Hitman

by Howie Carr

  The Speaker was no stranger to the Boston underworld. In the 1920s, as a state senator, he’d sued the Boston Police Department on behalf of his clients, the Gustin gang of bootleggers. McCormack’s brother Eddie, better known as “Knocko,” was a 300-pound bookie who owned a block-long barroom in Andrew Square.

  Facing an air force court-martial in 1952, Whitey had so brazenly dropped the name of the then house majority leader McCormack to his commanding officer that the captain wrote it up in a report that went into Bulger’s permanent military file. During his nine years in the custody of the Federal Bureau of Prisons, it was Speaker McCormack who had made sure that the wayward son of Southie never got too deeply into trouble as he was transferred from Lewisburg to Atlanta to Alcatraz to Leavenworth.

  Throughout his forty-six years in Congress, Speaker McCormack had always been a friend of the Bureau, voting to extend its investigative and arrest powers across state lines, then later protecting its budget in good times and bad. As he retired in January 1971, McCormack only needed one or two more small favors from the director. One was to keep an eye on Whitey Bulger, his bank-robbing constituent. Whitey’s younger brother Billy, after serving eight years as a state rep, had just been elected the new state senator from Southie—the position that had earlier been held both by the future Speaker McCormack and later by the brother of early Southie gangland boss Dan Carroll. The boyos were keeping the seat in the family.

  * * *

  AFTER THE nose-biting incident at the Killeens’ bar in February 1971, Buddy Roache of the Mullens arranged a sit-down at the Colonial Lounge on West Broadway with Billy O and Whitey. Whitey later told Dennis Condon how Buddy Roache had brusquely informed them that Donald Killeen was finished and that if they didn’t switch sides, he and Billy O would be killed as well.

  A violent argument ensued, ROACHE drew a weapon and was thereafter shot by O’SULLIVAN. ROACHE was seriously wounded and hospitalized. After this shooting, BULGER and O’SULLIVAN had expected retribution on the part of ROACHE’s associates. BULGER had been extremely cautious but O’SULLIVAN underestimated the group.

  In the aftermath of the Roache shooting, the Boston police got an early indication of just how much political protection Whitey already enjoyed. Detectives took the glasses that had been on Roache’s table before the gunplay and dusted them for fingerprints. They found those of two ex-cons—Whitey and Billy O.

  The detectives went to South Boston District Court, where Billy, by his own admission, already wielded considerable influence, to obtain arrest warrants. But the clerk-magistrate refused to issue them. The cops were amazed, and wrote up a report, much of it in capital letters, to indicate their dismay. It was sent directly to the police commissioner, who happened to be an ex–FBI agent himself.

  Whitey was never charged in the Buddy Roache shooting. It was the beginning of a pattern.

  * * *

  A MONTH or so later, on a Saturday night in March, Billy O had dinner at Jimmy’s Harborside with his wife. Afterward, Billy O dropped her off in front of their house on Savin Hill Avenue in Dorchester and parked his car on the street. As he walked back toward his house, Billy O noticed a group of younger men walking rapidly toward him. They all had their hands in their pockets. Billy O knew what that meant—they were carrying.

  Unarmed, Billy O turned and ran into the street. So did his pursuers. Billy O was heading for a vacant lot, and he almost made it. But he tripped on a manhole cover in the street and fell to the pavement. The Mullens caught up with him, pulled guns as he struggled to get up, and shot him four times in the head.

  The next day Billy O’s wife told reporters she had “no idea” who might have murdered her forty-three-year-old husband. Sure, she said, he enjoyed a wee small taste of the creature now and again, but never at home. And although Billy O sometimes muttered about these long-haired hippie types you saw on the Common nowadays, she told reporters that as far as she knew her late husband had “no enemies.”

  * * *

  KENNY KILLEEN, Donald’s brother, was known to the Mullens as “Balloonhead.” But he was capable enough, and he didn’t mind delegating authority. After Billy O’s demise, Balloonhead decided to bring in more outside talent. This time he and his brother went to an old-time South Shore hood named Ben Tilley and hired him to make a bomb to plant under the hood of one of the Mullens’ cars.

