It was infuriating enough, the twice-daily Whitey motorcade up and down Route 3 from the Plymouth County House of Correction to the federal courthouse.
Now he gets a helicopter?
Who the hell does this serial killer think he is, Jane Swift? I understand he’s a rat, and that means the Marshals have to keep him in the rat unit, protective custody, whatever you want to call it. If they handcuff him to some other jailbird, he might get shanked. We get that part of it.
But c’mon, isn’t the deficit large enough without running up thousands upon thousands of police overtime every day? Listen, in the late 1990s, when Whitey was on the lam and his cohorts were having hearings every day in Judge Mark Wolf’s courtroom, there was none of this kid-gloves treatment for the hoods.
They had one crummy, no-windows van for five guys -— the Martorano brothers, Stevie Flemmi, Frank Salemme and Bobby DeLuca. At the end of the day’s hearings, the Marshals would shackle and handcuff ’em, then throw them in the back of the van and take ’em back to the jail, hitting every pothole in Norfolk and Plymouth counties along the way.
Now Whitey, the King Rat, rides alone, in a convoy. And he gets a helicopter.
I’m pretty sure this is the first time the local feds have been ferrying a hit man around in a chopper since the days of Joe Barboza. But back then, in the 1960s, there was still a powerful Mafia around, looking to take the Animal off the board.
Now, not so much.
Why don’t they let the convoy ride in the HOV lane? A cop told me why — they’d be afraid someone would block the HOV lane and then machine-gun him, something like what happened to Rafael Trujillo in the Dominican Republic … in 1961.
I figured it’d be fun to get the weekend menu from Plymouth to see what Whitey will be chowing down on as he spends his first Independence Day in stir since 1964. The flacks refused to release the menu. It was all up to the Marshals, they said.
Maybe they needed the chopper because it’s almost July, and that means Judge Wolf’s traditional vacation on Martha’s Vineyard with the glitterati. Tennis with Yo-Yo Ma and other such Beautiful People. Weston is just too declasse in July, I guess.
I did at least have an opportunity to study the Plymouth House of Correction Web site. And apparently the sheriff has set up a “SafetyNet Service” to track those “who are at risk of wandering … who could be or are prone to wandering and becoming lost.”
Whitey’s only been back a week and I’m already getting sick of him. Take the weekend off, SafetyNet Service
