Black Mass: The Irish Mob, the Boston FBI, and a Devil's Deal (27 page)

Morris had reason to fear the worst. He knew what had happened to Wheeler and Halloran. And he had firsthand experience in the fate of another underworld figure who ran afoul of Bulger. Arthur “Bucky” Barrett was an expert safecracker who got caught in the no-man’s-land between the bureau and Bulger. He had pulled a daring bank heist in 1980, working with five others to rifle safety deposit boxes of $1.5 million in cash. Shortly after the robbery Morris and Connolly were put on to Barrett by Bulger. The agents approached the safecracker with an off-the-books double mission: they wanted to soften him up for Bulger with a friendly “warning” that Whitey would be looking for a cut from the bank job. And then they offered him the perilous haven of the FBI informant program if he would become a snitch. It was a mission of staggering corruption. Here were two seasoned FBI agents acting as Whitey Bulger’s emissaries on the street.

Nevertheless, Barrett rejected the FBI overture. And even though Barrett paid much of his bank withdrawal to placate Bulger, it did not save him from being kidnapped, tortured, and dragged into the cellar of a South Boston home in 1983, never to be seen alive again.

But Bucky Barrett was an anonymous casualty of war. He simply disappeared, and no one misses a safecracker except his wife and kids. It was Brian Halloran’s dead body on Northern Avenue that left a deep mark on agents in the Boston office. Fitzpatrick looked back on it and felt “defeated by it all. I still think about it and fight off the ghosts.”

TULSA homicide detective Michael Huff, the first officer on the Wheeler murder scene in 1981, had learned quickly that John Callahan and the World Jai Alai business were probably behind the killing and that the Winter Hill gang was in the picture. But he could get no hard information out of Boston. Phone calls went unreturned, and conferences were canceled or rescheduled. The Massachusetts State Police told him that Winter Hill was probably involved, but Huff could not induce the FBI to help him get background information on gang members. He never heard the name Bulger until Halloran was dead.

Callahan was the early focus for Huff and some Connecticut State Police detectives who had been chasing the accountant with the double life for several years because of the swirl of dust around the jai alai outlet in Hartford. They began looking into Callahan’s finances and the company books for irregularities that could be used to pressure him to talk about Wheeler’s death. Detectives had even gone to Switzerland to check his accounts and recent stay there. With investigators from two states rummaging through his books, Callahan became chillingly aware that he was now the last person alive who could implicate Bulger on the murder.

The former driving force of World Jai Alai was clearly in the crosshairs. But the pursuit of Callahan as a suspect ran into the usual detour in Boston. When Callahan first came into view as a suspect in late 1981, Huff began working with the Tulsa FBI office, which sought information about Callahan’s Winter Hill associates from none other than John Morris. In response to the queries from Tulsa, Morris sent Connolly to question Callahan. A defensive Morris later argued that Connolly was the “absolutely logical choice” to ask Callahan if Winter Hill was involved in the Oklahoma murder. Not surprisingly, Connolly reported back that Callahan had no dealings with Winter Hill and that Bulger had nothing to do with the Wheeler hit. One more time Connolly said Whitey didn’t do it. Morris obligingly closed the file.

The quick action confused Huff. He could understand there being no hard information available, but case closed? It burned him up that Wheeler’s death didn’t strike a chord in Boston. Wheeler was a “big damn guy” in his town who hired hundreds of people and gave money to good causes. Something’s wrong here, he thought. Why won’t anyone talk straight to me about a broad daylight murder of a prominent businessman whose family deserved some answers?

Huff and his new colleagues in Connecticut did the only thing they could do—they pushed on, scratching their heads about what was going on with the bureau in Boston. Their focus shifted to the Miami outlet of World Jai Alai to develop incriminating information on Callahan. By July 1982 Huff and the other detectives felt they had gathered enough damaging financial material to pressure Callahan in person toward the end of July 1982. They headed down to Florida on August 1. But one of Callahan’s old drinking buddies, Johnny Martorano, was already there. When Huff and Connecticut detectives landed at Miami airport, John Callahan was dead in the trunk of his rented Cadillac in a garage at the same airport. The peppery Callahan, who liked drinking with wiseguys, died like one at age forty-five.

Now there were three dead men who shared more than the grisly fate of being shot in the head and found splayed in their cars. They had all become enemies of Whitey Bulger.

Huff had seen Callahan as the key to the Wheeler murder. But Huff, a straightforward midwesterner, felt patronized every time he came to Boston. A weak smile, a pat on the shoulder, and then the door. The only time Huff felt he was talking sense about the case was when he got together with Connecticut and Florida homicide detectives. They began to entertain dark shapeless thoughts about what was happening in Boston. But in truth, they didn’t even know who to be mad at.

Within the FBI Connolly hung tough against all comers on Halloran. He helped set up the long-overdue interrogation of Bulger and Flemmi about Wheeler that finally took place two years after the murder. The FBI report on the meeting records a speech by Bulger. He told agents that he was only consenting to the interview so he could put all the baseless accusations to rest. He sounded like his brother Billy talking to the State House press corps. Everything was done on Bulger’s terms. He announced that he would not take a lie detector test, and it would take a court order to get his mug shot. And that was that.

Julie Miskel Rakes
and her husband Stephen were like a lot of other couples from the old neighborhood—family-oriented, hardworking, and determined to make their own modest way in life. They’d grown up in Southie. Julie was from the projects, just like the Bulgers and John Connolly, and her family belonged to the same parish as the Bulgers, St. Monica’s, situated at the outer boundary of the Old Harbor housing project and across a rotary from another, the Old Colony housing project.

Though only two years apart, Julie and Stephen did not really know each other while at South Boston High School. They met later when Julie was twenty years old and Stephen was twenty-two and operating the first of his many business ventures—Stippo’s Sub and Deli. Stippo was Stephen’s nickname, and the popular corner store sold coffee, donuts, and groceries. It was open from dawn to midnight, with Stephen’s brother, sister, mother, and father all working shifts. Stephen’s father was a particularly loyal employee. Unable to sleep, he’d go over and turn on the lights at 3:00 A.M. “We used to make jokes because he opened up at three o’clock in the morning, but he didn’t have to be open until six o’clock,” Julie recalled. “But he wanted to be ready.”

Julie began working at the store in 1977. Stephen was the owner and manager; he was in charge of ordering the stock, handling the banking, and pricing and shelving the inventory. Soon enough the couple began dating, and then, in 1978, the Rakeses and the Miskels gathered with their friends to celebrate the marriage of Julie and Stephen Rakes. It was a South Boston family affair.

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.