Brutal: The Untold Story of My Life Inside Whitey Bulger's Irish Mob (3 page)

When the doctor came out to see me, he had to inject Novocain into the cut around my eye. It was painful and I yelled. When my father heard me scream and then saw my eye swell, he punched the doctor and knocked him right out. The next thing I know, I’m lying on one gurney being stitched up by a second doctor, and the first doctor is lying on the gurney and they’re bringing him to. Johnny Woods grabbed my father and rushed him out of the ER room so they could work on me. Afterward, my father took me out for an ice cream sundae.

When I was twelve, I got into a two-hour fight with one of my best friends, Mikey McCormick. By the end of the first hour, a crowd of about two hundred neighbors, including my father and my brother Johnny, had formed a circle around us. Mikey, who weighed about thirty pounds more than me, was bleeding from my punches. But neither one of us was going to quit. We’d fight for a while and I would keep on punching and then he’d get his hands on me and we’d wrestle to the ground. Then that would be broken up and we’d both get up and start fistfighting again. My brothers always said that I wouldn’t quit, no matter how much I got hurt. It was true, even though Mikey wasn’t hurting me as much as I was hurting him. That day I got the better of Mikey, but there were plenty of days when he got the better of me.

When one neighbor, Mrs. McCannell, whose daughters were the same age as me, started rooting for Mike in a loud, obnoxious way, I threw a punch on purpose that missed Mikey, but hit her in her stomach. She doubled over and my father yelled to her, “That’ll teach you to keep your mouth shut.”

Finally, the parents decided it was enough and the fight ended. Mikey never would have given up if our parents hadn’t stopped it. When I got home, my father gave me an open-handed slap across the mouth that hurt more than anything I’d suffered in the fight. “What’s that for?” I asked, holding back my tears.

“For hitting a woman,” he told me. “Don’t ever hit a woman again.” I didn’t cry, because if I did, my father would crack me again and say, “What are you crying for?” The next day Mikey and I were friends again, but our parents didn’t talk to one another for two weeks.

The only time I saw my father cry was the day Pee Wee died. Pee Wee was a beautiful black cocker spaniel given to me on my first birthday. The two of us grew up together. Even when she got old and had bad arthritis, she followed me everywhere. One morning before school, around seven, when Pee Wee and I were both thirteen, the two of us were heading to Argus Bakery on Mercer and East Eighth streets. A guy drove around the corner, but the sun got in his eyes and he didn’t see us and hit Pee Wee. Right away, he got out of the car and went over to pick up the dog. I was crying hard but I still cracked him, punching the man in the mouth and splitting his lip. He had killed my dog and I was so mad. But he was a decent person. He took a blanket out of his trunk, gently picked up Pee Wee, put her in his car, and drove the two of us to our apartment. He got out and my father came down, but the dog looked dead. The man was sorry and understood why I had hit him. My father took Pee Wee to the Animal Rescue League, but there was nothing they could do. I went to school, but I was crying, so they let me out early. We ended up getting another dog at the pound, but I never forgot Pee Wee.

When I was fourteen, I got tested through a program at the South Boston Boys Club, which was doing some sort of a survey. The test showed that I had an IQ of 145. My brother Johnny had an IQ of 150. My father didn’t get overly excited over those scores. When I was in the sixth or seventh grade I came home with a report card of all A’s and one B. My father gave me a beating and said I wasn’t applying myself. It wasn’t because he cared that much about my education. He was just in a bad mood and my report card gave him a convenient reason to beat me.

As great as it was growing up in Southie in the 1960s, there were some genuinely scary times. Like the November night when I was thirteen and walking home from swim practice at the Boys Club, which was on West Sixth Street. It was around eight-thirty and I was with Richie Faith, who was ten at the time. We were walking through the Old Colony projects, heading toward Patterson Way and Ninth Street, when a guy suddenly jumped out of the bushes we were cutting through and tried to grab Richie. When Richie took off, screaming and running down the street, the guy came at me. I picked up a ten-inch pipe, probably part of a metal fence, that was lying there, and as he came at me, I hit him with it. He fell down, but I kept on hitting him until he staggered and took off.

