American Gangsters

by T. J. English

  To Mickey, it was the most ballsy criminal act he had ever conceived.…

  A plot, planned and put in motion by him, to murder Jimmy Coonan.

  Four months before the Michael Holly shooting, in late December of 1984, Jimmy Coonan had returned home from prison after serving his time for gun possession and for the old Vanderbilt Evans assault. Initially, Mickey and everyone else tried to act as if nothing had changed. There’d been a few meetings on the West Side with Mickey, Jimmy McElroy, Kelly, and Shannon in which Coonan sought to lay out his new agenda for the Eighties. Jimmy had been gone just over four years, and there were a lot of loose ends to be addressed, including an eight-year-old contract on the life of Michael Holly. The fact that Holly had not been taken care of was a source of embarrassment to Coonan—one he wanted dealt with as soon as possible.

  One of the personal duties Coonan resumed when he came back from prison was collecting the tribute from the ILA. As soon as he did, everyone else’s share dropped drastically. There was a lot of grumbling about that, from Mickey as well as McElroy, Kelly, and Shannon (who’d now risen in status from gofer to partner with the ambitious Kevin Kelly). But what bothered Mickey and the group most of all was that since Coonan’s return, he’d rekindled his romance with the Italians.

  One of the first times Mickey saw Coonan after he got out was in the lobby of an office building on Madison Avenue in January. Jimmy had summoned Mickey there to meet with a high-powered defense attorney named James LaRossa. LaRossa was the attorney for none other than Paul Castellano, boss of the Gambino family. Recently, Castellano had been ensnared in a massive federal racketeering indictment, and LaRossa was planning his defense.

  In the lobby of LaRossa’s ornate office building, Mickey met up with Coonan, Mugsy Ritter, and an up-and-coming capo in the Gambino organization named Danny Marino. While Coonan was away in prison, his good buddy Roy Demeo had been murdered by his own people, and Marino had taken over as Coonan’s “Italian connection.”

  Marino and Coonan were concerned about Castellano’s upcoming trial. Specifically, they were worried about Dominick Montiglio, the former Green Beret and nephew of Nino Gaggi whom Mickey had been introduced to after the sit-down at Tommaso’s Restaurant. Since then, Montiglio had flipped and was set to testify against Castellano.

  What they wanted Mickey to do was come up with damaging personal information about Montiglio to help discredit him on the stand.

  “Mickey, you talked to the guy,” said Coonan. “Whaddya know?”

  “I don’t really know nothin’. We talked about ’Nam a little bit …”

  “Okay, what’d he say?”

  “Just about things he seen there and nightmares he been having.”

  “What else?” asked Danny Marino.

  “Nothin’ else.”

  “Look, Mickey,” said Coonan. “It don’t have to be true, know what I’m sayin’?”

  They all went up to the lawyer’s office and sat in the waiting room. Mickey was getting steamed. He knew what they wanted him to do. They wanted him to put himself on the line, to sign a bunch of papers saying Dominick Montiglio was a scumbag and a killer. They wanted him to perjure himself and risk doing prison time for Big Paulie.

  Mickey was called into LaRossa’s office along with Coonan and Danny Marino. The lawyer asked Mickey what he knew about Montiglio, and Mickey repeated what he’d said in the lobby.

  “What else do you know?” asked LaRossa.

  “That’s about it.”

  “C’mon, Mickey,” said Marino. “Tell us more.”

  “Look, I only talked to the guy a few times and I told youse all I know. Now, if what you wanna do is make it up, whaddya need me for?”

  Mickey could tell Coonan and Marino were annoyed with him when he left LaRossa’s office. But the way he saw it, he was the one who had a right to be annoyed. Why should he be asked to put his freedom on the line for the guineas?

  Mickey was still incredulous about it the next day. “Those people,” he told black-mustachioed Mugsy Ritter, in reference to the Italians. “Sometimes they think they can do whatever they want just because they’re ginzos.”

  It was the same deal a few weeks later, when Mickey found a message waiting for him at Erie Transfer after he’d put in a long twelve-hour day on a movie set. The message said to meet Jimmy Coonan at Visage, a nightclub/disco on the West Side partly owned by Danny Marino.

