Where the Bodies Were Buried (35 page)

It was a cryptic remark. But I understood what Kevin was saying. “Right,” I said. “I'm not saying that Flemmi was the guy pulling the strings in all this. I'm saying that the FBI used Flemmi to help facilitate the recruitment of Bulger. And then once the partnership was formed, Bulger used Flemmi for his own needs, to help the feds nail the Italians, with him getting equal credit for it.”

“It's not a bad theory,” said Weeks. In the past, he'd told me that most of what he knew about the era of the Boston gang wars and the involvement of Rico, Condon, and other key players had come from Bulger, or Flemmi, who used to regale him with stories about the good old days. They were fascinating remembrances, but, of course, they tended to be self-serving. Ever since Weeks learned that Bugler and Flemmi had been informants for nearly a decade before he came along, filling the FBI rotor file with intel about many fellow criminals with whom Weeks had been doing business, everything he'd been told by those two was cast in a different light.

Pat Nee pulled up a chair and sat down. “Hey,” he said to Weeks, “did you tell him about the time Whitey ordered you to kill me?”

Kevin chuckled. There were a lot of things that Weeks and Nee were able to laugh about now that weren't so funny at the time.

Back in the early 1980s, at the same time Weeks was in the process of becoming Bulger's full-time pit bull, he also became friendly with Nee. They shared some things in common, one of them being an interest in martial arts, a skill that Nee had picked up during his years in the Marine Corps. In early 1981, they entered a tournament together and fought as partners, with matches in various karate clubs around New England. Pat is thirteen years older than Kevin, so there were plenty of jokes from their opponents about Kevin's “geriatric” partner. Their time together during that tournament would form the basis of a friendship that exists to this day.

Nee's uneasy partnership with Bulger is well documented in his book; I had interviewed him about it numerous times. Less well known was Bulger's animosity toward Pat.

“Bulger called him Cement Head,” said Kevin. “He felt Pat didn't listen to him.”

In the early 1980s, Nee began spending more and more time in Charlestown. The ostensible reason was that Nee had begun to explore a secret, transatlantic connection with the IRA. Charlestown's Irish American gangsters had a preexisting relationship with the IRA, in particular master smuggler Joe Murray. Ever since “the Troubles” in Northern Ireland exploded in the late 1960s, with British troops and the Royal Ulster Constabulary implementing repressive tactics to quell the minority Catholic population, it had been a dream of Pat's—and others in Boston's Irish American community—to ship guns to the IRA.

Bulger became involved in preparations for the IRA gunrunning scheme, though according to Nee, “He never had any real knowledge or sympathy for what was happening in Northern Ireland.” Bulger became interested after Joe Murray linked the planned outgoing shipment of weapons to Ireland to an incoming shipment of marijuana, organized and overseen by the same crew of smugglers and gangsters.

“Jim didn't trust Pat,” said Kevin. “He knew he was off meeting regularly with the Charlestown people and the IRA. Jimmy has to be in control at all times. He didn't know for sure what Pat was up to, and it made him nervous.”

The tension between Nee and Bulger came to a head one night when the two had words. “It was about the IRA,” said Pat. “Whitey wanted to pull out of the gun-smuggling operation. He kept saying, ‘It's costing us money and we're getting nothing in return.'” Bulger was a gangster and a businessman, not a revolutionary. Where was the profit in sending weapons to a guerrilla army on the other side of the ocean, a costly operation with no profit margin?

The exchange of words between the two old rivals was like having salt rubbed in a wound that had never really healed. Bulger knew that his prized bodyguard Kevin Weeks was making trips into Charlestown with Nee, and he didn't like it. Feelings of jealousy that Bulger had harbored ever since the two became karate partners left a bad taste in his mouth.

One day, Bulger and Weeks were making the rounds in Whitey's Chevy Malibu. Whitey asked, “When you're with Pat, what do you guys do?”

Kevin described to Bulger how, on those occasions when he met Nee at his house on I Street, they often sat in the kitchen and had tea.

“Does he ever turn his back on you?” asked his boss.

“Yeah, when he's at the stove making tea, his back is to me.”

