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?