  Mickey was still dressed in his work clothes—blue jeans, a heavy leather jacket, and a navy-blue knit cap. When he arrived at Visage, a burly doorman told him there was no way he could let him in dressed the way he was.

  “Look,” said Mickey. “I’m a West Sider, a friend of Jimmy Coonan’s and Danny Marino’s. They’re expecting me. Why don’t you go inside and check?”

  The doorman disappeared for a few minutes, then returned. “Sorry,” he said, pulling back the rope so Mickey could enter.

  There were disco lights glittering amid flashy dresses and expensive suits as Mickey made his way through the club carrying his cap and leather jacket. Finally, he spotted Coonan and Marino seated at a booth and walked over.

  “Jesus,” said Marino when he saw Mickey. “No wonder they wouldn’t let this guy in. Look at the way he’s dressed.”

  “Yeah,” replied Coonan, sheepishly. “Well, you know, he was out doin’ a piece of work.”

  Mickey couldn’t believe the way Jimmy was kissing Danny Marino’s ass. Here was this fucking Al Cologne from Brooklyn making comments about the way he was dressed in his own fucking neighborhood, and Coonan was practically apologizing for it.

  Mickey’s dissatisfaction with Jimmy had been festering ever since Edna refused him that loan he’d asked for. Then, a year later, Jimmy comes back to the neighborhood and starts cozying up to the Italians again. Add to that Mickey’s refusal to carry out the murders he’d been assigned through Edna, and he and Jimmy’s “friendship” could not have been more tenuous—on both sides.

  The way Mickey saw it, there was only one way to go.

  In the early weeks of 1985, Mickey sought out Billy Beattie, who, after many months on the lam in the Catskill Mountains had been trying to work his way back into the neighborhood. As soon as Coonan heard about it, he’d put out a contract on Beattie’s life, forcing him back into hiding.

  Mickey knew he could get a message to Billy through his brother Tommy. He made arrangements to meet Billy one afternoon near Central Park, away from Hell’s Kitchen.

  It was a brisk day as Mickey greeted Billy, who he hadn’t seen in nearly five years, since before the Whitehead trial. They strolled south on Central Park West, in the shadow of some of the city’s most stately apartment buildings.

  “I just wanna tell you one thing,” said Billy, wasting no time getting to the subject that was on both their minds. “If Coonan’s gonna kill me, I want you to know why. The real story.”

  Mickey smiled. “Hey, don’t tell me. I’ll tell you, man.”

  Beattie looked startled.

  “I’ll bet,” said Mickey, “Edna tried to hit on you.”

  “How the fuck did you know?”

  “I don’t know, man, I just figured.”

  Beattie explained how Edna, who he’d dated years ago before she married Coonan, had found out where he was staying. With Jimmy away in prison, she’d started calling up and making sexual advances. Beattie would hang up on her, but she’d call again the next night.

  “That’s the whole reason she wants me dead. And that bitch probably told Jimmy I’m the one that was comin’ on to her!”

  Mickey laughed. “Billy, I don’t wanna kill you, okay? I don’t intend to kill you. Neither do any of the other guys, ’cept Jimmy. I believe he wants to kill me too. So, you know, what else can we do? It’s like, kill or be killed, know what I’m sayin’?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Besides, Jimmy don’t wanna be an Irishman no more. He’s forgot where he come from, you know. He just wants to be an Italian now.”


  “Yeah, that’s his thing.”

  “Has been for a long, long time, I believe. We just didn’t wanna admit it.”

  Mickey and Billy Beattie stood silently for a few minutes looking out at the heavy traffic on Columbus Circle. A chilly breeze whisked through the treetops along Central Park West, and mothers, bundled in their winter clothes, pushed babies in strollers to and from the park.

  “I can’t say I like this,” said Billy, shaking his head. “But I guess we got no choice.”

  One week later, on the movie set where Mickey was working, he met again with Billy Beattie. The movie was 9 1/2 Weeks, starring Mickey Rourke and Kim Basinger, and the crew was filming a scene right on 10th Avenue, in the heart of Hell’s Kitchen. During a break they met in a camper and Mickey gave Billy a .32-caliber pistol wrapped in a towel.