Bulger thought about it and said, “Well, next time he turns his back on you, put two in his head.”

Sitting in the backyard in Malden at a Fourth of July barbecue, Weeks's story seemed incongruous, even lighthearted, but he wasn't joking. “That's when I realized how cheap life is,” he said.

“He came to me and told me about it the next day,” said Pat. “He said, ‘Hey, you better watch your back. Whitey's looking to do away with you.'”

This touched off a line of discussion I'd had on other occasions with Nee: did you consider taking Bulger out before he got you? The same response as always: not as easy as it sounded. Bulger was connected on so many levels: his brother, the FBI, business partners in the underworld. Killing Whitey would have brought down a load of shit; it would have been an act of suicide.

“But after that I never met him unless I was strapped,” said Nee. “And I never met him alone, one-on-one. It always had to be in a semipublic setting, with other people around. I didn't trust the cocksucker.”

I asked Kevin why he had warned Pat, which could be viewed as an act
of insubordination. “I was in tight with Jim. I gave him complete loyalty on most things. But that didn't mean I was going to start killing my own friends for no reason. Because then you start to worry, Gee, maybe I'm next.”

As we spoke, one of the kids kicked a ball that hit the picnic table and knocked over some plates of food. “Hey,” said Kevin, “be careful”—more an observation than a command—“somebody might get hurt.”

THE FOLLOWING DAY
, on Monday, July 8, Kevin Weeks showed up to testify at the Moakley Courthouse. There was a media frenzy in front of the building as he was escorted by a couple of U.S. marshals through the front door. The entourage of onlookers surrounding Weeks grew in size as he passed through security, entered an elevator, and disembarked on the fifth floor. By the time he'd been led into the courtroom and seated on the stand, interested spectators and media people had hunkered down, both in the courtroom and in the media room two floors below, in expectation of what promised to be one of the trial's most significant encounters.

On the stand, Weeks still looked formidable and relatively youthful, a reminder that thirty years earlier, when he first started working for the neighborhood mob boss, he was a young man in his early twenties. At the time, he had a day job with the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (MBTA), Boston's transit system, as a trackman. At night he worked as a bouncer at a bar on Commonwealth Avenue called Flix. In 1980, Weeks was hired by the O'Neill brothers to work as a bouncer at Triple O's, a job that would change the course of not only his career, but his life.

It is a common dictum in the underworld that as a mob boss gets older, he becomes vulnerable. Southie, in particular, was ruled by the belief that you distinguished yourself as a leader in the streets with your fists. Bulger was revered and feared by some because he was known to be a guy who would not hesitate to do what needed to be done: if someone crossed him, that person would be killed. Bulger was a master at physical intimidation. But he was not known to be a fighter, and by the time he brought Weeks into the fold, he was in his fifties. Yes, he was a physical fitness buff; he looked fit and was menacing. But the laws of the jungle dictated that
someone who was younger, faster, and stronger might seek to challenge Bulger. And so having someone like Weeks became a necessity.

Kevin was athletic, and he seemed to enjoy punching people. Bulger tested him out right away; he had Weeks beat up not only people who had crossed him in areas of criminal business, but also those who had violated the neighborhood's code of ethics. Someone who disrespected a woman, or someone who had received complaints for playing their music loud and still continued to do so, or someone who was generally drunk and disorderly might find themselves on the receiving end of a beating by Weeks, as ordered by Bulger. Occasionally these beatings took place in the upstairs function room at Triple O's.

On the stand, Weeks delved into his early years with Whitey with an easy familiarity. This was the fifth legal proceeding at which he had been called to testify since he began cooperating in 1999.

Brian Kelly handled the presentation of Weeks's direct testimony. As he had with other witnesses, he delivered his questions in a hurry, as if he had a train to catch.

“Initially, what did working for James Bulger involve?” asked Kelly.

“Basically, we just rode around. Sometimes I beat somebody up. Or picked up some envelopes from bookmakers.”

“When you say ‘envelopes,' what would be in the envelopes? Mail?”

Weeks smiled at that and answered, “Money.”

“Did you have any sort of routine about your association with Bulger?”

