Excerpt from Black Mass by Dick Lehr, Gerard O'Neill, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

The judge approved an extension, and the troopers, their hopes waning, devised their most ambitious plan. A trooper would stop Flemmi for a phony traffic infraction. The trooper would run Flemmi's plate, inform him the Chevy was reported stolen and then order the car towed away. With the car in their possession the troopers could install a bug before Flemmi retrieved it.

The trooper, Billy Gorman, stopped Flemmi one afternoon as he drove the Chevy through an intersection in Roxbury. Hidden but nearby, Long and the other troopers watched and monitored the cruiser's radio. Gorman had been handpicked for the assignment; he was unflappable and the mission called for a trooper who would not be drawn into an ugly exchange with the volatile ganster.

The cruiser's lights flashed, and Flemmi pulled over. The trooper got out, and so did Flemmi. They headed for each other right there in the street. The trooper spoke first: "Did you see that old lady there you almost ran over?"

The many months of only being able to study gangster body language now ended abruptly, and at long last the troopers finally heard actual noise from one of their targets. Flemmi's first words were hardly pleasant ones.

"What the fuck is this shit?" he shouted. No ordinary citizen, the gangster was not impressed by a trooper's uniform and badge. His temper raced from zero to 60 mph in an instant. "Do you know who I am, you fucking jerk? This is harassment!"

Methodically, Gorman asked Flemmi for his license and registration. "I don't got no fuckin' registration," Flemmi yelled. "These are dealer plates, can't you see?" The trooper calmly told Flemmi he should still have a registration. The trooper explained he was going to have to run the plate and that Flemmi would have to wait patiently. Gorman headed back to his cruiser and Flemmi stormed off into a convenience store where he began making telephone calls.

In the cruiser, Gorman consulted with Long. The tow truck was summoned. The installation crew was waiting in the back lot of the nearby abandoned Mattapan State Hospital. Flemmi came back out of the store, and Trooper Gorman explained that the car was reported stolen. Gorman and Long even play-acted on the cruiser's radio, with Long telling the patrol trooper, "Please be advised that the vehicle comes back as stolen from Nassau County, New York, in July 1979." Gorman told Flemmi the Chevy was going to be towed.

Flemmi was apoplectic. Then he uttered the words that made Long's and every other state troopers' stomach turn to mush. "You tell fuckin' O'Donovan that if he wants to bug my car so bad I'll drive it right up to fuckin' 1010," O'Donovan obviously referred to Lt. Col. John O'Donovan, Long's commander, and "1010" was a reference to state police headquarters. Flemmi knew.

It was over.

Flemmi went back inside the convenience store. The car was towed away, but even before its arrival behind the hospital, Flemmi's lawyer was telephoning O'Donovan screaming about the blatantly absurd seizure of the car. The state police commander kept a stiff upper lip, didn't give the lawyer anything, saying the car had come back as reported stolen. But the troopers all knew the ruse was up. Long told the troopers not to even install the bug -- don't give Bulger and Flemmi the satisfaction of taking apart the car and finding the bug. Let them wonder, maybe they'll get a little paranoid.

This was their only consolation. They'd thrown the Hail Mary and it had fallen woefully short. Despite their many months of successful surveillance, they'd lost in the streets against Bulger and Flemmi. They may have seen Bulger and Flemmi joined at the hip of the Boston Mafia, but they would not be taking them to court. They'd been outmaneuvered at every turn. But even in failure, the state police had -- unbeknownst to them -- triggered a massive internal crisis over at the FBI, a crisis which, more than any other in the FBI's long history with Bulger and Flemmi, posed the biggest threat to the cherished deal Connolly and Morris had with the two gangsters.

Copyright 2000, Dick Lehr and Gerard O'Neill. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced without written permission from the publisher.