American Gangsters

by T. J. English

  That’s when Mickey realized what an impressionable little fucker Ray Steen could be.

  So now here he was, four years later, in the middle of a business deal with Steen that he knew was about to blow up in their faces. He could feel it.

  “Don’t worry,” Ray was saying. “I got this under control.”

  “Well,” replied Mickey, stabbing his cigarette into an ashtray. “If they are agents, they got you already. So you might as well go ahead.”

  “Right.”

  “But when this fuck starts wavin’ a badge in your face?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Don’t come cryin’ to me.”

  On the evening of February 9th, Richie Egan strapped on his bulletproof vest, secured his .38 Special safely in its holster, and waited for instructions. Once again, he was in the John Jay College observation post across the street from the Westway Candy Store. Along with fellow officers James Tedaldi, Abe Ocasio, Don Gurney, and their supervisor, Sergeant Tom McCabe, Egan was waiting for Mickey Featherstone to arrive at the store. Once he did, the cops were ready to boogie. Search warrants had been secured, the Secret Service agents were in place and an all-out raid was about to get underway.

  Simultaneous with their operation, just down the street a half-dozen other federal agents—along with four or five members of the NYPD’s Emergency Service Unit—would also be conducting a raid. Both front and back entrances to 520 West 56th Street were being secured as the agents made ready to search apartments 15-B and 15-C—Featherstone’s and Steen’s.

  And there was more. Undercover agents Malfi and Libonati, along with four or five more Secret Service agents, would be carrying out the most important part of the night’s festivities—the arrest of Ray Steen.

  The decision to stage the raids and arrest had come suddenly. In recent weeks, there had been a complication in Steen’s supply of counterfeit. The cops got wind of it through a bug on the phone at the Westway Candy Store (by that time, they also had wiretaps on phones in Featherstone’s and Steen’s apartments). On the afternoon of February 5th, Agent Malfi called Steen at the candy store and asked why their planned transaction of the night before hadn’t gone down.

  “The guy got busted,” said Steen, referring to his source.

  “The guy got busted with our stuff?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Holy Jesus! So what does that do to the deal?”

  “No, no, no, wait, wait. The guy got busted, but not with the stuff.”

  “Well, what is this, the guy got busted ’cause of counterfeit or what?”

  “No, he didn’t get busted for counterfeit. No, a jewelry heist.”

  “Oh, so what’d he have, the stuff with him or something?”

  “No, he didn’t have nothin’. He just had his body with him there.”

  “C’mon, Ray, what the fuck is this?”

  Steen was reluctant to reveal the name of his and Featherstone’s source, but before the conversation was over he’d told Malfi just about everything the cops needed to know. The source, said Steen, had been arrested on a burglary charge and would be arraigned that night at 8 P.M. in lower Manhattan. SCU immediately dispatched an Intelligence unit to set up surveillance at 100 Centre Street, the New York municipal courthouse. Sure enough, at 7:45 P.M., Mickey Featherstone arrived with the bail money for Billy Comas and a sidekick of his named Johnny Halo.

  The cops were familiar with Comas. They knew him as a veteran hustler who had been dealing with the West Side Mob for years. What’s more, detectives from the 4th Homicide Zone had recently informed the Intelligence Division that Billy Comas was believed to be a witness—if not a participant—in the brutal murder of Harold Whitehead at the Opera Bar.

  Now that they had Steen’s and Featherstone’s supplier, the investigators were inclined to play their last card. Things had heated up in the neighborhood considerably. It seemed to be common knowledge that the phones were bugged, which meant that Malfi might be in danger. They certainly had the evidence to arrest, indict, and convict Ray Steen, which they hoped would provide enough leverage to enlist his cooperation in the investigation.

  What’s more, earlier that week Steen had told Malfi he’d seen the counterfeit plates for the $100 notes in Featherstone’s apartment. The investigators had used this bit of information as the pretext to file for a search warrant.

  At about 7 P.M., as Richie Egan and the other Intelligence cops watched from across the street, Mickey Featherstone arrived with a package at the Westway Candy Store, where Ray Steen was waiting to meet him. In twenty minutes, Steen was scheduled to sell $50,000 in counterfeit to Malfi. The package Featherstone was delivering contained the bogus bills, which Billy Comas had delivered earlier that day.

