Brutal_ The Untold Story of My Life Inside Whitey Bulger's Irish Mob - Kevin Weeks [50]
“Thanks,” I said and removed the old ring and put the new one on. It was the only time he had ever given me jewelry, and it was a beautiful ring, worth, I was certain, over $100,000.
I knew that Jimmy bought most of his jewelry from a particular jeweler in the Jewelers Building on Washington Street in Boston, and that he also bought hot stuff. On his own hand, he wore a five-carat solitaire pinky ring. Around his neck, he wore a gold Christ’s head medallion on a chain, and on his wrist was a gold Patek Phillippe watch given to him by the guys at Winter Hill. In addition, on his left pinky he wore a four-carat Irish claddagh ring, with two hands holding a heart, a ring he’d had made after he’d seen my three-carat claddagh ring.
Jimmy had great taste in jewelry and was generous with gifts to the women in his life, buying diamond earrings and diamond cocktail rings and watches for Theresa and Cathy, and expensive pieces of jewelry for the other girls he dated, as well as cars and condos for many of them.
He never worried about the price of the clothing he bought for himself. One day when we were shopping on Newbury Street, we went into the El Paso shoe store, where they sold custom-made cowboy boots. He ended up paying $2,500 for black alligator-skin boots, made specifically for his feet. These boots were made by Foley, who made only fifty pairs a year. He also bought a couple of other pairs of boots, somewhere around $1,000 a pair. Another time, we went into that same store, and I bought some beautiful ostrich-skin custom-made cowboy boots, which cost $1,700 and looked nice with a pair of dungarees. The salespeople at El Paso knew who James Bulger was and were unfailingly polite and helpful to him. Why not? He was courteous to all of them and paid cash for everything he bought. The two of us shopped in the finest men’s clothing stores on Newbury Street, like Daniel Rene and Louis, where we each bought custom-tailored suits. I ended up with dozens of Louis suits in my closet, but I hardly wore any of them.
But no matter how much money we made, we were always looking for new ways to make more. So I was pleased one night when the opportunity to make money for myself simply presented itself in front of my eyes. I was in the variety store, standing behind the counter, watching the place for Mark, the guy who owned the ticket concession in the store that sold tickets for concerts and sporting events, when a heavyset customer came in and asked for him. When I said Mark would be back in a while, the customer told me he had to hurry up, because he had to go see some bookmakers. “If you need to place a bet,” he told me slyly, “come see me.”
“You got a lot of guys working for you?” I asked him.
“All over Charlestown, Southie, Dorchester.”
“Really?”
“Yeah.”
“What’s your name?”
“Kevin Hayes. What’s your name?”
“Kevin Weeks.”
“Oh, shit.”
“You never know who you’re talking to. Nice meeting you,” I said, and left it at that. But now I had him on my radar. A short time later, I had a friend who knew Hayes arrange a meeting at the house of another friend, who happened to be in prison. I had Hayes come down to the cellar, where I had stretched out a plastic tarp on the floor. As soon as Hayes walked in, I took out a pistol. “You’re going to pay me one hundred thousand dollars for your football action or I’m going to kill you,” I told him.
He started talking, real crazy stuff that I could hardly understand. All of a sudden he yelled, “Do you think I’m wired?” and pulled off his shorts. The 400-pound gorilla stood there with no underwear, his little dick looking like he had a piece of bubble gum stuck to his bush. The last thing I had thought was that he would be wired, so I had no idea what he was doing.
After some more of his crazy talk, he agreed to pay us