The Coffey Files (8 page)

The entire episode was pretty much ignored by the police. Commiskey was murdered in 1977 and Coonan continued to lead the Westies for another ten years.

Coffey loved hearing these stories and knew that someday he would catch up with Coonan, but he still needed something to tie McElroy to the Walker murder.

Detectives in the local precinct confirmed that “Big Paulie” Castellano was backing Coonan and his Westie cohorts. It burned Coffey that Castellano seemed to get more respect in this part of town than a detective sergeant in the New York Police Department.

Coffey decided that before they could go much further with the investigation they would need at least a picture of McElroy, and it would not hurt to get his prints.

They decided to stake out a bar called Hell's Kitchen on 43rd Street and Ninth Avenue, the heart of Westie territory, a place McElroy was known to favor. The three cops took up stations inside the bar with a good view of the entrance. Beginning around six o'clock each night they watched the parade of West Side characters walk in and tumble out of Hell's Kitchen.

On the third night, they saw McElroy walk in. He immediately, spotted the three cops sitting in the back.

“So as soon as he got inside he made a big scene about needing cigarettes and turned to walk out again. By the time we were out of our seats he started running.”

A young man in good physical condition, McElroy took off down Ninth Avenue with Coffey, McDarby, and Cahill in pursuit. But these were three cops who usually got their man, and after five or six blocks they grabbed the suspect, who continued struggling.

“We hit him in the head a few times but he wouldn't go down. He really was a tough kid. Then a precinct patrol car pulled up with its lights flashing, and two uniformed cops, one a woman, came at us with their guns drawn.”

At the sight of the two cops McElroy began screaming for help. “They're robbin' me, they're robbin' me,” he yelled.

“The two uniforms didn't know what to do. I don't think they thought three white men in business suits were mugging Jimmy McElroy. But finally, I got free of his swinging arms and was able to get my gold shield out. When I held it up the two cops backed off. Of course they didn't jump in to help. They knew McElroy and they would have to return to the neighborhood the next day.”

Finally sensing his situation was hopeless, McElroy calmed down enough for McDarby to handcuff him while Cahill ran for the car. As was his style, Joe Coffey kept his gun in its holster.

Coffey eventually served more than twenty years as a uniformed cop and detective, pursuing many of the most violent criminals in the history of the NYPD, and fired his gun on only two occasions. The first time was when he was serving as a decoy cop, dressed like a woman, and a mugger attacked him. When the mugger managed to run away, Coffey fired a shot that missed by a mile but convinced the assailant to surrender. The next time he fired was in a wild shoot-out with the Black Liberation Army. Again he missed by a mile. He did use his pistol on two occasions to hit suspects over the head.

They took McElroy to the local precinct house, and Coffey left him with McDarby and Cahill to be fingerprinted and photographed.

“All the while McElroy was demanding to know what we had on him. He was screaming we had no right to bring him in. Of course he was right. This was an act of ‘Coffey's Martial Law.'”

Coffey was headed out of the station house to get some coffee for his men and tea for himself when he heard a bloodcurdling scream.

“I raced back to the detectives' area. When I opened the door I saw McDarby holding McElroy by the neck about two feet off the ground. McElroy's face was turning blood red. He was clearly choking to death. Cahill was at the desk calmly filling but some forms. I asked Frank what the problem was.”

“He wouldn't give me his wallet, Joe,” McDarby answered as he lifted the wallet from McElroy's hip pocket.

After his picture was taken and he was fingerprinted, McElroy was allowed to return to the streets.

The following day Coffey returned to the hunt for witnesses. Billy Walker was a member of the Theatrical Workers Union, the Teamsters who worked on movies being shot on the streets of New York. Coffey decided that his coworkers might be more willing to talk about how he was killed than residents of Westie territory.

To a certain extent this hunch turned out to be correct. Coffey learned that on the night of the murder Walker and several other stagehands were partying around the Broadway and Times Square area and did stop for at least a while in the Hell's Kitchen Bar.

