The Westies: Inside New York's Irish Mob (15 page)

It ended an hour later, on August 25, 1975, in front of Denis Curley’s apartment building at 444 West 48th Street. Before numerous onlookers, Dugan put a single .38-caliber bullet into his friend’s temple and fled. Curley died right there, the bullet lodged in his brain, a trickle of blood running across the pavement, over the curb, and into the street.

For weeks after the Denis Curley shooting, the neighborhood was gripped by a wave of near-hysteria. Everyone knew that Paddy Dugan and Denis Curley were best friends. They’d practically grown up together. Hell’s Kitchen had always been a violent place, but the idea that someone would shoot his best friend because of a barroom argument was horrifying to a lot of people. It represented a new kind of violence, where the traditions of loyalty and friendship no longer seemed to mean much.

Those in the know figured drugs had something to do with it. In the early and mid Seventies, a huge influx of street-level narcotics, including heroin, was being sold along 9th and 10th avenues. It was nickel and dime stuff, mostly, and the primary users were the poorer black and Hispanic residents. But many of the white kids were into it too. It was the new kick, the new high.

The professional criminals, of course, wouldn’t go near it. Not yet, anyway. Most of the Italians were still a few years away from the full-scale distribution of drugs. Local Irish gangsters like Mickey Spillane had no interest in it. Spillane didn’t use it and didn’t allow any of his inner circle to, either. He was against the sale of narcotics, even marijuana, on principle. But that didn’t stop a lot of the neighborhood kids from getting involved. Both Curley and Dugan were known junkies, and so were some of the other up-and-coming neighborhood criminals.

Supposedly, Paddy Dugan felt terrible about what he’d done to Denis Curley. Billy Beattie, who was bartending at the 596 Club the night it happened, asked Paddy about it. It was the morning after, and Beattie woke Dugan up from a deep sleep at 452 West 50th Street, a “flophouse” apartment they shared.

“Why’d you do it?” asked Beattie. “Why’d you kill your best friend?”

Dugan was hung over and looked grief-stricken. “I don’t know,” was all he could say, “I really don’t know.” A few days later, in front of two dozen people at Curley’s wake, Paddy cried like a baby.

To most people, though, Dugan’s remorse just wasn’t good enough. Retribution became the talk of the day. The notorious Eddie “the Butcher” Cummiskey, for one, had been a close friend of Denis Curley’s. Cummiskey used to call Curley the Rhinestone Cowboy because he and Denis drank together at the Sunbrite Bar and sang along with the Glen Campbell song “Rhinestone Cowboy” as it played over and over on the jukebox. Cummiskey was fifteen years older than Curley and thought of him as a younger brother. Not long after the shooting, he let it be known that he took Curley’s death as a personal insult.

One afternoon he strolled into the Sunbrite Bar and there stood Paddy Dugan, stoned out of his mind. Cummiskey, the bantam rooster, walked right up to him and said: “What kind of a scumbag kills his own friend?”

“Go ahead,” replied Dugan, taking a pistol out of his jacket and placing it on the bar. “Go ahead. You can’t make me feel any worse. Blow my fuckin’ head off.”

“Oh, no,” said Cummiskey. “No way. You’re not gettin’ off that easy.”

Not everyone got as worked up about it as Cummiskey. Mickey Featherstone, who’d just gotten out of prison after serving time for his gun possession conviction in the Linwood Willis killing, was at the 596 Club the night Denis Curley got killed. He thought what Dugan had done to Curley was wrong, but he felt a lot of people were responsible for what happened that night, not just Paddy. When he heard that Mike Ryan, a neighborhood kid, had talked to some detectives who were snooping around after the shooting, he found the kid and gave him a beating. “People don’t rat in this neighborhood,” he told Ryan. “And they especially don’t rat against my friends.”

James Coonan was not at the 596 Club on the night of the shooting, but he heard all about it. He knew that Cummiskey and Curley had been tight, and that Cummiskey would be looking to even the score. He knew this, and he began to think. It was a fact of life in the criminal underworld that most alliances are born out of other people’s anger and misfortune. For years Coonan had been looking for an event that might lure the dreaded Eddie Cummiskey totally over to his side. The death of Denis Curley might just do the trick, thought Jimmy. And Paddy Dugan might just be the sacrificial bait.

The last few years had been good to Jimmy Coonan. Since his marriage to Edna Fitzgerald a year ago, in 1974, he’d moved out of the neighborhood to a modest, two-story house just across the river in Keansburg, New Jersey, a quiet, lily-white middle-class suburb. They had the two children from Edna’s first marriage, and they’d quickly added one of their own. Jimmy owned a big black Buick four-door which he frequently drove into the old neighborhood, where he still did his daily business. Usually, there were messages and payments waiting for him at the 596 Club.

