How It All Goes Down
Heller's Cafe
- Detective Joe Saccardo of the Massachusetts state police is monitoring Heller's Cafe, which he suspects to be a front for illegal gambling.
- And he's right: bookie Michael London is inside right now, counting checks.
- London work with Bulger (duh), but he has a particularly close relationship with Vincent Ferrara of the Mafia.
- This is happening during the '80s, which means that the FBI is bogging down the investigation as much as possible.
- Anything to protect Bulger, right?
- Still, through hard work, and the help of a prosecutor named Michael Kendall, Saccardo manages to take London down—though everyone directly connected with Bulger is still safe.
- Saccardo wants to do another round of investigations, this time focused on a bookie named Chico Krantz.
- To do so, he enlists the help of a certain Fred Wyshak.
- Chico would be the perfect informant because "he had been paying tribute to the insular Bulger for nearly twenty years" (3.18.15).
- They manage to arrest Chico in 1991. After pressuring him with legal threats, they get him in the witness protection program the following year.
- A similar thing occurs with Jimmy Katz and Joe Yerardi, both gangsters with ties to Michael London.
- Another arrest, another flip, and another informant in the bank against Bulger.
- By 1994, the investigation is progressing nicely, and the feds are gathering evidence from all the way back in the '80s.
- In the middle of the year, the feds are finally ready to make their move and arrest Bulger, Flemmi, and Cadillac Frank.
- They want to do it fast so they don't have time to run.
- Well, Cadillac Frank stays in town, but Bulger and Flemmi are suspiciously missing. How could that possibly be?
- Cadillac Frank manages to escape the police to Florida, but is caught eight months later.
- Pretty good run.
- In 1995, Flemmi gets overconfident and returns to Boston, where he's immediately arrested. The gig is up for him, though he still seems unerringly confident that the FBI has his back.
- As for Bulger, he had picked up his girlfriend Catherine Greig and hit the road to parts unknown. There are reported sighting of him "in the Midwest, Florida, and even Mexico" (3.18.65).
- Bulger never contacts Flemmi again, but he does pay a call to John Morris in 1995.
- His message is classic Bulger: if Bulger's going down, he's taking Morris down with him.