The Westies: Inside New York's Irish Mob (31 page)

Featherstone knew a guy had to take precautions when dealing with someone like Ray Steen. Steen liked to brag that he’d killed people, but Mickey knew that was bullshit. In fact, Ray was a notorious bullshitter, one of a halfdozen or so teenage toughs in the neighborhood who worshiped Mickey Featherstone. Ever since Mickey returned from prison in ’75, they’d treated him like some kind of hero. Sometimes this hero worship made them stupid.

Mickey had realized this years ago. Not long after he got out of prison, he’d fallen into a deep depression. Sometimes back in those days when he was high enough he would pull out his revolver and start playing Russian roulette. Once, he’d done it in front of Steen, who was sixteen at the time. To prove what a tough guy he was, Steen had picked up the revolver, put it to his own head, and pulled the trigger.

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?”