Among Thieves

Chapter Thirty-Four

The last time Devon saw Whitey Bulger was in December of 1994. It was a dangerous time in Southie; a dangerous time for everyone with connections. The tension in the projects and down along the water crackled as the crisp New England winter set in. There had been a crackdown in recent months on bookmakers across Boston, and people-connected people-had been slipping out of sight. There were whispers everywhere that something was coming. No one knew what or when or how, but that didn’t stop people from believing. They talked about it as if it were an impending apocalypse; a nameless threat hovered everywhere, making everyone jumpy. There’s nothing more dangerous than a community of nervous gangsters.

Devon was at home in his apartment three days before Christmas. Despite the success at the Gardner Museum years earlier, the promise of advancement and opportunity had never materialized. It was as if the whole thing had never happened. The fallout from the robbery in the law-enforcement community was so heavy that the Gardner job wasn’t something he could use; if anything the attention paid to the investigation made him radioactive. Those who knew of his involvement had stayed away from him for years. Worse, he had spent the entire time looking over his shoulder, sure that he would be eliminated at any moment by Bulger or one of his men, just to clean up the loose ends.

When the phone rang and he heard Bulger’s voice on the other end of the line, his heart stopped. “I got a job for you,” Bulger said.

“Okay,” Devon said, the perspiration spreading over his body like the winter fog. “What is it?”

“Not over the phone,” Bulger said. “Tonight. Meet me at the liquor store. One o’clock.”

“Sure thing, Mr. Bulger,” Devon said.

When he hung up the phone, Devon ’s first instinct was to run. He went to his bedroom and opened his drawers, wondering what he would need to take. After a moment, though, his knees gave out and he slumped to the bed. The truth was that nothing he could take would make a difference. A change of clothes and fifty bucks; that was the sum total of his existence. The only thing that kept him alive was the odd job Murphy threw him occasionally. If he left, he’d have nothing. Less than nothing, even.

As he sat there, he thought hard about his situation. If Whitey had wanted him dead, he’d have had it done before now, he figured. It was a rationalization, but he had nothing else. He even convinced himself that maybe this was the start of good things for him-the fulfillment of a promise made years before.

He arrived a few minutes early at the liquor store out of which Whitey ran his business. The lights were off. He went to the front door and pushed. It was locked. He looked around and walked to the back of the building. As he approached he could see that the back door was cracked open ever so slightly. He pulled it open half a foot.

“Mr. Bulger?” he called out softly.

“In here,” came a voice.

Devon thought he would throw up. He could see nothing but darkness inside, and he assumed his life was over. He hesitated.

“Get the fuck in here,” the voice said.

Devon took a deep breath and stepped into the building. He’d passed up whatever chance he’d had to run. “Where are you?” he asked into the darkness.

“Back here. Storage room.”

Devon moved slowly, his hands feeling for danger out in front of him. After a moment he caught the dim shadow cast by a small light toward the back of the storage area. He walked toward the light, feeling slightly more sure-footed as he got closer and the light gave him a better sense of the room. When he got to the door, he pushed it open.

Bulger was there. There was a table in the center of the room, and on the table was a large wooden packing crate. “I need your help movin’ this,” Bulger said.

Devon looked around, expecting to see someone else from Bulger’s crew. It was just the two of them, though. “Sure thing, Mr. Bulger,” Devon said. “Where to? The other room?”

Bulger shook his head. “I got a truck outside,” he said.

“Oh,” Devon said. “Sure. No problem.”

The crate was lighter than Devon had expected. It was a two-man job, but not a strenuous one. The truck outside was a custom van. It had thick brown shag carpeting on the inside and little round bubble windows on the back end. It was the kind of a van Devon had always wanted growing up-the kind guys from the neighborhood got laid in.

He and Bulger loaded the crate into the back and closed the rear doors. “Get in,” Bulger said. He tossed Devon the keys. “You drive.”

Devon climbed into the driver’s seat; Whitey sat next to him. He started the engine and let it idle for a moment. “Where’re we goin’?”

