Hitman

by Howie Carr

  Even Whitey Bulger and Stevie Flemmi were jammed up. They’d helped Johnny find bookies to take bets on the fixed races. But they had an out—the FBI. Zip was now on their payroll. John Morris was his supervisor, and he, too, would soon be on Whitey and Stevie’s pad. Morris would later recall being introduced to both of Zip’s prize informants at the same time—in itself a violation of FBI policy, which required that informants always be interviewed separately, so that they would not know who the other informants were, or what stories they were telling. There was one additional problem with Whitey and Stevie, Morris testified.

  “I wasn’t sure,” he said, “if they knew they were informants.”

  Now Whitey and Stevie needed a favor—a big favor. And Zip came through. He and Morris went to the head of the organized-crime strike force, Jeremiah O’Sullivan, and told him that it was absolutely imperative for Bulger and Flemmi to remain free. The feds were planning an ambitious strike against In Town. They were going to wire Jerry Angiulo’s headquarters, the Dog House, and they needed informants who could tell them how to get inside, and where to plant the bugs.

  Of course Whitey had never once set foot inside 98 Prince Street, and he still owed a big favor to one of Angiulo’s top enforcers, J. R. Russo. Stevie by his own admission had no use for Angiulo and his crew and avoided them whenever possible. But Zip made the pitch to O’Sullivan that only they could provide the inside information needed for the bugging to go forward. And he added that Whitey and Stevie hadn’t really been involved in the race-fixing scheme. That was only the other guys, the Somerville crew. Zip had their word on that. Zip didn’t mention Ciulla’s testimony that they had shared in the profits. That would have been off-message.

  O’Sullivan finally agreed to cut Whitey and Stevie out of the indictment. They would be listed, but only as “unindicted coconspirators.” Zip hurried back to Southie with the good news. Then it was up to Whitey and Stevie to break the news to Johnny Martorano.

  Remember, other than them, by then I’m the only Hill partner left in Boston. I wasn’t suspicious at all when they told me Zip had kept them out of the indictment. I was happy for them, and I was happy for me. I needed somebody back here to keep an eye on things—and to keep the money coming to me. By then, I knew I would have to go on the lam. You get tried with a bunch of other guys, chances are everybody’s going to get convicted. I figured, I’ll go to Florida and hang out maybe six months, like I told Patty’s mother, until the trial is over, and then I’ll come back. If they’re acquitted, which I doubt but you never know, I can probably get the charges dismissed. If everyone else is convicted, I’ll plea bargain for less time. I wasn’t thinking it was the end. You figure, if you’re a gangster, sooner or later you go to jail. Everybody does.

  Going on the lam was, and still is, standard operating procedure. The reason was succinctly summed up by Sonny Mercurio when he was called as a witness during the 1997–98 hearings before Judge Wolf. Sonny was asked why he always left town when he was about to be indicted.

  “Power of the lam means you get a lesser sentence,” he said. “I advocate everybody run away.”

  * * *

  THERE WAS a lot to do to get ready to run away. First of all, Johnny needed new IDs. There was a guy who had a connection in the Framingham branch of the Registry of Motor Vehicles—Framingham John, they called him. On his new driver’s license, Johnny became “Richard Aucoin.”

  Next he set up a couple of safe houses, where he could hide out if he ever had to come back to Boston. One was an apartment in Medford that belonged to an ex-cop. Then, from an old girlfriend, he rented a room in Winthrop. That would be his main safe house. He bought furniture and dropped off a full wardrobe. He gave Stevie Flemmi his Winthrop phone number, the number Stevie passed on to Zip, who put it in the FBI report that Johnny wouldn’t read until 2009.

  Then Johnny drove to Florida with Patty, who would be accompanying him when he finally began the six-month “vacation.” They scouted out motels. Returning to Boston, Johnny introduced Stevie to Trooper Schneiderhan. That was what you did when you took it on the lam. When Stevie was a fugitive, he’d turned over his grease gun to Johnny, for use in the Indian war. Now Johnny was returning the favor, giving Stevie a Statie. Next Johnny worked out a system with Stevie so that he could stay in touch with everyone using pay phones.

