You’re Michael “Meatball” Morrissey, the 70-year hack DA of Norfolk County.
And on mornings like this, you sometimes dream of just heading down to Marina Bay and sailing away.
Captain Ahab had his Pequod, Captain Queeg had the Caine, and now you, Captain Meatball, pilot the Class Action.
Ahab was obsessed with Moby-Dick, Queeg with the missing strawberries, and now you are hunting the biggest game of all.
Karen Read and Turtleboy.
But as you obsessively track those public enemies, your scurvy crew is in full mutiny. You can’t believe it. This never happened to the Skipper on the Minnow. Gilligan never even considered walking the plank.
You’re Meatball Morrissey and Friday you lost the second cone head Keystone Cop on your State Police “detective” unit — Lt. Brian Tully.
Just because of that little Internal Affairs investigation by the MSP, and now this latest revelation that he was hacking, er, extracting data from Turtleboy’s cell phone even though your lawyers were claiming in court the phone was “pristine” and untouched by your crooked cops.
What did Turtleboy’s lawyer call those statements?
“Patently false…. Misleading… false impressions… clear violation of due process….”
Tully could straighten a thing out. He put the first handcuffs on Turtleboy.
So what if he and the special prosecutor Ken Mello admitted under oath to a grand jury that they had been doing exactly what they repeatedly told judges they hadn’t.
So what? It’s Norfolk County, and you’re Meatball Morrissey.
Tully was even more valuable in the administration of your Norfolk County “just-us” than his fellow cone head Trooper Michael Proctor, now suspended without pay from the MSP, over nothing.
Just because the FBI discovered that by his own text admissions, Proctor spent all his time scrolling through Karen Read’s cell phone for nude photos, when he wasn’t openly soliciting bribes for looking the other way in Canton murder cases.
First Proctor, now Tully. But then it got even worse for you on Friday. You lost your lifer hack flack, David Traub, who as a mark of his fealty had ponied up $2,225 to your “campaign.”
You’ve also lost Lynn Beland, your loyal $201,000-a-year assistant, not just another pretty face. She’s retiring at age 68 to try out for a role in the new Netflix production, “Childless Cat Ladies.”
Good old Lynn Beland — at least she ponied up $5,200 to you before she took it on the lam.
You’re Meatball Morrissey, and you’re worried now that you’re gonna lose your last real go-to trooper — Sgt. Yuriy Bukhenik, that super sleuth who runs the elite Rubber Ducky Detail, mandated to stamping out the First Amendment in Norfolk County.
He’s a thug’s thug, that Yuriy — like when he’s one-finger typing a report, and he suddenly calls out to everybody in the office, in his broken English, “Do anybody here know, is dat word ‘cat’ spelled wit’ one ‘t’ or two?”
At least you’ve got yourself a new first mate — Hank Brennan, the $250-an-hour Mob mouthpiece who’s been tasked with framing Karen Read in her double-jeopardy second-degree murder trial in January.
You’re Meatball Morrissey and you bonded with Brennan as soon as you met him.
You guys have so much in common — he was a stooge in court for serial killer Whitey Bulger and you were a stooge for Whitey’s little brother Billy at the State House.
Sitting in Canton, you guys can swap Bulger stories all day long. Hank can say, hey Meatball, do you remember what Whitey did to Donald Killeen? And you chuckle and say, what about what Billy did at the State House to Paul Harold?
He says, what about Brian Halloran? You come back with, ever hear of Alan Sisitsky?
And Hank Brennan says, how about how Whitey strangled Deb Hussey and pulled out all her teeth? You say, let me tell you what Billy did to a court clerk named John E. Powers.
You’re Meatball Morrissey and when you tell Hank Brennan that you want him to do to Karen Read exactly what an earlier Norfolk DA did to a guy named Freddy Weichel for Whitey Bulger, you don’t have to draw Hank a diagram.
Brennan’s from the neighborhood. His task is putting Karen Read in prison for 35 years for a crime she didn’t commit. Just like what Freddy Weichel got.
It’s a Norfolk County tradition.
You’re Meatball Morrissey, and sometimes you wonder, where are the ethical titans of yesteryear? Like developer William O’Connell, or FBI agents like Zip Connolly, Vino Morris and Paul Rico.
Those were the days!
At least you’ve still got the judges cowed. Turtleboy’s lawyers somehow discovered that threatening note you sent to the two judges and the court administrators, demanding that they get rid of a lowly clerk in Stoughton who dared to give public documents to Turtleboy.
On your personal burner email account, you thundered at the judges:
“These actions are completely unacceptable and must be resolved immediately.”
By firing the clerk.
You typed those words and you felt like your old boss Billy Bulger turning the screws on Judge E. George Daher back in the day. And then when the Herald asked for a comment from the court system about your outrageous demand, the judges were so terrified all they had to say was this:
“The Trial Court declines to comment.”
You’re Meatball Morrissey and you know why you can still get away with slapping the judges — because you’re with House Speaker Ron Mariano, and if those bust-out failed lawyers ever want another pay raise, they better not bleep with the boys from Quincy.
The legislature controls the money, just like when you were worshipping at the feet of Billy Bulger. It’s the same reason Diana DiZoglio will never get to audit the legislature’s books, no matter how big she wins on the Question 1 referendum next month.
If the SJC rules in DiZoglio’s favor, no judge in Massachusetts will ever get another pay raise.
You’re Meatball Morrissey, and you know how the system works. Your only regret about that threatening note to the judges was that in your tired and emotional state, you misspelled the names of both Turtleboy and Karen Read — as “Aiden” Kearney and Karen “Reed.”
You make mistakes like that and people start wondering, what condition was Meatball in when he went off the rails like that?
You know how that just reminds everybody of the four-car crash you had in Milton. You said you “blacked out.”
Of course nobody believed your explanation, except for the part where you said that when you passed out on Centre Street, you were on your cell phone, ordering a large pizza to go.
That part of the story, everyone totally believed.
You’re Meatball Morrissey and the only good thing about today is that the Pats are playing in London, so kick-off’s at 10. And nobody will look askance at you if you sip a Captain ‘n’ Cola or two a bit on the early side.
You’re off to Marina Bay and the Class Action for a cruise around the harbor. And as always, your first mate will be Captain Morgan.
You’re Meatball Morrissey, and you owe it to yourself.