Whitey's Payback Read Free

shooter that guaranteed that Joe Sullivan, without the disguise, would never be identified as a suspect.
    Sullivan’s appreciation of a job well done extends to my own undertakings as a writer. Since he’s been in prison so long, Sully has lots of time on his hands, and he’s become a voracious reader. He is fascinated by the process of gathering information and getting it down on the page. He asks me if I use a tape recorder or take notes when I’m doing interviews. “How do you get people to talk to you?” he asks. He wants to know how I’m able to put so much into my writing and still keep everything organized. He’s curious about how I’m able to remain mostly objective when writing about people that many would dismiss as “scumbags.”
    I answer Joe’s questions, and he listens attentively to my answers.
    I am fascinated by his life’s work, and he is fascinated by mine.
    Over a couple of visits to the prison visiting room, we continue our conversation. Often, Mad Dog and I become so engrossed that it’s easy to forget where we are. The hours pass, the day drags on. We are merely two craftsmen—the assassin and the journalist—discussing the tricks of our respective trades.
    The sixteen stories in this collection are republished here in their original form. With articles written fifteen and twenty years ago, it is tempting to go back and edit or rewrite from a revisionist perspective, to bend the information to a contemporary point of view. Fortunately, I am not the kind of writer who is obligated to make prognostications or provide “expert opinion” on the likely outcome of elections or sporting events. These articles represent the time in which they were written, snapshots from America’s ongoing crime narrative.
    The books I have written are sometimes from a historical perspective, but my journalism, as represented by these pieces, chronicles America’s crime history in real time. To be judged fairly, they must be taken as investigations into an evolving phenomenon, though with the benefit of hindsight they can also—for better or for worse—be evaluated for their accuracy as harbingers of things to come.
    The title of this collection— Whitey’s Payback —is drawn from the most recent collection of articles dealing with the prosecution of Boston mobster James “Whitey” Bulger. The story of Bulger’s capture and prosecution has many of the characteristics I most relish in a good story, namely, deeply rooted historical underpinnings that help explain a contemporary situation.
    Having Mad Dog Sullivan and Whitey Bulger open and close this book has a certain symmetry: Taken together, they represent the last of a kind of old-school gangsterism that most people would rather deny ever played such a monumental role in American urban life.
    Over the years, one fact has not changed: In the United States, the narrative remains open-ended. Being a crime journalist is the gift that keeps on giving. When gangsters, con artists, porn kingpins, and corrupt lawmen stop using the American Dream as their license to commit crime, I will stop writing about it. Short of that happening, I hope to see you again in another twenty-two years, with another collection of stories.

Not long after I published my first book, in late 1990, I received a call from an editor at Playboy . The editor wanted me to write a feature article for the magazine. No major publication of this stature had ever before called me, out of the blue, with the offer of an assignment. It was a big step in my career as a journalist. The editor told me what they had in mind, though, frankly, I was hardly listening. I accepted the assignment immediately because it felt like an important opportunity. It was only later, after I’d hung up the phone, that it dawned on me what I was being asked to do: The story was to be an exposé on the Witness Protection Program.
    Can that even be done? I asked myself.
    It was a good question, one I should have