Not only had Coonan’s loansharking operation improved in recent years, but he’d established a relationship with a dapper, old-time gangster named Charles “Ruby” Stein. An exceedingly vain man with slicked-back hair and a formal manner, Stein, then sixty-two years old, was known in the trade as a “shylock’s shylock.” Indeed, he was one of the most successful loansharks the city of New York had ever seen, with a customer list that included big-time businessmen, politicians, and bank presidents. Lately, he had aligned himself with Fat Tony Salerno’s Genovese family. Cops and syndicate insiders usually referred to Stein as “Fat Tony’s Meyer Lansky,” a reference to the legendary underworld financier.

In early 1975, Coonan had met Stein, strangely enough, by way of Mickey Spillane. Since the late 1950s, Spillane had borrowed upwards of a million dollars from Ruby, some of which he used to finance his criminal operations and some of which he used to satisfy his own insatiable gambling habit. Because of Spillane, all West Side racketeers—not just Spillane’s crowd—were always welcome at the Aeon Club, Ruby’s posh gambling den at 76th Street and Broadway, where Spillane was often allowed to run his own table. It was there that Coonan and Stein first shook hands.

Stein took a liking to Coonan, even though he’d been warned by Fat Tony to stay away from the Irish Mob. They were “crazy” and undisciplined, Fat Tony used to tell Ruby, remembering no doubt Spillane’s Eli Zicardi kidnapping fiasco. But Stein didn’t listen; he felt Coonan was a step above the average thug. For one thing, Jimmy was polite and exceedingly deferential towards Stein. Also, he’d expressed a genuine interest in learning more about big-time loansharking from “the man who knows it best.” With Ruby, flattery always worked.

Of course, the fact that Coonan was built like a longshoreman didn’t hurt either. Stein immediately put him to work as a part-time driver, bodyguard, and all-purpose gofer.

Now that Coonan was dealing with serious racketeers like Ruby Stein, it was more important than ever that he show the big boys just how feared he was. For years now he’d been establishing himself as the likely successor to Spillane. Slowly but surely he had been acquiring a crew of faithful young toughs like Richie Ryan, Jimmy McElroy, Tommy Hess, and, most recently, Billy Beattie, Edna’s former boyfriend, now a loanshark and a part-time bartender at the 596 Club. Even some of the old Spillane stalwarts like Cummiskey, Tom Devaney, and Walter Curich were now doing business with Coonan, not so much out of allegiance, but because anybody with any brains could see Jimmy was a man on the make. To align yourself with him now would put you in a “respectable” position in the event he did, through some sudden means, become boss of the entire neighborhood.

After Dugan killed Curley in August ’75, Coonan knew it was time to make his move. With the influence of drugs, the neighborhood seemed to be on the brink of tearing itself apart. The violence just kept getting crazier and crazier. If he could somehow harness that, somehow make it beholden to him and him alone, he would have the most feared gang the West Side of Manhattan had ever seen.

That’s where Paddy Dugan came in.

Ironically, Dugan had always been tight with Coonan. In fact, a few months earlier, when Jimmy was having trouble with Charlie Krueger, another part-time bartender at the 596 Club, he turned to Dugan. Coonan heard that Krueger had been free-lancing on the “business” they had with Tony Lucich, loansharking out in Queens and Brooklyn, using Jimmy’s name to get people to pay and not giving him a cut. When he first got the news, Coonan was mad enough to kill Charlie Krueger. But he had a better idea.

He arranged for Paddy Dugan and Billy Beattie to lure Krueger down to the 596 Club late one night on the pretense that they wanted to borrow money. When Krueger got there, they proceeded to strap him to a chair and beat the shit out of him. He could barely talk from the pistol whipping they gave him. Dugan and Beattie told Krueger they’d kill him unless he called Jimmy Coonan and demanded a $5,000 ransom. This had all been prearranged, of course, without Krueger’s knowledge.

In an extreme state of desperation, Krueger called Coonan and mumbled his predicament into the phone. When Coonan told him he’d be glad to loan him the $5,000 at 5 points—a relatively high rate of interest—Krueger was not only relieved, he felt indebted to Coonan. He thought Jimmy had saved his life.

Coonan paid Dugan and Beattie $1,000 apiece for their night’s work, and told them not to bother Charlie Krueger anymore.

