Willis was the most notorious gangster in Asian organized crime – and, even more remarkably, the first white man to rise so high in this insular underworld. He was once just another hockey-playing Catholic kid in this working-class Boston neighborhood. But now they knew him here as Bac Guai John. White Devil. 3 years later, he’s sitting in prison khakis across from me in a small room at the Federal Correctional Institution in Cumberland, Maryland, where he recently started serving a 20-year sentence for drug trafficking and money laundering. Armed guards patrol watchfully nearby. In person, Willis is cautious but respectful as he shares his story publicly for the first time, but he’s an intimidating presence nonetheless. On his left arm is a tattoo of a dragon, for strength; a koi, for prosperity; and, on his elbow, the Chinese characters tong fu, for pain. “My life’s been pain,” he tells me in his thick Boston accent. “It hasn’t been easy. You might look at a guy who’s driving around in a Bentley and think that guy’s got the world by the balls. But you don’t know his mind, what he’s been through. I’ve struggled for everything that I did. Look at me now. I’m sitting in prison. It’s not as simple.”

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