The Westies: Inside New York's Irish Mob by T. J. English Read Free Book Online Page A

1930s, an Irish father had even threatened to shoot the Reverend William Scully for marrying his daughter to an Italian.
    In later years, as the neighborhood’s Catholic population became more and more Spanish-speaking, Sacred Heart’s congregation was still disproportionately Irish. Those Irish who had remained rallied around this modest Venetian Gothic structure with its bright-red doors as if it were the last remaining link to their proud and embattled past.
    On this particular afternoon, a soft light cascaded down from the cathedral’s elegant clerestory windows as Spillane, dressed in an impeccably tailored black tuxedo, strolled down the aisle past the assemblage. In keeping with his image, he winked at those he knew and smiled politely at those he didn’t.
    Spillane’s bride-to-be, the lovely Maureen McManus, was led down the aisle by her father. Dressed in a flowing white gown, her resplendent reddish-brown hair tumbling to her shoulders, she was flush with excitement. Following behind her was her good friend and bridesmaid, Eileen Farrell, and Mickey’s best man and twin brother, Charlie Spillane.
    As Spillane and Maureen McManus stood before the Reverend J. M. Brown, backed by a majestic fifteen-foot-high marble altar, the older guests could hardly contain their pride. Together, this distinguished couple represented two of the neighborhood’s most formidable traditions.
    Since 1905, the McManus family, affectionately known in the neighborhood as “the McMani,” had controlled the political fate of the district through their leadership of the Midtown Democratic Club. In the beginning, there was Thomas J. “The” McManus, who first wrested control of the district leadership from George Washington Plunkitt, one of the most powerful bosses of the infamous New York political organization known as Tammany Hall. Following his election, McManus himself became a practitioner of Tammany Hall politics, using his position to bequeath patronage jobs and welcome new immigrants with voter registration forms.
    When McManus dropped dead unexpectedly of a heart attack, it was treated like the passing of a monarch. Some 500 floral pieces filled the back room of the Midtown Democratic Club, where the wake was held. Days later, New York Governor Al Smith led the funeral march of 100 policemen and 300 carloads of mourners.
    In 1945, Maureen’s father, Eugene, nephew of “The” McManus and proprietor of a funeral home on West 51st Street, became district leader. But by the time of his daughter’s wedding in 1960, Eugene was in ailing health. It was rumored that he would soon be turning the district leadership over to his son, James, Maureen’s brother.
    Successive generations of immigrants, Irish and otherwise, had turned to Maureen’s great-uncle and her father, and soon would turn to her brother; the McMani represented something solid and reliable in a neighborhood constantly in a state of flux. Mickey Spillane, on the other hand, represented quite a different tradition. Much had happened since the days of Owney Madden and the Prohibition rackets. What had seemed like an indestructible criminal empire had been dismantled and forced underground. But the stories and traditions still remained, and even flourished—in somewhat altered forms—during the years of Spillane’s youth.
    In the postwar years of the Forties and Fifties, when Mickey was a teenager, Hell’s Kitchen, like so much of New York City, was in the throes of “development.” Long gone was the 9th Avenue El train and the noise and dirt that went with it. As part of the West Side Improvement Project, the New York Central Railroad had lowered its tracks below street level, out of sight and out of mind. And construction of the Lincoln Tunnel, running under the Hudson River to New Jersey, had devastated the area just south of 39th Street. All told, to make way for the tunnel, ninety-one tenements disappeared, as did “Paddy’s Market,” an outdoor bazaar