Brutal_ The Untold Story of My Life Inside Whitey Bulger's Irish Mob - Kevin Weeks [84]
I had my own meeting with Paulie McGonigle in June 1974, the day after I graduated from high school. On graduation night, when Bobby Cox, Mikey Raymond, and I threw our big graduation party in the three-decker house we’d moved into for the summer, the 300 kids who showed up scattered around, inside and outside the house, drinking and making lots of noise.
The next morning, around noontime, I was in the back room sleeping when there was a knock on the door. I woke up to hear some yelling at the door. Quickly putting on my pants, I went to the door and saw a small guy threatening my friends. Unlike Jimmy, this guy didn’t have the presence of a gangster. Maybe five-eight, he had his hair combed all over to try and cover his balding head and was wearing a silk shirt that opened to his sternum, as well as a gold necklace, platform shoes, and black flared pants. And he was chewing gum. I was eighteen at the time and had no idea who he was, but he looked like something out of Studio 54. The guy was yelling about the party and a friend of his whose grandmother lived nearby. “I’ll punch your fucking heads in,” he kept repeating. “I’ll cut you up and take you all out of here in a garbage bag.” I made it clear that I would have no problem punching his fucking head in and taking him out of there in a garbage bag. With that, he took off.
Forty-five minutes later, there was another knock at the door. When I opened the door this time, I saw Jimmy standing there with two other guys, Pat Nee and Jack Curran, and the same gum-chewing guy from Studio 54. Jimmy looked at me and said, “Do you know who I am?”
“Yeah, I know who you are,” I said.
“And you’re going to punch this guy out and put him in a garbage bag?” he asked, pointing to Paulie.
“That’s not what happened,” I said. “He came up here and no one knows who he is. But he’s telling us he’s going to cut us up and take us out in garbage bags, so I told him I’d punch him out and put him in a garbage bag.”
I could see Pat Nee and Jack Curran standing behind Paulie, laughing and shaking their heads. “No more parties here,” Jimmy finally said.
“You got it,” I said. “It was just a one-time graduation party.” Jimmy looked at Paulie and shook his head. And the four of them left.
Five months later, on a November night, Jimmy took care of the right brother. He got Paulie in the car with Tommy King and shot Paulie in the head. Paulie was buried over at Tenean Beach. Less than a year later, Jimmy killed Tommy because they’d had words at Triple O’s. The same night Jimmy killed Tommy, he also killed Tommy’s friend Buddy Leonard, hoping to confuse the authorities about Tommy’s murder.
Photographic Insert
My father, John Weeks
My mother, Margaret Weeks, in Dorchester
The window over the tunnel was my bedroom window at 8 Pilsudski Way in South Boston’s Old Colony Projects.
Here I am as a high school senior at South Boston High, class of 1974.
Rock climbing on Hurricane Island off the coast of Maine during an Outward Bound course, Class H52, fall 1974
Triple O’s, the Southie bar at 28 West Broadway where I worked as a bouncer. Jimmy Bulger came here frequently on weekends to discuss business.
Kevin O’Neil, one of the three O’Neil brothers who owned Triple O’s. A codefendant of mine, O’Neil was indicted along with me in 1999.
Rotary Variety and the liquor store, both owned by Jimmy, Stevie, and me, were conveniently side by side.
At a Pennsylvania paintball tournament in 1999. My team won both the five and ten man divisions in the ZAP Amateur International Open.
Brian Halloran, who really did have a balloon-shaped head, was the first murder I participated in. I called it in and Jimmy did the rest.
Michael Donahue made the fatal mistake of giving a ride to Brian Halloran and was killed in the hit.
Anthony’s Pier 4 restaurant still exists, right across the street from where the Halloran