“They admitted drinking heavily and using cocaine and getting pretty rowdy,” Coffey recalls. “But when it came to remembering when Walker disappeared from the group or what happened to him, they clammed up.

“Many of the stagehands were either loosely aligned with the Westies gang themselves or were related somehow to gang members. So there was no way they were going to give up McElroy. A couple of the older guys, however, admitted they were more afraid of Castellano, who they knew was backing the Westies. I figured I would have to speak to Big Paulie about this.”

Around lunchtime the next day he and Frank McDarby drove out to the Veterans and Friends Social Club in the Bay Ridge section of Brooklyn which was, as every cop and reporter in New York knew, the headquarters of the capo di tutti capi, Paul “Big Paulie” Castellano.

Joe Coffey once told a reporter, “The Mafia is the biggest single shareholder in the American economy. They've become a second economy. They have more influence on the daily lives of all Americans than the government or Wall Street or even the Church. They can manipulate anything.”

In 1978 Castellano was the CEO of that criminal corporation. In New York alone he ran loan-sharking, prostitution, pornography, drug dealing, gunrunning, extortion, book-making, and counterfeiting organizations and any other criminal enterprises that would add to the wealth of the Gambino clan.

If you wanted to unload your truck in the city's garment center or sell pictures of naked children in Times Square you had to pay tribute to a Castellano capo. If you opened a restaurant on the East Side or picked up a hooker in a Park Avenue hotel you put money in Paul Castellano's pocket. If you tried to do these things without giving “Big Paulie” his share, you put your life at risk. His negotiable currency was bullets. His executive staff was known for its ability to arrange a multimillion-dollar merger in a thirty-second conference in a Seventh Avenue alley.

Castellano savored his position and encouraged his image as a successful businessman. He was soft-spoken and gentlemanly in manner and read
The Wall Street Journal
every day. In fact, he invested much of his illicit earnings in legitimate businesses and watched the movements of those businesses with great interest.

But to Joe Coffey, Paul Castellano was a piece of trash lying in the street waiting for the sweeper to flush him down the sewer. He did not fear the godfather nor would he be intimidated by him.

“The gravy part of my assignment was getting the chance to sit face-to-face with scum like Castellano and Funzi Tieri and not have anyone think I was trying to make some kind of corrupt deal with them. Everyone on both sides of the law knew I was out to put him and the others like him behind bars.”

Smiling and totally relaxed, Joe pushed past the doorman and opened the door to the storefront social club. The doorman, who saw him pull up in the unmarked car and made him for a cop right away, had already alerted the group inside.

A dozen button men were playing cards and nursing their midday Johnny Walker Red's and water. They appeared to be a peaceful group of unemployed laborers waiting around the union hall for their next job.

There was a moment of tension as the assembled hoods shot icy stares at Coffey standing in the doorway. There was no thought of interfering. These were men who did bloody work. They could sense fear in an adversary and knew how to exploit it. But Joe Coffey was not afraid. The message he sent out was, “I'm willing to be polite but I think you're all pieces of shit so don't push me.”

The tension was broken when Joe Delmonico, one of Castellano's personal henchmen, put down his cards and rose to greet Joe. “Coffey, what do you want here?” he asked as he extended his handshake.

Joe ignored the offered hand and replied simply that he wanted “to sit down with Paul.”

Delmonico told him to stay where he was and disappeared into the rear of the club.

For about five minutes Coffey stood alone just inside the doorway. Nobody offered him a drink, no card hands were played, not a word was uttered. Again, he was grateful McDarby and McGlynn were waiting in the car outside with Cahill. If things turned bad, he knew they would handle their end. They would watch his back.

He also knew that when word got out that he had been alone in Castellano's hangout for more than ten minutes, detectives from the Internal Affairs Division would be questioning his men about what went on. “Was Coffey putting the squeeze on Castellano?” they would ask. He knew many organized crime investigations, especially those involving drugs, never got off the ground because the detectives were afraid of being accused of corruption. When they did something unorthodox, like meeting face-to-face with the godfather, bells would go off in Internal Affairs. But Coffey knew McDarby, McGlynn, Cahill, and the rest of his gang would support him. That's why he had insisted on handpicking his team.

