Brutal_ The Untold Story of My Life Inside Whitey Bulger's Irish Mob - Kevin Weeks [68]
Stevie was close with his parents, who had both emigrated from Italy to the United States before he was born. He took good care of them, buying them houses and cars and whatever else they needed. His father, John, was a quiet guy, old school, who spoke broken English. He had served in World War I with the Italian army and had been a bricklayer in the old country. But there was still plenty of spirit in him. When John was ninety-two, Stevie couldn’t find him one day, so Jimmy and I took off looking for him. About a half-hour later, we found him outside his house. He was sitting on the roof, which had a severe slant to it, quietly watching the roofers working on the other side of his house. When Stevie looked up and saw him up there, he muttered “Jesus Christ” in amazement. The three of us watched, not saying a word, until, when he was ready, John got down by himself. A couple of years later, he told everyone he was planning to go to Italy. By himself. Sure enough, a month later, he took off for Italy and stayed there for about a month, having himself a great time until he decided it was time to come home.
Stevie’s mother, Mary, was a terrific little lady, one of the world’s sweetest. Her greatest joy was cooking for her sons and their friends. Stevie had bought his folks a single-family home in Milton, but later moved them to Southie, where they lived next door to Billy Bulger. It was here where Stevie murdered Debra Davis. But it was also here, in her kitchen, that Mary happily cooked so often for Jimmy and Stevie and me, serving us delicious Italian specialties from large pots simmering on her stove. Jimmy did tell me that Marion wasn’t nice to Stevie’s parents, and I could never understand that.
When Stevie’s brother Jimmy the Bear died of a heroin overdose while serving a life sentence at MCI Norfolk for the murder of Francis Benjamin, Jimmy and I went to the wake. While we were viewing his brother lying in the casket, Stevie was standing there with his mother and father and Michael. Mary went over to Jimmy and said, crying, “Vincent was such a good boy. He never hurt anyone.”
Stevie looked at her and said, “Stop, Ma. He killed everybody.” Stevie was right. Jimmy the Bear was an extremely violent man, and as Barboza’s partner had been involved in the Boston gang wars of the 1960s. The murder of Francis Benjamin, for which the Bear had gotten the life sentence, was a particularly ugly one. After he’d shot Benjamin in the head, using a gun that belonged to a cop, the Bear had cut off the head to avoid any ballistics evidence tracing the gun to the crime. But they fingered him anyhow.
But Stevie had his own unique streak of violence. As I started to work more with him, I’d see him explode, at people who owed him money or didn’t do what they were asked to do. He’d start berating them, screaming at them, and I’d just watch. Jimmy, Stevie, and I never tried to calm one another down in a scene like that. We’d never embarrass one another by showing any divisions in public. If something had to be said about an incident like that, it was said in private when the three of us were alone. There were times when one of us would play the good guy and the other the bad guy, assuring the guy in the mess that we’d try to work things out. But the only way things could ever be worked out was for the guy to do exactly what Stevie wanted. Stevie rarely had to work hard convincing someone to do what he wanted. His reputation preceded him.
Like Jimmy, Stevie kept himself looking good by eating healthy and working out nearly every day in his own house, where he had weights and did calisthenics. He maintained vigorous exercise workouts because he felt the young guys were always sizing him up and