“Well, in the beginning, when I was working for the MBTA, I'd leave work, I'd meet Jim at the furniture store in the afternoon around four. We'd ride around South Boston doing various things, and then I'd meet him later on at night. Eventually, I quit the MBTA and I was with him all the time. But Jim would usually come out between three or three thirty in the afternoon. We'd go around, take care of business, whatever was up for the day, and go to dinner. And then I'd meet him later that night.”

“Did you have any rules about where you could talk about crime?”

“We never talked in enclosed areas, houses, cars, never talked on the phone. We were afraid of being intercepted by wiretaps, bugs.”

“So you would go outside and walk on occasion to avoid detection?”

“Well, Jim liked to walk for fresh air and the exercise, and, yeah, we
could talk about what we had to talk about for the day. . . . Usually we went down to Castle Island; sometimes we'd walk through the projects.”

At this point, Kelly entered into evidence a series of law enforcement surveillance photos that showed Bulger and Weeks on their many strolls, Bulger wearing a Boston Red Sox baseball cap and Kevin with his bulging muscles. The photos were familiar to anyone who had followed the Bulger story over the years; they had been used on television programs like
America's Most Wanted
and
Unsolved Mysteries,
and by the FBI in its official media campaign in search of Bulger the fugitive.

After having Weeks identify each of the photos and give a brief narration of where they were taken, Kelly asked, “Now, sir, do you see James Bulger anywhere in the courtroom today?”

“Yes,” said Kevin.

“Would you please point to him and identify him?”

“He's right in front of me,” said the witness, pointing a finger at the defendant. Whitey gave the appearance that he was jotting notes on a legal pad and paid no attention to his former right-hand man.

Weeks was on the stand to detail his involvement in a number of activities crucial to the daily running of the Bulger organization. He had been a guardian of the gang's arsenal of weapons, which were, over the years, moved around to various locations in the neighborhood until they found a home at the “screen house,” the cabana or shed that had been built behind the home of Steve Flemmi's mother. Weeks was also a player in the organization's loan-sharking, gambling, and drug operations. These rackets were crucial ongoing moneymakers, the financial backbone of the enterprise, and Kevin was given the task of organizing the many bookies and drug dealers who worked under the umbrella of the Bulger gang. He picked up payments and kept tabs on who was or was not up to speed. If some form of punishment was necessary for those who did not fulfill their obligations or stepped out of line, that decision was made by Bulger, but Kevin Weeks was often the administrator of “street justice.”

Shakedowns and extortions were another crucial aspect of the gang's income stream. Whitey alone was often enough to strike fear in the hearts of anyone the gang was seeking to bleed dry, but having young Weeks standing behind the boss, a hulking presence with a wicked gleam in his eye, was an added motivator that inevitably helped seal the deal.

The irony was that unlike Bulger, Flemmi, Martorano, or even Pat Nee—men who had become professional desperados and gangsters early in their lives—Kevin Weeks never set out to be in the Mob. He had two older brothers who graduated from Harvard University. Kevin had himself been a decent student. He attended college for one year before dropping out to pursue an interest in boxing. He had been a Golden Gloves champion. Kevin was a tough guy, but he was not a killer. He had grown up hard, but he hadn't grown up interacting with people who killed other human beings for a living. Even after he became Bulger's attack dog, a dispenser of threats and beatings, he remained a bridesmaid and never a bride when it came to stabbing people to death, strangling them with your bare hands, or shooting them in the head.

Nonetheless, in the eyes of the law, a bridesmaid is most definitely guilty by association, and so Weeks was currently seated across from his former boss to explain his role as accomplice in no less than five murders perpetrated by the organization.

The first was the double killing of Brian Halloran and the hapless Michael Donahue.

By now, the jury was familiar with the saga of Halloran, after having heard testimony from Martorano, Morris, and others on how the Southie gangster's ongoing role as FBI snitch had become the worst-kept secret in all of Boston. Specifically, Halloran had been titillating his FBI handlers with information about the murders of Roger Wheeler in Oklahoma and John Callahan in Miami, two far-flung hits that had allegedly been put in motion by Bulger and Flemmi and carried out by Martorano.