  At 7:07 Mickey called his apartment from the candy store. He told Sissy to tell Billy Uptown to stay put; he’d be right over as soon as he was done. The investigators, listening to the conversation over a transmitter, were pleasantly surprised. They had not known Billy Comas would actually be on the premises when they made their raid. It was icing on the cake.

  At 7:30 Malfi drove up in front of the candy store in his black undercover van. Steen slid back the side door and got in. Within minutes the van drove off. The cops waited to make sure it was safely out of the area, then Derkash gave the order for the raids to commence.

  Egan, his heart pounding, hit 10th Avenue running at full speed. Alongside him were McCabe, Tedaldi, Gurney, and Ocasio. Given the Intelligence cops’ usual role as backup players, it wasn’t often they got to take to the streets like this. Egan had to admit, it felt good. It made him feel like a rookie all over again.

  It was freezing outside and there were large ice patches on the street and sidewalk. As he crossed the avenue huffing and puffing, Egan inadvertently stepped on one of the ice patches and almost slipped on his ass. He righted himself without falling just as a half-dozen feds pulled up in two unmarked cars with flashing lights on top.

  Mickey Featherstone had just stepped out of the candy store and was standing on the sidewalk in front of the door. In the store behind him were the proprietor, Donald Mallay, Tommy Collins, and three or four other neighborhood people. As soon as he saw the cars hurtling towards the store, Featherstone backpedaled through the door.

  “It’s a raid!” he shouted, as the small army of law enforcement officers—shotguns and revolvers drawn—descended on the tiny store. Quickly, Mickey took a .25-caliber Beretta he had tucked in his belt and tossed it. It hit the ground near a glass-encased counter just as four of the agents burst in the door.

  There was pandemonium, with everyone shouting and bumping into each other. The phone in the candy store started ringing. Featherstone was ordered to get down on the floor, and one of the agents stood over him with a shotgun pointed at his head. Forty-one-year-old Donald Mallay, standing behind the counter, looked like he was about ready to have a heart attack. Along with Tommy Collins and the others, he was told to stand against a back wall near the pinball machines. Instructions were being shouted—“Hands behind your head!” “Feet spread!” “Don’t say a fuckin’ word!”—as the agents and cops frisked everyone in the store.

  “Whose is this?” asked one of the cops loudly, pointing at the gun on the floor.

  Nobody said a word.

  After an agent from the Drug Enforcement Administration read everyone their rights, a thorough search of the store got underway. Based on what Steen had been telling Malfi, the investigators were hoping to find cocaine and a lathe for making silencers on the premises. But it was soon apparent that neither was there. The cops confiscated the .25 Mickey had tossed on the floor, then lined everyone up and began asking questions—or “taking their pedigree” as the cops liked to call it. For the time being, they had nothing to hold anyone on. After turning the place upside down and asking their questions, they let everyone go.

  “We’ll be seeing you again,” one of the agents said to Featherstone as he sneered at the cops on his way out the door.


  Meanwhile, down the block at 520 West 56th Street, six federal agents and a four-man Emergency Service Unit had arrived at apartment 15-B. “This is the police,” announced one of the agents, knocking on the door. “We have a search warrant for this apartment. Open up.”

  The agents heard rustling inside, but no one came to the door.

  “Go ahead,” said the agent to one of the Emergency Service cops, who began smashing at the door with a sledgehammer.

  Inside the apartment, gray-haired Billy Comas heard the pounding and didn’t know what to do. There were no fire escapes on the building and he sure as hell couldn’t jump from the fifteenth floor. He ran through the bedroom, past Mickey Jr.’s crib, and started banging on the bathroom door.

  “Sissy! We got a fuckin’ problem here!”

  Sissy came out of the bathroom and went to the front door. As soon as she opened it, the agents flooded in, shotguns and revolvers pointed in all directions. Sissy and Billy Comas were told to sit on a couch in the front room. Sissy’s six-year-old niece, who had been in the kitchen, came into the room, terrified. Sissy grabbed her and brought her over to the couch. They could hear Mickey, Jr., crying loudly.

