Whiteys payback, p.24
Whitey's Payback,
p.24
“How would I get it in here?” I ask.
“You fold it up and stuff it down the front of your pants, in your crotch area. You could get by security with that.”
I nod. Yeah, maybe I could.
“You pass it to me here in the visiting room. I’ll take it into the bathroom. I can get a guard’s uniform. I’d put on that mask and walk right out of here. They’d think I was a guard.”
Sully says all this with a twinkle in his eye. We both know that, although I write about criminals in books and magazine articles, and attempt to do so with knowledge and even a certain degree of intimacy, I am, after all, a civilian. I am not going to help Mad Dog Sullivan break out of prison.
I chuckle and say, “Okay, Sully, I’ll check and see if they can make that mask.”
“Yeah,” he says, “would you do that?”
Visiting time is over. There is a common practice for both visitor and inmate as a visit comes to an end: The inmate is escorted by a guard to a door on one side of the room, and the visitor is also escorted by another guard to different door on the other side of the room. Visitor and inmate, knowing they will not see each other for months or years or maybe ever again, watch each other being led from the room, wanting to get one last look at their friend or loved one.
I shout across the room, “Take care, Sully. And stay out of trouble.”
Sully gives me a pumped-fist salute. He knows what I mean. Nearly on his death bed with lung cancer, bowed but unbroken, I watch him disappear through the electronic, steel-plated door, a twinkle in his eye, a smile on his face, visions of escape dancing in his head.
Acknowledgments
This book represents more than two decades’ worth of labor, all of it enabled and supported by contacts in “the field”; by editors and their staffs in the magazine, newspaper, and webzine trades; and by fellow journalists and friends who helped usher these articles from the proposal stage to published/posted reality. It is impossible to name them all. Some contributors have been lost to memory. Nonetheless, I have attempted to reassemble a list of those who played a role, either through professional obligation or personal generosity, in these articles having originally appeared in some of the best periodicals in the country.
You will notice that many of the pieces in this collection were first published in Playboy magazine. That is no accident. Over half a century, Playboy has been a tremendous supporter of quality journalism, especially crime journalism. I am particularly indebted to two former Playboy editors, Peter Moore and Chris Napolitano, who helped conceive and line edit some of the most complex and lengthy pieces in this collection. I also owe much respect to Hugh Hefner. Although we have never met, I tip my hat to Hefner for having created such a valuable forum for good work; for commissioning the best writers and paying them accordingly; and for being a tireless advocate for First Amendment rights, civil liberties, and courageous reporting.
The following acknowledgments are organized into sections, according to the particular piece for which an individual made a vital contribution.
Introduction and Part I: Bullet in the Ass
Special thanks to Gail Sullivan and Kelly Sullivan for facilitating my time with Joe Sullivan; to the late Mike McNickle, who worked with me as a research assistant on many of the earliest pieces in this collection; to Laurie Gunst, who graciously led me to many key sources in Jamaica and in Brooklyn; to Flo O’Connor at the Jamaican Council on Human Rights in Kingston; and to Steven Wong, who for many years served as my dai lo, or big brother, in New York City’s Chinatown, and who also led me to many key sources in Hong Kong, the city of his birth.
Part II: American Dream, American Nightmare
Thanks to the late Bob Callahan, who introduced me to the Mitchell brothers; to Susie Bright, renowned author and “sexpert,” who helped me understand the world of adult entertainment; and Tom Caldarola, a longtime friend who remains my “go-to” person in San Francisco. Thanks to the Chinese Staff and Workers’ Association in New York’s Chinatown for their assistance and for their tireless advocacy on behalf of Asian immigrants in the United States; to legendary civil-rights attorney Myron Beldock, who first helped me track down George Whitmore; to Regina Whitmore, George Whitmore’s beloved daughter; to Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist and friend Jim Dwyer; and to Sewell Chan, deputy Op-Ed editor at the New York Times.
Part III: Narco Wars, at Home and Abroad
As a magazine writer in pursuit of a story, often I have found myself at the mercy of local reporters. Few were more gracious than John Caniglia of the Cleveland Plain Dealer, who shared sources and contact information on the Lee Lucas story. Also helpful in Cleveland were attorneys John McCaffrey and James Owen. Special thanks to Geneva France in Mansfield, who suffered a grave injustice at the hands of the criminal justice system in the Northern District of Ohio, and who remains a friend.
