MCI-Billerica: the 17-month bit; learning the meter-shunt

pivotal · B.S., ~age 24

• When: at age twenty-four; Billerica three months after the Danvers assault (event 18)
• What: At twenty-four Gately did 17 months at MCI-Billerica for the double-bouncer assault — "it was more like he'd beaten the second bouncer bloody with the unconscious body of the first." He did the time "stand-up," too big to fuck with; when hard guys came for his canteen cigarettes he laughed them off, and when they returned he beat them half to death behind the weight room where others could hear, after which he was left alone. Here he learned the alarm-meter-shunt technique (from an older con who later died of a morphine OD in Utah) — the signature M.O. that will later mark the DuPlessis job as his (event 27).