  “Tell your son to get out here!” one of the agents told Sissy.

  “He’s eighteen months old, he’s an infant! Whaddya want him to do!?”

  Sissy went into the bedroom, where three or four agents had already begun turning things upside down, and lifted Mickey, Jr., from his crib.

  Over the next two hours the Featherstone apartment was vigorously searched. Among the items confiscated were two bayonets, one machete, 30.06 rifle shells, two blank New York State driver’s licenses, an honorary Westchester County detective’s shield, and a fully loaded .25-caliber Beretta. Underneath a cushion on the couch, right where Billy Comas had been sitting, they found a small black address book. But there were no counterfeit plates.

  Nor were there any plates next door in Ray Steen’s apartment, which was unoccupied when the cops arrived. They had also hoped to find a large arsenal of weapons which Steen told Malfi was stored in his closet. But earlier that day, Mickey Featherstone, sensing a raid was imminent, had told Ray to move the guns to his aunt’s apartment. By the time the agents arrived there was a .25 and a 12-gauge shotgun, a nice cache but hardly an arsenal.

  Five blocks uptown, at 61st Street and 11th Avenue, the third and final stage of the night’s operation was going down. After Steen got into Malfi’s van, they drove around the corner to 55th Street between 10th and 11th avenues. Another undercover agent was in a car that pulled up behind the van. Malfi told Steen he was going to give the counterfeit money to “his man” in the car behind them.

  Steen looked nervous. “Well, you know, my people ran a check on your plates. They come back registered to a whole different car, man. This is why they’re suspicious.”

  “These plates?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Registered to a different car?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Hey, my man, your people must’ve made a mistake on the plate check.”

  Malfi stepped out of the van and took the two brown-paper bags containing the counterfeit notes to the agent parked behind him. He and the agent talked for a few minutes, then the agent radioed to two more agents in another car, telling them he now had the counterfeit money in his possession.

  Malfi got back into the van. “Okay, Ray, we just gotta drive up here a few blocks to get the bread.”

  Steen was even more nervous now. Beads of perspiration were beginning to form on his brow. “Hey, Ronnie, you said this guy was gonna have it.”

  “Hey, relax Ray. Are we friends or what?”

  Steen laughed nervously. “Alright, but I don’t feel too good about this.”

  Malfi and Steen drove to 61st and 11th, followed by the agent who had just received the counterfeit. It was dark now and the streetlights on 11th Avenue were a pale yellow. Malfi parked, got out of the black van, and walked across the avenue to a dark sedan, where two armed agents were waiting. Without saying a word, the two agents got out of the sedan and walked over to the van. By then the third agent was out of his car. The three of them surrounded the van and placed Steen under arrest.

  Later the agents counted the counterfeit money Steen had given them. There was $48,000—$2,000 less than there was supposed to be.

  They had to laugh. Little Al Capone had tried to stiff them.

  That night, high above Manhattan, at the Secret Service’s New York Field Office in the World Trade Center, Steen sat in a leather chair surrounded by five or six agents. At first, Steen claimed that Mickey Featherstone had nothing to do with the counterfeit operation. He’d only used Featherstone’s name to make himself look big, he said. As for the counterfeit money itself? He’d stolen it from the Town and Country Pub on 49th Street and 9th Avenue.

  Nobody believed Steen’s story, but he persisted. Eventually, they brought in a tall, bearded man in a nicely tailored suit.

  “Raymond,” said Agent Derkash, “I have someone I want you to meet. This is Ira Block. He’s an assistant U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York. He’s going to explain to you what the charges are and how much time you’ll be spending in prison after you’re convicted. Have you ever spent time in prison, Raymond?”

  Steen shook his head.

  “Okay. You just listen to this man.”

  After Block told Steen he might be facing fifty or sixty years for counterfeit currency, gun, and narcotics possession charges, Raymond began to waver. Sensing that he was about to turn, Derkash went for the clincher. He knew it was always risky to confront a prospective stool pigeon with the undercover agent. Sometimes they got agitated and refused to cooperate. Other times they melted before your eyes and signed whatever agreement you put in front of them. With Steen, Derkash was banking on the latter.

