Black Mass

by Dick Lehr

  Stephen was no stranger to trouble; in the past he and his brothers had tangled with police. But with Julie, he was going to make a go of it. Two years after marrying their first daughter, Nicole, was born, and a second daughter, Meredith, was born in November 1982. During this time Stephen sold the deli and became a partner in a liquor store, but by 1983 he and Julie had decided they were ready to go it alone again. Stephen preferred owning his own business. The work pace might be punishing, but the rewards would be theirs alone. Julie suggested a video rental store, but Stephen persuaded her that a liquor store was more profitable.

  Hunting around, Stephen spotted an abandoned Texaco gas station right at the rotary near St. Monica’s Church. It was a prime site on a main street, Old Colony Avenue. Traffic was always flowing down Old Colony and around the rotary out front, and the property had a rare commodity in the compact business districts of South Boston—a parking lot. Together they researched Boston property records to identify the owner. The deed belonged to a woman, Abigail A. Burns. Julie Rakes had trouble keeping the woman’s name straight. “I used to call her Abigail Adams.” She was confusing the owner with one of the nation’s first families: the wife of John Adams, the second president of the United States. It was an amusing mix-up that became one of the couple’s inside jokes.

  “We were going to make it big,” Julie recalled. “This was going to be our source of income that was going to give us the lifestyle that we wanted—for the rest of our lives.”

  But in spite of all their hopes and hard work, there was a problem. Whitey Bulger had been chased out of the Lancaster Street garage, harassed by state troopers in his black Chevy, and, most recently, hounded as a murder suspect. The time had come for him and Flemmi to quit all their running around and find a new home office. The way Bulger saw it, why not the cozy confines of the old neighborhood? There was no substitute for the familiar and insulated feel of South Boston. The Rakeses, unfortunately, knew none of this, and their modest ambition was about to collide with Whitey Bulger’s desires in a town where whatever Whitey wanted, Whitey got.

  THE FALL of 1983 was a mad scramble for the couple, who were trying to accomplish all that was necessary to open in time for the holiday season. In a relatively short period of time things had actually gone pretty smoothly, beginning with their successful bid for a liquor license at an auction during the summer. Watching for legal notices appearing in the newspaper, Stephen had spotted the auction of a license from a liquor store that was closing, displaced by construction. The eager couple dressed up one Saturday and went downtown to the law firm overseeing the sale.

  “I was nervous,” said Julie Rakes. “It was my first auction.” Stephen was more used to the particulars of operating a liquor store, having been a partner in another one, but the couple decided Julie should do the actual bidding. “He was saying, ‘Go ahead. You can do it,’” said Julie, “and I was saying, ‘What do you do? What do you do?’ It was fun. Exciting. He said, ‘Go ahead. Raise your hand. Raise your hand!’” Julie did. The bidding opened at $1,000. There was other interest, but Julie kept going. Suddenly the bidding ended, and the Rakeses walked away with a liquor license for the relatively cheap price of $3,000.

  It was a great start, possibly a good omen. They created a business corporation, Stippo’s Inc., that consisted of an all-family lineup of corporate officers. “I was president,” said Julie, “and we made jokes about it.” Stephen took the title of treasurer and clerk and also director. Then came some other good news: Julie was pregnant with their third child. At the end of September the couple got in touch with a contractor, a friend from the neighborhood, Brian Burke. Burke started on the toughest part of the project—converting a gas station into a liquor store. The ground had to be dug up and the huge gas tanks removed, all in accordance with state environmental codes. Burke cleaned up the lot, replaced the roof, and applied a new look to the building’s exterior. “Lots of cement,” said Julie. The Rakeses were not out to break new ground in design or aesthetics. Their pockets were not deep. The goal was a basic renovation that achieved functionalism: a clean, well-lighted, cement-block building with glass windows. The couple felt a rush of excitement after the sign was hoisted into place on the front—Stippo’s Liquor Mart.

