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claim that he was working with the FBI, that, in fact, he was listening to tapes with the FBI agent. Stevie was also blaming everything on Morris, testifying that Morris gave him the tip-off about the imminent arrest, which, of course, wasn’t true. He was trying to keep Connolly’s identity in the tip-off secret when in fact Connolly was the one who told me about the coming indictments. When I was meeting Connolly at the Top of the Hub, he gave me the tape that Morris had left behind, which I then gave to Stevie’s attorney. In fact, if Stevie had just told the truth about Connolly in the first place, it would have helped his case instead of hurting it.

Of course, Stevie had expected Connolly to say something to help his case. Perhaps that was why he was trying to protect him about the tip-off. However, on April 30, 1998, during one of his two courtroom appearances during the Wolf hearings, Connolly, afraid of incriminating himself and being charged with crimes, had invoked the Fifth Amendment after every question he was asked. He refused to bolster Stevie’s contention that the FBI assured him and Jimmy that they could commit crimes short of murder, so long as they provided information on the Mafia.

Lehr and O’Neill, the Globe reporters who had written the four-part series on the Bulger brothers, went on to write a book, Black Mass, based on the Wolf hearings. In their book, maybe 50 percent of the facts came out, and a lot of times they were taken out of context. These so-called experts didn’t know anything that really happened with Jimmy and Stevie and me, but they still said certain things about me. I’d love to give these guys the opportunity to say these things to my face, like a man, but that will never happen. Dick Lehr is a professor at Boston University. I’d like to meet him one-on-one with no one else around besides the two of us. Then he could tell me what he thinks of me and I could show him what I think of him. I’ve always believed that if you have a problem with someone, you knock on his door and say, “You have something to say to me? Okay, now what do you want to do about it?”

Even today, it’s hard to try and figure out what happened between Jimmy and Connolly. Connolly was an affable guy, but Jimmy had exposed his dark side and their roles had become reversed. Instead of Connolly being the handler and Jimmy the informant, Jimmy had become the master and made Connolly his puppet. I had seen so little of Connolly before Stevie got arrested in early 1995. But then, until I learned the truth about Jimmy and Connolly, I had assumed he was just a corrupt FBI agent taking money to look out for Jimmy’s interests. Once I understood their true relationship, FBI handler and FBI informant, I saw the power Jimmy had over him and understood how deeply Jimmy had corrupted him.

But my days of meeting Connolly and visiting Stevie to help him with his case were coming to an end. I would soon have my own case to take care of, and the three of us would no longer have anything to discuss. If I had known earlier what the real relationship had been between the two of them, I would have gone my own way a lot sooner. But even knowing the truth about Jimmy, I couldn’t hate him. Though I had been shocked and furious over what I learned about him, it’s still hard to be around someone for twenty-five years and not like him. Besides, you had to admire Jimmy. He beat them at their own game.

FOURTEEN

ARREST, PRISON, AND RELEASE

On November 17, 1999, around three in the afternoon, I was walking down N and Sixth streets, heading to my car to go down to the variety store, when agents from the DEA and state police called out, “Kevin.”

“Yeah,” I said.

“Have you got a minute?” one of them said. “We want to talk to you.”

“I’m heading down the store to get a cup of coffee,” I told him. “I’ll meet you down there.”

“No, we want to talk to you here,” the agent said. I could see other agents in cars around the street, as well as some walking around. They were all over the place.

“Am I under arrest?” I asked.

“No,” he said.

“Then