Brutal_ The Untold Story of My Life Inside Whitey Bulger's Irish Mob - Kevin Weeks [75]
Right away, Shea’s associates took over and had their people working on the street. The midlevel dealers each paid us a flat monthly fee, somewhere between $1,500 and $1,800 a month depending on the size of their business. Some of the distrbutors, like Shea’s partners were paying $5,000 a week. What they were paying for was the right to be in business in different areas of the city. Shea’s people shook down drug dealers of various degrees all over New England. Some had been bringing in their drugs by the boatload and would now be paying Jimmy in order to continue doing this. None of them had a choice in the matter. If they didn’t pay, he would kill them. They couldn’t go to the law, so what else could they do but pay?
There was no change in the origin of the cocaine, which came from different states in different manners. Billy Shea’s organization had connections all over the place and often sent people down to Florida to bring it up here by car, truck, or van. The big people, the principals who were allowed to sell the cocaine to the dealers, were making good money. Many different groups were involved, and how much each group or individual made depended on how much effort they put into it. Some people were certainly making millions.
Jimmy, Stevie, and I weren’t in the import business and weren’t bringing in the marijuana or the cocaine. We were in the shakedown business. We didn’t bring drugs in; we took money off the people who did. We never dealt with the street dealers, but rather with a dozen large-scale drug distributors all over the state who were bringing in the coke and marijuana and paying hundreds of thousands to Jimmy. The dealers on the street corners sold eight-balls (the street name for approximately three and a half grams), grams, and half-grams to customers for their personal use. They were supplied by the midlevel drug dealer who was selling them multiple ounces. In other words, the big importers gave it to the major distributors, who sold it to the middlemen, who then sold it to the street dealers. In order to get to Jimmy, Stevie, and me, someone would have to go through those four layers of insulation. While street corner dealers often used drugs, the bigger dealers rarely used their own product.
Marijuana was still a lucrative business, as dealers continued to pay us hundreds of thousands of dollars, sometimes millions. I picked up money from the people who were paying us, either midlevel drug dealers or large-scale importers, depending on how big their business was. Some I went to. Others came to me. I always knew who was supposed to pay me and saw them once a month to get the money off them. If they didn’t pay, they were out of business. But that never happened. No one refused to pay us. Once we got it, Jimmy, Stevie, and I chopped up the money.
The marijuana was sold in many other towns across the state. Joe Murray was the big Charlestown dealer. Mike Caruana, a North Shore dealer from the early 1980s, made so much money off marijuana that he bought gold and was considering minting gold coins with his own likeness on them. One day, however, he turned up missing and was never found. I don’t know what happened to him, but he was involved with the Mafia, as well as with Jimmy and Stevie. Only the people who were involved in his disappearance know what happened. Another big-time marijuana dealer was Frank Lepere, from Marshfield, who was paying us millions. And making still more. Some dealers sold both cocaine and marijuana, while others just handled one or the other.
Understandably, collecting involved shakedowns, some of which began in the least likely places. One day Jimmy and I were heading into the Best Chevrolet dealership on Commonwealth Avenue when Mickey G. walked out of a bar across the street. Mickey was a sort of rogue on the fringe of things whom Jimmy had known years earlier. Mickey asked Jimmy what was up and