While most of Irish America took advantage of their newfound status in the wake of Kennedy’s election and headed for suburbia, there remained in Hell’s Kitchen a small, hard-core community who had neither the means nor the inclination to leave. With the area now entering its newest phase of economic decline, these embattled Irish held tight—for better or for worse—to the traditions established by their forebears. It was this group who turned to Mickey Spillane, whose polite manner and handsome black-Irish features made him something of a Kennedyesque figure in his own right.
By the mid-1960s, what remained of the West Side rackets were now evenly divided between Spillane’s crew, known simply as the Hell’s Kitchen Irish Mob, and various Italian interests. The Italians still played a major role on the docks and at Madison Square Garden, the city’s premier sports arena, then located at 50th Street and 8th Avenue. At the Garden the labor force was controlled equally by the Gambino crime family in Brooklyn, by Vincent “the Chin” Gigante’s Genovese family crew, and by Spillane’s Irish Mob.
The prize New York Coliseum, which opened in 1956 at 59th Street and 8th Avenue, was also split among numerous criminal factions. Insuring that everyone got a piece of the action, as many as fourteen different unions got involved, many of them acting as brokers between individual contractors, management, and the mob.
Spillane’s alliance with the Mafia was always tenuous. He had inherited the relationship from his former boss, Hughie Mulligan, who had himself inherited a tradition going all the way back to Owney Madden. Since Madden first joined Lucky Luciano’s Organized Crime Commission in 1931, the Italians had far outstripped the Irish in every facet of organized crime. As J. Edgar Hoover chased Communists and denied the existence of the Mafia, the Italians constructed an impressive national network controlled mainly by the “Five Families” of New York City. Local neighborhood mobs like the Hell’s Kitchen Irish were allowed to operate, but only as long as the Italians got their cut.
Along with having to walk a fine line between being a partner and a competitor, Spillane resented the fact that La Cosa Nostra, as the Mafia was now commonly known, was able to muscle in on his territory. Since he wasn’t interested in seeing what he could get out of the “partnership” by branching out into non-neighborhood activities, to Spillane the arrangement seemed like a one-way street—a shakedown, in fact. About the only thing he got in return for his cooperation was a guarantee he wouldn’t be fucked with.
There was always a degree of mutual distrust, and things no doubt took a turn for the worse when Spillane snatched Eli Zicardi, who ran the policy games for Anthony “Fat Tony” Salerno, head of the Genovese family. While he no longer nabbed neighborhood folks, Spillane still occasionally kidnapped wiseguys, holding them for ransom and then letting them go once he got paid. It was a peculiar aspect of his relationship with the Italians. They often knew Spillane was the one who had done it, but they were willing to tolerate it as long as nobody got hurt and the ransom never exceeded the $10,000 to $15,000 range.
But something went wrong with the Zicardi kidnapping. The ransom was delivered. Zicardi, however, disappeared from the face of the earth.
There were no immediate repercussions. But people wondered just how long Spillane would be able to get away with harassing bigshots like Fat Tony Salerno before it all came home to roost.
In the meantime, Spillane kept his control over Hell’s Kitchen’s “ground-level” rackets. The numbers game was the most lucrative. Each day, Mickey had a dozen or more runners out collecting three-digit numbers and bets to go with them. Since the winning bet often paid extremely high dividends—sometimes as much as 600 to 1—even nongamblers liked to play, betting anywhere between $1 and $1,000.
The number was determined by that day’s “total mutual handle,” or betting totals at the track, which were published in the daily newspapers. The last three digits of the total were the number for the day. Some days there was more than one winner; some days there were none—in which case the entire pot wound up in Spillane’s pocket.
Along with the numbers racket, Spillane owned a piece of most of the gambling dens in Hell’s Kitchen. There were at least a half-dozen all-night clubs on 10th Avenue, known simply as “the Avenue” to most West Siders. Spillane himself was an avid dice and card player, and almost any night of the week he could be found at Tommy Collins’s social club, a first floor walk-up at 722 10th Avenue, or at 694 10th Avenue, another frequent gambling spot.
