Brutal: The Untold Story of My Life Inside Whitey Bulger's Irish Mob (19 page)

When we met, Stevie was living with Marion Hussey in Milton, near Curry College, in a house that once belonged to his parents. But he was still legally married to Jeannette, the woman he’d married in the 1950s, when he was a paratrooper. He’d had a couple of girls with Jeannette, and he and Marion had two sons together. I only met Jeannette a few times, once in the early 1980s, at Stevie’s mother’s house. Her blonde hair done up in a bun, she was around five-four, of medium build and very pleasant. Jimmy, Stevie, and I were in the house when she came in to say hi to Stevie’s mother, Mary. We chatted for a few minutes about nothing special and when the three of us left, she stayed at the house to spend some more time with her mother-in-law. I’m pretty sure that a few years later, Stevie did go to Haiti for a quick divorce, but he never married Marion.

Stevie and Jeannette were still married at the time of the wedding of their daughter Jeannette to Al Benedetti in 1983. It was an expensive wedding, done up right, with the reception at a beautiful Boston hotel, a fancy affair with an open bar, lots of hors d’oeuvres, a live band, and a big crowd. All the South Boston gang, Jimmy and Stevie’s inner circle, were there, having a terrific time and a lot of laughs. We all brought our wives and I was there with Pam and Jimmy was with Theresa. Stevie looked handsome and proud as he and Jeannette walked their daughter down the aisle of the church, and he remained the perfect host all evening long.

When Theresa Stanley’s daughter Karen married hockey player Chris Nilan, the wedding at the Copley Plaza was equally as lavish, and Jimmy, like Stevie, spared nothing to make it so. The ceremony took place in a church, but the reception was at the hotel. There was a large crowd, which included all of the Montreal Canadiens, as well as lots of friends and relatives and many of Jimmy’s business associates. Theresa looked especially lovely that night, as did Karen, who was every bit as beautiful as her mother. Like Stevie, Jimmy provided an open bar, as well as expensive bottles of wine and Dom Perignon on every table. Karen and Chris raised their family in Hingham until they were divorced about ten years later.

Stevie loved women and was attracted to them in all shapes and sizes, so Jeannette and Marion were far from the only females in his life. A good-looking guy, he looked a little like Robert De Niro and always bought expensive clothes. He and Jimmy traveled all over Europe, Mexico, and the islands, bringing beautiful women with them. One of Stevie’s favorites, of course, was Debra Davis, whom he killed when she tried to leave him. His ego could never stand the thought of any woman leaving him. Jimmy could see a relationship end and say, “See you the fuck later.” He could walk away from the woman without feeling the need to kill her in order to keep his ego intact. But Stevie couldn’t do that. He couldn’t just say goodbye. He had to kill her. It’s funny, but people don’t think criminals have women problems like everyone else. Yet they do. But most criminals don’t handle this stress from women the way Stevie did.

You never knew what was going on in Stevie’s mind. Anyone who met him couldn’t help but like him, but you never knew when that nice manner was going to transform into his violent temper, which most often ended up in someone’s death. And you never knew when you were going to end up involved in his violent behavior. One morning in 1981, around 4:00
A.M
., I got a phone call from Jimmy to meet him outside my apartment on L Street. I didn’t need him to tell me that this was going to be a business call, so I dressed appropriately. Jimmy always said nighttime was the best camouflage. And it was free—just there, waiting to be used. Heeding his advice, “dark clothes for dark deeds,” I threw on a black, long-sleeved T-shirt, black dungarees, black socks, black sneakers, and black leather gloves and waited outside for him. The blue Chevy Malibu pulled up a few minutes later, with Jimmy, of course, behind the wheel, and Stevie beside him. I hopped in the back and we drove in silence to Medford. Stevie looked pretty souped up and didn’t say much. When we pulled up to the house of Loretta Finn, one of his current girlfriends, I said to myself, “Oh, shit. This ain’t good,” figuring we might be going to help Stevie kill her.

When Stevie got out of the car and walked into the house, I asked Jimmy what was up. “You never know with Stevie,” he answered me. “He’s been fighting with Loretta. She’s lucky if he doesn’t kill her.” My thoughts exactly.