  But family and friends were not the only visitors to the construction site during the final days leading up to the opening. Also taking note of the progress were Bulger and Flemmi. Under the cover of darkness, the two gangsters were coming around to inspect all the remodeling. Late at night, with no one around, they slipped into the parking lot. There was usually a third man with them, Kevin Weeks, who had replaced Nicky Femia as sidekick, driver, and sometime enforcer. Bulger had discarded the coke-crazed Femia who, freelancing and spinning out of control, in early December tried to rob an auto body shop but had his brains blown out when one of the victims shot and killed him. Half Bulger’s age, Weeks had the perfect résumé. The bushy-haired kid might stand a few inches shy of six feet, but his upper body was all muscle, and most important, he had quick hands. The son of a boxing trainer, he’d grown up in the rings around the city. And like John Connolly’s, his boyhood was spent in thrall to the Bulger mystique. He filled up on stories about Southie’s very own gangster but didn’t catch his first glimpse of the man only whispered about as a young teen until he happened to spot Whitey marching through the housing project.

  After graduating in 1974 from South Boston High School, Weeks’s first job was the one he was made for—a bouncer, or “security aide,” at his alma mater, patrolling the hallways and breaking up the fights between white and black students that were a regular feature of court-ordered busing. Then the next winter, a few days before St. Patrick’s Day, the eighteen-year-old moved up to Whitey’s world when he went to work at Triple O’s. He started out behind the bar lugging ice. Then one night the bar’s big-bodied enforcers seemed unable to handle a brawl, and Kevin leaped from behind the bar and leveled the miscreants with blazing combinations. Whitey took notice. Weeks was promoted first to a Triple O’s bouncer and then to Bulger’s side. By the early 1980s Bulger was Weeks’s mentor, and Weeks was Bulger’s surrogate son. Weeks liked to show off his loyalty, telling people he’d rather serve hard time, even see harm come to his own family, before ever uttering a bad word about Whitey Bulger.

  Inspecting the construction site, the men would get out of their car and walk around. For Bulger it was a good time to be considering a new office. He and Flemmi were doing well—indeed, better than ever. The local Mafia was rocked: Gennaro Angiulo was now in jail, along with a number of other key mafiosi. Bulger’s own rackets had prospered in the aftermath of the FBI’s bugging of the mob. “The more that we worked on the Mafia the less of a threat the Mafia was to them,” John Morris acknowledged. The amount of rent, or tribute, Bulger charged was increasing steadily, as was the number of bookmakers and drug dealers making such payments. More than ever, Bulger and Flemmi were willing to help the FBI clear out the clutter from the city’s underworld. It was great for business.

  Looking for a new office, Bulger and Flemmi’s priority was a location that included an actual, legitimate business. Running a real business made it possible to launder profits from their illegal gambling, loan-sharking, and drug dealing. Bulger had often used the rooms above Triple O’s. Bulger even had his mail delivered there. But bars were crowded, public, and often chaotic places. The fights that broke out at Triple O’s drew police scrutiny. Instead, he and Flemmi wanted a place that might fit more tidily into the palms of their hands, and this new liquor store at the rotary had caught Bulger’s eye.

  By year’s end Julie and Stephen Rakes were in a rush. They’d missed Christmas and were not going to have time to hold a grand opening. Julie’s two sisters, her mother, and Stephen’s father and mother helped set up inside and stock the shelves. The Rakeses oversaw the installation of a bank of refrigerators—their biggest investment to date. To capture part of the holiday season, they hurriedly opened up just in time
for New Year’s.

  Their families sent over plants with ribbons to display on the counter to mark the occasion, but beyond that the Rakeses simply opened their doors for business. Stephen took out a newspaper advertisement in the South Boston Tribune announcing that the store, located at “The Rotary in South Boston,” was “Now Open” and had “Parking Available.” Listed were the hours: “Monday through Saturday, 9 A.M. to 11 P.M.” It was pretty basic stuff. Then at the bottom of the display ad Stephen included an enticing item he hoped would catch a few South Boston readers’ eyes. “Win a trip for two to Hawaii or $1,000 in a cash drawing on Wednesday, February 8, 1984, 5 P.M., at the Mart.” The promotion was Stephen’s idea, his brainstorm to draw customers to the store. “In the area stores never offered things like trips,” said Julie Rakes, “so we thought it was kind of big. It would attract attention.”