“ Charlestown.” Whitey wasn’t looking at him; he was looking out the window, scanning the parking lot from every angle, looking in the rearview mirror to see if anything was moving. Devon had never seen him nervous before. It didn’t do anything to put Devon at ease. He put the van in gear and pulled out.

Under other circumstances, the drive might have been pleasant. The temperature hovered in the high twenties, and light flurries drifted weightless through the beams cast by the headlights. A thin layer of snow had cleansed the city earlier in the day, and it had remained cold enough for the snow to stick. As Devon crossed through Southie and into Boston, he hesitated. “Which way you wanna go?”

“ Charlestown Bridge,” Bulger replied.

Devon nodded and took the right onto Atlantic, then followed it around, peeling off onto Surface Road, which followed the shadow of the raised highway that separated downtown Boston from the North End, onto North Washington to the four-lane bridge that crossed into the southeastern part of Charlestown. At the far end of the bridge there was a light. “ Take Chelsea Street,” Bulger ordered.

Devon turned and headed north, through Charlestown on the eastern part of town. The place glowed with the holiday season, colored lights warming the street scene through brownstone windows. To the right was the Navy Yard, with its virgin luxury condos; to the left was the flat below Monument Square, with its redeveloped brownstones, their roof decks proclaiming the city’s recent gentrification. With the snow, it looked as though they might have traveled through time to be cruising through the place fifty years earlier.

Chelsea Street quickly fell into the night shadows of the Mystic River Bridge, which towered over the water, headed to Chelsea, where LNG stations and industrial smokestacks dominated the landscape. To the right, the Navy Yard withered away to shoreline, and to the left, the refurbished town houses gave way to battered housing projects. The contrast as they headed north was striking.

Chelsea Street crossed the Little Mystic Channel and turned into Terminal Street at the water’s edge out on Mystic Wharf, a twenty-acre chunk of landfill where Boston ’s Public Works Department stored its vehicles. The place was covered in concrete and jutted out from the mainland into the Mystic River. Thousands upon thousands of ghostly vehicles lined up in an endless parking lot. It was a wasteland, with only a few buildings squatting fat and ugly at the edge of the river.

“I’ll tell you when to stop,” Bulger said as they approached the western end of the mammoth wharf. “Turn in here, to the right.”

Devon turned through a gate. There were two visible buildings, low and long, running perpendicular to the river. A faded sign on one read “Charlestown Self-Storage.” “Around back,” Bulger said.

They wound around onto a narrow driveway out back that hairpinned by the edge of the water, following the back of the building to a narrow drive in between the two structures. Halfway down, Bulger said, “Park here.”

Devon stopped the van.

“Get out.”

Devon did as he was told; Bulger followed. He looked around nervously as he walked to the back of the van and opened it up. The two of them leaned in and grabbed hold of the crate, hoisted it up, and carried it toward the only door Devon could see. Once there, they set it down and Bulger took out a key. He opened the door and held it with his foot while the two of them moved the crate inside. Then he let the door slam, and they were swallowed up in darkness so complete Devon wondered for a moment whether he was dead. He felt around with his hand on the wall and found a switch, flipping it. A jaundiced light flickered on. “Turn the fuckin’ light off,” Bulger hissed. Devon looked at him, confused, but turned the light off. A moment later, Bulger flipped on a flashlight and slipped it under his arm. It was a weak light, creating little more than gray shadows, but it was enough for them to maneuver down the long, narrow passage. “Down at the end,” Bulger said, and the two of them walked jerkily down the hallway.

There was little that Devon could see, but then he was pretty sure he wasn’t missing much. Narrow blue sliding doors lined the hallway, each of them lonely and silent. They reminded Devon of prison cells stacked up side by side; a mausoleum of solitary confinement, the screams of the occupants silenced and forgotten.

When they arrived at the end of the hallway they put the crate down and Bulger used his flashlight to locate another key and unlock the door. He reached down and grabbed hold of the handle at the bottom of the door, sliding it open. Motioning to Devon, he picked up one end of the crate again, carried it inside the little storage room, and then pulled the door down behind them.