Loretta was a tall girl, about five-nine, with long brown hair and big brown eyes. Part Japanese, she was really gorgeous. But, surprisingly, she survived the night. Less than ten minutes after he went into the house, Stevie came out, this time carrying a bunch of fur coats and bags of jewelry. Without a word, he threw them all into the back seat beside me, got into the front, and off we went. Jimmy dropped me off around five, saying, “Get you tomorrow,” as I got out of the car. It was too late to try and go back to sleep, so I stayed up and got ready for a day of work on the MBTA.

But Loretta tested her luck a second time. She and Stevie were back together within a week, and one night when they were at Triple O’s with Jimmy and me, she joked to us, “You know, I could eat peanuts off Stevie’s head.” Jimmy looked at me and rolled his eyes. I knew what he was thinking. Yeah, the girl was an inch or so taller than Stevie, but that was no joking matter. Whether she realized it or not, she was insulting the guy in front of his friends. Lucky for her, Stevie was hard of hearing in one ear and hadn’t heard her. But she had to be crazy or just plain stupid to have fooled around with a guy like that. People think they’re joking, and it’s usually okay as long as they don’t try and embarrass someone. Then it isn’t funny at all. It’s deadly.

Although Jimmy went out to dinner frequently with Stevie and his different women, the only place I ever ate with Stevie was at his mother’s house. Since I was mostly in Southie and Stevie was all over Boston, we didn’t see each other every day. Stevie would come over to talk business with Jimmy for an hour or so, at the variety or liquor stores or at Triple O’s. Then he would be on his way, to do business in another part of town, or whatever he wanted. The three of us did spend a good deal of time together in Jimmy’s car, heading to a meeting or an extortion or whatever. But thanks to our caution about being taped, our conversations were always minimal and never about business or anything important.

With his brilliant head for business, Stevie was easily a millionaire, investing the prodigious amounts of money he earned through illegitimate means in real estate and other legitimate businesses. To Stevie, money was god. It was important to Jimmy, but not as much as to Stevie. Stevie might have made even more money than Jimmy, since Jimmy had been in jail for nine years, while Stevie hadn’t lost a day of work. But even though both of them made a lot of money, Jimmy had no problem giving someone a break. Like if someone owed him $100,000, after he’d paid a portion of the money, Jimmy might well say, “Forget about the rest.” But Stevie would never do that. Stevie would have the guy pay him dollar for dollar, with no break whatsoever. Jimmy also had deep loyalty to me and to other people. Whenever possible, he would make sure not to involve any of us personally or expose us to danger. Stevie was loyal, but just to a point. His loyalty went mostly to his greed. Big-time.

Stevie was close with his two sons, Billy and Stevie Jr., with whom he helped develop Schooner’s, a nightclub near Faneuil Hall. It opened in late December 1994. Stevie had done the whole place over. He knew a lot about construction and liked to build things. He enjoyed watching the projects come together and had an eye for all the little details, paying careful attention to each one and making sure everything was done perfectly. One of his investments was in a laundromat in Back Bay. While he was in the process of designing and building it, Jimmy and I met him over there a couple of times, but, unfortunately for Stevie, he got pinched before it reached its full potential.

Although there was no doubt that Stevie had a sharp mind and handled business details exceptionally well, he was not as alert to the presence of the law as Jimmy and I were. No matter how many times Jimmy would warn him to be more cautious, Stevie just wasn’t as attuned to what was going on around him as Jimmy felt he should have been. This was probably because we were always in South Boston and could recognize an unfamiliar car or face easily, while Stevie was all over Boston and had too big an area to cover well. That was one of his few shortcomings, but it was a major one that eventually did him in.

In 1980, Jimmy opened up a garage with Stevie on Lancaster Street in downtown Boston, which George Kaufman ran for them. They often used the garage as a business office and had meetings and conducted business there. It was an indoor parking garage, with many permanent spaces for cars. There was also a typically inaccurate dumb story that the newspapers printed about a scene at the garage, a story that was spread as the gospel, even though it was too ridiculous to be true. But, like Jimmy always said, “Never let the truth get in the way of a good story.”