When he wasn’t gambling or tending to his rackets, Spillane spent a considerable amount of time shoring up his reputation as a man of influence in the community. His marriage to Maureen McManus, of course, was his biggest coup. Among other things, it reinforced the symbiotic relationship that had always existed between the neighborhood’s various spheres of influence. To the old-time residents of Hell’s Kitchen, the coupling of Spillane and McManus evoked nostalgia for those days when the gangster and the politician walked hand in hand, and the Irish ruled the roost. Current reality was quite different.
Since the turn of the century reign of the McMani and before, outside commentators had been accusing Hell’s Kitchen pols of being under the influence of local gangsters. To a large extent, it was true, though anyone with a knowledge of New York City politics shouldn’t have been surprised. Hell’s Kitchen was far from unique in this regard. From the earliest days of Boss Tweed’s Tammany machine, a local district leader’s influence was based on his ability to deliver services and exert control in his community. In the Twenties and Thirties, that included unleashing gangsters on election day to make sure voters pulled the right levers—even if they had to do so with ten broken fingers. In return, a district leader was able to exert influence over a cop or a county judge when one of the local lads got busted.
By the 1960s, however, years of political reform altered the relationship between politics and crime in the neighborhoods. It became a lot less binding on both sides. Yes, Mickey Spillane still controlled a certain number of jobs in Hell’s Kitchen, which were in turn parceled out through the Midtown Democratic Club as political favors. And Spillane would still, at the behest of the district leadership, extend loans to local merchants unable to get credit from the banks. But long gone were the days when a local gangster could control enough votes to swing an election, or a local district leader have enough sway to keep his constituents out of jail.
Throughout the mid and late Sixties, the neighborhood continued its slippery slide towards ghettoization. Funds for low-income housing, always a staple in Hell’s Kitchen, dried up; older buildings stood empty and gutted. Drugs began to be a factor. The streets looked deserted a lot of the time, and there were random muggings, stickups, and harassment from landlords. It was getting so longstanding neighborhood folk couldn’t walk around anymore and feel safe.
At the White House Bar on 45th Street and 10th Avenue, Spillane heard these and other complaints. Usually he was surrounded by his underlings—an up and coming young kid named Billy Beattie, older friends like Tom Devaney, Tom “the Greek” Kapatos, the avuncular Tommy Collins, and Eddie Cummiskey. Old-time neighborhood residents came into the bar looking for a favor. Mickey took them off to the side or maybe into a back room and listened while they poured out their hearts. Maybe the guy had a business venture he thought Spillane might want to invest in. Maybe he’d been robbed by a local Puerto Rican kid and wanted to even the score. Maybe his wife or daughter had just gone into the hospital and he needed a loan to cover the bills.
Mickey listened quietly and did what he could. “Thank you, Mr. Spillane,” they would say. “God be with you.” Sometimes there were hugs and even tears as they reminisced about those long-gone days when the rackets were thriving and the neighborhood was all theirs. Spillane seemed to cherish these encounters. It made him feel like he was doing something for the community. It made him feel like he had respect.
Meanwhile, outside in the streets, there was something brewing that the courtly Spillane did not fully comprehe
nd. In the late 1960s, kids all across America were questioning authority, with many traditions and conventions being swept aside. Respect itself was becoming outdated as an entire generation embraced the politics of upheaval.
To the aspiring young gangsters of Hell’s Kitchen it was as good a reason as any to let off a little steam. In the spirit of the times, they danced to the beat of a different drummer. For them Mickey Spillane was an antique, and his adherence to old-world neighborhood values was all phony bullshit. Even Spillane’s reputation as a high-roller and a fancy dresser, as far as they were concerned, was crap. Everybody knew he bought his so-called thousand-dollar suits for almost nothing at Tassiello’s “swag” (stolen merchandise) shop on 9th Avenue.
What’s more, the word on the street was that Spillane “didn’t have the balls” anymore. He was always getting other people to pull the trigger for him, just so he could stay clean in the eyes of the legitimate folk. There was even a story making the rounds that Spillane had agreed to pay a neighborhood kid, Alfred Scott, $5,000 to do a shooting for him. When Scott did it, Spillane reneged on the deal and the kid had to go on the lam in Arizona without a cent to his name.
