John Reid, a nineteen-year-old neighborhood kid, was pulling his car into a parking lot just north of the bar. Evans and his entourage made no great effort to get out of the way. Reid, who was a good ten inches shorter and 100 pounds lighter than Evans, stepped out of his car. He and Evans exchanged angry words, then Reid challenged the Harlem folks to a fight. Evans and his friends looked at this little kid and smiled.
“Oh, you think it’s funny, do you?” asked Reid. “Why don’t you wait right here?”
Reid disappeared into the 596 Club. A few seconds later Evans and his friends heard a commotion and turned around. Behind them was a group of five or six white folks charging from the bar. Some of them were carrying sticks and baseball bats. At the front of the pack was the bar owner and rising neighborhood leader, Jimmy Coonan.
Two cops from the Midtown North Precinct’s anticrime unit happened to be sitting in an undercover taxi waiting at a red light. The whole thing was unfolding right before their eyes. As the mob advanced, they got out of the cab and approached. At precisely that moment, Evans, who was standing near some street construction on 10th Avenue, picked up a metal Con Edison sign to use as a weapon.
That’s when Coonan pulled a .38-caliber Colt Special from his pocket. Amidst the yelling and confusion, Coonan fired, hitting Vanderbilt Evans once in the right shoulder, just inches from his heart.
The cops charged. “Halt! Halt!” they shouted, grabbing Coonan and wrestling him to the ground.
At the precinct house, Jimmy claimed that someone else pulled the gun and he’d only picked it up after it was dropped. As for the shot that was fired? Yes, sir, he’d heard it, but it must have been somebody else.
The Vanderbilt Evans shooting was a complete pain in the ass, as far as Coonan was concerned. He was let out on bail, but there was sure to be a grand jury investigation. Not only that, but the cops had found him with $1,500 in his pocket, which they were saying they knew was part of his loansharking operation.
In July and August of ’75, Jimmy spent a good deal of time trying to get his witnesses together. At one point he assembled a group of neighborhood people, including fellow loanshark Tony Lucich, at Eddie White’s apartment at 501 West 43rd Street, across from the 596 Club on the northwest corner of 10th Avenue. “Eddie,” Jimmy Coonan told White, “remember how you seen this thing. You seen it plain as could be from your window. And Jimmy Coonan didn’t pull no gun on nobody.” Lucich, who was best man at Coonan’s wedding and a stand-up guy, was going to back up Eddie White’s version, even though he’d been playing cards somewhere else on the night of the shooting.
It was Coonan’s hope that he could confuse the issue enough that he wouldn’t get indicted. But with two cops as witnesses against him, he knew it was a long shot.
Even if he was able to finagle his way out of this one, Jimmy knew this Wild West shit had to stop. Sure, it served a purpose, in a way. In Hell’s Kitchen these types of incidents tended to enhance a guy’s reputation, make him seem like someone who was quick with a gun, someone who had to be taken seriously. Also, John Reid had been in trouble with these menacing black dudes from Harlem and Jimmy had come to his defense. That was admirable.
But Coonan knew that with his criminal record and his new business ventures at stake, it just wasn’t worth the risk.
What he needed now was someone to share the violence with him. In racketeering circles, it is an acknowledged fact that a boss or crew chief has to have a right-hand man. Someone who’ll stand over a union official, a shopowner, or a loanshark customer and say, “Listen, friend, you best come up with the money. My boss here, he’s too nice, but not me. Me, I’ll break your fuckin’ legs.”
In the old days, Eddie McGrath had his Cockeye Dunn and Squint Sheridan. Mickey Spillane had his Eddie Cummiskey. Hell, the Italians had whole crews for this sort of thing. Why not me? reasoned Coonan. For appearances’ sake, if nothing else.
Before long, Jimmy found a kid who fit the bill—Mickey Featherstone had returned from Vietnam. Featherstone was not a gangster—not yet, anyway. His violent actions had nothing to do with profit motive. They had nothing to do with anything, really, other than the kid’s own personal demons.