  The Mullens got a tip and paid Tilley a visit at his house in Quincy. He was outnumbered and outgunned, so he immediately turned over the bomb to them and apologized.

  “Nothing personal, guys,” Tilley said. “It was just business.”

  They took the bomb, disabled it, and then left most of it, still looking quite ominous with all its dangling wires, on the porch of Kenny Killeen’s bayfront home on Marine Road. However, he didn’t seem to get the message, so the Mullens decided to take sterner measures.

  On weekend mornings in the summer, Balloonhead would take the morning papers out onto his back porch and enjoy the fine weather while reading the papers and watching the boats. Soon the Mullens had their own boat in the harbor, monitoring the Killeen porch. The Mullen Navy had a walkie-talkie, which was used to communicate with the Mullen Army back on dry land. The Mullens had two cars parked on N Street, within shooting distance of Kenny’s porch. One car was legit, and that was where the shooters sat, smoking cigarettes as they waited for Balloonhead to go outside onto his porch. The second car was stolen, wiped clean of prints, and parked directly in line to the porch. In the backseat of the second car was a rifle, a 30-ought-6, and a sandbag the sharpshooter could use to balance it on while drawing a bead on Killeen’s head.

  “We’d get the word from the boat that Balloonhead has come out onto his porch, and we’d run to the other car, wearing gloves,” one Mullen said. “Twice we had him in our sights, but each time one of his kids came out. The third time, we had him cold. I fired, but the bullet hit the wrought-iron rail fence outside his house. He was hit by bullet fragments in the hand and somewhere else, but he was a marine, he knew what to do. He dropped and stayed down. But that was the end of him in the gang. He announced his retirement, instantly. He never left the house again for months. We stopped calling him ‘Balloonhead.’ Kenny’s new nickname was ‘Ben Bolt,’ because he was bolted to his house.”

  * * *

  FBI AGENT Dennis Condon kept reaching out to Whitey Bulger, but the feds’ courtship of him seemed to be going nowhere. In terms of inside information, he was no Stevie Flemmi. On July 7, 1971, Condon reported that Whitey “still has some inhibitions about furnishing information … if his productivity does not increase, consideration will be given to closing him out.”

  Whitey had more pressing matters on his mind than cultivating a relationship with the FBI. The Mullens were still hunting him and Donald Killeen, and Whitey told Condon he “was convinced if they did not make a move, they would be eliminated.”

  Whitey knew who he needed to see about making a move of his own, and it wasn’t J. Edgar Hoover.

  * * *

  JOHNNY MARTORANO was now hanging out in a new joint. Basin Street was history. His new place was a small bar on Columbus Avenue in the South End, Duffy’s Tavern. It was a temporary headquarters, because next door his brother Jimmy was constructing a new club with Howie Winter that they had named Chandler’s. Buildings on Columbus Avenue cost next to nothing in 1972, because the South End was still mostly slums, its property values depressed by both the nearby public-housing projects and the rooming houses that attracted alcoholics slowly drinking their way to the bottom—the Pine Street Inn, the last resort of homeless winos in Boston.

  Jimmy and Howie had been able to purchase a large building from the Boston Redevelopment Authority on the corner of Columbus and Dartmouth streets. In what would eventually become one of the city’s more fashionable neighborhoods, they planned to open a club on the ground floor. On the four floors above their planned restaurant/lounge, they were putting in twenty-eight high-end apartments they planned to re
nt. When they bought the old building, one of the tenants was a barroom, and they quickly snapped up the liquor license.

  As convicted felons, neither Jimmy nor Howie could own a liquor license, and even though Johnny could have held it in his name, that didn’t seem wise, either. So the license for Duffy’s Tavern, which would be transferred to Chandler’s after the construction was complete, was held in the names of Jimmy’s wife and Howie’s daughter.

  While the main part of the building was being renovated, the partners decided to keep the bar going. Duffy’s Tavern was a small place, with maybe fifteen barstools and a handful of tables. One night in the spring of 1972, Johnny was sitting at one of the tables in Duffy’s by himself, killing time, when he noticed someone walking across the room toward him.

