American Gangsters

by T. J. English

  On the afternoon of May 18th, Sissy made arrangements to meet with Billy Bokun at the 9th Avenue International Food Festival, one of the city’s largest street fairs, running down the middle of 9th Avenue from West 34th Street all the way up to West 57th.

  By the time Sissy spotted Bokun on the corner of 51st Street and 9th Avenue, it was already late afternoon. The sun had dipped low in the sky, and the shadows from the old Hell’s Kitchen tenement buildings stretched across the avenue. But there were still thousands of people milling about, shoulder to shoulder, and the smoky aroma of burning grills and fresh-cooked foods was as pungent as it had been all day.

  “Billy! Billy!” shouted Sissy as Bokun, a beer in one hand, approached through the crowd. She made sure her purse, which contained the recorder, was hanging in front of her body.

  “What’s up?” said Billy, leaning on a mailbox on the corner of 51st Street in front of a Spanish bodega.

  “Alright,” answered Sissy. “I just feel funny. Like, I asked the guys, ‘Have you seen Billy around?’ They said, ‘Every once in a while, like, I’ll bump into him.’ It’s like, we look at each other, you know, you could at least say hello.”

  “Yeah, I … you know, hey, Sis. Well …”

  “It’s ridiculous. I mean, I feel stupid.”

  “No … I feel, uh, I feel the same way.”

  Sissy and Billy Bokun had known each other since they were young kids. Both were born on 9th Avenue, just blocks from where they now stood. Billy had been best friends with Sissy’s brother Danny before Danny got busted for assault and sent away to prison. It pained Sissy to see Billy in such a desperate state. It pained her even more to have to lure him into a conversation she hoped would vindicate her husband, and maybe, at the same time, put Bokun away for the rest of his life.

  “I’m gonna be honest with you,” said Billy. “I had one beer. This is my first beer. I’m not drunk, and I’m not high or nothin.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “I’m straight. I just got outta bed a little while ago. I mean, let me be honest with you, I’m goin’ for broke with this, you know, this appeals lawyer for your husband. I’m ready to sell my car. ’Cause I have no money. I’m not working. Everybody’s fuckin’ makin’ money but me. Okay? And I’m not sayin’ a fuckin’ word. I ain’t gonna say nothin’. Listen, I’m not doin’ nothin’ no more. I mean, I’m not gettin’ into horses, killing nobody else. I’m straight.”

  “Well, Mickey still feels like, ‘Why did Billy turn around and say Kenny told him to wear a mustache?’”

  “He did. He said, ‘Wear your wig. Pencil in your mustache and shave it off afterwards.’”

  “See, now, they never brought up the mustache. Kevin says you didn’t wear a mustache.”

  “I had a mustache. But it was so light and so thin I had to pencil it in. It was an eyeliner mustache.”

  “That’s what’s messin’ Mickey up. Mickey’s goin’, ‘Why the fuck?’ ’Cause I said to Mickey, ‘I don’t doubt Billy.’ I said, ‘Billy says to this day they told him to wear a mustache. I don’t doubt that.…’”

  “Oh, Sissy, I did a job on myself. I did a job that you wouldn’t believe. They couldn’t identify me. They still can’t identify me!”

  “Yeah.”

  “I mean, if eyewitnesses couldn’t, you know, I did one hell of a job. If I say so myself.”

  “Were you high, though, that day?”

  “No, I was straight.”

  “I mean, at ten to twelve in the afternoon, go shoot somebody?”

  “No, I was straight.”

  “Yeah? Did Michael Holly ever see you comin’ towards him?”

  “Uh, I was in the car. He didn’t see nothin’. I jumped out. Boom! I just shot him. One-two-three-four-five. Back in the car. Ten seconds, no more.”

  “There was one black guy that day. A construction guy.”

  “Well, I aimed the gun at him. Yeah, I was gonna shoot everybody dead. Okay? But, the only reason I didn’t was I had no bullets.… Like, I didn’t, well, I’m not ashamed of what I did. I think what I did is absolutely right.”

  “Why you did it is, you feel …”

  “I feel ’cause he whacked my brother. He was responsible for John. Otherwise I wouldn’t have done it. Okay? I’m not a go-shooter. I’m not a cowboy. I’m just what I am, right? I’m a workin’ guy.”

