Birns had a good relationship with both Gambino and the Colombo families in New York. Something happened in the 1960s where Birns didnt like to do business with the Genovese crime family unless he had to. The reason he went through the Gambinos for the loan, was he liked doing business with that family and that Greene was too much to have a normal conversation. Birns didnt go Scalish for the loan since John did not like Greene and only tolerated him cause of Frank Brancato, plus Jack Licavoli would not allow a loan to go to Greene. Billy Cox was Birns courier and went to New York to get the money, bring it to Danny Greene, instead he used part of the money to buy cocaine. Greene was in the right to refuse to pay the money back and that it was birns problem. Dont believe this boiled down to them backing different people for the boss position. John Scalish was very much alive when all this went down. Birns tried to collect, but Greene would not pay up. So Birns farmed a contract on greene to low level associates. Greene found out and started going after Birns. When finally they got Birns, they didn't realize that Jack Licavoli and Shondor invested large sums of money together. Thus two weeks after Birns was killed, someone tried to kill Greene with a bomb.