  We’d first set up a system of codes when Stevie was on the lam in Montreal. Here’s how it worked. I would write down KING JM LEAR—ten letters, get it? Like there’s ten numbers, including zero. So 1 is K, 2 is I, 3 is N, and so forth. If I want Stevie or anyone else to call me, I give ’em the number of a pay phone near wherever I’m staying, only with letters as the code for the phone number. All of South Florida back then was in the 305 area code. So I’d say, I’ll be at N-R-J, and then give the rest of the number. Only instead of giving the phone number in ten digits, I use the letters that correspond to the numbers. Stevie was KING SF LEAR. It’s the way I communicated with everybody—my parents, my kids, George Kaufman. As it turned out, I was the one calling out 99 percent of the time. I’d always have rolls of quarters in the car, so I could always make a call whenever I wanted.

  Zip was still proving to be a valuable addition to the gang—or at least to Whitey and Stevie. In the summer of 1978, unknown gunmen invaded a Summer Street nightclub known as Blackfriars. In an after-hours drug-and-cash rip-off, they shot five men to death, including one of the owners and a former TV-news reporter. The shooters have never been positively identified.

  Whitey read the stories in the papers and got an idea how he could make a score off the five murders. He called Zip and asked him if he could get the Boston Police Department to turn over to the FBI copies of their photos of the crime scene. Whitey was particularly interested in obtaining a few pictures of the murdered co-owner of Blackfriars.

  Zip had the photos to Whitey within hours, and Whitey and Stevie quickly paid a visit to another local businessman, who they knew had owed $60,000 to the dead owner of Blackfriars. Whitey was his usual brusque self, informing the guy that he now owed Whitey sixty grand. Whitey, whose reputation by now preceded him, left the impression that he had murdered the five men, and didn’t mind adding a sixth victim. “And if you think this is just a shakedown,” Whitey added with a sneer, “here are some pictures we took of the guy after we killed him, before we left.”

  Props—sometimes Bulger used an ax, or a knife. Other times, some grisly black-and-white police photos would suffice. Whitey left with $60,000 in cash.

  * * *

  TONY CIULLA first had to stand trial in New Jersey. He negotiated a deal with prosecutors, and part of the plea was that he could sell his story to the highest bidder, which turned out to be Sports Illustrated. The race-fixing scandal was SI’s cover story in the November 6, 1978, edition. Since they hadn’t been indicted yet, the magazine didn’t print the names of the Winter Hill Gang, but in open court in New Jersey a state judge ordered Fat Tony to reveal the names of his partners in Boston.

  “Fellows that were partners of mine,” Ciulla said. “One’s name is Howie Winter. One name is John Martorano. M-A-R-T-O-R-A-N-O. Whitey Bulger. Stephen Flemmi.”

  * * *

  AS 1978 ended, Johnny’s flight plans were almost finished. He made sure all of his children had a good Christmas, because he knew he wouldn’t be seeing them again for a while. He still had the six-month figure in his head, but he couldn’t be sure how long it would take to get everything straightened out.

  After all, Howie Winter had hoped to get out quickly, too. His lawyers had asked a new judge for clemency, presenting a petition signed by 4,000 residents of Somerville. Yet Howie was still languishing in state prison. And on February 9, 1979, he and Johnny Martorano and everyone else in the gang except Whitey and Stevie would be indicted.

  I knew money wouldn’t be a problem. I’d scouted out the Western Union offices down in Florida, plus there were always guys coming down from Boston. And I had my brother’s friend, Jo
hn Callahan. I’d gotten pretty friendly with him—I liked him. He struck me as a CIA-type guy, almost like a double agent, in the daytime a polished businessman in the boardrooms, at night wearing a leather jacket in the barrooms. I knew he had a condo in Florida, Plantation, and he said I’ll do anything I can to help out.

  I left before the indictment. At some point Whitey and Stevie told me the date the indictments were coming down, and I knew, the sooner I got out the better. See, if you get arrested, you have to jump bail and you lose that money, but more importantly, jumping bail adds an extra five years on your sentence. That’s why everyone screws before they’re indicted.

  I hit the road right after Christmas 1978. Patty was with me. I had a brand-new Cadillac. Later on, I cut back to a Chevy-looking car, to be less conspicuous. I think I had maybe $10,000 cash, not that much but I could always get more. Whatever money you have on you when you’re arrested, it’s forfeited. So when you’re a fugitive it’s really not smart to carry a huge amount of cash. I’d get down to $2,000, then I’d start looking for another 10. But I didn’t plan on being gone that long.

