How It All Goes Down
Shades of Whitey
- Although Billy Bulger is by now "securely on top of the State Senate," he's going through a bit of a money shortage (2.14.1).
- So he takes out a $240,000 loan from his friend Thomas Finnerty to make up the difference until some long-awaited money comes in.
- But then Billy learns that Finnerty has been dealing with Harold Brown, a criminally-associated Boston developer.
- Furious at this deception, Billy immediately pays back the loan, plus interest.
- Or at least that's how Billy tells it. Harold Brown has a totally different story.
- The feds catch Brown in 1985 after recording him making a deal with a "corrupt city inspector" to undervalue the price of a new development to save cash on fees (2.14.8).
- Threatened with jail time, Brown reveals that Billy Bulger and Finnerty had helped him get permission to build a skyscraper in return for a bit of back-patting, if you catch our drift.
- Roughly $1,800,000 worth of back-pats, to be specific. Finnerty and Bulger immediately split the first payment of $500,000 between themselves: hence the $240,000.
- There's a huge "public clamor" when this deal is made known (2.14.18).
- Billy stands by the story we started off this chapter with, and somehow manages to whether the PR storm.
- Of course, he has some help from the FBI. Connolly is super-happy to help Billy out, as Billy's just about the only person he admires more than Whitey.
- After a softball interview with the FBI and a prompt dismissal by new US attorney Jeremiah O'Sullivan, Billy Bulger is officially let off the hook.
- Coincidentally, Whitey is in the midst of a shakedown of his own, having just assaulted a man named Raymond Slinger for an unpaid $50,000 debt.
- So the FBI investigates. That is, until Connolly appears, muddying the waters and telling Whitey to chill until things blow over.