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But Loretta tested her luck a second time. She and Stevie were back together within a week, and one night when they were at Triple O’s with Jimmy and me, she joked to us, “You know, I could eat peanuts off Stevie’s head.” Jimmy looked at me and rolled his eyes. I knew what he was thinking. Yeah, the girl was an inch or so taller than Stevie, but that was no joking matter. Whether she realized it or not, she was insulting the guy in front of his friends. Lucky for her, Stevie was hard of hearing in one ear and hadn’t heard her. But she had to be crazy or just plain stupid to have fooled around with a guy like that. People think they’re joking, and it’s usually okay as long as they don’t try and embarrass someone. Then it isn’t funny at all. It’s deadly.

Although Jimmy went out to dinner frequently with Stevie and his different women, the only place I ever ate with Stevie was at his mother’s house. Since I was mostly in Southie and Stevie was all over Boston, we didn’t see each other every day. Stevie would come over to talk business with Jimmy for an hour or so, at the variety or liquor stores or at Triple O’s. Then he would be on his way, to do business in another part of town, or whatever he wanted. The three of us did spend a good deal of time together in Jimmy’s car, heading to a meeting or an extortion or whatever. But thanks to our caution about being taped, our conversations were always minimal and never about business or anything important.

With his brilliant head for business, Stevie was easily a millionaire, investing the prodigious amounts of money he earned through illegitimate means in real estate and other legitimate businesses. To Stevie, money was god. It was important to Jimmy, but not as much as to Stevie. Stevie might have made even more money than Jimmy, since Jimmy had been in jail for nine years, while Stevie hadn’t lost a day of work. But even though both of them made a lot of money, Jimmy had no problem giving someone a break. Like if someone owed him $100,000, after he’d paid a portion of the money, Jimmy might well say, “Forget about the rest.” But Stevie would never do that. Stevie would have the guy pay him dollar for dollar, with no break whatsoever. Jimmy also had deep loyalty to me and to other people. Whenever possible, he would make sure not to involve any of us personally or expose us to danger. Stevie was loyal, but just to a point. His loyalty went mostly to his greed. Big-time.

Stevie was close with his two sons, Billy and Stevie Jr., with whom he helped develop Schooner’s, a nightclub near Faneuil Hall. It opened in late December 1994. Stevie had done the whole place over. He knew a lot about construction and liked to build things. He enjoyed watching the projects come together and had an eye for all the little details, paying careful attention to each one and making sure everything was done perfectly. One of his investments was in a laundromat in Back Bay. While he was in the process of designing and building it, Jimmy and I met him over there a couple of times, but, unfortunately for Stevie, he got pinched before it reached its full potential.

Although there was no doubt that Stevie had a sharp mind and handled business details exceptionally well, he was not as alert to the presence of the law as Jimmy and I were. No matter how many times Jimmy would warn him to be more cautious, Stevie just wasn’t as attuned to what was going on around him as Jimmy felt he should have been. This was probably because we were always in South Boston and could recognize an unfamiliar car or face easily, while Stevie was all over Boston and had too big an area to cover well. That was one of his few shortcomings, but it was a major one that eventually did him in.

In 1980, Jimmy opened up a garage with Stevie on Lancaster Street in downtown Boston, which George Kaufman ran for them. They often used the garage as a business office and had meetings and conducted business there. It was an indoor parking garage, with many permanent spaces for cars.