True or not, that didn’t wash anymore. There was a new breed now, more restless and violent than their immediate predecessors. If the working-class Irish of Hell’s Kitchen had become something of a lost tribe in the 1960s, then this younger generation were the children of that lost tribe. The most dominant symbol of their lives was not J.F.K. riding proudly along Pennsylvania Avenue on Inauguration Day, but J.F.K. slumped over in the back seat of a limousine in Dallas, his brains splattered all over his wife Jackie’s dress.
It was only a matter of time before one of these Young Turks stepped forward to lay claim to his generation’s inheritance. Since the earliest days of gangsterism in Hell’s Kitchen it had always happened that way, youth rising up to exert its physical authority. The only question was whether this person would have the cojones to take on someone as popular as Mickey Spillane, and once he’d done that, whether he’d be able to instill discipline into this increasingly wanton younger generation.
It was a daunting proposition. But before long a nineteen-year-old neighborhood kid with golden hair and a broad smile began to make his moves. Not since the days of the goofy and homicidal Mad Dog Coll would Hell’s Kitchen see someone make their presence felt with such youthful audacity, such ambition, such brutal panache. This kid had all the makings of a serious challenger: he was manipulative, physically impressive, and he had a personal vendetta against Spillane he’d been harboring for years.
The year was 1966. The kid’s name was James Michael Coonan.
3
JIMMY SOWS HIS OATS
It’s this fuckin’ Mike Spillane,” said Eddie Sullivan. “We wanna take him out.”
Sullivan looked like he hadn’t slept in days. He was sporting a five-day stubble on his chin, his eyes were bloodshot, and he was chain-smoking cigarettes like they were the only thing keeping his lungs going. It was March 1966 and Sullivan was seated in a Naugahyde booth in the back of Tony’s Cafe, a nondescript little bar on West 72nd Street in upper Manhattan, speaking to his old friend and criminal partner, Bobby Huggard. Huggard was accompanied by Georgie Saflita, his criminal partner. Rounding out this ragged ensemble was young Jimmy Coonan and his older brother, Jackie.
Built like a bull, with bulging forearms and a vacant, steely look in his eyes, Bobby Huggard was a hard-core criminal. Though only twenty-one, he’d already been charged a half-dozen times with an assortment of violent crimes, including numerous counts of felonious assault, his specialty. Even in jail Huggard was known as a mean dude. In other words, not a bad guy to have at your side if you were planning to engage in an all-out gang war.
Huggard knew all about Mickey Spillane. Recently, he’d moved from Queens to the West Side of Manhattan, where he rented a small apartment on 43rd Street, just a few blocks from Spillane’s White House Bar. Huggard had a cousin who regularly placed bets with Spillane. One afternoon, his cousin had introduced him to Spillane, Eddie Cummiskey, and some of the others who hung out regularly at the White House.
Huggard didn’t really give a fuck about Spillane one way or the other. He’d met him, that was all. In fact, once he got a look at Spillane, he couldn’t really figure out how he’d gotten to be such a power on the West Side. Spillane was about forty pounds lighter than Huggard and dressed in a suit and tie. The way Huggard saw it, he didn’t seem like a tough guy at all; just a high liver.
While Huggard demurred, Eddie Sullivan sipped on his beer and lit up another cigarette. “What we wanna know, Bobby, is are you with us on this thing or not.”
Huggard shrugged. It wasn’t the best offer he’d ever had, but it was something to do. “Sure, Eddie. You know you can count on me.”
For the next thirty minutes, Eddie Sullivan explained how they were going to build an arsenal to take on Spillane. But before they did that, he said, they would need cash. And to get cash they would have to pull a robbery. Sullivan knew a bar in the Bronx he felt would be a pushover. That would be their first target.
Bobby Huggard listened as Eddie Sullivan babbled away. Some of it made sense; some of it made no sense at all. Occasionally Jackie Coonan jumped in with a comment. Nineteen-year-old Jimmy Coonan, by far the youngest person at the table, hardly spoke at all.