My investigations in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, were aided by a host of people across the border in El Paso, Texas. Special thanks to Valentin Sandoval, a well-connected filmmaker and poet who led me to contacts in Juárez and El Paso; to the lovely Valerie Anne Garcia, who kept me safe and sound at the Holiday Inn Express in downtown El Paso; to Howard Campbell, a professor at the University of Texas at El Paso and a highly knowledgeable source on the effects of the narco war in the borderland region; and to Carlos Spector, a civil rights attorney who continues to do essential work on behalf of Mexican immigrants and others whose lives have been thrown into chaos by the narco war.
Part IV: The Bulger Chronicles
I have been covering the Whitey Bulger beat for years and am greatly indebted to local reporters in Boston who have been on the front lines of this story, most notably Shelley Murphy and Kevin Cullen of the Boston Globe. For leading me to important sources; helping with logistics and the cultivation of contacts in Boston; and helping me to understand important details about the Bulger era, I would like to thank the following people: Pat Nee, Kevin Weeks, Jimmy Martorano, John Martorano, Marilyn Di Silva, Tommy Lyons, Paul Griffin, retired FBI agent Robert Fitzpatrick, Steve Davis, Richard Stratton, Sharon Branco, John Connolly, Jim Connolly, the late Teresa Stanley, and lawyer and author Harvey Silverglate. Special thanks also to Jim Carmody, manager at the Seaport Boston Hotel, and Lucas Whitmann, editor at Newsweek/Daily Beast.
Special thanks to Joel Millman, a friend and highly skilled reporter at the Wall Street Journal, for serving as a welcome sounding board over the years. And to Sophia Banda, friend, confidant, and sometimes personal assistant, who has been and remains a ray of sunshine in my life. And, as always, to my longtime agent Nat Sobel and his crew at Sobel Weber Associates, Inc., who were instrumental in making sure this book found its proper home.
Finally, muchas gracias to legendary publisher Otto Penzler at MysteriousPress.com, who is responsible for getting this book into print and published as an ebook in record time. Having presided over the genre of crime writing—both fiction and nonfiction—as a publisher for nearly forty years, Penzler knows the terrain. And he and his new partners at Open Road Media have established themselves as skillful practitioners at the commingling—and transition—of books from the printed page to electronic formats.
Mostly, I am grateful to the Spirit that put me on this path, and am thankful for the confluence of circumstances that have made it possible for me to make a living doing what gives me the most fulfillment: investigating subjects that engage my head and my heart, and writing stories for the entertainment and edification of those who revere the written word.
About this Book
Whitey’s Payback is a collection of sixteen true crime stories, subjects ranging from irish mob kingpins to mafia hitmen, to yardie drug lords to corrupt cops, from America’s foremost authority on the underworld.
James ‘Whitey’ Bulger is the last of the old-fashioned gangsters. As a polished, sophisticated psychopath—who also happened to be a secret FBI informant—his Boston reign of fear lasted for 20 years. For over a decade he was second only to Osama bin Laden on the FBI’s most wanted list. Captured after sixteen years in hiding, he now sits in a maximum security prison awaiting trial on racketeering charges and nineteen counts of murder. But Bulger will have his payback: at trial he has promised to lift the lid a toxic conspiracy of agents, cops, judges, criminals, and politicians that helped enforce his rule.
T.J. English has been writing about men like Bulger for over two decades. In this collection, in addition to numerous pieces about Whitey, he investigates the frontline of crime in the US. Combining first-rate reporting and the storytelling technique of a novelist, English takes his readers on a bloody but fascinating journey to the dark side of the American Dream.
Also by this Author
The Westies: Inside The Hell’s Kitchen Irish Mob
Born to Kill
Paddy Whacked
Havana Nocturne
The Savage City
About the Author
THOMAS JOSEPH ENGLISH (b. 1957) is one of America’s foremost authorities on the recent history of crime. His New York Times bestselling books have investigated the Irish mob, Vietnamese gangs and mafia infiltration of pre-Castro Cuba. He has also written for the screen, producing episodes for the gritty cop shows NYPD Blue and Homicide: Life on the Street. He lives in New York City.
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First published in the UK in 2013 by Head of Zeus Ltd.
Copyright © T.J. English, 2013
The moral right of T.J. English to be identified as the authors of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.
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A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN (E) 9781781856727
Printed in Germany.
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T. J. English, Whitey's Payback
