“My father was working homicide then. Hated the Westies for what they’d done, as Irish, to the Irish.”
“Had he known Featherstone and Coonan?”
“Sure he did. Not drinking buddies, but we all had relatives in Hell’s Kitchen. Ate in the same pubs, went to the same churches, worked in the same unions and shops,” I said. “Just earlier today I was telling Jimmy about playing as a kid in Bennett Park, about exploring Fort Washington just a stone’s throw from the George Washington Bridge.”
“Yeah.”
“Half the kids I hung out with had fathers who were cops and firemen,” I said. “The other half came from the wrong side of the proverbial tracks. Westies and thugs of all varieties. I wasn’t choosy when I was out on the street.”
“The shooting?”
“Sure. The shooting,” I said. “So the Yugo thinks he can dance into the Irish mafia, the Irish Sopranos, without a struggle. But the next generation of hoodlums thought otherwise. The demographics were changing and so were the profits, because drugs had come into the mix. Every tough guy seemed to be hungry for drug money.”
“Understood.”
“It was most often a family affair at this point. When Mugsy Renner was running drugs, he put the rest of his relatives into the action. Same for all the guys. Narcotics was following a big shipment of cocaine that was coming in through a mule from South America, bound for a safe house in Hell’s Kitchen. It was Renner’s crew against some of the Shannons-at least the ones who weren’t behind bars.”
“Why was homicide involved?”
“Because the coke had been flown in through JFK. Three airline employees, cargo traffic agents, were supposedly in on the deal and let Renner’s gang and their truck into the hangar for the pickup. The agents were tied up and executed, mob-style-single bullet to the back of the head. Not exactly the cut of the profits they had expected. So narcotics called in homicide for backup when they rushed in to raid Renner’s headquarters on West 51st Street.”
It still made my blood boil to think of Renner setting up my father and his team.
“The cops walked into a trap, of course. The drugs were worth too many millions to sit in a tenement in Hell’s Kitchen,” I said. “There had actually been two dump trucks involved in the sting, and the one with the drugs got away clean. Never been found to this day. Renner parked a truck full of garbage in front of his house. When the narcs burst in on them in the middle of the night with a warrant, there was nothing to be found.”
“No drugs? No money?”
“Nothing. Nothing except Renner’s crazy kid. His oldest son, Emmet, was up on the roof with an automatic rifle. Twenty-two-year-old with a history of mental illness.”
“Against a narcotics squad and homicide?”
“I’m talking certifiably crazy,” I said. “He thought it wasn’t against the law to possess a weapon in his own home, so as the cops were leaving, tempers flaring, Renner starts shooting off rounds, hailing bullets down on the street.”
I paused. I had been back to stare at that building so many times as a young boy that I could see it in front of me today.
“Shooting at people?” Mercer asked. “At the cops?”
“Nope. He was imitating Jimmy C. He was figuring his father could win control of the Westies just the way Coonan had done it when he was eighteen-with a great show of force from the roof of a Hell’s Kitchen tenement.”
“It worked the first time, I guess.”
“Only now it was a street full of cops.”
“And they returned fire,” Mercer said.
“Just some warning shots, to show Renner they were serious,” I said. “But then he shot a cop. Right in the head. The guy bled out on the street before anyone could help him.”
“So Emmet Renner was a dead man.”
“Not exactly. That would have been one thing. But what nobody knew was that his brother was up on the roof with him.”
I gnawed on my cheek again.
“By that time, Emergency Services had burst into the house on their way to the roof. Renner ducked down and the cops thought he was reloading,” I said. “What they couldn’t see was that the crazy bastard thought he’d initiate his brother into the Westies. Handed him the rifle and told him to take his best shot.”
I put myself in my father’s shoes, as I had done thousands of times since that night.
“The gun barrel comes back over the side of the building, only this time Renner stands up. He fires the rifle and wings the guy right next to my father. Got his shoulder, and the blood splashed all over my dad’s face.”
“So he fired back.”
“Damn right, he did. My father shot Renner in the head. One round, direct hit. Of course everyone on the street figured it was Emmet, the crazy one, who’d been shot. They had no reason to think he’d turned the weapon over to his brother. His brother, Charlie.”
“But it was actually Charlie who shot one of the cops, wasn’t it?” Mercer asked. “He shot the guy standing right next to your father.”
“Yeah, that was Charlie Renner all right.”
“And that’s the man your father killed? Charlie Renner?”
“He wasn’t a man, Mercer. He was five years older than I was then. He used to play stickball with me in Hell’s Kitchen. He was an altar boy at St. Ignatius before I was,” I said. “Charlie Renner was thirteen years old the night he died. That’s the stuff that doesn’t quite fit into the Brian Chapman legend, Mercer. My father killed a kid.”
FORTY-TWO
“This has to stay between us for the time being, Loo,” I heard Mercer say. “I need your word on that.”
Apparently, the short pause in the conversation meant he got Peterson’s word.
“Mike’s got an idea that this whole thing could have something to do with him and that Alex is just the pawn in all this,” Mercer said. “What we need you to do is use your juice to find out where Emmet Renner is.”
Ray Peterson knew Emmet Renner’s name well. All the old-timers did. He was a cop killer who’d skated because he, too, had turned snitch and testified against other mobsters for the feds.
“Last Mike knew, he was in Arizona in the Witness Protection Program. New name, plastic surgery, the whole nine yards. You’ll have to cut through all the red tape with the feds to get that information.”
Mercer looked at me while Peterson asked him a question.
“He’ll have to tell you himself,” he said, shrugging as he handed me his phone.
“Where the hell are you two?” Peterson asked.
“On our way back to the marina, Loo. I got sidetracked.”
“You don’t even want the good news?”
“Is there any?” I asked.
“Yeah,” Peterson said. “The blood in the Shipley SUV is Wynan Wilson’s.”
I breathed a sigh of relief that it wasn’t Coop’s. But I had already made the connection to the Westies that this just seemed to confirm.
“You hear me, Chapman?”
“I got it, Loo,” I said. “Thanks.”
“Now, what is this with Renner, Mike? Your old man did the right thing at the right time. Twenty other cops were aiming at the shooter. Just nobody was as good as Brian, and none of them knew he was a-a kid.”
“There were threats back then, Loo. Don’t you remember that?” I asked. “How my mother had to leave town for a month. Take my sisters and me to my aunt’s house in the Poconos.”
“Sure, but that was thirty years ago. Things change.”
“Things change if you’ve got all your marbles. I don’t know what happens if you only started out with half a load.”
“Have you heard from Emmet Renner in all this time?” Peterson asked.
“Veiled threats. Bullshit from wiseguys I’ve locked up over the years,” I said. “But he never came back to the city, so far as I know. It was part of his deal for turning state’s evidence. That, and the desire to live a long life.”