Everybody knew Featherstone because his family had been in the neighborhood for years. He’d had brothers and sisters who came before him. But they weren’t like Mickey. Nobody was. Jimmy had been told stories about this kid and he liked what he heard. Featherstone had potential.
Later, they would form an alliance that was as terrifying as anything any West Sider had seen since the days of the Gophers. But for now, they had slightly different priorities. For Coonan, the early Seventies had been days of planning and hustling and laying the foundation for a time when he could resume his war with Spillane.
For Featherstone, they were days of random violence and self-hatred.
4
MICKEY
When Mickey Featherstone walked into the Leprechaun Bar with two friends early on the morning of September 30, 1970, he had every reason to believe there might be trouble. Just forty-eight hours earlier, across the street from the bar on the northwest corner of 9th Avenue and 44th Street, there had been an altercation. A bunch of female impersonators were beating up a neighborhood kid and Mickey had done his bit.
A fight between someone from the neighborhood and a group of “fags in drag” was not an altogether uncommon sight in Hell’s Kitchen. Especially on 9th Avenue, just a few blocks from the heart of Times Square, prostitutes, transvestites, and other creatures of the night often made the rounds looking for business, drugs, or just plain companionship. It was Frank McCarthy, a neighborhood kid in his early twenties, who had been walking home with his girlfriend when he came across three men dressed as women cruising along West 42nd Street. Various insults were hurled back and forth; then McCarthy and his girlfriend headed north. The drag queens followed. A scuffle broke out across the street from the Leprechaun Bar, located at 608 9th Avenue. When Featherstone arrived, he did what any self-respecting West Sider would have done. He dove right in, no questions asked.
Before Mickey even had a chance to land a punch, a huge black guy who identified himself as a police officer intervened. The guy moved and spoke with a certain authority, so his claim seemed plausible enough. He was also carrying a police billyclub, which he used to force Featherstone and McCarthy up against the wall.
When a squad car from the Midtown North Precinct pulled up, much to Mickey’s surprise the black dude and the drag queens scattered.
“What the fuck’s going on here?” asked one of the patrolmen as he stepped out of the car and approached.
By this time Mickey realized the guy who had said he was a cop wasn’t really a cop at all. He and McCarthy told the patrolmen what had happened—that the three transvestites had jumped McCarthy and his girlfriend, and that a big black guy with a billyclub had pretended he was a cop and tried to shake them down. The patrolmen didn’t seem too concerned; and since no one was willing to press charges, McCarthy, his girlfriend, and the cops went on about their business.
Mickey would have let it slide, too, if he hadn’t walked into the Leprechaun Bar two nights later to find the asshole who had pretended to be a cop, billyclub and all.
The Leprechaun Bar was another typical Hell’s Kitchen bistro. To the right, as you entered, were four booths against the wall. In the middle of the room there was enough space for three or four tables. To the left, running nearly the length of the wall, was a counter flanked by a half-dozen stools. There was a cigarette machine near the front door and a jukebox in the back. The rest of the room was cluttered with empty beer kegs, cases of booze, and cardboard boxes that lined the walls leading down a hallway to the restrooms.
Mickey was with two neighborhood acquaintances, Jimmy Russell and Kevin Kerr. They ordered a few drinks; then Featherstone asked the old Greek bartender, “Who’s the dude with the billyclub?”
The Greek looked to see who Mickey was talking about, then answered:
“That’s Milton. Security.”
Oh shit, thought Mickey, this fucking guy’s a bouncer!?
The last thing he and his companions needed was trouble. Jimmy Russell was a small-time criminal with an assault charge pending. He was also a heroin addict. Kevin Kerr had no criminal record, but he had been seen hanging out with neighborhood crooks so often that the cops had his name right up there with all the others. And Featherstone … well, twenty-one-year-old Mickey Featherstone had the kind of criminal record that would make a parole officer blanch. Not one but two homicides, numerous arrests for assault, and one outstanding charge for possession of an unregistered weapon—all in the last eighteen months.
Not only that, but right this moment, as he sat in this bar with the music blaring and the cigarette smoke billowing and intimations of violence beginning to swirl in his head, Mickey Featherstone was an escapee from the psychiatric ward of a veteran’s hospital. “A passive-aggressive personality with an acute impulse disorder,” is how doctors had described him just days before he snuck away from their fine upstate New York facility.