  Sissy knew she had enough to hang Billy already, but she let him go on. Billy seemed to need to talk, to reassure Sissy that he had nothing to do with Mickey taking the fall.

  “Far as I’m concerned,” continued Billy, “I do believe the cops framed your husband. Somebody told them from jump street who did it. They say, ‘Well, no way we can get Bokun. We can probably frame Featherstone.’ The way I’m looking at it now …”

  “Right.”

  “They framed your husband. Okay? Your husband added to the frame by going to Erie, which was a mental mistake. Okay? Going to check.”

  “But remember when you said, ‘Kevin fuckin’ set me up. And he didn’t only set me up, he set Mickey up along with me.’ Remember?”

  “Right. I said that after the fact. After I spoke to your husband, after me and Mickey decided that it was true.… The only thing I can say is, what I was told is everything was taken care of. Everybody had their place and their alibis. He could’ve hid hisself, you know? He could’ve put hisself at the dentist or anything.”

  “But he said that they called him that morning to use the car. Kenny, or somebody, called to use his Tempo that he was leasing.”

  “But that was the fucking plan! See, the plan was … alls I was supposed to do was go over to that corner, you know, and go and shoot the guy. And I didn’t know nothin’ else about the plan.”

  “Yeah.”

  “That’s what I was supposed to do. And I did what I was supposed to do. And now I get all the repercussions! See, the reason I’m by myself is, I don’t know, I’m not the type of guy who can walk around and shoot everybody. I can shoot anyone for my brother, but I can’t just go out and whack everybody. It’s my personality. I mean, that’s my big fault. I guess it’s my loyalty to everybody, you know. I’m so loyal, ’cause I can’t help it.”

  The sun had begun to set, and the booths along 9th Avenue were finally being taken apart. As the crowds thinned out, a soft breeze sent debris and dust flying about. Sissy told Billy she had to get going and pick up her children from her mother’s apartment on 56th Street.

  “I hope your husband gets out,” said Billy, his voice straining with emotion. “’Cause, you know, I sit here …”

  “He’ll be alright.”

  “I sit here and, more than anybody, it bothers me.”

  “Alright, Billy. Take care.”

  Sissy watched Billy head south on 9th Avenue. When he was a safe distance away, she peeked inside her purse to make sure the recorder was on. It was.

  She didn’t know whether to be elated or depressed. In all likelihood, this would be the last time she would see Billy Bokun for a long, long while. And the next time would probably be in court.

  On the afternoon of September 5th, Francis Thomas Featherstone was brought before the same judge, Alvin Schlessinger, in the same courtroom where just five months earlier he’d been convicted for the murder of Michael Holly.

  John Kaley had just put forth a motion to have his client’s conviction vacated. Joining Kaley in that motion was Assistant D.A. Jeffrey Schlanger, the same prosecutor who secured Mickey’s conviction.

  Schlanger had been promoted to the Rackets Bureau following his widely heralded prosecution of Featherstone. He admitted being “skeptical” upon first hearing Mickey’s assertion that he was not the shooter in the Holly killing. But after listening to the taped conversations with Kelly, Shannon, and Bokun, he’d changed his mind.

  “On too many occasions to cite,” he said, reading from a prepared text, “the New York County D.A.’s office has gone to extreme and extraordinary lengths to investigate claims of innocence
by people either charged or convicted of crimes which they claimed they did not do. Usually those claims do not hold water. However, on those rare occasions when they do, our obligation to see that justice is carried out is clear: that conviction must be set aside.…

  “When all the evidence in this particular case is taken together, the People are now convinced beyond a reasonable doubt that it was William Bokun and not Francis Featherstone who shot and killed Michael Holly on April 25, 1985.”

  Judge Schlessinger listened dutifully to Schlanger’s statement, but for all intents and purposes his decision had already been made. Since the beginning of Mickey’s and Sissy’s cooperation, the judge had been kept abreast of the investigation. He’d been informed of the Featherstones’ ongoing debriefings with the FBI, the U.S. Attorney’s office, and the Manhattan D.A. He’d pored over the transcripts from Mickey and Sissy’s undercover conversations with Kelly, Shannon, and Bokun. And he’d gone over the legal precedents for the highly unusual ruling he was now being asked to make.