According to the local newspapers, who were quoting from an equally inaccurate police report, one afternoon Nicky Femia, the 240-pound mob enforcer who spent most of his time at the garage, was eating his McDonald’s lunch on the hood of Jimmy’s black 1979 Chevy Caprice. The story describes how Jimmy came out of the garage, saw Femia messing up his car with the food, and proceeded to humiliate him by flinging French fries into his face and screaming at him in front of a small crowd. The story is too ridiculous to repeat, and even more ridiculous to have ever happened. In the first place, Jimmy never acted like that to any of his associates. Second of all, Nicky was a very dangerous guy and if Jimmy ever humiliated him in front of others in that manner, Femia would be looking for revenge and Jimmy would have had to kill him. Just another example of inaccurate reporting and distortions of the truth about Jimmy.

The garage was the real setting, however, for some of Stevie’s best jokes. I used to call him Judd for the Defense, referring to the 1967–69 ABC television show about a flamboyant lawyer named Clinton Judd, because every time Stevie tried to stick up for me, he’d get me in more hot water with Jimmy. Even if it was a dead issue, something I had already done that had gotten Jimmy annoyed, Stevie would try to stir it up all over again. He’d get such a kick out of seeing Jimmy get on me. Like with my paintball tournaments. “So, how was that paintball convention last weekend, Kev?” he’d ask me days after Jimmy had gone at me for taking off for Texas for a tournament. “Where exactly did you say you went? I heard you did real well.”

Jimmy would start at me all over again and Stevie would stand in back of him, facing me, barely able to conceal his laughter. There was nothing mean-spirited about what Stevie was doing when he brought up my paintball tournaments. He was doing it all in fun. But all I knew was that every time Judd for the Defense stuck up for me in any matter, I always ended up getting convicted. “Hey, do me a favor and quit sticking up for me,” I’d tell him, but he would just smile and keep on busting my balls.

In his typical joking manner, Stevie had tried to convince me to take care of a cat, Mactavish, that he had over at the garage. I’d never seen such an ugly cat. First of all, it was the size of a dog, and it was missing an ear, which it had lost in a fight, along with large chunks of its fur. The dirty street cat was all scarred up and would attack anything that came within five feet of its broken tail. “Come on, Kev,” Stevie was always going at me, laughing as he was talking, unable to keep a straight face. “This cat loves you. It would be perfect for your kids. They’d love it. Come on. Take him home for a few days. He needs a good home. Give him a try.”

“Oh, yeah,” I told him. “He’d be great with my boys. Just the perfect family pet. I’ll come home one night and find the cat grazing on my kid’s arm.” But he never gave up pulling my leg about that miserable cat. Stevie never ran out of jokes, mostly off-color jokes, a lot of which he got from George Kaufman, an old Winter Hill associate of his. Stevie was a great joke-teller and got Jimmy to laugh at most of his jokes.

But he had his own passion, which wasn’t for paintball competitions, but rather for parachuting. He’d joined the International Association of Airborne Veterans, and with other former paratroopers, he jumped from planes in South Africa, East Germany, Israel, Russia, and Thailand, forming friendships with other Korean War vets. He enjoyed the jumps, and was always commenting about how modern the equipment was now as compared to what he had used during the war. He would describe the different types of parachutes the Army used and how they had improved over the years. Once when he was talking about his experiences during the Korean War, he told me and Jimmy how he could look from one mountaintop to the other and see the faces of the people he was shooting at. But most of his reminiscing about those days took place at the reunions with other vets that he attended faithfully, making jumps right up until the 1990s.

Stevie was close with his parents, who had both emigrated from Italy to the United States before he was born. He took good care of them, buying them houses and cars and whatever else they needed. His father, John, was a quiet guy, old school, who spoke broken English. He had served in World War I with the Italian army and had been a bricklayer in the old country. But there was still plenty of spirit in him. When John was ninety-two, Stevie couldn’t find him one day, so Jimmy and I took off looking for him. About a half-hour later, we found him outside his house. He was sitting on the roof, which had a severe slant to it, quietly watching the roofers working on the other side of his house. When Stevie looked up and saw him up there, he muttered “Jesus Christ” in amazement. The three of us watched, not saying a word, until, when he was ready, John got down by himself. A couple of years later, he told everyone he was planning to go to Italy. By himself. Sure enough, a month later, he took off for Italy and stayed there for about a month, having himself a great time until he decided it was time to come home.