  Besides, I had Stevie and Whitey looking out for me.

  10

  The Fugitive

  MARTORANO: I went on the lam.

  JUDGE: You did what?

  MARTORANO: I became a fugitive.

  PROSECUTOR: Went on the lam, I believe he said, Your Honor.

  JUDGE: I think that is what he said. I want to make sure we all understand. Go ahead.

  PROSECUTOR: You became a fugitive.

  MARTORANO: Yeah.

  JOHNNY MARTORANO AND Patty had a couple of suitcases with them when they hit I-95 in early 1979, heading toward the Sunshine State, that sunny place for shady people, as Graham Greene would say.

  For the first few months they just drifted, a pair of tourists, stopping at different motels and hotels, crisscrossing the southern third of the state, from Fort Lauderdale to the Keys and across Alligator Alley to Naples and Fort Myers.

  I would talk to George [Kaufman]. He stayed on top of my families. Initially I was getting money from Stevie and Whitey. Off and on, I was into sports betting, with Tommy Ryan, and Nicky Montaldo and Nicky Rais from Somerville. I always had 200, 300 thousand with George, and each week I’d add to it. Every so often Stevie would give George, say, $15,000. I never asked what it was for, I was just happy to have it. You know, on the lam, everything is different. All cash, you can’t leave a trail, you can’t work, or at least you can’t work at a job that doesn’t pay you cash. You need that cash coming in. I’m sure it’s different now, since 9/11 you need identification for everything, you can’t move around with no IDs anymore. After a few months, I switched my Richard Aucoin driver’s license to Florida, and then I did get a credit card—I mean “Richard Aucoin” got a credit card. In those days, in Florida, you could walk into Sun Bank and put down say a thousand bucks cash. They’d give you a MasterCard and you had a credit limit of $500—half the cash you’d put down. Give ’em five grand, and your limit was $2,500. Even then you needed a credit card to rent a car. So if I had to rent a car, I’d just give ’em my credit card, so they’d have a number to put down, and then I’d pay cash.

  I was doing okay. I was just waiting for the horse trial, I wanted to see how it went.

  Not very well. They went into court in the summer of 1979. Howie Winter was the marquee defendant, with Jimmy Martorano, still serving out the federal extortion sentence, as the unlikely second banana. Fat Tony Ciulla spent seventeen days on the witness stand, detailing his banning from most of the racetracks along the East Coast, and how he had managed the career of that now infamous thoroughbred Spread the Word.

  A jockey from Florida recalled being “smacked in the face” by Winter, and threatened with being “put in the trunk of a car.” The prosecutor estimated that Howie Winter’s “ring” had been grossing $40 million a year.

  On July 11, 1979, Howie, Jimmy, and all of their codefendants except one jockey were convicted. Howie was found guilty on forty counts, including racketeering, bribery, and violating the federal Travel Act, which prohibits making out-of-state phone calls in the commission of a crime. As evidence, the Justice Department cited Ciulla’s damning phone records, including dozens of calls to Johnny Martorano.

  At sentencing, Howie told the judge he’d rejected two overtures by the feds to become a witness. He said he refused to “make up lies like Ciulla did.”

  “I’ve had enough justice,” Howie told the court. “What I would like is a little mercy.”

  The judge sentenced him to seven-to-ten years, on top of the eighteen-to-twenty-year state sentence he was already serving.

  After the trial, I had to reevaluate my situation. Stevie and Whitey said wait awhile longer. Now I knew the worst I would get was 7-to-10, because that was what Howie got. In ’81 or ’82, my lawyer, Richie Egbert, said he could get this settled for not much time at all. But it seemed like something was always coming up, like a murder.

  LAWYER: How long did you expect to be out and about?

  MARTORANO: Six, seven months.

  LAWYER: And it turned into?

  MARTORANO: Seventeen years.

  LAWYER: Did you ever have any discussion with Mr. Bulger and Mr. Flemmi about doing anything to take care of your situation?

  MARTORANO: As far as looking for Ciulla?

  LAWYER: Yes.

  MARTORANO: I would have liked to have found Ciulla.