A few minutes later, Richie, his father, Bill Faith, and my father and my brother Johnny all came running over to where I was. Richie had run up to his house a block and a half away and told them what was going on. When they got there, I was standing there, still holding the pipe. “Are you all right?” my father asked. I nodded, and he looked around and saw that there was blood everywhere, all over me, all over the ground. “What happened?” he asked. “Where did the man go?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “I just took the pipe and kept on hitting him.”

My father kept looking at the blood and said, “Jesus Christ, there’s so much blood. You must have killed him.”

My father took me and together the five of us followed the trail of blood across the street and toward the schoolyard. The trail just ended abruptly in the middle of the street, so they figured the guy must have had a car or something that he got into and took off. Then they took Richie and me home. When we got to our house, I got cleaned up and ate, and we all talked about what had happened. Then my father told me to go to bed. I was lying in bed in the room I shared with Johnny and could hear my parents talking in the next room. “The little bastard has no fear,” my father was saying to my mother. “I worry about him, Peg.”

The truth of the matter was, I had been scared to death. My father wanted all of us kids to be able to take care of ourselves, but he meant with our hands. He wasn’t big on weapons. If I hadn’t had the pipe, I would have used my hands, but the outcome probably wouldn’t have been so good for me. And I hadn’t had the option to run like Richie did. I certainly hadn’t wanted that scene to happen that night. I would have been happy to have walked home with no problems, eaten a peanut butter sandwich, and gone to bed. But since it happened, it was a good thing the adrenaline had been flowing and I was able to keep hitting the guy until he took off and left me. I was also lucky they were doing the fences over and I’d been able to get hold of that metal pipe. I hadn’t been a hero that night. I had just used my natural instinct to survive.

Another night, my brother Johnny, who was sixteen at the time, was also coming home from the Boys Club when he saw a car parked on West Sixth Street with its lights off. As Johnny walked by, he could see that the guy inside the car was exposing himself. Johnny opened the door and started punching him. Then he kicked in the headlights of the car. This was in the late 1960s when there were weirdos all around. It seems like this stuff is more prevalent today, but maybe it’s because people just didn’t talk about it much when I was growing up.

My father had certainly made sure that all three of us boys were able to use our hands to take care of ourselves in the ring as well as in the street. He never trained us in boxing or put us through the paces like learning how to jump rope and hitting the heavy bag and the speed bag. But at home he made sure we had good wind and good footwork and knew the basics, like how to throw a jab, a straight right hand, and a left hook. The biggest thing he did for my boxing was to get me up at six in the morning to go for a run. His rule was simple: If you don’t run, you don’t box. So from age twelve on, I woke up at six every morning, 365 days a year, regardless of the weather, and began the day with a three-mile run, usually in the park near Old Colony. Then I would get ready for school. My brothers ran, too. It was the best way to build up your wind.

Billy, who was eight years older than me, was the purest boxer of all of us, a completely natural boxer who won more than 108 fights. For each of his amateur fights, which he fought all over the country, he made about $25, which was enough to pay for his gas, tape, wrap, and stuff like that. Billy was so good no one could even touch him. He outclassed everyone.

Billy was offered a $17,000 contract to go pro when he was eighteen, a huge amount of money in 1966, but he wanted to go to college. That same year, Sugar Ray Robinson saw him fight in the New England tournament. Fighters came from all over New England to fight in that tournament, which was held in the old Boston Garden. Then you fought all your fights in one night, and could end up fighting as many as seven fights in one night if you kept on winning. Today, fighters fight one fight a week. After Billy won that tournament, Robinson went into the dressing room and spent forty-five minutes talking to him about boxing. My father and Billy’s trainer, Johnny Woods, were there, too. Robinson told Woods that Billy was the best amateur fighter he had ever seen.

Billy also won that tournament the next two years, as well as the Golden Gloves Open Division in Lowell for three years. Two of those years he was awarded the outstanding fighter award in both those tournaments. Billy had the perfect temperament for boxing. In the ring, he was always in control of himself and his emotions. My father was proud of Billy and rarely missed one of his fights. I went, too, and also used to watch him spar at the local gyms like the Baby Tigers gym on Washington Street, near Boston City Hospital, or the McDonough Gym in South Boston on East Fourth Street, ironically right behind the South Boston District Court. A large number of good fighters came out of South Boston, but Billy was one of the best.

