I Was Whitey Bulger's PC Doctor

By "PC", I don't mean "politically correct". Whitey was a pretty forward-thinking guy about some things, but whether or not he or anyone he knew was "politically correct" is neither here nor there in this particular context. Nor was I an actual "doctor". As a fresh young layabout I acquired some PC skills from a raft of computer books I had shoplifted, and by the early nineties I was known in the 'hood as a good man with a mouse. I had actually wanted to be considered a good man with a rat - as in a hitman who could whack rats - but the "mouse" rep was good enough at the time. Anyway, Whitey got wind of my skills and I got drafted to look at his PC. This was sometime in the fall of '94, right before he went on the lam, and he was pretty antsy. The last thing he needed was a computer virus. "Fuckin' thing's been behaving like it's been shot in the head," he told me. "And, believe me, I know what I'm talkin' about." I nodded, sat down at his computer, rebooted the thing and logged in at the MS-DOS prompt. I uploaded a fresh copy of the latest Norton Antivirus. All the while, Whitey's sitting on a chair right next to me, flexing his muscles, fidgeting, crossing both his arms and his legs at the same time, and making terrible faces. He scowled at the PC as though he wanted to kill it. It was pretty unnerving. Without exactly making eye contact with Whitey, I asked him, "Mr. Bulger, do you have any idea how you picked up the virus?" He gave me this stony-eyed look. I glanced at a bunch of CD-ROM's lying scattered across his desk, and kinda shuffled through them, looking for anything suspicious. I did see one thing with a vaguely porn-ish looking cover, entitled "Short-Eyes & Long-Timers". I said, "Hmm..." and reached out to that. Whitey cried, "HEY!" He knocked all the CD-ROM's off the desk and glared at me, his lips trembling a little. "Who the fuck are you to look at my stuff?" "Sorry, Mr. Bulger..." I went back to putting the Norton Antivirus through its paces, and everything was quiet for a while. Whitey's chin was buried in the cradle of his crossed forearms, his blue eyes on fire. Like goddamn pilot lights, I thought. Eventually, he said, "I hate those assholes who make these viruses." "I'm with you there, Mr. Bulger." "I really fucking HATE 'em," he said. "They should all be executed by an order of the state." I just nodded. "And I mean publicly executed." "Yessir." "They oughta be fuckin' drawn and quartered, like that Scottish asshole Braveheart. Only they ought to be gagged so they can't fucking shout 'Freedom'..." I cleared my throat. "Fuckin' computer hackers ought to have their jaws ripped off and their dicks sewn into their assholes..." He uncrossed his arms and stood up. I flinched. He took a gun out of a desk drawer and stepped over to the window of his Quincy condo. He pulled up the window and aimed the gun at a fluffy white cat on the sidewalk below. "This is what I want to do to those freakin' Virus Writers!" BANG! went his gun, and the cat's head exploded in a puff of red. Just about then, the Norton Antivirus had done its thing. I rebooted the PC and it was as good as new. I got out of there A.S.A.P. I even forgot to ask for my fee. Just said, "Thank you for letting me help you, Mr. Bulger. It's been a privilege." And he just stared at me like he wanted to drive my teeth into my scalp.