Call Me Charlie

Josh Bond — Call Me Charlie

I managed a hotel in an apartment building in Santa Monica for about seven years. I lived in the apartment building, and I had an office in the hotel across the street. Super easy commute. It’s great when you live in LA. [audience chuckles] You meet a lot of interesting people when you manage an apartment building. 

For example, there was a retired couple who lived in the apartment next to mine, the Gaskos. The first time I met the husband, I was in my apartment playing guitar and trying to write a song. There’s a knock on the door and I open it to find a 70‑year‑old man holding a black case. He tells me that he heard me playing music and he liked it, which was good, and he thought I could use this black Stetson cowboy hat. So, really nice gesture. I thanked him and he said his name was Charlie. 

So, fast forward four or five years, I’m taking a nap on my couch. I’ve been working for like two weeks straight, no days off. I’m on call every night. But this particular Wednesday, I was taking off work early. I was going to see this band My Morning Jacket in Hollywood. I was meeting a friend, all planned out. At 02:00 PM, the phone rang. My coworker is at the hotel with the FBI. So, before I know it, I’m on the phone with an FBI agent. And he says, ​“I need to talk to you about a tenant in your apartment building.” I’m on my couch, so I say, ​“Can we do this tomorrow?” [audience laughter] And he says, ​“No, where are you? Come here now.” 

So, I get to my office and I have a seat. There’s a larger man with a Hawaiian shirt and jeans on. He closes the door, he throws a manila folder down on the desk, he opens it and points to a sheet of paper. Across the top is ​“Wanted,” the familiar wanted. And underneath, a photo of a man and a woman with names. And he says, ​“Do these people live in the apartment next to mine?” At first glance, I know the woman is my neighbor Carol Gasko. The man, not as familiar. But after another look, I know these are my neighbors. I’ve never heard the name Katherine Greig, the name James J ​“Whitey” Bulger is very familiar. [audience laughter] 

I had heard this name many times when I was in college at Boston University. [audience laughter] But I didn’t really know anything about him. He was more of a Jimmy Hoffa‑type guy to me. It’s like, ​“Oh, this guy’s missing. He’s never going to be found.” It was almost like a joke. So, I’m standing there, and the FBI agent says, ​“What do you think?” I’m like, ​“What does my face tell you?” And he says, ​“I need percentages.” I said, ​“99.5%, 100%.” [audience laughter] So, he gets on his radio. While this is happening, almost like a movie after an explosion where the sound just disappears, and you’re trying to process something that you really don’t– you’re not familiar with, you don’t know what’s going on, and you don’t know what’s about to happen. 

So, this is an old man who bought me a bike light one time, because he was worried about me riding my bike at night without one. [audience chuckles] And now, I’m discovering he’s a notorious fugitive. [audience laughter] So, another agent quickly appears, and he says, ​“We need the keys to his apartment. We’ll bust this door down if you don’t give them to us.” I said, ​“Okay, here are the keys.” And he left. And then, the other agent, Hawaiian shirt, walks up to me, and he says, ​“Look, this guy’s pretty high on the Most Wanted list. One, two, maybe, I don’t know. We could use your help apprehending him.” [audience laughter] 

So, my first response is, ​“I just gave you the keys to his apartment and told you he lives there, so I’m not really sure what else I can do.” [audience laughter] And he says, ​“Well, we can’t just go to his apartment. We have to make sure he’s in there. If it’s just her, it doesn’t really work for us. So, why don’t you go knock on the door and see if he’s there?” In the previous months before this, Carol had been telling people in the building like, ​“Charlie has dementia, he has heart problems.” They put notes on their door during the day, ​“Don’t knock on the door.” I knew from talking to him over the years that he slept during the day. So, I explained this to the agent. 

And without skipping a beat, he moves on. And he says, ​“What are you doing tonight?” And I said, ​“Well, I’m going to a concert.” He said, ​“You might want to cancel those plans.” [audience chuckles] And so, I call my buddy and tell him, ​“Look, I don’t think I’m going to make the show tonight, and I can’t tell you why.” [audience laughter] So, as the shock, the original shock, is dissipating, I realize I’m going to be with these guys until they have him in cuffs. ​“What do you need me to do?” And then, things kick in. We place an agent in the hotel at a window that has a good view of the Gaskos’ balcony, and then the agent wants to go to my apartment.

So, I take him through a back alley and some side streets, so we aren’t walking in front of the apartment building, clear view of Charlie and Carol. We’re stopping at cars, and he’s talking on the radio, and there are agents everywhere. I’m starting to think this is a pretty big deal. It must be. There are this many people staked out in the neighborhood. I’m hearing chatter over the radio, ​“Oh, they just closed their blinds. Did you tip them off?” ​“I’ve been with you the whole time. No, of course not.” 

So, we get to my apartment. I draw on the floor plan of the Gaskos’ place. We’re throwing ideas back and forth of how to get this guy out of his apartment. He’s talking on the radio, and we’re in my living room. My living room wall shares a wall with Charlie’s bedroom. So, yeah, I’m like, ​“This guy can hear everything we’re saying.” Like, ​“he’s replayed conversations I’ve had at night with my friends, asking me why we don’t curse or fight as much as he and his friends did in his younger days.” [audience laughter] So, I take the agent, we walk back into my bedroom, and we come up with an idea, we’re going to break into his storage locker in the garage. 

