Whitey Bulger America's Most Wanted Gangster and the Manhunt That Brought Him To Justice (16 page)

Whitey considered each of his busing-era attacks carefully. He sought to maximize the symbolic expression of his neighborhood’s anger while minimizing the risk to himself. He knew that directly attacking Garrity or Garrity’s house would have invited an unrelenting response from law enforcement, so he had attacked a school nearby. He knew the same logic of risk and reward applied to taking on Ted Kennedy, so he had attacked the Kennedy birthplace, not the senator himself. And as much as he wanted to attack the police who were such an intimidating presence during the busing years, he knew it would be madness to charge at them directly. Whitey finally settled on a way to get even after the Tactical Patrol Force burst into a Southie bar, The Rabbit Inn, and beat patrons they held responsible for orchestrating anti-busing violence. DiGrazia, the police commissioner, contends Whitey was one of those patrons, but Whitey wasn’t in the bar when the police burst in, though he was friendly with some who were.
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Whitey knew that any physical attack on a police officer would bring a disproportionate response from law enforcement, so he decided to hit the TPF indirectly. “They love their horses,” Whitey said. “Let’s kill their horses.”
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Whitey’s wild idea was to poison apples with cyanide and scatter them in a grassy area at the bottom of G Street where the riot police kept the horses when they weren’t up at the high school. He carved out the cores of a bunch of apples, filled them with poison, then replaced the cores. Long before dawn, he spread them in the grass at the bottom of the hill. But the plan was thwarted when a police officer picked up one of the apples and saw that the core had been tampered with.
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Cops scrambled to move the horses and collect the poisoned apples.

Whitey’s oddest anti-busing protest took place far from South Boston, forty miles south at another symbolic site. In 1976, Whitey gave dynamite to a South Boston man and instructed him to place it on historic Plymouth Rock, where the Pilgrims are said to have waded ashore in the seventeenth century. The explosion chipped the rock slightly and blew a hole in the sand, but the rock survived mostly unscathed.
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“The symbolism, the way Jimmy saw it, was to aim this at the original settlers, because it was the Yankees, the Brahmins, who were pushing the busing on us,” said Kevin Weeks, Whitey’s longtime associate. It was dubious logic at best, but logic did not predominate when busing was the subject in Southie. “Jimmy hated busing. Hated what it did to Southie,” Weeks said. “We all did. So he did what he had to do. We all did.”
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Unlike some of the haters
who stood on street corners hurling rocks and epithets, Bill Bulger had a history of supporting civil rights. In the 1960s, he brought a Boston College Law School classmate, David Nelson, to speak on interracial justice at St. Monica’s Church. Nelson, who would later become the first black to sit as a district judge in Boston’s federal court, was a lawyer and a member of the Catholic Interracial Council, a civil rights advocacy group. Nelson said his remarks were well received, and he considered Bill Bulger a progressive on civil rights. But his opinion changed after watching how Bulger comported himself during the busing crisis. “I know he has loyalties,” Nelson said. “I know he has a strong sense of family. But I hold Billy responsible as a leader. He came to the conclusion that desegregation was a bad idea, that busing was an atrocious idea, so I can allow that on an intellectual basis. On the other hand, he really proferred no response to, ‘What then, if not busing? What then, if not desegregation?’ Billy, in my view, had more power and influence than anyone to at least assuage, and ultimately do away with the kind of hatred and anger and regressiveness, by reason of his strength and leadership. I don’t think he did much to do that.”

Nelson saw Bill as very much a product of Southie’s self-image as a place apart. “But it’s that kind of notion that can’t work. You can’t have a city or any large entity viewed as pockets, as separate countries.”
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Nelson came to judge Bill Bulger as much for his limitations as for his strengths. What he didn’t know, couldn’t know, is that, in the midst of the racial turmoil of busing, another Bulger—Whitey—had quietly intervened on his behalf.

Nelson was a law partner of Joe Oteri, a lawyer whose powerful courtroom skills had attracted as clients several of Whitey Bulger’s criminal associates. One night, in the middle of the busing crisis, Oteri brought Nelson to his mother’s house in South Boston for dinner. The two were out on the sidewalk, outside the house, when they were surrounded by a group of teenagers. “We don’t want niggers around here,” one of the teens snarled. “Get outta here.”

