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There were, of course, times when some people really did offer us money to kill someone. Then we would go to the potential victim and tell him we were being offered money to kill him. Every time that person paid us. Who wouldn’t?

Another example of creating a problem and charging to solve it involved a man who owned a bar in Dorchester. We heard he was having trouble with a guy around thirty who kept coming into his bar. One night, Jimmy, Stevie, and I drove by the owner’s house with a couple of other guys and shot it up while he was standing by the window. We didn’t try to kill him. We just wanted to scare him. In a few minutes, we blew out all the windows and the doors. The next day, when the owner of the bar reached out to us, Jimmy and Stevie told him that the guy who was giving him trouble in the bar had tried to kill him, but we would straighten it out. Without hesitation, the bar owner handed us $25,000 to make the problem go away. In this case, the problem was us, not some customer at the bar, but the bar owner never saw that.

Ray Slinger’s extortion turned out to be a perfect example of the media publicizing a story that was totally different than the event I personally witnessed. Ray was a real estate and insurance agent in South Boston who had done business with Kevin O’Neil. One day around noon in 1986, Jimmy and I were upstairs in Triple O’s, eating the egg sandwiches and frappes we had just gotten from the deli next door. Fitzie, the bartender, called up to tell Kevin that Ray Slinger was downstairs. Even though Ray was in a legitimate business, he didn’t have a sterling business reputation. Unbeknownst to me, Stevie and Jimmy had already talked to Ray and told him they wanted to talk to him. When Jimmy heard Fitzie’s message, he looked at Kevin O’Neil and said, “What’s up with him?”

“I want to talk to him about an insurance bill,” Kevin said. “I gave him the money but he kept it and didn’t pay the bill.”

Jimmy said, “Tell him to come up.” When Fitzie then reported that Ray was with a woman, Jimmy told him to tell Ray to come up by himself.

A few minutes later, Ray, who was in his fifties, heavyset, around six-one and with thin silver hair, walked into our room, wearing a long tan trench coat, white shirt, black dress pants, and dark shoes. When he saw the three of us sitting at a table, he began to shake visibly. As he stood off to the side, his coat separated and I noticed a pistol tucked into his pants. Without a word, I jumped up over our table and, knocking him over, grabbed the pistol out of his pants.

“Whoa, slow down,” Jimmy said, but when I pulled out the pistol, he got mad. “You dirty motherfucker!” he shouted at Ray. “You bring a pistol around me? Where did you get it?”

“I borrowed it off a friend,” he told Jimmy. “For protection.”

With the gun now in his hand, Jimmy told Ray to sit down. After that, despite the lies printed by the media, no one beat up Ray or punched him. All I had done was thrown him off his feet, making him bang off the wall. But the guy was hyperventilating as Jimmy put the gun to the top of his head, saying, “I could shoot you on the top of your head and there would be no blood.” Ray started shaking uncontrollably, tears coming down his face, as Jimmy continued. “Listen,” he told Ray, “I’ve been offered fifty thousand dollars to kill you.”

“By who?” Slinger got out.

“It doesn’t matter,” Jimmy answered him. “Unless you give me the money, I’ll kill you.”

When Slinger said, “I can give you two thousand dollars,” Jimmy kicked him in the shin with his cowboy boot.

“My boots cost more than that,” Jimmy said, and Slinger looked like he was going to have a heart attack. “Hey, calm down,” Jimmy told him and then told me to go downstairs and get him a beer.

I had started to head down the stairs when Slinger said, “No, I want a mixed drink.” I went downstairs and got him a gin and tonic. He drank half of it down in one gulp.

Then Jimmy said, “I’m going to talk to Ray,” and Kevin and I went downstairs. Fifteen minutes later, he called the two of us back upstairs