Johnny was a great boxer, too, and won twenty-nine amateur fights. But unlike Billy, he didn’t have the disposition for boxing. He’d get mad in the ring, which was never good. Then he would lose his composure and try to hurt the other fighter. He would turn violent, like he was fighting in the street. I had a violent streak, but when I was boxing I didn’t forget the fundamentals of boxing. You just never got mad in the ring.

I would never be the pure natural boxer that Billy was, but I won my fair share of matches. I have excellent hands, which is just part of my physical build. I also have big shoulders and big arms and was considered the heaviest hitter of the three of us. Being able to punch hard was a big advantage in the ring. I was a boxer-puncher. I could box, but I could also hit hard. I had good instincts and loved the sport. And I started early. When I was six, I won the Boys Club boxing championship, and at seven the South Boston Baby Gloves tournament. Baby Gloves was always held on St. Patrick’s Day, and everyone in Southie would come to watch us fight three rounds. Before I was sixteen, I also won the Silver Mittens and fought in the Junior Olympics.

And I always wanted to win. Out of my seventy-eight fights, I only lost two. One was to a kid from New Bedford. I took the fight on a week’s notice and lost. But three weeks later, I fought him again and won. The second loss was at the Boston Club, when I was eighteen and fighting in the New England tournament. I made it to the finals and lost. I wore either purple-and-gold or green-and-white shorts, and the other kid had on white shorts with big red hearts. I didn’t take it seriously when I saw him come into the ring. He caught me with a left hook and dropped me in the second round. I lost by a split decision and never underestimated an opponent again.

Butchie Attardo was my trainer after the Baby Gloves tournament, while Red Corrigan trained me and James “Stretch” Walsh was in my corner during my boxing career. As an amateur, I won a lot of tournaments, including the Golden Gloves at seventeen as a 139-pound lightweight. Like my brothers, I boxed in tournaments all over New England. The only time I remember the three of us fighting in the same ring was in the McDonough Gym for the Golden Gloves in Southie when I was ten. That night we all won in our weight divisions. Other times, Billy and I also won numerous outstanding boxer awards, which we were awarded after winning multiple fights in one night. Between my brothers and me, we must have won a couple of hundred trophies, for boxing, basketball, baseball, and swimming, all of which served as dust collectors on Pilsudski Way. They’re all gone now.

My father went to a few of my bouts, but my mother never did. She didn’t like fighting. I got a little money for my fights, but the most was $200 for an amateur fight. There was so much I liked about boxing: working out and getting in shape, matching my skill against someone else’s, going to the gym, breaking a sweat, and just plain getting out of the house.

I was nervous before every fight, with butterflies in my stomach. But the second I got in the ring, it was just me and my opponent. I never saw or heard the crowd and just focused on the fight. Most of the time we didn’t talk about the matches. You were friends with some of the fighters, so you fought and then shook hands. You might fight the same guy two or three times. I never had my nose broken, but I did end up with two or three black eyes. My hands and thumb were broken a few times, and my fingers never healed correctly.

When I was seventeen, a couple of people wanted me to turn pro. I met Emile Griffith, the one-time middleweight champion of the world, who had come to town to fight Joe DeNucci, who later became Massachusetts Secretary of State. I was at Connolly’s Gym at the time, training to fight, when Griffith’s trainer, Gil Clancy, had Kevin Dorian, Beau Jaynes, and me sparring with Griffith for a week. After the week, Gil Clancy wanted to take me to New York to train and turn pro, but my father wouldn’t let me go. I was a junior at South Boston High and wasn’t really disappointed. The three of us also sparred with Ken Buchanan, three rounds a day for a week, when he was getting ready to fight Roberto Duran, the lightweight champion of the world.

I stopped fighting for a few years, but in 1982, at age twenty-six, I got back in shape and started to fight again. Then I was getting $250 just to show up, but at the end I couldn’t get any fights. People didn’t want to fight me. I weighed 167 pounds but was trying to get back to 156. Johnny Pretzie, who had fought Rocky Marciano, and Tommy MacNeil, who had fought Floyd Patterson for the heavyweight championship of the world, were training and managing me then. Even though I was a super-middleweight, I took fights against heavyweights, giving those guys fifty extra pounds against me, just to get a fight. I ended up getting three Friday-night fights at the IBW Electricians Hall in Dorchester and won all three. Then I stopped fighting and went onto other things.