  As the judge prepared to deliver his verdict, Mickey stood to face the court. Ever since he could remember, he’d been called “paranoid” by doctors, lawyers, and even friends. Nobody believed him when he claimed he was not the person who killed Michael Holly, and nobody believed him when he said he’d been deliberately set up. He’d been forced to pursue a path he never wanted to, a path that had isolated him from everyone in his life except for his wife and family.

  What he hoped for now was more than just vindication. What he hoped for was deliverance.

  “In the interest of justice,” declared Judge Schlessinger with the bang of his gavel, “I am compelled to overturn this conviction.”

  Mickey was asked if he had anything to say. He responded with a simple, “Thank you.”

  Later, he decided what he should have said—loud enough for every cop, prosecutor and judge in New York County to hear—was, “I told you so.”

  16

  MICKEY’S NEW FRIENDS

  Long before Richie Egan arrived at the offices of the U.S. Attorney, he had a pretty good idea why he’d been summoned. A prosecutor, Mary Lee Warren, had informed him it involved a federal racketeering case they were building against Jimmy Coonan and other West Side crime figures. Egan knew there was no way the Southern District would attempt a case of this magnitude unless they had a big-time witness on their side. Now that Mickey Featherstone’s conviction had been vacated, there was only one possible explanation.

  Featherstone must have flipped.

  Egan’s sixteen years as a cop had taught him never to be too surprised by anything, especially the whims and machinations of a professional racketeer. Yet he found it hard to imagine Mickey Featherstone cooperating with the government. In police circles, Featherstone always had a reputation as the ultimate tough guy, the kind of person who would just as soon spit in a cop’s face as shake his hand.

  In some ways, Egan found it comforting that people like Featherstone existed. It made it that much easier to distinguish the good guys from the bad guys.

  But if Featherstone was serving as a government informant, presumably he had decided to forswear his past. Egan wasn’t buying that just yet, but one lesson seemed clear: No matter how tough the criminal, there was always the possibility that one day he might join hands with the government, whatever his personal motivations.

  At the U.S. Attorney’s office, adjacent to the federal courthouse at 1 St. Andrews Plaza in lower Manhattan, Egan got a complete rundown on the case from Warren and the other investigators involved. Not only were Featherstone and his wife cooperating with the investigation, but extensive debriefings by the FBI and the Manhattan D.A.’s office had already begun.

  In order to put the Westies away for good, the government would have to charge them with the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Practices (RICO) Act. And in order to do that, they would need to go above and beyond the individual crimes and establish a “pattern of racketeering,” which is where Egan came in.

  “What we’re proposing,” Warren told Egan, “is that you move in with us full-time. Nobody knows this particular group of criminals as well as you. We could use your expertise on this. You’d have a desk right here with us, and you’d be working in conjunction with all the other branches of the investigation—the FBI, Narcotics, Homicide, and the Manhattan Task Force South.”

  Egan had plenty of reasons to say no to the government’s offer. For one thing, he’d been promoted to detective in ’79 and was currently working on an investigation of Colombian drug traffickers in Brooklyn. Along with the Drug Enforcement Administration, he’d been gathering intelligence on that case for nearly three years now, and it would soon be entering its crucial final stages. Like most cops, Egan didn’t like the idea of leaving an investigation just when it was beginning to heat up.

  And there were inherent pitfalls in working with the U.S. Attorney’s office. Throughout his career with the NYPD, Egan had heard many horror stories from cops who’d gone to work with federal prosecutors and regretted every minute of it. Federal prosecutors were a different breed—ivory-tower lawyers with no understanding of the streets, much less hard-core criminal behavior. Many had political ambitions of their own and tended to view a member of the city’s police department, however distinguished, as little more than a necessary evil.

  Egan was aware of this, yet knew immediately what his answer would be. In all his years as a cop, no case had gotten his adrenaline going quite like the West Side investigation. Plus, it was rare for an Intelligence cop to get an opportunity to see a case through to the end. Usually Intell laid the groundwork, then some other division came along and got all the credit when the arrests and convictions got handed down. Here was a chance to make sure the boys from Intell would be given due representation. Egan felt he owed it to himself—and the Division—to say yes.

