Brutal_ The Untold Story of My Life Inside Whitey Bulger's Irish Mob - Kevin Weeks [36]
Jimmy then made a U-turn out of the parking lot, pulled up near Halloran’s car, which was in the middle of the street now, and shot out the open driver’s window. I couldn’t believe it when Halloran stumbled out of his car, walking, stunned and dazed, toward the rear of his car, straight into the path of the shots coming at him. He’d been hit everywhere except his head, which later turned out to be a stroke of good luck for Jimmy.
At that point, a van drove up and blocked my view, so I pulled out onto the edge of the parking lot into the street to see what was going on. Halloran didn’t look good. There was a lot of blood coming out of his body. He’d taken a hell of a lot of punishment and staggered for yet another few seconds before he finally went down. I could see the shots still going into him while his body bounced on the ground, twitching every time he got hit. Some of the bystanders were crying, probably not about the body, but about being in the line of fire, while others looked terrified as they realized what had just gone down.
As a kid, I’d seen people being stabbed in bars, lots of fighting, and more than one violent death. But what I was witnessing now was a scene from a Sam Peckinpah movie, only in slow motion. It was surreal, and I felt the adrenaline moving through my veins. I glanced at my watch and was surprised to see that the whole thing had taken maybe ninety seconds.
People were still ducking every which way, yelling, screaming, and hiding behind cars. Jimmy tore away and a police wagon pulled up thirty seconds later. The driver of the Datsun, who we later learned was Michael Donahue, never got out of the car. Later people would say he was an innocent bystander, just some poor jerk who was offering Halloran a ride home. That’s bullshit. Donahue was an unintended, but not innocent, bystander. He was a player who had been involved in the Pappas murder at the Golden Dragon in Chinatown. That night, Halloran had shot Pappas in the head and Donahue had driven him away from the murder. People had a misconception that Donahue, a cop’s son, was a legitimate guy. He wasn’t. But he died instantly that night, with a bullet to his head. When you think about it, Jimmy was a good shot because not one innocent person died that night.
As I drove away, I began to hear the calls coming in on the police scanner about shots being fired on Atlantic Avenue. While I was listening to that and thinking about where I was supposed to go next, I wasn’t sweating or nervous. Even though it always takes a lot to rattle me, I was still surprised at how calm I felt. I had no worries that we might get caught. Rather, I was just glad it was over and was anxious to get back to some kind of normalcy. After all, this Halloran thing had been going on for about six weeks. Not that I ever thought I’d be as involved as I was that day.
I pulled away from the scene, remembering that Jimmy had told me if anything happened I should meet him at Capital Market on Morrissey Boulevard. So I drove over there and waited twenty minutes, but he didn’t show up. I called him on his beeper and punched in the number of a nearby telephone booth that took incoming calls. He called me back and said, “What are you doing?”
“I’m at Capital Market,” I said.
“I’m at Theresa’s, eating,” he told me. “Grab something to eat and I’ll speak to you later.”
So I headed over to my in-laws’ to eat. When I got there, I put on the news at six o’clock and watched it with my wife’s family. It was all over the news. Gangland slaying at the waterfront. Nobody around