The room couldn’t have been more than six by ten, only slightly bigger than a jail cell, and it had no ventilation, no insulation. Devon could see their breath as they exhaled, caught in the weak light still cast by Bulger’s flashlight. In the center of the room stood a narrow wooden box, about five feet tall, eight feet long, and three feet wide. Devon ’s first thought was that it resembled a coffin.

Bulger opened the door to the box from one end; it had a metal clasp that held a swinging door closed. Devon had never seen anything like it. The interior was lined with a rich, luxurious cloth. It looked like silk, but a deeper silk than he’d ever seen. “What’s that?” he asked.

“Mind your fuckin’ business,” Bulger said. “There’s a hammer in the van. Get it, and get the fuckin’ crate open.”

Devon did as he was told. It took a few minutes for him to pry off the lid to the crate, but once he did, he could hardly believe his eyes. There, inside the crate, were all of the paintings and drawings he and the Irishman had taken from the Gardner Museum years before. “Holy fuck,” Devon said.

“You ain’t kiddin’,” Bulger agreed.

The last time Devon had seen the paintings they were rolled up and piled on a table at the auto body shop. Now they were mounted on wood, and they looked well cared for.

“I thought the Irishman paid you for these,” Devon said.

“He did. We’ve tried twice to move them out of the country, but there’s still too much fuckin’ heat. I’m holding them for our friends until it’s safe. In the meantime, we gotta take care of them. You don’t stretch ’em out, and they crack,” Bulger said. “This box is like a humidor; it’ll keep out the moisture and protect ’em. These things get ruined and they’re fuckin’ worthless.”

“Where’d you get it?”

“I know a guy,” Bulger replied. “I had him make it. That’s all you need to fuckin’ know. Now hand them in to me, one at a time.”

It took just a few minutes for them to transfer the paintings to the box. Bulger closed the door and latched it.

Bulger turned to Devon. He had his knife in one hand and a set of the keys to the storage facility in the other. The knife turned menacingly in his hand. “There are three sets of keys to this place,” he said. He tossed the key in his hand to Devon. “Now you got one, and I got one.”

“What about the third?”

“You don’t need to worry about the third,” Bulger said. Without warning, he reached out and grabbed Devon by the throat, pushing him into the wall. “You even think about fuckin’ me on this, and I’ll do things you can’t even imagine, you got that?” He held the knife less than an inch away fron Devon ’s right eye. “I’m more serious than you’ll ever fuckin’ know.”

“I don’t understand,” Devon said. “Why do I need the key?”

“Because if I’m not around, someone’s got to get our Irish friends their shit if they show up lookin’ for it.”

“What about the other guy?”

Bulger laughed. “He’s not in a position to help out our friends.” He turned serious again. “Three of us,” he said. “That’s all there is that know about this place. And I know the other guy ain’t gonna fuckin’ cross me; so if this shit disappears, you’re the only guy I’m comin’ after.”

“I wouldn’t fuck you,” Devon said.

Bulger kept the knife where it was for another minute. Then he pulled it back and put it away in its sheath. “Good,” he said. “Now help me get this fuckin’ crate back to the van.”

Devon started helping with the crate. “Why me?” Devon asked after a moment.

Bulger laughed. “I don’t trust nobody who isn’t scared shitless of me,” he said. “Some other guys, they might think they could take me. They might think, if things ain’t goin’ my way, that’s their chance. You ain’t gonna think that way no matter what happens, are you?”

Devon looked down. “No,” he said. “No, I’m not, Mr. Bulger.”

Bulger looked at him and smiled. “I told you once before, call me Jimmy,” he said.

Bulger dropped Devon off back at his apartment and peeled away. Devon never saw him again. A day later, rumors began to spread that the Justice Department had obtained sealed indictments against Bulger’s Winter Hill Gang. Bulger himself was tipped off by his FBI handlers and slipped away before he could be arrested. In the fifteen years since, no one ever called on Devon to get the paintings.