This message is for all of you strikers pounding the picket lines outside Nstar facilities: The suits would like to give you a sweeter deal, really they would. But they're a little short, because they have to keep paying a big fat pension every month to Zip Connolly, the convicted gangster and accused murderer. See, it's not enough that Whitey Bulger's consigliere is collecting a pension from the FBI that amounts to more than $50,000 a year. No sir, Zip was in the Bulger mob, see, and when you're with the Bulgers, that means you don't just slurp at the public trough, you lick the plate. Even under indictment, an organized-crime kingpin, Zip grabs a second pension from Nstar. He got his 10 years' in, even though he spent the last two years at Nstar, as the feds prepared to indict him, on a leave of absence. That was a paid leave of absence,. by the way. At perhaps $150,000 a year. Nobody in the Bulger mob ever starved to death, after all. And so what if Zip is in a federal prison in North Carolina, about to be extradited to Florida to stand trial on first-degree murder charges? He still wants that money. Give him the money! He earned that pension, dammit! He's got a trophy wife 17 years younger than himself, and three kids, and a Godfather-style mansion in Lynn-field. Does Nstar send the checks to his mansion, or to the penitentiary in Butner? Or does he have direct de-posit to his prison canteen account? And if he gets checks, are they made out to John J. Connolly or to his Bureau of Prisons number, 22928-038? You Nstar linemen? Nothing for you bums. You'll get by on what you make now, and it's not bad, no doubt about it. It's just that your deal is not quite as sweet as the one Zip Connolly got. But then you guys in the union didn't have the connections Zip did. After he retired from the FBI, Zip became the Edison's direct-or of protection, I mean, security. All day long, the two-faced gangster sat in his office at the Pru, surrounded by stacks of blank stationery he somehow obtained from the Boston Globe and the BPD. He worked on his screenplay, "Only the Ghost Knows." The title came from a statement made by Vinny "the Animal" Ferrara at the end of a Mafia initiation recorded by the FBI. Ironically, he said that "only the ghost knows" into an FBI microphone. That Animal — what a maroon, huh? But tomorrow, and here's another irony for you, the Animal gets re-leased from prison. As for when Zip gets sprung, well, the ghost knows that too, and so do the rest of us --never. Yesterday, a call was placed to the Lynnfield cul de sac where Mrs. Zip lives next door to her brother-in-law, alleged Mob leg breaker Arthur Gianelli. Liz was asked, exactly how many pensions does Zip have? "I'm not gonna comment," she said. "Goodbye." Nstar declined to comment as well. But in an old court document, Zip admitted he was grabbing the second kiss in the mail. The lesson here is, you can take Zip out of Southie, but you can't take the Southie out of Zip. It is appalling, though, that imprisoned mobsters can continue to rob the rest of us. In Zip's case, he gets some of our federal income taxes, and he gets something out of our electricity bills As for the FBI, at the end of his squalid 22-year FBI career, Zip was a GS-14, and his pension was larded with all kinds of extras — his guaranteed OT, his two years beyond the standard 20, the extra dough the feds give out for the higher cost of living in Boston. And then there's the COLA. One final question: what do you have to do to lose a pension around here? Only the ghost knows.

Howie Carr

CONNOLLY: Disgraced ex-FBI agent gets Nstar pension of more than $50G a year.