estate deals.

But it was not to be. Six months later Slinger was summoned to the dreaded Triple O’s bar. He gingerly entered the dank, claustrophobic barroom, with its warped floorboards and low ceiling, its dark walls and sticky tabletops. It was a place where someone was always playing pool while nursing a drink and solitary patrons stared into their shot glasses and beer chasers. Slinger was ushered to the second-floor office, where Bulger was waiting for him, arms folded. He looked up and announced, “We got a problem.”

Bulger said he had been hired to kill Slinger, an assignment that would require him to arrive at Slinger’s Old Harbor Real Estate office “with shotguns and masks and so forth.”

Bulger would answer no questions, including who it was who wanted Slinger dead or why. He would only talk about what could be done about it—pay Bulger to cancel the contract. Slinger, who had some large debts and his share of enemies, gulped and asked if he could be out from under for $2,000. But Bulger laughed at him and said his boots cost more than that.