  The guy appeared to be in his early forties, with a very light complexion, blond hair, and blue eyes. He was dressed sharply, wearing a suit and tie, which pegged him as someone who was not from the South End. He stopped at Johnny’s table, extended his hand, and smiled.

  “You may not remember me, Johnny. I’m Jimmy Bulger. Billy O told me to come see you if I ever had a problem.”

  Johnny studied the man in front of him. He vaguely recalled maybe meeting him once before, one night at the Attic. But he said his name was Jimmy. Johnny seemed to remember that the guy in front of him had been introduced by another name—was it “Whitey”?

  Johnny Martorano smiled at the guy with two names.

  “Any friend of Billy’s is a friend of mine,” Johnny said and invited him to sit down and have a drink.

  Whitey looked like a gangster-politician in that suit. He says he wants to meet with Howie Winter. He says, I have to get this thing in the Town resolved. That was what they all called Southie—“the Town.” He showed respect. He knew how to ask for a favor. You knew he wasn’t going to go see the Mafia because if Jerry Angiulo intervened he’d want to take over everything. I hadn’t really been following what was going on over there in Southie, none of us had. But Whitey must have thought things weren’t going well, or he wouldn’t have reached out to me, to set up a meeting for him with Howie.

  Whitey had figured out a way to end the war between the Killeens and the Mullens that didn’t end with his own murder. The only way to accomplish that would be to dispose of his boss, Donald Killeen. Whitey naturally wouldn’t even consider getting involved in such a plot unless he had a deal in place with the Mullens, who disliked him for a very good reason—he’d been trying to kill them, and vice versa.

  Whitey needed someone to broker the deal for him, which was where Howie Winter came in. Howie knew the Mullens—Whitey had told Condon that much, months earlier—and they could be expected to go along with whatever Howie asked them to do. When they weren’t stalking the Killeens, the Mullens were truck hijackers and tailgaters. They also burgled a lot of warehouses. They always needed a place to sell their truckloads of hot merchandise, and that was where Howie Winter came in. He was the Mullens’ biggest fence, and once they got paid, the Mullens often stayed in Somerville to get drunk, recycling their profits back into various Winter Hill gin mills. It was a win-win, at least for Somerville.

  Naturally Howie and the others in Somerville liked the Mullens a lot—they were earners. Whitey wanted Howie to guarantee that if he set up Donald Killeen, the Mullens wouldn’t come looking for him next.

  There was one other major sticking point. Once Donald Killeen was dead, Whitey wanted to merge the two crews, with himself as the boss. It was certainly an audacious suggestion, eliminating your own crew chief and then taking over the more powerful gang that had handled the murder on your behalf. But Whitey’s pitch was that it would be in everyone’s interest to halt the bloodshed. All the other gangs in Boston were consolidating—why shouldn’t Southie’s? As long as Southie was divided, it would be easy pickings for In Town. Stevie Flemmi and Frank Salemme might be gone, but sooner or later somebody else would move in to fill the vacuum. And ultimately, that couldn’t be good news for Somerville, or for the remaining independents, like Johnny.

  Howie agreed to arrange a sit-down for Whitey and the Mullens, but Whitey wasn’t taking any chances. He didn’t know many people from In Town, but one he had become friendly with was J. R. “Joe” Russo from East Boston. Whitey asked Russo to check with Howie, just to make sure he wasn’t walking into a trap. Russo made the call to Winter Hill and then reported back to Whitey that Howie had assured him everything was on the level. Less than a decade later, Whitey would be telling his FBI handlers how much he despised the Mafia, but in 1972 when his back was to the wall, he had no qualms about seeking their assistance—any port in a storm.

  The sit-down was at Chandler’s, which we’d just opened. It was after hours, early one morning. For the Mullens, it was Pat Nee, Weasel Mantville, and Tommy King. I don’t know where McGonagle was. Whitey was the only one on the other side. Howie was the mediator. He told them, he’d just been through one of these wars, and it made no sense. Everybody’d be better off if it got settled. At the end of the night I guess they had a deal.

  Donald Killeen now lived in Framingham, and that was where they would get him. May 13 was a Saturday, and it was his son Greg’s fourth birthday. His parents bought him a toy fire engine as his present. Shortly after 9 P.M., with the sun long down, Donald Killeen got a phone call. He told his wife he wanted to buy a newspaper, and went outside to his 1971 Chevrolet Nova.