  The gun was supposed to be used on Jimmy Coonan.

  But Billy Beattie didn’t have the nerve to do it alone. So other members of the Westies were brought into the conspiracy. McElroy, Kelly, and Shannon had all recently told Mickey they were fed up with Jimmy Coonan. To them, the idea of eliminating Jimmy certainly had its advantages: profit and survival. They’d all get more control over the neighborhood’s criminal bounty this way. And they knew how upset Featherstone was with Coonan. If he carried through on his plot to kill Jimmy, anyone too closely associated with Coonan might be next in line. Even if they didn’t agree with Mickey, it would be smart to at least act like they were on his side.

  Mickey, Beattie, McElroy, Kelly, and Shannon all met one evening in March ’85 and talked about how to get rid of Coonan. Someone raised the possibility of having a black guy they knew dress up as a Rastafarian, go out to Hazlet, and gun Jimmy down in his neighborhood. With a black dude as the shooter, the cops would never think to trace it to the Westies. Everybody liked that idea until they realized there probably wasn’t a single black person in all of Hazlet. Any Rastafarian seen in that neighborhood would probably be arrested just on general principle.

  The whole thing reached a low point, of sorts, one afternoon later in March when they all put on bulletproof vests, piled into a car, and drove out to Hazlet, hoping to catch Coonan at home. “The house that Ruby built,” they called Coonan’s home at 15 Vanmater Terrace, because Jimmy had purchased it with the money he saved by murdering Ruby Stein. They drove around the neighborhood for an hour or so bitching about Jimmy and Edna, passing a joint around and getting high. They never saw Jimmy that day.

  Although everyone was trying to act tough, the thought of killing Jimmy Coonan was not a pleasant one. It wasn’t that he didn’t deserve it. It was the uncertainty that lay ahead. After Coonan was gone, who would control the rackets? Who would give the orders?

  No one dared ask those questions aloud, but they were heavy on the minds of all five men that day as they drove around the immaculate suburban streets of Hazlet, halfheartedly looking to kill their lifelong friend and leader, Jimmy Coonan.

  Although it hadn’t happened by April of ’85, there were those who felt it was imminent. Maybe it would take place right on 10th Avenue when Jimmy drove by in his brand new Mercedes. Maybe it would happen in a restaurant when he was eating pasta with one of his Italian friends. Or maybe it would be quiet. Maybe Jimmy Coonan would just disappear one day, his body made to “do the Houdini,” just as he had made so many other bodies disappear over the years.

  The fact that Coonan knew nothing of this plot was an indication of just how far removed he had become. Since his return, he’d been spending less and less time with his West Side crew, which contributed to their resentment towards him. Jimmy didn’t seem to want to associate with his old pals anymore. The way they saw it, he was on the verge of just turning the neighborhood’s rackets over to the guineas in return for a spot in their organization.

  The very idea of Coonan’s demise had created a high level of paranoia among those Westies who were in on the plot. Who knew what bloodshed might result from even thinking about such an outrageous act?

  These thoughts were definitely on Mickey Featherstone’s mind on April 26, 1985, the day after the Michael Holly shooting. That morning, Sissy, who was six months pregnant, and their niece Esther rode with him in the family Oldsmobile to Erie Transfer, where he was going to pick up his paycheck. For the first time in a long time, he hadn’t gotten high the night before. He stayed straight so he could mull over all the sinister possibilities of the previous day’s events with a clear head.

  The Holly murder was just too goddamned suspicious, he kept thinking as he crossed the massive span of the George Washington Bridge and headed south on the West Side Highway towards the old neighborhood. Why did they use a car from Erie Transfer? Why didn’t they let him know exactly when and where it was going to go down so he could establish a clear-cut alibi?

  When Mickey pulled up in front of Erie Transfer he hardly noticed the car that was double-parked in front of him. And he wasn’t really paying much attention to the sedan behind him either, though he could see it plainly in his rearview mirror. It wasn’t until he spotted a car with four men in it driving the wrong way on West 52nd Street that he realized what was happening.

  Then all hell broke loose. More cops than he’d ever seen in one place in his life, both detectives and uniformed officers, descended on his car.

  “Oh my God!” gasped Sissy.