  LAWYER: And if you had found Mr. Ciulla?

  MARTORANO: I would have shot him.

  Johnny and Patty were staying in Fort Lauderdale. But Johnny started spending a lot of time in the bars along the beach, and soon Patty was on him about his new female friends. Johnny wasn’t married, but he might as well have been. He and Patty were living together—in one house. It was a lot different than dating. As a fugitive, he could no longer afford the multiple residences he’d maintained around Boston. Finally, he decided to quit the “sun-fun capital” of Broward County. He and Patty moved north and inland, to Orlando. They took out a twelve-month lease on a house and Patty started a one-year cosmetology course.

  A few times, Johnny drove north to meet Stevie face-to-face in New York City. They always rendezvoused at the same place—the Marriott at LaGuardia Airport. But mostly Johnny stayed put in Florida.

  With time on his hands, he took up motorcycles, Harleys of course. First it was a low rider, then a wide glide. He started making runs down to Daytona Beach, where he basked in the redneck ambience. He bought a twenty-two-foot boat, with a cabin and a single engine. The boat gave him somewhere to hang out on the weekends when Patty wasn’t in school. During the week, Johnny would walk Daytona Beach, sometimes barefoot, back and forth for miles, people watching, pondering his next move.

  Must been late ’80, early ’81. I’m just walking, like I always did, and then, up ahead, coming in the other direction, I see Joe McDonald. I don’t know which of us saw the other one first, but we hugged each other, and we went out for lunch and caught up on everything.

  He had plenty of dough, he had his shy business back in Boston, and he had money in a no-tell motel in Chelsea. He was living in a furnished apartment, like a Guest Suites, nothing fancy, because he didn’t need anything. I’d go see him, and one time I had to come down from Orlando to babysit him when he went on a bender. Back in Boston, he’d had his brother Leo. Leo would watch out for Joe when he’d go on a bat. But now Leo wasn’t there, so I had to do it. I’d try to talk to him, but when he got to really drinking, it was like talking to the wall. Once he got on the hard stuff he was gone ’til it played itself out.

  Later on, I’m in Plymouth, reading the 209s Zip filed, and there’s Whitey, reporting back to the FBI that Joe’s on a bender in Florida, and Johnny’s watching out for him.

  Jimmy the Bear Flemmi died of a drug overdose at MCI-Norfolk on October 16, 1979. The Bear was forty-seven years old. After his escape during a weekend furlough in 1976, he had remained free until
earlier in 1979, when police arrested him while he was beating yet another woman in Baltimore. He was returned to prison in Massachusetts, where he soon died of an overdose of heroin. Stevie always claimed In Town gave his brother a hot shot to get rid of him.

  Meanwhile, Stevie again moved his parents. The problem with Milton was that his mother had to drive down Blue Hill Avenue to get home from her job at Boston City Hospital. Earlier in 1979, at a stoplight, his parents had been jumped by a gang of blacks and severely beaten. A photograph of Mary Flemmi, propped up against her car, had run on the Associated Press regional wire, without references to her two gangster sons. There were reports that Stevie later bragged about having killed several of his parents’ attackers, but he denied the stories. At least one of Mrs. Flemmi’s muggers was later shot to death by a Boston policeman, and another died in a drive-by shooting.

  Whitey told Stevie about a place for sale in what he described as a “safer” neighborhood—Southie. The address was 832 East Third Street, next door to Whitey’s brother Billy, the president of the Massachusetts State Senate, at 828 East Third. It was a small house, but 832 East Third had a “sunporch,” good for stashing machine guns and silencers, and for strangling young women.

  * * *

  SAL SPERLINGA had not been indicted in the federal race-fixing case. By late 1979, he was out on work release. He got a work-release “job” working for a Somerville alderman, whose brother was a state rep. The alderman had a print shop in Magoun Square, where he printed the Hill’s weekly football cards—“to be used for entertainment purposes only,” as they always said.

  One day, down in Union Square, Sal had spotted an ex-con, a half-assed wiseguy named Dan Moran. He was the son of another ex-Somerville alderman. Sal told Moran to get out and stay out. Moran bided his time a few days, found out where Sal was hanging, and one Friday afternoon slipped into the alderman’s print shop. In the back room, Sal was playing cards with the boys. Dan Moran shot him dead.