“They’d be afraid to,” Lundbohm replied instantly. Lundbohm knew—indeed every cop knew—that wiring up someone to see Whitey Bulger was high risk and extremely dangerous. Police agencies couldn’t even convince wiseguys who had been turned into informants to wade into Bulger waters with their bodies wired up for sound. The idea of putting civilians at risk like that was reckless. The Rakeses were amateurs. Besides, still fresh in the minds of cops like Lundbohm was the murder of Brian Halloran two years earlier. The story was all around that he was shot down right after going to the FBI. Lundbohm waved off Connolly’s talk about body wires. It was like asking someone to jump off the Tobin Bridge.
“I don’t think so. I would advise against it.”
“Then I’m not sure if much can be done, Joe.” The meeting was over. “But I will look into it.”
Connolly never did. Connolly did not write up Lundbohm’s information in a FBI report. He did not share the information with his new squad supervisor, Jim Ring, even if only to discuss how to handle the accusation against two of their secret informants. Instead, on his own, Connolly decided that extortion by Bulger and Flemmi was not going to be any of the bureau’s business, a decision that was certainly not his alone to make. “I would definitely have expected him to come to me,” Jim Ring said later. “That’s his entire job. There was an allegation that there was an ongoing extortion. That’s what he’s supposed to do. He’s supposed to come and talk to me. He doesn’t have the authority to go out and handle that on his own.”
Connolly did share what he knew with one person, though. He told Whitey.
Following his breakfast with Connolly, Lundbohm called Julie Rakes and told her that, even though he’d rejected Connolly’s idea to have Stephen wear a body wire, the matter was now in the FBI’s hands, and the FBI would be in touch.
But just days after Lundbohm’s meeting with Connolly, during a visit to the Lundbohm home, Stephen Rakes pulled Lundbohm aside, out of earshot of Julie Rakes and Lundbohm’s wife. Rakes was nervous as he huddled with his wife’s uncle.
“Whitey said to back off,” Rakes told Lundbohm. Whitey, a shaken Rakes continued, had stopped him in the street in South Boston and said, “Tell Lundbohm to back off.”
In an instant, Lundbohm had a single thought: Bulger knew about his talk with Connolly. And more than ever Julie and Stephen were in jeopardy. The truth smacked them in the face—all roads led to Bulger.
Stephen Rakes folded soon after the warning. Bulger summoned him to the liquor mart several times during the weeks that followed, and Rakes signed the documents so that the takeover of their liquor mart appeared on the up and up. Rakes at one point had the gall to mention the additional $25,000. Bulger began screaming at him, and the money was never mentioned again. The conveyance was made out to Kevin Weeks alone, although Weeks filed documents later listing an equal ownership to Bulger and to Flemmi’s mother, Mary. Stevie Flemmi later said that the liquor mart was proof he and Bulger were in a legitimate business—an absurd claim that was almost humorous if not for the dark extortion behind the takeover.
Even before the actual passing of the papers, Weeks showed up in the store and took over behind the counter, Bulger hovering nearby. The sign out front was soon changed from Stippo’s to the South Boston Liquor Mart. Then a large, green shamrock was painted on the cement exterior. Eventually, on a referral from John Connolly, the FBI in Boston began buying liquor for its Christmas party from Bulger’s liquor mart.
Rumors spread quietly through South Boston. There was hushed talk that Stephen Rakes had been held from his ankles over the Broadway Bridge. There was a rumor about a gun being put to Stephen’s head, a rumor that he’d lost the store in a card game. But Rakes now mostly brushed off all the gossip and just kept his head down.
To support themselves, Stephen and Julie dipped into the paper bag full of cash hidden in the hope chest at Julie’s mother’s house. They treated their wounds with a few splurges—a new Dodge Caravan, a road trip to Disneyworld, and the next year they used some of the cash as part of a down payment to get out of South Boston and purchase a home in suburban Milton. Their son Colby was born on June 5, 1984. Stephen Rakes had taken heed; he’d backed off.
While the Rakeses were in Florida, a rumor started that Bulger had killed Rakes. Weeks tracked Rakes down at Disneyworld and ordered him back. Rakes left his family, flew home, and, to quiet the talk, stood next to Bulger, Flemmi, and Weeks at a busy intersection so that passersby could see he was alive.
Rakes fell into line, behind so many others in Southie. He was eventually summoned before a federal grand jury investigating extortion and money laundering at Bulger’s liquor store. He was called twice, in 1991 and 1995. Within days of the latter, Bulger pulled up next to him as he was walking in South Boston and called out of the passenger’s window: “Hey, I’m watching you.” But Whitey actually had little to worry about from Stephen Rakes. In both appearances before the grand jury he described how he’d happily and voluntarily sold his store to Kevin Weeks just a few days after opening it up. The reason? Rakes, under oath, said he was in over his head, had fallen too far in debt, and didn’t like the many hours he had to log in order to run the business. He testified that Weeks paid him $5,000 and that he took out another $20,000 he’d put into the store, for a total of $25,000. They were silly lies that no one believed, despite Rakes’s best effort to sound relaxed and convincing. And the lies came with a price.
Rakes was charged with perjury and obstruction of justice, and in 1998 he was convicted of both in U.S. federal district court. For Rakes it was the ultimate double jeopardy—the government that did not protect him went after him, while Whitey walked away. But it was a fate Stephen Rakes had come to prefer to facing Bulger.
CHAPTER TWELVE
The Bulger Myth
Detective Dick Bergeron of the Quincy Police Department pulled himself closer to the manual Royal typewriter that sat atop his gunmetal desk. Typing was not his calling in life; working the streets, stalking gangsters was. He shifted uneasily in the chair and then pecked at the keyboard.
The detective typed the words: “TOP SECRET.”
He typed the words: “SUBJECT: Proposed Targets of Investigation for Sophisticated Electronic Surveillance.”
He typed the names of the two targets:
I. James J. (AKA “Whitey”) Bulger.
D/O/B: 09-03-29.