Brutal: The Untold Story of My Life Inside Whitey Bulger's Irish Mob by Kevin Weeks; Phyllis Karas
Authors: Kevin Weeks; Phyllis Karas
Ads: Link
escape vehicle. It showed how 98 percent of his life was business, with maybe 2 percent pleasure. While other guys might be out drinking, he’d be thinking. While other people would be going to sleep at night, he’d be up planning. He was disciplined and lived and breathed the life of crime, which explains why he is still out there today, rather than in a jail cell.
Even though we’d tested the Tow Truck’s different features together and I’d taken it out many times, seeing Jimmy pull up with the wig and mustache was the first time I’d ever seen him use it for real. And in broad daylight.
But the minute I saw him, I thought, This ain’t good . Actually, he looked just like Jimmy Flynn, an old-time Winter Hill associate. Flynn and Jimmy Mantville, who had been part of the original Mullins gang on the other side from Jimmy when the gang wars broke out in Southie in the late 1960s and early 1970s, had allegedly made two prior attempts on Halloran. The story that was circulating was that both Flynn and Mantville had attempted to get Halloran because he was talking on them about a bank or armored car robbery they were allegedly involved in. One attempt had been at Halloran’s house, and the second at a teachers’ union hall parking lot. Both times he got shot at, but they missed and he’d escaped uninjured.
This time, I was sitting in my car, staring at Jimmy in the Tow Truck, thinking there would be no escape for Halloran. I wasn’t upset or nervous or scared. It was a whole different feeling, with all my senses heightened and the adrenaline starting to flow big-time. I’d only seen Halloran twice in my life, both times at the Black Rose in Faneuil Hall, but I knew time was running out for him. And I knew I was a part of that fact. But, as I had learned earlier in life, the human mind can justify anything, and I was having no problem justifying my role here. After all, once Jimmy made his mind up that Halloran had to go, it was gonna happen. With or without me. Jimmy was tapping me for the job, and there would be no way I could walk away.
Not that I’d want to. I was working for the top gangster in the city, a cold-blooded murderer, and I’d always known that if he asked me to kill someone, I would do it. It didn’t bother me to live like this. I knew a lot of people couldn’t handle what was about to happen. They’d become nervous wrecks, but it didn’t faze me in the least. I had come to accept the fact that someday, sooner or later, I’d be involved in a murder. We were, I understood, brutal people. We hurt a lot of people. I wasn’t hanging around with Boy Scouts.
The truth was that I genuinely liked Jimmy; to me, he was a great guy. We shared a lot of laughs and I always saw the good side of him. Sure, I’d seen his temper, but it had never been directed at me. The two of us worked well together. I had a reputation for fighting with my hands, so moving from boxing to bouncing to working for Jimmy was a natural progression for me. And it carried a lot of prestige. My father was pleased with my working for the top gangster in the city, someone most people in Southie respected for helping people in need, and used to say to me, “Listen and learn.” He would talk about me at family gatherings, telling more stories about me than any of his other five kids. It was as if I was doing what he wanted to do in life. When you consider the odds, it makes some sort of sense that out of his six kids one would turn out to be a criminal. It was the same thing in Jimmy’s family. He’d been a criminal since he was a kid, the only one like that in the Bulger family. His brother Billy was president of the Massachusetts State Senate for sixteen years and later became president of the University of Massachusetts, while another brother, Jackie, was a clerk magistrate in the Boston Juvenile Court. His sisters were all housewives and professionals of one type or another.
Until I got married and moved out of the house,
Even though we’d tested the Tow Truck’s different features together and I’d taken it out many times, seeing Jimmy pull up with the wig and mustache was the first time I’d ever seen him use it for real. And in broad daylight.
But the minute I saw him, I thought, This ain’t good . Actually, he looked just like Jimmy Flynn, an old-time Winter Hill associate. Flynn and Jimmy Mantville, who had been part of the original Mullins gang on the other side from Jimmy when the gang wars broke out in Southie in the late 1960s and early 1970s, had allegedly made two prior attempts on Halloran. The story that was circulating was that both Flynn and Mantville had attempted to get Halloran because he was talking on them about a bank or armored car robbery they were allegedly involved in. One attempt had been at Halloran’s house, and the second at a teachers’ union hall parking lot. Both times he got shot at, but they missed and he’d escaped uninjured.
This time, I was sitting in my car, staring at Jimmy in the Tow Truck, thinking there would be no escape for Halloran. I wasn’t upset or nervous or scared. It was a whole different feeling, with all my senses heightened and the adrenaline starting to flow big-time. I’d only seen Halloran twice in my life, both times at the Black Rose in Faneuil Hall, but I knew time was running out for him. And I knew I was a part of that fact. But, as I had learned earlier in life, the human mind can justify anything, and I was having no problem justifying my role here. After all, once Jimmy made his mind up that Halloran had to go, it was gonna happen. With or without me. Jimmy was tapping me for the job, and there would be no way I could walk away.
Not that I’d want to. I was working for the top gangster in the city, a cold-blooded murderer, and I’d always known that if he asked me to kill someone, I would do it. It didn’t bother me to live like this. I knew a lot of people couldn’t handle what was about to happen. They’d become nervous wrecks, but it didn’t faze me in the least. I had come to accept the fact that someday, sooner or later, I’d be involved in a murder. We were, I understood, brutal people. We hurt a lot of people. I wasn’t hanging around with Boy Scouts.
The truth was that I genuinely liked Jimmy; to me, he was a great guy. We shared a lot of laughs and I always saw the good side of him. Sure, I’d seen his temper, but it had never been directed at me. The two of us worked well together. I had a reputation for fighting with my hands, so moving from boxing to bouncing to working for Jimmy was a natural progression for me. And it carried a lot of prestige. My father was pleased with my working for the top gangster in the city, someone most people in Southie respected for helping people in need, and used to say to me, “Listen and learn.” He would talk about me at family gatherings, telling more stories about me than any of his other five kids. It was as if I was doing what he wanted to do in life. When you consider the odds, it makes some sort of sense that out of his six kids one would turn out to be a criminal. It was the same thing in Jimmy’s family. He’d been a criminal since he was a kid, the only one like that in the Bulger family. His brother Billy was president of the Massachusetts State Senate for sixteen years and later became president of the University of Massachusetts, while another brother, Jackie, was a clerk magistrate in the Boston Juvenile Court. His sisters were all housewives and professionals of one type or another.
Until I got married and moved out of the house,
Similar Books