Oteri stood in front of Nelson to protect him. An ex-marine, he was more angry than scared. “Hey, I grew up here. This is my mother’s house,” Oteri said, and as soon as he said it, he regretted it. The teens grew more agitated and closed in. Oteri’s elderly uncle sprang from the house, telling the kids to scatter. Eventually they left, leaving a trail of profanity and racial insults.

Oteri feared he had exposed his mother to retaliation. At the least, he worried that the young men would return and vandalize the house. He had an idea of how to avoid that—he called Steve Flemmi, who had done some business with Oteri’s firm. He explained the situation to Flemmi before broaching the real reason for his call. “Stevie,” Oteri said, “do you think you could ask Jimmy Bulger to make sure nothing happens here?”

A week later, Oteri was in his law office when he got a phone call from someone who identified himself as one of the teenagers that accosted him on the sidewalk. The kid apologized for his loutish behavior outside Mrs. Oteri’s house. “We were out of line,” the kid said, sheepishly. “It won’t happen again.”
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Joe Oteri put the phone down, knowing two things: No one would ever bother his mother on account of David Nelson’s visit for dinner, and Whitey Bulger controlled more than just the rackets in Southie.

Whitey’s response to busing was visceral
but at the same time carefully calibrated. He stepped in at times, as he did with Oteri, conscious of not letting things get completely out of hand. More than looking after his own interests, Whitey was looking after those of his politician brother.

As winter turned to spring in 1975, the busing crisis had left Mayor Kevin White politically vulnerable in the white working-class sections of the city, which traditionally had the highest voter turnout in Boston. In South Boston, many people called for one of their own to challenge Mayor White. The two leading politicians in the neighborhood, Bill Bulger and Ray Flynn, were testing the waters, trying to figure out whether they had a shot. Bill Bulger was the state senator, and Flynn was the state representative. Their supporters were growing more enthusiastic about their prospects, and there was a lot of talk going around the town about who had the best shot. In the bars and restaurants, there was a lot of trash talking, too. “It got a little nasty,” recalls Brian Wallace, Flynn’s top aide. “I think there was a sense on both sides that our guy could do it if they tried. And I think there was a sense that only one could run. If both of them did, they’d split the Southie vote and the rest of the anti-busing vote in the city. So there was a lot of jockeying for position, not by Billy and Ray so much as people who wanted them to run.”

Wallace had just returned to his family’s house one afternoon when the phone rang. His father answered.

“Brian,” his father called out. “It’s for you.”

“Who is it?”

“Some guy named Jim,” his father said.

Wallace took the phone and said hello.

“Brian,” the voice on the other end said, “this is Jimmy Bulger.”

Like everybody else in Southie, Brian Wallace knew who Whitey Bulger was, but he had never spoken to him before.

“What’s wrong?” Wallace asked.

“Nothing,” Whitey replied. “I’d just like to talk to you about something.”

“Where are you?” Wallace asked.

“I’ll be right outside,” Whitey said. “In a blue car.”

Wallace gulped. “Okay,” he said, “I’ll be right out.”

His father, who had been standing there listening to the conversation, took the phone and hung it up.

“It’s Whitey Bulger,” Wallace told his father. “He wants to talk to me.”

“I don’t want you going out there,” his father said.

“Dad,” Wallace replied, “I’ve got to. It’s Whitey Bulger. I’ve got to see what he wants.”

For about twenty minutes, the gangster didn’t appear to want anything; he just drove Wallace around town. They drove past the high school, quiet after the school buses had left. They drove past the lines of double-parked cars on East Broadway, all the way to City Point, then down along the water, past the yacht clubs and Carson Beach. Wallace didn’t dare speak. Whitey eventually broke the ice. “I was going to hit you last night,” Whitey said. “I followed you.”

Whitey named each of the bars Wallace and a group of his friends had been in the night before. How long they had stayed. What they were wearing. Where they had gone next. Wallace realized that Whitey had followed him for hours. He sat quietly as Whitey drove slowly through the projects where he grew up. Wallace was twenty-five years old, a low-level political operative whom everybody remembered as a good basketball player at Southie High. He was, as they’d say in Southie, harmless. “Why would you hit me?” Wallace asked, almost in a whisper.

