But Angiulo, whose high school ambition was to be a criminal lawyer, took delusional refuge in a mistaken belief that RICO applied only to those infiltrating legitimate business, as the Mafia in New York City frequently did. Oblivious to the finer points of RICO, Angiulo railed on, with hidden microphones picking up every word.
Then, in a fateful misstep that sealed his fate, Angiulo unwittingly outlined the racketeering case against himself in a colloquy with Zannino. The rambling recitation of his criminal endeavors was the bare bones of the indictment he would face just two years later.
“Our argument is we’re illegitimate business,” he said to Zannino.
“We’re shylocks,” answered Zannino, the family’s consigliere.
“We’re shylocks,” echoed Angiulo, warming to the litany.
“Yeah,” said Zannino.
“We’re fuckin’ bookmakers,” Angiulo added.
“Bookmakers,” confirmed Zannino.
“We’re selling marijuana,” said Angiulo.
“We’re not infiltrating,” replied Zannino.
“We’re, we’re, we’re illegal here, illegal there. Arsonists. We’re every fuckin’ thing,” said Angiulo, warming to his own argument.
“Pimps, prostitutes,” added Zannino, bringing the discussion back to where it belonged.
“The law does not cover us,” Angiulo declared. And then quizzically: “Is that right?”
Zannino again brought the discussion back to reality. “That’s the argument,” he said glumly.
The truth was, the argument was a big-time loser. Later that same night a talked-out Angiulo confronted the cruel reality. “The law was written for people like us,” he said wearily.
AS Angiulo surveyed his ebbing domain, he noticed one small thing. Stevie and Whitey hadn’t been around since they last visited Prince Street, when some of their indebtedness to the Mafia was discussed. Angiulo beefed about the pair not coming around “for two fuckin’ months”—or since the time of their secret FBI reconnaissance mission in November 1980. As with nearly all mob matters, Angiulo thought their absence was about money. But it wasn’t that simple. Bulger and Flemmi could have cared less about any money they owed a dead duck with microphones in his walls. They stayed away because their handlers tipped them off. Bulger and Flemmi knew their loose confederation with Angiulo would be discussed while the tapes reeled it all in. But it would only be hearsay for investigative leads if there was no talk about crimes from their own mouths.
From the beginning the agents did the best they could to cover up for Bulger and Flemmi as their misdeeds tumbled off the tapes in 1981 and, later, when the tapes were transcribed for Angiulo’s racketeering trial. With Morris in charge, the agents distorted the meaning of raw information coming into headquarters about Bulger’s gambling, loan-sharking, and potential use as a hitman by the Mafia. Running interference, Connolly raced headlong into the record. For example, the FBI tapes caught Zannino urging Angiulo to use Whitey and Stevie to kill a fringe mobster. The tapes also had Zannino paying homage to Winter Hill as a formidable partner in some loan-sharking and gambling enterprises. Indeed, the tapes revealed the Angiulos routinely discussing what the thwarted state police were after—a racketeering case based on a joint venture between the Mafia and Winter Hill. The Mafia leaders talked frequently about how best to divide gambling and loan-sharking territory with Winter Hill. Jerry Angiulo himself summed it all up when he referred to the millions of dollars in extorted payments by the FBI’s pair of prized informants: “Whitey has all of South Boston, and Stevie has all of the South End.”
But those fiefdoms were not only left alone by the FBI; they were protected. And the FBI’s protection was hardly confined to nonviolent gaming crimes. The bulk of the business was from extorting drug dealers and bookies who faced ultimatums every month to either pay or die.
Zannino knew Stevie’s work firsthand as a killer from the gangland wars of the 1960s. He reminisced with gusto about how Stevie murdered Dorchester loan shark William Bennett after Bennett crossed the Mafia. (Willie Bennett was one of three Bennett brothers murdered at Zannino’s behest over financial and territorial disputes.) The bloodthirsty consigliere knew about Bulger’s work only by reputation, aware of his use of selective violence from afar.
But Zannino knew a job for the pair when he saw one and immediately pushed them as the solution to Angelo Patrizzi. A dim-witted mobster on the periphery, Patrizzi had just come out of jail vowing vengeance against two Mafia soldiers who had killed his brother for holding back on loan-shark payments. It was a widely known threat that put the Mafia leaders on the spot. They decided to stop Patrizzi in his tracks. Patrizzi was a thirty-eight-year-old escaped convict with an eighth-grade education, a drug and alcohol problem, and a bullet fragment in his head. But he knew what it meant when Zannino had Freddie Simone start coming around the garage where he worked, making nice. Patrizzi went into hiding in Southie. Zannino offered Angiulo a suggestion for a threat living on Bulger’s home turf: “Whitey and Stevie will clip his fuckin’ head.”
But Angiulo didn’t want to owe Bulger a favor, especially when Bulger had his $245,000 outstanding bill due the Mafia. Angiulo, who saw the nettlesome problem as internal housekeeping, preferred the safer course of using several Mafia soldiers to execute the foolish man making rash threats. And Angiulo was always thinking about who could testify against him if something went wrong: Bulger was not “one of us” who would automatically stand up if caught. Angiulo even rejected the idea of having soldier Connie Frizzi team up with Bulger so Frizzi could identify Patrizzi and then get out of Bulger’s way.
Connolly cleverly took the whole incident out of context and claimed that the internal Mafia debate debunked the law enforcement rumor that Bulger was sometimes used as a hitman. He reported to his boss that the Prince Street eavesdropping operation had established two “indisputable facts”—one that papered over Bulger’s standing as a killer for hire and the other that jabbed the state police for overstating the general knowledge about Bulger’s rat status. Connolly offered two bulletins from Prince Street to a boss just in from Knoxville.
“A. That source [Bulger] is not a hit man for Jerry Angiulo as has been contended.
“B. That the hierarchy of the LCN do [sic] not consider source to be an FBI informant as Col. O’Donovan of the Massachusetts State Police has stated.”