  “Stay in the car!” Mickey shouted at his wife and daughter, as he opened the door and stepped out into the street.

  The cops, guns drawn, swarmed around the car. They pulled Sissy and Esther out on the passenger side and led them away.

  “You’re under arrest, Mickey,” one of the detectives barked, pushing Featherstone up against a chain-link fence and slapping on a set of cuffs.

  “Mind tellin’ me what the fuck for?” asked Featherstone.

  “Wouldn’t you like to know?”

  An unmarked police car pulled up. As he was being led away, Mickey peered past the sea of cops towards Erie Transfer, where many of his fellow workers had gathered.

  “Call my lawyers!” he yelled as he was pushed into the detective’s car. “They ain’t tellin’ me what I’m under arrest for!”

  On May 13, 1985, two and a half weeks after Featherstone’s arrest, Ken Aronson got a call from a detective in the 10th Precinct.

  “Is this Mickey Featherstone’s attorney?” asked the detective.

  “Yes.”

  “We located the witnesses. Today’s the lineup. You’re here, you’re here. You’re not, you’re not.”

  Then he hung up.

  Aronson was suitably annoyed. Since Mickey’s arrest, there had already been one such lineup. It had taken place within hours of the bust, and Hochheiser and Aronson had not been notified. Apparently, that lineup involved two people who had been driving a delivery van on West 35th Street the day Michael Holly was shot. Their van was forced to stop when a beige station wagon in front of them came to an abrupt halt. They watched in amazement as a man got out of the station wagon on the passenger side, screwed a silencer onto a chrome-colored pistol, and fired five shots at a pedestrian dressed in construction clothes. Then the shooter hopped back in the car and it drove off.

  One of the witnesses swore he saw the shooter plain as day. The other was slightly less certain of the assailant’s appearance, though he’d definitely seen the guy. They both described the shooter as roughly five-feet-seven-inches tall and about 150 pounds. He had sandy-blond hair about collar length, a mustache, and was wearing a white painter’s cap and sunglasses.

  The two witnesses had identified Featherstone from the lineup as the person they’d seen shoot Michael Holly.

  Now, two more witnesses—construction workers who’d been walking on West 35th Street and observed the entire incident from start to finish—had finally been located by the police. They, too, would now get a chance to pick Featherstone out of a lineup.

  Aronson got over to the 10th Precinct as fast as he could. From what he’d been hearing from Mickey
, the cops had been mistreating him since the day of his arrest. Featherstone was something of a legend in law enforcement circles, and the attorney didn’t doubt for a minute that the NYPD was making the most of having him in custody. Aronson also felt it was entirely possible that the cops, pissed that Featherstone had beaten so many cases in the past, might try to railroad him by establishing bogus witnesses to the shooting.

  At the station house, the attorney was led into a small, narrow area—more like a hallway than a room—with no windows. There were two file cabinets along one side, and along the other a large plywood panel with hinges on the top. The detectives lifted up the panel to reveal a two-way mirror which looked out onto the lineup room.

  Aronson stood against the back wall, near the file cabinets. The only light was from the lineup room, where a couple of detectives waited patiently for the order to bring in Featherstone and the assorted crooks and cops—“fillers”—who would stand next to Mickey in the lineup. But first, a gruff-sounding detective called for the witnesses to be brought in.

  Given the reputation of Mickey Featherstone and the Westies, the cops were taking no chances. The Whitehead murder trial had resulted in two suicidal witnesses, and they were determined that would not be the case this time around. Even Aronson wasn’t told the names of the witnesses.

  As they were led into the room, the attorney, who had been present at many police lineups in his career, observed something he had never seen before. Both witnesses had paper bags over their heads. Small holes had been cut in the bags so they could see.

  With a cop on each side, the witnesses stood directly in front of the two-way mirror.

  “Bring ’em in,” a detective shouted to the cops in the other room.

  Mickey Featherstone and five other people were led into the room and stood against the wall. The fillers were all about Mickey’s size, with mustaches like his and hair of a similar sandy-blond color. They were all wearing painter’s caps of the type the witnesses remembered the shooter wearing on the day in question. The lights in the lineup room were doused, except for a fluorescent light on the ceiling, which shined down on Featherstone and the others.