So, we go down to the garage, and we walk out into the back alley, and he goes to get his car– He had some bolt cutters in there. I’m just pumped up, like I’m involved in something. It’s like a movie. I’m having fun almost at this point. I call my brother, because I’ve got to tell somebody. [audience laughter] And I said, ​“Man, do you know who Whitey Bulger is?” And he goes, ​“No.” [audience laughter] And I said, ​“Well, I’m with the FBI right now, and I think we’re about to arrest this guy. He’s the old man who lives next to me.”

I had to hang up because, the FBI agent came around the corner. I don’t think I was supposed to be on the phone. [audience laughter] So, we get in there, and he’s like, ​“All right, stand by the elevator and whistle if anybody appears while I break into this storage unit.” I’m sitting there, and the adrenaline and the energy of the situation is helping me to forget about my relationship to these people over the last four years. I mean, this is the same man who bought me a Christmas present every year for the four or five years I lived there. 

Once the lock was broken, we go back to my apartment. He’s telling me, ​“Okay, this is what’s going to happen. I’m going to go down, we’re going to get everything set, I’m going to call you, you knock on his door, bring him down.” And I’m like, ​“No, I’m going to go to the hotel, I’m going to call him, I’m going to tell him to meet me there, then you guys take care of your business.” 

So, I’m in my office, and I’m thinking about this guy, my neighbor, who took care of an old woman on the first floor, and who one year, when [chuckles] I didn’t write a thank‑you note for a Christmas present he gave me a box of stationery. [audience laughter] And I’m like, ​“What did this guy do?” And so, I go to Wikipedia [audience chuckles] and I’m reading murders and extortion and gambling. I get to the bottom. In one of his last public sightings with one of his mafia buddies, there’s a quote from him and he says, ​“When I go down, I’m going out guns blazing.” 

So, around this time, I start to rethink my involvement [audience laughter] in the day’s events. And conveniently, my phone rings and it’s the FBI, and they say, ​“Make the call.” So, I start to kind of, ​“Look, man, I don’t know. I just read something about this guy that’s not– I don’t know about this. He said, ​“No, no, no. He’ll never know. He’ll never know,” which was obviously not true, but I was that close to getting to my concert. So, I said, ​“All right, I’ll make the call.” 

So, I called the Gaskos from the hotel, and there was no answer. And I was so relieved, so happy that they didn’t answer the phone. I called the agent back and said, ​“Hey, man, sorry, they didn’t answer. Going to have to do something else.” He’s like, ​“Are you sure you don’t want to knock on the door?” And I’m like, ​“Look, man, curtains closed, guns blazing. [audience chuckles] What if he comes to the door with the gun?” and he says and just be like, ​‘Hey, man, what’s going on?’” I’m thinking to myself, ​“He will shoot me before I finish that one statement.” [audience laughter] And I tell him, ​“I’m not going to do that.” 

While this is going on, Carol calls back. And so, I get on the phone and I explain to her that the storage unit’s been broken into. I can either call the police or Charlie can meet me in the garage and we’ll look at it. So, she discusses with him and she’s like, ​“He’ll be down in five minutes.” I say, ​“All right, great.” Hang up, call the FBI, ​“He’s on his way. Do your thing.” And then, I walk outside, I call my friend and I say, ​“Look, man, I think I’m going to make the show. [audience laughter] I’ll explain everything to you when I get there.” 

I’m standing in the courtyard of the hotel, and Carol walks out on her balcony, which is directly across the street. She looks at me, and then she quickly looks down to the garage, and then she looks back at me. I don’t know if she knew, but she looked worried and she walked back in, and then I get a call from the FBI and they say, ​“We got him. Go to your concert.”

So, I go change clothes. To the adrenaline and the rush, and I’m walking back to the garage. And as I open the door, I mean, it’s like a slow‑motion shot of Suburbans and vans and FBI agents everywhere. And my neighbor, Charlie Gasko, standing there in cuffs, surrounded by agents, laughing and telling stories. He almost looked relieved. I’m staring at this. As I pass him a few feet away, I see Carol standing there in cuffs and there’s maybe one agent with her. And the magnitude of everything that had happened started to sink in a little bit. She looked at me and she said, ​“Hi, Josh.” 

I couldn’t speak. I just meekly waved, and walked to my car, and got on the highway, and called my brother and said, ​“You’ll never guess what happened to me today.” [audience chuckles] And he said, [chuckles] ​“What?” And I said, ​“I helped the FBI arrest the most wanted man in the country.” [audience laughter] 

So, a couple months later, my family’s a little worried about me, and my friends are taking bets on how much longer I have to live. [audience laughter] I get home one day, and there’s a letter in the mail from the Plymouth Correctional Facility. I open it later on that night, and I see the same familiar cursive writing and the same shoot‑the‑shit [beep] dialogue tone that I knew from four years living next to Charlie Gasko. But in this letter, he’s reintroducing himself as Jim Bulger. 

And so, I write him back and I say, ​“Look, I had something to do with the day of the arrest, and my family’s a little worried. [audience laughter] So, just a little note of ​‘Everything’s good’ would be nice.” [audience laughter] So, he wrote back and he said, ​“Look, they had me with or without your help. No worries.” So, that made my mom feel better. [audience laughter] Anyway, new neighbors eventually moved in. They seemed like nice people, [audience laughter] but what do I know?