Black Mass

THEN came the waiting game. In chambers, with the aid of his clerks, Wolf began the task of preparing a ruling, studying the testimony, the exhibits, and the applicable case law. Months passed, and by early 1999 the case had mostly fallen from public view. Occasionally, in other contexts, it popped up. The former U.S. attorney and ex-governor Bill Weld appeared on a radio show in 1998 to promote his first novel and ran into a host who wanted to ask about the Bulger affair with the FBI. Christopher Lydon of WBUR’s The Connection was incredulous that Weld hadn’t done more to dig out the Bulger mess. “Why aren’t you more outraged?” challenged Lydon. “Did your friend William Bulger know about it? Did you ever ask him about it?”

The usually garrulous Weld went mum. He replied no, a trace of annoyance in his voice. Lydon kept going, but mostly in monologue. Rather than join in, Weld allowed seconds of silence to fill the radio space. Of particular concern to Lydon was the recent suicide of Billy Johnson, the state trooper who had gotten tough with Whitey Bulger at Logan Airport over smuggled cash and later believed the encounter had cost him his career. “He killed himself !” said Lydon. “A miserable man at the end of a life that he thought had honorably been devoted to law enforcement.

“Where’s the outrage?” Lydon asked again.

The tense encounter ended finally, and the two got to talking about Weld’s novel. But Weld’s reluctance to get into it with Lydon seemed to capture symbolically the reluctance of Weld’s generation of Boston law enforcement leaders to ever seriously tackle the Bulger scandal.

By the end of the summer of 1999 word began spreading around town that Wolf, after ten months of rumination and writing, was applying the finishing touches to his ruling. In early August, FBI director Louis Freeh arrived in Boston and, at a press conference, acknowledged publicly that the FBI “made significant mistakes” during the Boston FBI’s twenty-year run with Bulger and Flemmi. The admissions were seen as an effort by a publicity-obsessed FBI to take some of the sting out of the upcoming federal court ruling. “We have a lot of mistakes to account for,” said Freeh. He promised that corrupt FBI agents from Boston would be brought to justice.

Two weeks later the FBI announced that the fugitive Whitey Bulger was finally being added to its Ten Most Wanted List. The move—more than four years after Bulger fled his 1995 indictment—was seen as long overdue. In the public’s mind in Boston, the perception had taken root that the FBI was never really interested in tracking down its former informant. But now Bulger joined the likes of fugitives Eric Robert Rudolph, a suspect in abortion clinic bombings, and Osama bin Laden, the Saudi terrorism suspect. And he held a distinction all his own: he was believed to be the first FBI informant to ever make the famous top ten list, which had posted 458 fugitives since its inception in 1950. His face would now appear across the country in post offices and federal buildings, on the FBI’s web site, and even in a Dick Tracy cartoon as part of an FBI Most Wanted promotion.

In cellblock H-3 three celebrated inmates were also eagerly awaiting the ruling—Frank Salemme, Bobby DeLuca, and Stevie Flemmi. Their high hopes were that the judge would find the evidence so compromised he would throw out the racketeering charges against the group—that Wolf would rule that the FBI had indeed promised blanket immunity for Flemmi and Bulger, and therefore the government could not now violate that immunity and prosecute them.

Ever since their arrest in 1995 the three mobsters had been kept at the Plymouth prison, a modern facility that opened in 1994 and was located forty-eight miles south of Boston. The new facility had been built atop an old landfill in an isolated, unwanted area of the historic community. It was also right off of route 3, a highway connecting Boston to Cape Cod, and Flemmi, from his cell, could hear the hum of freedom in the distance, the cars carrying commuters and vacationers along a route he and Bulger and John Connolly all used to take on their way to the Cape.

The cellblock could hold 140 inmates in 70 cells. It was a large rectangular space constructed as a self-contained “mini-prison,” meaning that the inmates spent virtually all of their time on the block and did almost everything there. Meals arrived on wheels from a central prison kitchen, and inmates ate at the tables in the unit’s common area. The cellblock had its own showers along one end, its own televisions, and its own pay phones. It was smoke-free. The unit had a “rec deck,” a small, outdoor recreation area that opened up off the far end of the unit. The area was essentially a fenced-in cage, but inmates could escape the stale air of the cellblock and get some exercise by going out there. The chin-up bar attached underneath a set of stairs was jokingly called “the gym,” and the cart of books positioned against one wall was “the library.” Two decks of cells, on a ground floor and a mezzanine level, lined the long walls of the cellblock. Salemme and DeLuca lived side by side in cells at the far end of one mezzanine level, near the entrance to the rec deck. Flemmi was on his own.

Over time Salemme had emerged as a model inmate and cellblock leader. The guards relied on him. He was given the top cellblock job, a position previously occupied by, of all people, Howie Winter, until Winter was moved out of the unit. Frank was the “meal server”: three times a day, while all the other inmates were locked down, he set up the common area for meals. He put ice in the juice pitchers, wiped down the tables, arranged the chairs. No job on the unit carried more responsibility—not cleaning the rec deck, emptying the trash bins, cleaning the showers, or sweeping the tiled floors and the mezzanine walkway. The guards wanted the unit as shiny and clean as a hospital ward, and Frank was the key inmate making that happen. It was a far cry from his old life as a high-rolling gangster, but the job, a way to help pass the days, kept the mobster busy.

DeLuca was not as motivated a worker. His job was sweeping the mezzanine. But like Salemme, he worked out and wanted to stay in shape. He regularly performed chin-ups to keep his upper body hard and muscular. Both watched their diet, especially Salemme, who avoided the high-fat prison offerings and preferred salads and fruits. Salemme also read a lot—boating magazines, Tom Clancy, and Dean Koontz.

Flemmi was another story. During the course of the hearings in court, as the extent of his FBI deal was exposed, Flemmi was pushed further and further to the margins of cellblock life. Inmates did not want to have anything to do with him. He was ostracized—a rat, the lowest form of underworld life. Salemme would not talk to him, would not even look at him. Flemmi sometimes approached DeLuca, but the encounters were curt and brief.