Before Featherstone and his friends even had a chance to assess the situation, one of the guys who’d been talking to Milton the bouncer started to move towards them. He was a big, lumbering white guy, about six-one and 190 pounds, with blond hair and a thug’s face. They could see by the way he moved and the look in his eyes that he’d been drinking. They could also see he was spoiling for a fight. Later, they would learn his name was Linwood Willis.
“Why you lookin’ at me?” Willis demanded in a loud Southern accent. “Y’all tryin’ to be smarties or somethin’?”
Russell looked at Kerr; Kerr looked at Russell; they both looked at Featherstone. What had they done to deserve this shit!?
“Buy me a drink,” insisted Willis. “Buy me a drink or I’ll cut all three of you.”
Mickey Featherstone was beginning to get annoyed. Russell and Kerr tried to calm him down, but Mickey glared at Milton the bouncer, who had listened to the whole thing and was laughing. Then he glared at this Southern hick, Willis, who was still cursing them for no good reason. Something sinister was going on here, he thought, and he didn’t like it one bit. At five-nine and 138 pounds, Mickey was a little guy, and his friends weren’t much bigger. Willis was over six feet and Milton the bouncer maybe six-two and 260 pounds.
Featherstone could see right away that what he and his friends needed was an equalizer—a .38, maybe, or anything else that would stop these two fat fucks in their tracks. He told Russell and Kerr to sit tight.
It was now about 3 A.M. The streets were quiet and there was an early autumn chill in the air as Featherstone went looking for a gun. Ever since his discharge from the army over a year ago, Mickey had been certain that people were out to fuck him over. Tonight, he felt, was another one of those nights. When he went into that bar with his friends, all he wanted was a peaceful drink, and a complete stranger had harassed him. Why did it always have to end like this?
Sometimes he was sure it was a conspiracy of some kind, people he knew from ’Nam trying to get back at him. Sometimes he thought it was the Communists.
The doctors said he was crazy, and a lot of other people did too. Mickey could live with that. He knew that for the last few years of his life he had been on some wild self-destructive course. There had been violent nightmares, shootings, and dozens of rumbles. Of course something was wrong. But every time he got away from the hospital, whether it was on a furlough, or, like this time, an escape, he would go into a bar and somebody would show him disrespect, somebody he’d never even messed with. Then there would be trouble. Sometimes people would even get killed; and Mickey would wind up back in the hospital, and he’d say, “See, you people always tell me I’m paranoid, but I was right. Always, there’s somebody out to get me.”
Jimmy Coonan didn’t usually spend his nights drinking late in neighborhood saloons, so Mickey was surprised when he spotted him sitting in a booth near the back of Sonny’s Cafe, at 47th Street and 9th Avenue. Coonan was with a few people Featherstone didn’t know, so he motioned for him to come into the men’s room.
“What’s wrong?” asked Coonan, as they crowded into the small lavatory at Sonny’s.
Mickey had known Jimmy on a casual basis almost all his life. He knew his older brother Jackie a lot better, but, like everyone else in the neighborhood, he was familiar with Jimmy’s story. Ever since his return from the service, Mickey had been hearing about Coonan’s feud with Spillane. He’d always sort of admired Coonan, and figured one day, if things worked out, he and Jimmy might even be able to make some money together.
But all that meant nothing at the moment; what he needed right now was a gun, no questions asked, and that’s exactly how he put it to Coonan.
With no hesitation at all, Coonan produced a handgun—a .25-caliber semiautomatic—which he kept in his belt in the small of his back, covered by his jacket.
“Mickey, you need any help?” asked Jimmy.
“No,” replied Featherstone. “This is somethin’ I gotta take care of myself.”
With that, Featherstone split the scene. As he headed south on 9th Avenue towards the Leprechaun, he felt an overwhelming sense of gratitude towards Jimmy Coonan. Here was a guy who would be there when you needed him; a guy who could be trusted to do the right thing. Some people would have given a bullshit answer, tried to pretend they didn’t know anything about guns. Some might even have been scared. But Jimmy didn’t bat an eye; just turned over his piece like Mickey was his own brother.