To Huggard, this was intriguing. He knew all about Jimmy Coonan’s feud with Spillane. From what he’d heard, Spillane once pistol-whipped Coonan’s old man and Jimmy had turned vengeance into a personal crusade. There was definitely something about this kid, thought Huggard. Even as the others did all the talking here at Tony’s Bar—with the elder Eddie Sullivan assuming the role of leader—Huggard could tell the person really behind the move on Spillane was this intense little blond-haired kid, Jimmy Coonan.
* * *
Unlike a lot of Irish kids in Hell’s Kitchen who fell prey to the neighborhood’s “glorious” tradition of gangsterism, Jimmy Coonan had come from a respectable middle-class background. His father, John Coonan, was a certified public accountant. Coonan’s Tax Service at 369 West 50th Street was no great threat to E. F. Hutton, but it was steady employment. Coonan’s mother, Anna, who was of part German extraction, also worked there.
Born on December 21, 1946, Jimmy was the second of John’s and Anna’s four children. Their residence was a five-room walk-up at 434 West 49th, between 9th and 10th avenues. As a teenager, Jimmy was only five-foot-seven-inches tall, but stocky, with a thick neck and broad shoulders. He showed a lot of promise as a boxer, a skill he would later hone at Elmira Reformatory. Although he was a reasonably affable youngster, he was known to have an explosive temper. Once, at the age of seventeen, he got in a fight with a neighborhood kid. The kid wound up in a local hospital with nearly sixty lacerations on his face and body.
It was also at the age of seventeen that Coonan dropped out of high school and began running with the neighborhood’s professional criminal element. Because of his boxer’s physique, it was always assumed Coonan would be one of a dozen strong-arm types, the kind of kid a more established racketeer might use to do the dirty work for him. But Jimmy showed early on that he had higher aspirations, and he was smart, always looking to form alliances that might strengthen his position in the neighborhood.
One of the first partnerships Coonan formed was with brawny, brown-haired Eddie Sullivan, a small-time burglar and bank robber who was nearly fifteen years his senior. Sullivan was a free-lance criminal, not attached to any gang, who often hung out in West Side saloons looking to borrow money or drum up business.
Mickey Spillane, for one, never liked Sullivan. Not only was he not from Hell’s Kitchen, but he was a drunk and a troublemaker who seemed to have designs on the neighborhood rackets. One time, in the back of the White House Bar, Spillane and his brother even had to give Sullivan a beating just so he’d stop coming around the neighborhood.
To young Jimmy Coonan, Sullivan was useful. F
or one thing, ever since the Spillane brothers smacked him around, Sullivan had been saying he was going to make a move on Mickey Spillane whether Coonan was with him or not. Jimmy knew Sullivan was crazy enough to do it, and that if he used Sullivan properly, Coonan would be the prime beneficiary.
The other thing was that Sullivan had a lot of criminal contacts from his many years in prison. If Coonan was going to make a serious move on Spillane, he knew he’d need an arsenal and a few helping hands. At the moment, it was only himself, Sullivan, and his twenty-two-year-old brother, Jackie, against the Spillane twins and at least a dozen other guys who’d come to Spillane’s defense.
It was Sullivan who reached out to Bobby Huggard, who he’d once done stickups with. That’s how they’d all wound up at Tony’s Bar on West 72nd Street this sunny March afternoon. They were a ragtag collection of criminal misfits, an unlikely crew to take on someone as powerful and well-liked as Mickey Spillane. But with Sullivan’s know-how, Huggard’s brawn, and, most of all, Jimmy Coonan’s desire, they were determined to follow this thing through to its logical—or even illogical—conclusion.
Within days of the meeting at Tony’s Bar, developments on the West Side were threatening to overtake Coonan, Sullivan, and their makeshift crew. For one thing, the Bobby Lagville killing went down. Lagville was the guy who was sent by Spillane to kill Eddie Sullivan. But Lagville had been found out by Coonan & Company, taken out to Long Island City, and turned into a receptacle for an assortment of large-caliber bullets.
Detectives from the 108th Precinct in Queens were asking questions up and down 10th Avenue trying to find out who might have had a motive for killing Little Bobby Lagville, a known Hell’s Kitchen gangster. In keeping with the West Side Code, nobody knew nothin’.
American Gangsters Page 29