Only problem was, Paddy Dugan was a junkie who couldn’t leave well enough alone. In November, three months after he’d killed Curley, Dugan nabbed Charlie Krueger again, this time without Jimmy’s authorization. He had Krueger call Coonan and make the same demand as before.

Coonan was beside himself. That night he called Billy Beattie. “Do you know what that jerk buddy of yours did?” he screamed into the phone.

“What?”

“He’s got that fat bastard Krueger down at the club. He’s holdin’ him for ransom!”

“Oh, shit. Well, I hope you know I had nothin’ to do with it.”

“Yeah, he told me he was on his own. Billy, I’m glad you ain’t got a piece of that, you know. I warned the son of a bitch.”

The very next day, on November 17, 1975, Paddy Dugan disappeared. The last anybody saw of him he was headed for his bachelor pad at 452 West 50th Street.…

On the night Paddy disappeared, Alberta Sachs, Jimmy Coonan’s niece, was asleep in her mother’s apartment at 442 West 50th Street, just four buildings over from Paddy’s. She heard a knock at the door. It was her Uncle Jimmy and Eddie Cummiskey. They wanted to borrow some kitchen knives. They took three or four of the sharpest ones, gave Alberta $20, and left.

Alberta went back to sleep on the couch. About an hour later, she heard a noise out in the hallway. When she opened the door, she saw Coonan and Cummiskey again. This time Jimmy was holding a green plastic bag that had something round in it. Something about the size of a basketball.

It was dripping blood.

“What the hell is that?” asked Jimmy Coonan’s thirteen-year-old niece.

“It’s Paddy Dugan’s head,” replied Cummiskey.

Coonan told her they were going down to the boiler room and they wanted her to clean up the hallway after them. Then they disappeared into the dark stairwell.

Alberta did as she was told. Then she lay back down on the couch and pulled the covers up to her neck …

The following morning, a number of neighborhood people saw Coonan and Eddie Cummiskey at the Sunbrite Bar on 10th Avenue. They looked exhausted and demented, as if they’d been up all night drinking. Coonan had a big shit-eating grin on his face. Cummiskey had a mischievous glint in his baby blues. He was singing along with the juke box at the top of his lungs. The song he was singing was “Rhinestone Cowboy.”

When Billy Beattie and Tommy Hess came into the bar, Jimmy instructed them to go over to Paddy’s apartment, open the refrigerator, get a milk carton that was in there, and bring it back down to the bar.

Tall, gangly Billy Beattie did exactly as he was told. As he was heading north on 10th Avenue, back towards the Sunbrite, he noticed the milk carton had something loose inside that definitely wasn’t milk. He peeked through the opening in the top of the carton. It was hard to tell, but he had a pretty good idea what it was: Paddy Dugan’s private parts.

As soon as he stepped inside the bar, Eddie Cummiskey grabbed the carton. He was being loud and rowdy. “Let’s take it and dump it right on the fuckin’ stoop. Right where the bastard killed Denis.”

Coonan got suddenly serious. “Can’t let you do that, you crazy bastard. That’s gonna bring the heat. It’s part of him, for Chrissake!”

Cummiskey held the carton aloft like it was a trophy. Finally, Coonan grabbed it and gave it back to Beattie. “Here,” he said under his breath, “take this and get rid of it.”

Beattie took the carton back to 452 West 50th Street and flushed the contents down the toilet.

For days afterwards, Paddy’s demise became the talk of the neighborhood. Some people were saying his genitalia were in a pickle jar behind the bar at the Sunbrite. Others were saying they had seen Eddie Cummiskey walking along 10th Avenue at dawn holding Paddy’s severed head by the hair. Still others said they’d seen Cummiskey walk right into the Sunbrite with Paddy’s head and roll it down the bar.

They were
crazy
stories, of course. Outrageous. Unbelievable.

But the facts were the facts. Denis Curley’s killer was gone. Jimmy Coonan and Eddie Cummiskey had a motive. And Paddy Dugan’s genitalia didn’t wind up in a milk carton by accident.

Mickey Featherstone was not in the neighborhood at the time of Dugan’s murder. He was in Sing Sing finishing off a short two-month stint for a parole violation. Both he and Jackie Coonan had violated the terms of their parole by consorting with known felons—each other. They were held in prison until they were able to secure a hearing before the state parole board, at which time a half-dozen neighborhood people showed up to vouch for them. The neighborhood people perjured themselves by telling the parole board that Mickey and Jackie had not been together, when in fact they had. One of the people who’d lied on their behalf was Paddy Dugan.