Brutal_ The Untold Story of My Life Inside Whitey Bulger's Irish Mob - Kevin Weeks [32]
Jimmy, John, and I got into our separate cars and headed to the Mullins Club at O and Third. Even though it was officially called the CPAA, or City Point Athletic Association, most people knew it as the Mullins Club, which was also the place where the Mullins gang hung. Jimmy was driving his green Olds Delta 88 and I was in my green Thunderbird. Jimmy walked into the Mullins Club to see if anyone else was around to help him. When he didn’t find anyone, he told me to leave my car there and drive him over to Theresa Stanley’s house on Silver Street in South Boston. When I dropped him off, he said I should head back to the Mullins Club. By then it was about four-thirty in the afternoon. I had no idea exactly what was going to happen, but I could tell that there was an urgency to whatever it was. I drove back down to the club where, fifteen minutes later, Jimmy pulled up, wearing a light brown wig, floppy mustache, and dark clothes, driving the Tow Truck.
The Tow Truck was basically a hit car, a modified high-performance blue 1975 Malibu. We had nicknamed it the Tow Truck so if anyone ever picked us up talking about it on the radio, they would think we were talking about some tow truck. When Jimmy had bought it a year or so earlier, it was a two-toned blue, but he had it painted a dark green. Jimmy had a master mechanic work on it according to his own specifications, and garaged it on K Street. It was a beauty, its engine all souped up, with over 900 horsepower. Jimmy’s mechanic had gone over it from head to toe: shocks, springs, the transmission, the whole suspension system, the motor, the driveshaft, the rear end. Every part of the car was high-performance. From the motor to the rear suspension, everything had been replaced because with so much power, the weakest link would break under full acceleration. You could turn each light on or off with the flick of a switch. If you got in a chase, all the lights but the headlights could go off so it would be hard for anyone to follow you. Jimmy had a smokescreen put in it where enough thick fog would come out the tailpipe to shut down an entire street. The mechanic had added an extra oil well that was filled with Marvel Mystery Oil, which fed into the exhaust manifold. The heat from the exhaust manifold produced smoke that seeped out of the tailpipes and created a heavy fog. You hit a button and oil would be pumped into the exhaust manifold and the red-hot pipes would steam up. We tested it late one night and watched as it fogged out all of First Street.
There were also little nozzles on a pipe underneath the rear bumper that were pressurized so oil would shoot out of them. If you were getting chased, as you went into a turn, you’d lay down an oil slick. You could make the turn, but the cars behind you would be spinning out of control. It was like James Bond’s Aston Martin, without the ejector seat. You couldn’t look at that car and not hear the roar of the engine. It literally growled. When you’d step on the accelerator, the car would stand up on its four wheels. The driveshaft, the whole engine would try to twist inside the car. I’d never seen such a phenomenal car. It looked like an ordinary Chevy Malibu, but only until you stepped on the gas. It was a beast.
I had my own set of keys and would take it out at night once a week and make sure everything worked. I’d be out on the Southeast Expressway or the Mass Turnpike, going 90 mph, and I’d step on the gas and the car would leave rubber. If a cop ever went after me for speeding, I wasn’t stopping. One night, when I had the car out on the Turnpike, a Porsche Targa 911 and a Corvette blew by me, so I stepped on the gas. The car took off like a