To Featherstone, it was the ultimate act of friendship, and he would remember Coonan having come through in the pinch long after the other events of September 30, 1970, had become a hazy, troublesome memory.
Back at the Leprechaun, Linwood Willis was still holding court, drunkenly oblivious to the fate that awaited him. When Featherstone walked in, Willis immediately started shouting insults at him; words that were heard clearly by the bartender, the barmaid, and everyone else in the bar. Finally, Willis stepped out the front door, telling Featherstone and his friends he was going to wait for them outside. Mickey said to his buddies, “You guys stay here. I’ll take care of this.”
The barmaid at the Leprechaun sidled over to the window to watch the show. What she saw, and heard, was this:
When Featherstone and Willis got outside, the big Southerner pushed the Irish kid from behind. Mickey circled around so he was now standing opposite Willis, facing north.
“So you’re a tough guy?” Featherstone asked as Willis stumbled towards him. “You got your gun?”
“Yeah,” snarled Willis, reaching inside his jacket.
Mickey pulled the Beretta from his right coat pocket and fired twice, hitting his target once directly in the heart and again a quarter of an inch below. The body immediately dropped to the pavement.
Mickey froze for a moment, the sound of gunfire still echoing in his ears. Then he went over to look at what he’d done. Blood had already begun to run from Willis’s chest towards the curb.
Featherstone got a nasty surprise when he flipped open Willis’s jacket. There was no gun. The corpse was totally unarmed. His heart pounding and his temples beginning to throb, Mickey quickly headed west on 43rd Street.
A few minutes later, on 10th Avenue at 45th Street, he was confronted by a patrol car from Midtown North. Using the car as a shield, Sergeant John Hanno and Patrolman Robert Erben drew their revolvers and directed Featherstone to drop the gun which he’d been holding in his hand for all the world to see. Standing in the car’s headlights, looking dazed and disoriented, Mickey did what they asked. Then he put his hands out, waiting for the cops to slap on the cuffs.
At the precinct house on West 54th Street, three or four detectives interrogated the suspect. His hands and legs trembling uncontrollably, Mickey first claimed that Willis had pulled a gun on him and that he’d used his military expertise to disarm him. But nobody believed that. Eventually, as the darkness outside the squad r
oom gave way to the soothing lightness of dawn, Mickey cut the bullshit.
“He was hasslin’ me for no reason,” said Featherstone. “That was the first mistake he made.”
In October 1970, within weeks of the Linwood Willis shooting, Featherstone landed in the third floor Mental Observation Unit of Rikers Island Hospital. It hadn’t taken a grand jury long to pass down an indictment for murder and criminal possession of a dangerous weapon. With Featherstone’s past, there was never much question whether or not he committed the act—and he wasn’t denying he had. The only real question was whether he would be found psychologically sound to stand trial.
Since Mickey’s return from a twelve-month tour of duty in Vietnam, all of Hell’s Kitchen had been witnessing his violent transformation from a shy, anonymous neighborhood kid into a stone-cold killer. At first, everybody figured Featherstone was just letting off steam and that once he readjusted to civilian life he’d be okay. But the violence kept getting worse and worse, until finally it was too late. Some people felt if he’d only gotten out of the neighborhood things could have been different.
In April of 1966, when he first left high school at the age of seventeen to enlist in the army, Featherstone might have agreed. The drugs and street violence that were then becoming so common in the neighborhood made the service seem like an attractive escape route. At the time, the war in Southeast Asia was still something of a mystery. It was pre–Tet Offensive. Pre–My Lai Massacre. There was no stigma attached to following in John Wayne’s footsteps, and even if there had been it wouldn’t have applied in Hell’s Kitchen. Joining the service was another of the neighborhood’s glorious traditions, dating back to World War I and the widely heralded “Fighting 69th” Regiment, known in the neighborhood as “Hell’s Kitchen’s own.” The tradition was continued in World War II with the 165th Infantry, another regiment made up mostly of Hell’s Kitchen natives.
Westies Page 8
