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When the three of us got to the door, they started arguing with me. “You don’t know who the fuck I am,” one of them said.

“Yeah, yeah,” I said. “Just screw. Get out of here.” With that, one of the guys threw a punch at me. I stepped to the side and hit him a right hand and he went down, falling over backward and hitting his head on the ground. I turned and hit his friend a left hook to the jaw and he went down, too. Thinking that was the end of it, I walked back into Triple O’s.

A week later, I overheard two waitresses in the bar, Vicki and Pat, talking. Vicki, who was about four years older than me, well built, with short blonde hair and a great personality, was telling Pat, “You have to tell him.”

But Pat was saying, “No, I’m not getting involved. I’m staying out of it.”

Finally, Vicki came up to me and Kevin O’Neil and told us that Pat’s mother checked coats in the Beef and Ale restaurant on Washington Street in town. She’d heard the owner, whose last name was Spelios, telling people he was going to spend money, even if he had to sell his place, to have me killed for fracturing his son’s skull and was reaching out to Jack Ashley, an ex-Boston cop. Ashley, who was around six-five and 250 pounds, was now a loan shark with a reputation of being a capable guy who could handle himself. “I couldn’t not tell you,” Vicki said, “because if anything ever happened to you, I’d feel terrible.”

Kevin assured me he knew Jack Ashley personally and would reach out to him and let him know I was with him and Jimmy. He also told me that Ashley always carried a .22 derringer under his hat.

The following weekend, Kevin and I were in the bar when Jack Ashley walked in. Kevin talked to him for a few minutes and then called me over. The three of us were walking into an alcove beneath the stairs leading to the function room when Jack made the mistake of reaching to take his hat off. Assuming he was going for a gun, I immediately pulled out a .38 pistol and stuck it in his chest.

“Whoa, hold on,” Kevin said.

“Hey, I don’t know anything about anything that’s been going on here,” Jack said, putting his right hand up in the air. “I’ve been out of town for a week and all I know is that Kevin wants to talk to me.” I put my pistol away and let Kevin explain everything about the coke and the guys in the bar. Later that night, when Kevin and I were standing at the bar with Jack, Stevie and Jimmy walked in, and we told them about the fight and Spelios’s plan to have me killed. The next day, the two of them went to see Spelios and explained I was with them and that his kid was wrong. “Yeah, well, my son ended up with a fractured skull and the other kid got a broken jaw,” Spelios began to tell Jimmy and Stevie.

“Listen,” Jimmy interrupted him, “you’re reaching out to have this guy killed. Well, we’re going to let him go after your son. How’s that?” It didn’t take long for the father to decide to let the whole thing go, but Jimmy and Stevie ended up making him pay a fine, basically for wanting to hit me when I was with Jimmy. His kid never came back into Triple O’s, and I didn’t spend any time at the Beef and Ale.

After Billy died, there seemed to be more fights, and as always, Jimmy was taking notice of how I handled them. It helped that, like Jimmy, I had grown up in the neighborhood, and knew and dealt with the younger people. When I rode around and did some occasional business with him, I was also learning that he was a pretty fair person and that although he had a penchant for violence and most people were afraid of him, he used violence only as a last resort, when all else failed.

Finally, a few years after Billy died, in 1982, one especially busy night at Triple O’s, Jimmy said to Kevin O’Neil, “Kevin’s fighting. He’s watching out for your interest at the bar. And he’s not making any money. You should make it worth his while. Why don’t you give him twenty-five percent of the place?”

But Kevin wasn’t interested in doing that, and I can’t blame him for not wanting to give up 25 percent of his place to me. When he said no, Jimmy said, “I’m