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Ironically, after he left the business, Joe Murray got killed by his wife, or at least that’s who they say shot him. In September 1992, a week before he was killed, Murray had come to Jimmy, Stevie, and me and asked to meet us at Thomas Park, a spot called the Heights by people in South Boston. Here he offered us money to kill his wife and his brother-in-law. Apparently his wife had found out Joe had been cooperating with law enforcement. He was afraid she was going to tell people and he would be outed as an informant.

Before that happened, he was trying to get her killed. We settled on a price of $1 million dollars, $500,000 up front and $500,000 afterward. But Joe decided the price was too steep, and, a week later he went up to his cottage in Belgrade Lakes, Maine, where his wife was. It was reported that he attacked her with a knife but she shot him, supposedly five times with a .357 Magnum, killing him. Too bad he hadn’t accepted our price. The truth of the matter is, Murray had no one with him. While Jimmy, Stevie, and I had a gang, Murray was alone. All along, he had been paying us to be his protection.

Actually, even if he had given us the $500,000 up front to take care of his wife and brother-in-law, we had already decided we weren’t going to do anything. And there was nothing Murray could have done about that. But if he’d taken our deal, he would have still been alive because he would have thought we were doing something. Then he would have not left for Maine by himself to take care of his wife. He saved the money, but he paid the price.

But that spring afternoon in 1983, while we were turning the car around, Bobby Darling, a detective with the Boston police, drove by and spotted us. We returned to where we had picked up Ronnie, dropped him off, and proceeded up West Broadway, taking a right on D Street away from First Street toward Fourth Street, then taking a left on Fifth Street. As we were heading up Fifth Street, between F and Dorchester, we could see that Bobby Darling was following us. Jimmy stopped the car and pulled over. Bobby Darling pulled up and said to Jimmy, “Whitey, who was in the car with you? Who was the other fellow?”

Jimmy said, “You’re asking me who was in my car with me? Get the fuck out of here.” With that, we drove away.

About a week later, we heard that Darling had filed an FIO, a Field Intelligence Observation report, in which he stated that James “Whitey” Bulger, Stephen “the Rifleman” Flemmi, and Joseph Murray, the drug supplier from Charlestown, were observed together, watching the raid from a safe distance. He had lied. He knew who was in our car that day. He had looked right at me and said hi. He knew it was me and Jimmy, but had lied and put in that Flemmi and Murray were in the car.

One afternoon, two weeks later, Jimmy caught Darling out by his condo in Louisburg Square. Jimmy jumped into his car, chased him down, cut him off, and said, “You dirty dog coward motherfucker. You put in that phony FIO report. You lied. You just stepped over the line. If I ever see you round me again, I’ll cut your fucking head off.”

Darling, who was shaken up, went to Boston Police headquarters and reported the incident. Their reply to him was, “What were you doing over there? That is out of our jurisdiction.” When he repeated Jimmy’s exact words to him, his commander said, “If I were you, I’d stay away from him.” He ended up giving Darling two weeks vacation time.

However, because of that one phony FIO, which was all lies from Darling, who knew exactly who was in the car, a major investigation on us began, an investigation resulting in Operation Beans, which was a play on Boston’s nickname, Beantown. Operation Beans, a DEA plan targeting Jimmy, Stevie, and me in an attempt to accumulate evidence to arrest us for drug trafficking, eventually fell flat on its face.

But it didn’t take Jimmy and me long to realize exactly what was going on. One afternoon, I was looking out of the variety store when I saw a guy standing around the Old Colony projects, smoking