  Customers came. The husband and wife worked as a tag team, moving between store and home, handing off the business and the kids. Relatives always pitched in, but they were volunteers. There were no partners, no one to answer to. It was exhausting and all-consuming, but the business was theirs and the cash register was ringing.

  Before they could complete even a week’s worth of business, the Rakeses would be finished. They wouldn’t even be around long enough to hold the advertised raffle. Whitey and Stevie had no plans to fly anyone off to Hawaii for free.

  JULIE threw on her coat and headed out into the winter night, a night that was beginning like so many other nights: busy and hectic. One spouse coming, the other going, a pace the couple had maintained throughout the renovation of their new store and into its opening days. It was cloudy outside, and the forecasters on the radio had talked about the possibility of snow flurries. But it seemed too mild for that, with temperatures in the forties. The talk around town was mostly about the city’s new mayor, Ray Flynn, the “People’s Mayor,” an Irish son of Southie who was starting his new job during these first days of 1984.

  Julie drove over to the store from their house on Fourth Street, a short drive that took her along routes she’d known her entire life, past the homes, stores, and bars along Old Colony Avenue. It was the only world she knew, and she was thinking good thoughts, about her family, about the new business, about Stephen. After she arrived, she chatted with the person they’d hired to work in the stock room and make deliveries. Then the telephone rang.

  It was Stephen.

  “How am I supposed to know when the lamb is ready?”

  Stephen. He and Julie were learning to be interchangeable parts—she in business, he at home. Julie walked him through the instructions for the roast, and then she got off the phone and tended to a few customers. It was midweek and actually pretty quiet. Julie was taking a moment to catch her breath and consider how far she and Stephen had come when around nine o’clock the phone rang again. Stephen? she wondered. What this time?

  “Julie?”

  “Yes.”

  Julie did not recognize the deep and husky voice coming at her over the line.

  “I know you, I like you, and I don’t want to see you get hurt.”

  “Who is this?”

  The voice ignored her question. “You should get out.”

  “Who is this?”

  “The store is going to be bombed.”

  “Why are you doing this?” Julie’s voice was rising in alarm. “If you like me, why don’t you say your name?” She was shouting. “Why don’t you say your name!” But she was yelling into an empty hum. The caller had hung up.

  Julie was frightened. She looked around the mostly empty store, feeling like someone was watching. She was back on the telephone with her husband, upset and explaining to him about the call she had just taken, and the more she described the anonymous call the more upset she got. Stephen, for his part, tried to sound comforting. Julie could hear the television in the background, and she could hear the kids making noise. But hanging up, Julie also thought Stephen’s voice sounded awfully tense.

  Stephen Rakes had a good reason for sounding that way. In his kitchen at that precise moment he was entertaining three uninvited visitors. He had been cleaning up after dinner, playing around with his two girls, getting them changed for bed and letting them watch some television, when he heard a knock at the door. He hadn’t been expecting anyone. He went to the door and pulled it open. In the dark stood three men, and Rakes recognized them all. He actually knew Kevin Weeks from growing up, although they were never close; in one of those Southie coincidences, one of his brothers had married one of Weeks’s sisters. Stephen and Julie sometimes stopped by Triple O’s for a drink, and Weeks was often there—his wife was one of the bartenders. Stephen also recognized the other men. He sometimes saw them at Triple O’s too. But he didn’t know them personally, he’d never had anything to do with them, and they’d never come around to his house before. It’s just that everyone knew Whitey Bulger and Stevie Flemmi.

  It did not look good. The men walked right in and took Stephen into the kitchen. Bulger and Flemmi sat down. Weeks stayed on his feet nearby. Bulger was in charge. “You got a problem,” he told Rakes. The competition, Whitey said, some of the other liquor store owners, wanted him dead. But Bulger had an option. “Instead of killing you, we’ll buy the store.”

  Rakes fidgeted. “It’s not for sale,” he said.

