Brutal_ The Untold Story of My Life Inside Whitey Bulger's Irish Mob - Kevin Weeks [107]
“Fine,” I said, “but they just pinched Stevie. And red’s all around.” Red was the universal warning sign for danger. When we used it, it meant the law was around. “And they’re looking for someone else.”
“I heard it on the radio,” he told me. “I just got back to Massachusetts, but now I’m making a U-turn. I was coming back tonight.” He was probably taking Theresa home for a visit. We talked for a couple of minutes about nothing much and then he said, “Call you later,” and he was gone.
As it turned out, Stevie was actually indicted on Monday January 9. He’d been arrested on Thursday night on a complaint, and was charged with something just to hold him and prevent his taking off till the indictment was handed down. On January 9, the indictment came down for Jimmy, too, as well as for six others, including Bobby DeLuca, Jimmy and Johnny Martorano, Frankie Salemme and Frankie Salemme Jr., and George Kaufman. Now that he’d been indicted for racketeering, extortion, money laundering, and gambling, Jimmy was officially wanted and in the wind. He was gone.
Over the next six weeks, Jimmy and I had a lot of phone calls. Since he was on the lam now, he’d had to get rid of his beeper and was using calling cards at pay phones to call me at numbers I would give him. I’d never have him call me at the same number twice. He’d always tell me exactly when he would call, and he was never a minute late with each call. I never had a number to reach him at.
The next time I saw Jimmy was in the middle of February 1995. He’d made arrangements to drop off Theresa at her daughter Karen’s house in Hingham and pick up Catherine Greig. Theresa wasn’t well suited for life on the run, and after two months she was ready to come home and see her four kids. Cathy was much better equipped for that kind of life. She had no kids and had been devoted to Jimmy since the early 1980s. Cathy was very intelligent, and always upbeat and pleasant. A good person, she treated everybody in the same nice manner. She had two toy black poodles, Nicki and Gigi, that she and Jimmy loved and were always walking. Cathy was a dental hygienist, but thanks to caring for Nicki and Gigi, she’d become expert at grooming dogs as well. They had been together as long as I had known Jimmy.
Cathy lived with Jimmy—when he wasn’t living with Theresa—in a house in Squantum. In mid-February, Jimmy made arrangements for me to meet Cathy at 7:30 P.M. at the bottom of the Golden Gate stairs that run down from Thomas Park in South Boston. When I drove up, she was coming down the stairs. Her sister Margaret had dropped her off and taken Nicki and Gigi. Cathy gave me her usual big smile and hopped in my black Pontiac Bonneville and we took off. I’d driven around for an hour before I met her, to make sure I was clean and there was no law following me. As always, Cathy looked attractive and well put together. Blond and blue-eyed, she had a lovely smile, a pretty face, and nice bone structure to her face. And she kept herself in good shape. That night she was wearing warm clothes, no hat, and a big smile, and carried an over-the-shoulder type of weekend bag as her only piece of luggage.
We drove around for another hour to make sure neither one of us was being followed before heading over to Malibu Beach in Dorchester. There were two parking lots on the beach, one on the Morrissey Boulevard side, where I was to park, and the other on the Savin Hill side, where Jimmy would park.
Cathy and I were on the walkway heading from the Morrissey Boulevard side to the Savin Hill side, about nine, when Jimmy appeared out of the shadows of the cold, clear February night. Trying to surprise us, he strode calmly out of the darkness. But Cathy saw him right away and picked