Howie Carr by The Brothers Bulger: How They Terrorized;Corrupted Boston for a Quarter Century

Author:The Brothers Bulger: How They Terrorized;Corrupted Boston for a Quarter Century
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: BIO000000
ISBN: 9780446506144
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Published: 2007-07-31T05:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 13

FOR A SOUTHIE GUY, Steven “Stippo” Rakes had a head for numbers, and he didn’t mind working. From an early age he was buying and selling real estate. For a while he owned a sub shop, after which he bought a liquor store. By 1983, Stippo had sold his interest in the package store, and had his eye on a new location, on Old Colony Avenue, at the rotary, right between the two public housing projects.

Keeping his plans for the site to himself, Stippo took a $500-a-month lease on the property with an option to buy. Next, he took his wife, Julie, to an auction at City Hall, and she won a bid for a liquor license that had once belonged to a package store on Essex Street in the city’s adult entertainment district, the Combat Zone.

The priest at the nearby church was opposed to the transfer, but Stippo knew a city councilor. The license transfer was approved by the Licensing Board on a 3–0 vote.

There were eleven liquor stores in Southie, and none of them had any parking. Just the fact that Stippo had nine parking spaces in front of his store would give him a huge advantage over his competition. Ditto, his location on the rotary, between the two housing projects. He would name it Stippo’s Rotary Discount. Soon Stippo was in for about $80,000—he installed signs, an alarm system, and new plate glass windows with steel rolltop grates, a wise precaution, considering the neighborhood. He didn’t know it at the time, but every night that summer, after he went home, Whitey and the boys had been checking out his progress.

Stippo’s Rotary Discount finally opened just before Christmas 1983. In the first four days, Stippo’s did $25,000 worth of business. Every other liquor store in Southie was down, some as much as 20 percent, during what was normally one of the busiest weeks of the year. And so the calls started—death threats. The first one came when Julie was behind the counter.

“Listen,” the caller said, “we like you. But we’re gonna blow the place up.” Click.

Julie immediately called Stippo, who was home at their second-floor apartment on East Fourth Street, baby-sitting their two daughters, two-year-old Nicole and one-year-old Meredith. She told him what had happened.

He was speechless in disbelief. “I thought this shit only happened in movies,” he said later.

It was about seven o’clock on the fifth day the store was open. Stippo was baby-sitting again, and Julie was down at the store. The doorbell rang and Stippo reflexively buzzed his visitors in. Moments later, he heard a rapping on the door. Stippo opened it and saw in the hallway his old South Boston High classmate Kevin Weeks and, beside him, a fifty-something guy, about five foot nine, in a leather three-quarters-length coat. No introductions were necessary. Whitey’s reputation preceded him. And like everyone else in Southie, Stippo knew that Weeks had become, next to Stevie, Whitey’s closest associate.

“We need to talk to you,” Weeks said, as Whitey looked on.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.