  It was the last peep of protest Stephen Rakes would make. Bulger exploded, saying they would kill him and take the store. Bulger stormed out, Flemmi and Weeks at his heels. In a panic, Rakes called his wife and told her about the surprise visit. They didn’t know what to do. Before Stephen had time to begin to think clearly, there was another rattle at the door.

  Bulger was back. He pushed his way past Rakes, accompanied again by Flemmi and Weeks and squeezing a brown paper bag. Back in the family’s kitchen, Bulger put the bag down and stood over Rakes at the table. Bulger had a pocket knife in his hand, which he opened and closed as if to punctuate his words. Stephen’s little girl wandered into the kitchen to see what was going on. Flemmi pulled out a handgun from his waist, put it on the table, and lifted the girl up onto his lap. “Isn’t she cute,” Flemmi said. The gangster tousled her blond hair. The gun’s hard metal caught the girl’s attention, and she reached for it. Flemmi let her touch it, and the girl even put part of the gun in her mouth. “It would be a sin for her not to see you.”

  Stephen Rakes watched in horror. Bulger continued: either we kill you or we buy the store. Rakes sat still and listened. Bulger explained that inside the paper bag, packed in neatly folded bunches, was $67,000 in cash. Never mind that Stephen and Julie actually had put about $100,000 into their new business—between the cost of the lease, the renovation, the refrigerators, and the stock—all of which they fully expected to make back and more. Bulger had set his own price, and this was Bulgertown.

  “You’re lucky you’re getting what you put into it,” Bulger told Rakes. Lucky? Bulger said offhandedly that they would give him another $25,000 if all went well. “Now go away,” he told Rakes. The three visitors moved to leave.

  “It’s ours,” said Flemmi.

  Rakes sat transfixed. He certainly didn’t look lucky. Instead of seeming as if he’d just been made whole, he was falling apart. It was now approaching eleven o’clock, and back at the liquor mart Julie Rakes, struggling to keep her wits, was anxious to close for the night. The telephone rang. She grabbed the phone.

  It was Stephen again, and this time he was beyond tense. His voice sounded strange and far away, and then Julie Rakes realized her husband was crying. Stephen explained the sudden turn of events, about a new deal that had fallen into their laps, and Julie just listened in cold silence, a numbness washing over her. This was what shock must be like, a suspended, out-of-body feeling: Stephen, whimpering, muttering things beyond belief, explaining what would happen next, what she had to do.

  Julie Rakes looked up and saw an oversized man—well over six feet and heavily built—walk into the liquor mart. It was Jamie Fl
annery, someone she’d known from high school. They’d been friends. Flannery was also a regular at Triple O’s. He had a drinking problem and sometimes worked as a bouncer at the bar. Julie had seen him at the bar with Whitey Bulger. Things suddenly were making terrible sense.

  Julie put down the telephone. Flannery was abrupt. He told her to gather up her things, that he’d come to take her home. He told her not to ask any questions, and Julie Rakes complied. Hurriedly, she collected some money from the cash register. She picked up the plants her family had sent to mark the opening of the store. Flannery carried out some wine Julie and Stephen had stocked for a friend who’d made it and was looking for their help in distributing it. They put these things in the car and then Julie, fumbling, turned out the lights and locked up. They quickly drove away.

  She never went back to their liquor store again. In the car Julie was shaken, but Flannery said little, just drove, and as he made his way down Fourth Street and began to slow down Julie saw that up ahead in the dark three strangers were standing outside her door. She wanted to know, who were they? Flannery identified the three—the one at the front steps (Bulger), the one just off the stairs (Flemmi), and the one nearing the car parked at the curb (Weeks)—and as Flannery got closer Julie could recognize for herself two of the men, Bulger and Weeks. Behind them Julie saw her husband frozen in the doorway.

  “Keep driving, keep driving,” she shouted. Frightened, she didn’t want to meet these people, and Flannery did cruise on past the house. It was the least he could do. He circled around the block. By the time they returned the three men were gone, but now Stephen Rakes was standing at the curb, waiting for his wife to pull up. He wouldn’t even let his wife get out of the car. He handed her the paper bag and told her to go to her mother’s house. Right away, he said, and he was talking through clenched teeth.