After what seemed like a prison stretch Delmonico returned.

“Mr. Castellano will see you tomorrow night,” he said.

“I knew,” Coffey remembers, “Castellano was in the back room and could have seen me then, but he needed to make the power play in front of his men. Since I was going to be asking him for a favor and wanted to maintain a decent relationship, I did not invoke Coffey's Martial Law and barge right into the back room.

“Instead, I said that would be fine and gave him my card with the phone number at police headquarters.”

That evening at home Joe related the visit to the social club to Pat and the kids. They loved to hear his stories. In a way it made up for the time his work took away from the family. Before going to bed, Steven reminded his father about a school basketball game the next night. “It starts at seven o'clock. I hope you can be there,” Steven said. Joe promised his son he would try.

At eleven o'clock the next morning Coffey's direct phone line on his increasingly cluttered desk rang. It was Delmonico.

“Paulie says seven o'clock at Tomasso's,” the thug said.

“I can't make it at seven,” Joe answered. “My kid's got a basketball game. I'll send McDarby and McGlynn.”

“No good, Joe. Paulie said he'd only meet with you and you alone.”

For what seemed like the millionth time in his career, Coffey had to chose between something important to his family and his own mission in life. As usual he chose his work. He hoped Steven and Pat would continue to know that he loved them, thought of them always, and wished they would forgive him for the time he stayed away from them.

“Okay, tell Paulie I'll be there at seven,” he told Delmonico.

At six thirty, Coffey, McDarby, and McClynn drove up outside Tomasso's in Brooklyn. They circled the block twice, looking for any sign they might be walking into some kind of setup. When they agreed everything seemed to be okay, they parked, to the dismay of the doorman, right in front of the restaurant. It was the spot usually reserved for “Big Paulie.”

At seven they were at the bar ordering drinks. Joe remembers the rest of the evening vividly:

“One minute later in walked Castellano surrounded by Delmonico and five mutts in Mafia uniforms—dark suits, open shirts, gold chains, shiny pointed shoes. Paulie, though, was wearing a tie and a white-on-white shirt. He looked like a legitimate businessman. Delmonico walked over and told me to come alone with him and Paulie. McDarby and McGlynn were joined at the bar by the five stooges.

“The restaurant had two private banquet rooms and the maitre d' led us to the smaller one. Inside a party of about ten people were having dinner. The maitre d' told them they would have to switch to the other room. Waiters cleaned up their tables and moved them. No one objected.

“Then Paulie and I were alone at a freshly made up table right in the middle of the room.

“‘Sergeant,' he said, ‘I've heard a lot about you. I agreed to sit down with you because Funzi says you are a fair man.'

“For a moment I was surprised as hell. It was a shock to me that he and Funzi had talked about me. I was surprised that they talked at all. But I got right to business. I said, ‘Paul, I'm here because a low-class vicious killer on the West Side named McElroy has been throwing your name around. He and the rest of his gang, including Jimmy Coonan and Mickey Featherstone, are killing legitimate people for no reason at all. People are afraid to talk up about it because they say they work for Big Paulie.'

“We talked for about half an hour. He actually admitted he knew Coonan and Featherstone but of course said he knew nothing about murders and did not believe legitimate people should be murdered for no reason. I believed him. It was part of the Mafia code that they tried to keep their savagery within the family. But he would not admit to knowing McElroy and would not commit to passing the word that he did not sanction the Westies' homicidal behavior.

“We pretty much ran out of things to say to each other, and after an awkward silence he started to tell me about a new house he was having built on Staten Island. He said that Pat and I—I was really surprised he knew my wife's name—were welcome there anytime and would be invited to the housewarming. He was feeling me out to see if I was corruptible. I said, ‘Are you crazy? You think I want to be on Candid Camera?' He knew I meant the cameras the FBI and police intelligence would have trained on the house at all times.