  “Hello, Ray,” said Malfi, after he was brought into the room. He was still wearing his street clothes from when he’d met with Steen earlier that night.

  The color drained from Steen’s face. “Man, they told me you was bad, but I stuck by you.”

  Ray said he wanted to meet with his girlfriend, Alberta Sachs. Within thirty minutes, the agents brought her into the room. For five or ten minutes the two teenagers sat off to one side of the office and talked in private. Occasionally their voices rose; Ray looked distraught, Alberta frightened. Eventually, on the verge of tears, Steen came forward and said they would both be willing to cooperate.

  While Ray and Alberta were signing their agreement papers, down the hall Billy Comas was being interviewed by several other Secret Service agents. After the agents had finished searching the Featherstone apartment, they brought Comas downtown, sat him in a chair and gave him a cup of coffee. They told him they knew he was Featherstone’s source for the counterfeit $100 notes, but they wanted to hear his side of the story.

  “I know what you guys really want,” said Comas. “I been ’round the goddamn block. You got my record.”

  Unlike Ray Steen, fifty-five-year-old Billy Comas was a hardened criminal with a long list of arrests and convictions. Over the years he’d weathered beatings, homosexual assaults, and inmate uprisings in a wide variety of penal institutions, both state and federal. Prison did not scare him. What did scare him was Jimmy Coonan and Mickey Featherstone.

  “They’re bad guys,” he told the agents, as if that were all that needed to be said.

  The agents told Comas that, for the moment, they weren’t interested in his dealings with Coonan and Featherstone. They just wanted to know where the counterfeit notes were coming from.

  “Yeah,” said Comas. “Then what?”

  One of the agents shrugged. “Then we build a case.”

  Before he had even decided whether to cooperate, Comas told the agents his source for the bills was “the Greeks.” He said his contact was a guy named Nick Daratsakis, although the notes were printed by a Pete Christie, who lived in New Jersey. Comas added that he had been buyin
g the $100 notes off Daratsakis at 6 points and selling them to Featherstone for 12.

  They briefly discussed the quality of the bills, which one of the agents mentioned was not that good. Comas agreed, saying the problem was in the way they had been “treated.” Usually, to give the bills a used look, they were treated by dipping them in coffee. These bills had been dipped in tea.

  The agent said they wanted Comas to arrange a meeting with the Greeks and wear a transmitting device.

  “Sure,” replied Comas, “that’s good for you guys, but what about me? I once helped the cops and went to jail anyway. So, you know, what’re we talkin’ about here?”

  The agents told Comas they could make his cooperation known to the U.S. Attorney’s office and the U.S. Probation Department. As it stood now, he was going to do hard time for his involvement in the counterfeit operation and maybe a few other charges too, like gun trafficking. They weren’t making any promises, but if he became an informant there was a good chance he could get out of this with little more than a long probation sentence. Furthermore, his status as an informant would be closely guarded throughout the investigation. Nobody would have to know anything.

  “Yeah,” said Comas, with a knowing smile. “But what happens if it goes to trial? Then what?”

  That, replied the agent, was a definite possibility. The case against Featherstone and Coonan was strong. If he were called as a witness, there was nothing they could do about it. But he could go into the Witness Protection Program where he and his family would be guarded around the clock.

  Comas shook his head and laughed. For a few seconds he sat mumbling to himself.

  “Alright,” he said finally, looking none too pleased about it. “I’ll take a shot.”

  Then he put his index finger up to his temple, as if it were the barrel of a loaded gun, and pulled the trigger.

  12

  THE WESTIES, ONCE AND FOR ALL

  The weeks following the February 1979 raids and arrest of Ray Steen were marked by a flurry of activity. Once Ray and Alberta began to tell their tales, it opened a treasure trove of possibilities for the government. Ira Block and the U.S. Attorney’s office had the federal counterfeit case, which looked to be strong even without the printing plates. On the local level, the Whitehead homicide investigation was beginning to come together. There hadn’t been any formal charges yet for the murder, but the Manhattan District Attorney’s office was about ready to empanel a grand jury. And there was an assortment of smaller violations, including gun possession and a parole violation against Featherstone.