  Within days of his meeting with Warren, Egan moved in with the other investigators assigned to the case on the 9th floor of 1 St. Andrews Plaza, just down the hall from Warren and her thirty-one-year-old co-prosecutor, David Brodsky. The accommodations, of course, were a mere formality. With all the debriefings and surveillance operations yet to come, Egan knew he’d be spending very little time behind a desk.

  The first order of business was to join the ongoing debriefings with Featherstone. Art Ruffles, an FBI investigator, along with Detective Steve Mshar from the NYPD’s Task Force South, had been questioning Mickey on crimes involving Coonan, Kelly, McElroy, Shannon, and others. Already, they had gathered information on a staggering number of crimes spanning some twenty years.

  Where Egan’s expertise was needed most was in the area of historical background. Using the Intelligence Division’s voluminous files, he might be able to give the investigation the kind of overview necessary for the government to bring all the names and events together in one neat RICO package.

  Within days after Featherstone’s conviction was overturned, Egan had his initial meeting with Mickey. As had been the case at least once a day for the last few months, Mickey was brought from the Manhattan Correctional Center (MCC), where he was now being held, to a conference room in the U.S. Attorney’s office. It was the first time the two men had been face-to-face since March of 1979, when Egan, with about a half-dozen other detectives, had arrested Mickey for the Whitehead murder in front of a check-cashing store on 10th Avenue.

  “Mickey,” said Egan, extending his hand, “for what it’s worth, no hard feelings.”

  “No,” replied Featherstone. “I got no hard feelings for you. You was always straight with me.” Then he laughed and added, “Wish I could say the same for your fellow officers.”

  Egan had not really known what to expect from Featherstone. He’d heard how Mickey felt he’d been framed for the Michael Holly murder by his fellow gang members. There was no telling whether he would be embittered by this, and see his cooperation as an opportunity to settle old scores, or whether he would be contrite, hoping only to clean his own slate
and start anew. As an Intelligence cop Egan had interviewed dozens of criminals in similar situations, and there were no set patterns. Some were surly and argumentative. Some felt shame and humiliation. Others were polite, even downright friendly.

  Over the following weeks, Egan found that Mickey was a little bit of everything. Often, after he was brought from his cell for his daily debriefing session, Featherstone would start out angry and uncommunicative. Usually his anger had something to do with the U.S. Attorney’s office, which he felt was not doing enough to get him a bail hearing. Sometimes it had to do with the treatment he was receiving at the MCC, where, he claimed, inmates in the Witness Protection wing were constantly derided as stoolies and “cheese eaters”—or rats—by the guards who worked there.

  After a while, though, Mickey always calmed down. “It’s not you, Richie,” he would say to Detective Egan. “I ain’t angry with you. It’s those other bastards.” Then the two men would begin to burrow back through Mickey’s past, dredging up memories of violence and criminal behavior that Featherstone had, over the years, buried deep in his memory.

  Egan was particularly interested in reviewing the years when Mickey first hooked up with Jimmy Coonan. That was when Sergeant Tom McCabe, Egan’s supervisor, had first begun to push for a full-scale investigation of the Hell’s Kitchen Irish Mob. Specifically, it was the murders of Tom Devaney, Eddie Cummiskey, and Tom Kapatos in ’76 and early ’77 that had first piqued McCabe’s interest. Despite the hours and hours of investigation by McCabe, Egan, and others, those murders had never been solved.

  “You gotta remember,” Mickey told Egan. “Coonan kept me in the dark ’bout a lot of things. To tell ya the truth, I was never interested. But I can tell ya who was behind those murders—Fat Tony Salerno. Definitely.”

  Just as McCabe and Egan had always suspected, the killings were part of Salerno’s struggle with Mickey Spillane for control of the soon-to-be-constructed Jacob Javits Convention Center. Joseph “Mad Dog” Sullivan, the freelance hitman famed for his Attica escape and long rumored to have been involved in Jimmy Hoffa’s demise, did the hits for Salerno, boss of the Genovese crime family, in expectation that he’d get a piece of the Convention Center rackets. But after the killings, Fat Tony reneged on his part of the bargain, and in 1978 a very pissed off Mad Dog Sullivan came to Coonan and Featherstone looking to join their crew.