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Like Stevie Flemmi later said, “Jimmy captured Kevin at an early age.” He might have been right. But no one ever put a gun to my head. I went willingly.

THREE

BREAKING IN

THE HALLORAN MURDER

Brian Halloran had been lucky two times earlier when he’d escaped the bullets aimed for his balloon-shaped head. But Jimmy Flynn and Jimmy Mantville, not Jimmy Bulger, had been shooting then. Once Jimmy Bulger decided to take him out, Halloran never stood a chance.

It was just luck—I’m not sure if it was good or bad luck—that made me a crucial part of Halloran’s unlucky day. Since I was the only one Jimmy trusted who happened to be around on the afternoon of May 11, 1982, I got the call. And once I answered it, there would be no turning back. It turned out to be a day that ended Halloran’s life and permanently changed mine.

Brian Halloran was a forty-two-year-old Winter Hill hanger-on. The Winter Hill gang had gotten its name from a neighborhood in Somerville, Massachusetts where some well-known criminals had teamed up. They had played a central role in the Boston gang wars of the 1960s. Back in the late 1960s and early 1970s, Jimmy had joined forces with Winter Hill and Stevie Flemmi, who was already involved with them. The gang had members of various ethnic backgrounds, including the Italian, Irish, and Polish. They were all independent, well-known, violent criminals who had joined forces. In 1979, twenty-one members and associates, including one of its leaders, Howie Winter, had been indicted by federal prosecutors for racetrack fixing. Jimmy and Stevie basically took over the Winter Hill rackets, and though some of the members, like Joe MacDonald and Johnny Martorano, were on the run, the gang continued on.

But Halloran was also a bully who’d ended a life himself. To be specific, he had taken out George Pappas, a reputed drug dealer, in a Chinatown restaurant, the Golden Dragon, a year earlier. I’m not quite sure what that murder was about, probably drugs, most likely cocaine. As it turned out, Halloran had one of his first strokes of good luck here. Jackie Salemme got nabbed for that murder, and after he served a few years, the case was overturned. Salemme walked and the case remained unsolved. So in 1982, Halloran was trying to trade info to get off on any future case against Pappas involving him and headed to the FBI with stories about Jimmy. Only one group of FBI agents believed his shit; the other camp didn’t believe his story because he made his worth to the Winter Hill gang more than it was. A lot of them knew Jimmy didn’t like Halloran and wouldn’t use him for any jobs. But the info that Halloran was talking came straight through to Jimmy from sources he had at the FBI, so it didn’t make any difference what any FBI guys thought. Of course, at the time I knew nothing about Jimmy’s “other” relationship with the FBI and merely knew that he paid money to his sources at the agency for information about the law and his crimes.

Halloran’s first story was that Jimmy and Stevie had asked him to murder Tulsa millionaire Roger Wheeler. Wheeler had bought World Jai Alai, a sports betting enterprise with headquarters in Florida and Connecticut, in 1978, and was beginning to figure out that Jimmy and Stevie were skimming money, extorting $1 million a year from the company’s Connecticut operation. Jimmy and Stevie had gotten involved with the operation through former FBI agent Paul Rico, who was now head of security at Jai Alai. Actually, it was Winter Hill mob hit man Johnny Martorano who ended up taking care of Wheeler at his Tulsa, Oklahoma golf course, shooting him between his eyes as he got into his Cadillac after a round of golf. When Halloran refused to take a lie detector test about his role in the murder plan, that turned out to be fuel for the camp that thought he was a liar. Which he was. The idea of Jimmy offering Halloran a contract was bullshit.

The second piece of info Halloran was feeding the FBI was closer to the truth. It had to do with the murder of Louie Litif, one of Jimmy’s bookmakers,