Brutal_ The Untold Story of My Life Inside Whitey Bulger's Irish Mob - Kevin Weeks [103]
Bellotti had always been after Jimmy, making it a personal matter, trying to embarrass Billy’s political career through his brother. So Jimmy was determined to do whatever he could to make sure that Bellotti didn’t get his party’s nomination in the race for governor. During the campaign, Jimmy and I used to go around town and along the expressway at night spreading our particular message of “Remember John Coady” on sidewalks. Late at night, I hung over the overpasses or climbed the walls, spray-painting in fluorescent orange and black the places where the cars went by with the words “Remember John Coady,” while Jimmy waited in the car.
John Coady had been the deputy revenue department commissioner in 1982 when Bellotti’s office probed the Revenue Department. During Bellotti’s investigation, a state tax examiner, Stanley Barczak, made allegations against Coady. Seven weeks after Barczak’s testimony, on July 30, 1982, Coady committed suicide in his North Andover home. Many people believed Coady had done nothing wrong and that Bellotti’s relentless pursuit had made an innocent man commit suicide.
Our campaign to discredit Bellotti may well have ended up costing him votes. A week before the election, people started to talk about John Coady, and the Globe wrote stories about the graffiti appearing all over town. It was enough to stimulate the media’s interest in John Coady, even though they had no idea that Jimmy and I were behind the whole scene.
But for the most part, the media devoted far too much space to printing lies about Jimmy and me. I assume that most people would prefer to stay private, rather than have their names in the newspaper. We were no different.
TWELVE
IN THE WIND
1994–1996
I was standing by the end of the counter next to the lottery machine at Rotary Liquors at 295 Old Colony Avenue, the store we’d bought from Stippo ten years earlier, when John Connolly walked in. It was around three in the afternoon on Tuesday, December 23, 1994. Connolly, who modeled his appearance after John Gotti, was wearing an expensive suit and tie, his hair carefully coiffed, dressed as sharply as when he’d been an FBI agent. He’d retired from the FBI in 1990 and was now working as head of corporate security at Boston Edison, a nice benefit from his years at the FBI. Although I’d see him riding around South Boston, he rarely came into the variety store next door, where I usually worked. If he was looking for Jimmy, he’d go to the liquor store, but most of the time he’d be talking to Kevin O’Neil. “Is the other guy around?” he asked this time, referring, of course, to Jimmy.
He looked a little anxious, like he had something on his mind, but I told him Jimmy wasn’t around. When he asked for Stevie, I told him he wasn’t around, either. We made some small talk before he said, “Then I’ve got to talk to you.”
The two of us headed down to the walk-in beer chest and walked inside. This was the perfect place for a private conversation since it would be hard to bug because of the dampness, along with the humming of the fans and the whirring noise of the compressors. And we would also be out of sight of anybody hanging around down there.
“The indictments are imminent,” he told me as soon as I closed the door to the chest. That wasn’t exactly a surprise. We’d known for months that a grand jury had been sitting in Worcester considering the extortion of the Jewish bookmakers, like Chico Krantz and Jimmy Katz, who were paying rent, another word for protection money, to Jimmy and Stevie. We knew the indictments would be for bookmaking, extortion, gambling, and money laundering. “They’re trying to put them all together over the holidays,” Connolly continued. “That way they can pinch them all at once.”
That made sense. Stevie would be at his mother’s and Jimmy at Theresa’s over the holidays. They could scoop them both up, and whoever else might be around visiting their families, on the same