“This is a small town, Brian,” Whitey replied. “There’s a lot of nasty things being said about my brother.”

“I love your brother Billy,” Wallace interjected.

Whitey turned and glared at him, and Wallace didn’t say anything else.

“You know who I mean. You know who they are, what they’re saying, and I can’t have them talking about my family, disrespecting my family. You’re right in the middle of this. You are tolerating this. You are encouraging this. These are people who are with you. They are Ray Flynn’s people. And you’re going to have to get them to stop. Or else.”

He told Wallace he decided to let him live, in part, because Wallace was dating the daughter of a man who worked for Whitey’s bookmaking network. “I gave you a pass,” Whitey told Wallace. “But that’s your only pass. I can’t kill Ray Flynn. But I can kill you. I could walk into the Bayview [pub] and put one behind your ear and no one would say anything.”

As they idled at a traffic light, Whitey turned to Wallace and Wallace found himself staring into the cold, blue eyes he had heard others talk about all those years. “Brian,” Whitey said, “I’ve killed twenty-six people in my life. Killing you would be easy.”

They talked for a half hour, as Whitey continued to snake his car around Southie. Wallace said little, but piped up when Whitey accused him of backing Kevin White. “I’d never be with White,” Wallace said. “I’d never be with anybody who supports busing.”

Whitey smiled and the menace was suddenly gone, evaporated. They started talking about mutual acquaintances, Southie stories and characters. It was like flipping a light switch. The intimidating face was now beaming. The ominous voice was pitched higher, almost a lilt. When Whitey dropped him off at his house, Wallace felt dizzy. The conversation had begun with Whitey saying he had spent the previous night picking a spot to shoot him. It ended with a handshake, with Whitey as friendly as could be. All in the course of an hour.

Wallace spent the next few weeks exhorting Flynn loyalists to tone down the rhetoric. And in the end, neither Bill Bulger nor Ray Flynn challenged Kevin White.

Sometime after his long drive and talk with Whitey, Brian Wallace met some friends at Triple O’s and a waitress came over and handed him a beer.

“What’s this?” he said. “I didn’t order this.”

“It’s on him,” the waitress said, using a thumb to indicate Whitey, who was standing at the back of the bar, his back to the wall.

“I really don’t want it,” Wallace said.

The waitress stared at Wallace, then tossed her hair and said, as she turned on her heel, “Then you go fuckin’ tell him.”

Wallace thought about it for a few moments. Then he grabbed the beer and held it aloft toward Whitey in a show of appreciation. Whitey didn’t even look over.
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The Bulger brothers defended their town
the way they knew best: Bill with eloquence, Whitey with menace. But the fallout from the busing controversy had deep implications for both of them. After the schools were desegregated, so were the housing projects in the late 1980s, including the one where Whitey had grown up and lived occasionally with his mother until she died in 1980. Whitey’s power was based in part on the perception of his ruthlessness; that he controlled the whole neighborhood as an unseen but all-seeing force. It was a perception that didn’t resonate with outsiders who moved in from neighborhoods in which the name Whitey Bulger meant nothing. As South Boston became less racially homogeneous and more economically diverse, Whitey Bulger’s reputation and power ebbed.

Busing changed the town in other ways, too. Many of the natives who moved to the suburbs to escape busing were replaced by younger, more affluent outsiders. Three-deckers that had been rented for generations were sold, floor by floor, as condominiums. The seedy bars that had served generations of longshoremen and factory workers were replaced by gleaming pubs with polished wood and French doors. Whitey’s gambling business suffered, especially as the legal, state-run lottery grew. The 1980s saw him turn to other ways to make money. Extorting the growing number of drug dealers in Southie became his most lucrative business.

The busing crisis affected Billy’s prospects to an even greater extent. His impassioned defense of his neighborhood made him more popular than ever in South Boston. But if he was the political pope of Southie, his defiant stance against busing carried with it a perception of intolerance that made him unelectable outside of his own district. His stance, however, did not affect his popularity with peers in the state senate. He became the body’s president in 1978 and held the position for eighteen years, longer than anyone in state history. But his opposition to busing had defined him to an outside world, and his ambitions were permanently circumscribed.