Free The Westies: Inside New York's Irish Mob by T. J. English Page B

Standing over him were two cops with their revolvers pointed at his head.
    Huggard got the hell out of there as fast as he could. The next day, from his ex-wife’s place, he called Coonan’s father to find out what had happened. It turned out Jackie had tried to rob the bar on Greenpoint Avenue, and the bartender had jumped over the counter after him.
    So Jackie shot him dead.
    Huggard knew there was bound to be some kind of investigation. He got together what money he could and immediately got the fuck out of New York City.
    In the meantime, Jimmy Coonan and Eddie Sullivan heard what happened and stayed put at their friend Billy Murtha’s apartment. They were pissed off. Things had been building nicely towards a showdown with Spillane, and now Jackie had to screw it all up by killing a bartender in Brooklyn for no good reason. It would really be hot on the West Side now; they would have to be on their toes even more than usual.
    A few days later, Charles Canelstein and Jerry Morales walked into the Pussycat Lounge and bumped into a very paranoid Eddie Sullivan. Hours later, in a vacant lot across from Calvary Cemetery in Queens, they were both riddled with lead and left to die. Unfortunately for Coonan and the boys, it was a sloppy hit and Canelstein lived. (Unfortunately for Jerry Morales, it wasn’t that sloppy. He was dead by the time the cops arrived.)
    On May 12, 1966—thirty-seven days after the shooting—Charles Canelstein was wheeled into the Queens County criminal courthouse on a gurney. Before a grand jury, he identified Eddie Sullivan as the triggerman and Jimmy Coonan and the others as his accomplices. What he remembered most vividly was the noise coming from his assailants after he was shot.
    “I heard footsteps going back to the car,” he said. “I heard the doors shut and I heard a hysterical kind of laughter. It wasn’t like somebody told a joke, it was almost an animalistic kind of laughter coming from the car.”
    All four were indicted. Eddie Sullivan, a three-time loser, was convicted and given a life sentence.
    Jimmy Coonan plea-bargained and wound up getting five to ten for felonious assault. He served his time quietly at an assortment of penal facilities, including Sing Sing, where he was reunited with his brother Jackie.
    In the meantime, the Coonan/Spillane Wars were put on hold.
    At the same time Jimmy Coonan was waging war with Mickey Spillane, Francis Featherstone was passing through adolescence. He’d been born and raised in an apartment at 45th Street and 10th Avenue, just six blocks from Coonan, and later moved to 501 1/2 West 43rd Street. The last of nine children, Mickey, as he was known to family and friends, was two years younger than Jimmy. By 1966, the two Hell’s Kitchen Irishmen had heard of each other, but they traveled in different circles. Mickey was a baby-faced kid who nobody payed much attention to, Jimmy a young gangster on the make.
    On April 27, 1966, just three weeks after Coonan’s arrest for the Canelstein/Morales shooting, seventeen-year-old Mickey Featherstone enlisted in the army. Ultimate destination: Vietnam. While Jimmy Coonan put down his guns and readied himself for a prison sentence, Featherstone was being issued a weapon by the United States government. By November, they would be in opposite corners of the earth—Coonan in prison in upstate New York, Featherstone on his way to Saigon.
    In the autumn of 1969, the New York Mets shocked the sports world by beating the heavily favored Baltimore Orioles four games to one in the World Series. After years of being the ugly ducklings of baseball, the Amazin’ Mets became the pride of New York City almost overnight.
    For Mickey Spillane and other bookmakers throughout the city, however, the World Series was a disaster. The Las Vegas odds-makers had the Mets as 7 to 1 underdogs, and when outfielder Cleon Jones caught the fly ball that ended it all, the city’s bookmakers took a beating. Every sentimental slob