  “Several men charged the car,” the Globe would later report, “rammed a submachine gun into the driver’s side, and fired sixteen bullets.”

  Inside the house, Killeen’s ten-year-old daughter heard the shots and thought they were fireworks. Killeen had seen the Mullens advancing on him, in a group, just the way they had with Billy O. Like Billy O, he’d been caught flat-footed. He died reaching into the glove compartment for the .38-caliber revolver police later found under his body.

  Weasel Mantville, a Mullen who died in the 1980s.

  The next day, at the funeral home, a large bouquet arrived for Donald Killen from a Brookline florist, collect.

  The card read, “Au Revoir.”

  * * *

  JOHNNY MARTORANO was making ends meet, barely. Chandler’s had just opened, and his name was on the payroll, if not the liquor license. But his women and his children were costing him a fortune every month. None of the mothers of his children worked. He was responsible for at least two rent payments, car payments, utility bills, wardrobes, and more. Everything that cost money, Johnny Martorano had two of.

  He now had two daughters and two sons—his second son, Vincent, had been born in 1970. Johnny was now remarried, to Vincent’s mother. They’d gotten hitched in New Hampshire.

  Meanwhile, his first ex-wife, the former Nancy O’Neill, had remarried.

  Her new husband was some guy from East Milton, he was a little older than me. I knew him. He’d been a friend of Wimpy Bennett’s. I was visiting the girls one day, and I asked Jeannie how she was getting along with the new guy. Of course kids never really like their stepparents, I understand that. But she didn’t care for him much at all, so I decided to have a private chat with him. I told this guy, if you ever lay a hand on either one of the girls, I’ll shoot you in the head. Jeannie and Lisa didn’t have any more complaints after that.

  About the same time, Barbara got sick, and I asked Nancy to take in my son Johnny. He lived with his sisters maybe six months—they’re still really close, after all these years. Barbara and Nancy always got along well, surprisingly I guess.

  Everyone had to be supported. And there were other expenses as well—Johnny continued giving a couple of hundred a week to Stevie’s common-law wife, Marion Hussey. That was what friends did for each other, when somebody had to go on the lam. And Stevie was, after all, Johnny’s best friend

  Johnny Martorano’s life had become a country-music song—“Livin’ here, lovin’ there, lyin’ in between.” The new Mrs. Martorano was riding him hard all the time, inquiring in rather caustic ter
ms where he was sleeping all those nights when he didn’t come home.

  “Life was a party, but you know, I couldn’t have paid for everything with a 9-to-5 job, and I’ve never had one of those.” So Johnny was hustling. He had some money out on the street, at a couple of points a week. The afternoons he’d spend at whatever track was open, along with most of his friends. Then he’d drive back to the South End, where he hung out nights. Duffy’s Tavern was a dive—after last call, if nothing else was going on, Johnny would sometimes turn out the lights and sit by himself in the dark with a pellet gun, shooting the rats one by one as they slithered out of the walls.

  Duffy’s quickly became popular among the local boosters as a good place to unload their shoplifted merchandise. The way Johnny figured it, he was merely a pawnbroker without a license. He paid his thieves as much as they could have gotten at the pawnshops on Washington Street under the Orange Line. The only difference was that Johnny didn’t have to let the cops periodically check out his shelves full of tagged swag.

  Soon a continuous stream of junkies was showing up at Duffy’s, lugging shopping bags full of obviously stolen merchandise. They boosted so much women’s apparel Johnny finally got some clothing racks, which he used to set up his own version of Filene’s Basement in the cellar. He paid the boosters between 10 and 15 percent of the price on the tags, then put the stolen clothes on sale for one-third of the label’s list price, subject to haggling.

  “That was enough of a markup so that I could make a profit and give a lot of stuff away,” Martorano said. “It’s an easy way to make friends. Somebody comes over, and you bring out a rack of fur coats and tell them, pick one or two out for yourself. It’s something people remember. Gets ’em in good with their girlfriends, maybe even their wives.”