Surviving the Mob (16 page)

“News of my release must have gone around the neighborhood like a shot. The next morning I stepped out onto the streets for the first time in four years. Parked right out in front was an Oldsmobile Regency with its motor running. As I neared the car, the window rolled down. To my surprise, Mike Yannotti was inside. Our relationship had turned pretty sour, but that morning it was all hugs, kisses, and smiles. It was as though our last year of not speaking had never happened.

“Mike told me Dina had called him and that he wanted to be the first to welcome me home. I’d barely sat down in the car than he put two thousand dollars in my hand. Then he filled me in on what had been happening with the crew. After that he talked about Sammy Karkis. Mike assured me that he’d sat on Sammy’s house for a week waiting for an opening to put two [bullets] in his head. But before the right opportunity
arose, Nicky sent word to back off. Before I could ask why Nicky called off the hit, he changed the subject. He said a few of the crew members were concerned that I was mad at them. They didn’t want that; they just wanted things to be the way they used to be. But they were so concerned about what I might do that they went to Nicky and asked him to intervene just in case I had bad intentions. Mike told me I should see Nicky as soon as possible.

“Mike then took me over to Dina’s mother’s place. Everybody looked at me like they couldn’t believe I was really back. I got my son out of bed and hugged and kissed him. He wasn’t fully awake, but he hugged me back and it felt good. After a few minutes, I had to leave for my job and Mike gave me a ride to the airport.

“The very next day I was called to see Nicky at his social club. Instead of saying welcome home, he said, ‘Everybody here loves you. These guys would do anything for ya’. If you’re gonna be mad at anyone, be mad at me. I put a stop to the Karkis thing and I’ll tell ya why.’

“Then Nicky explained that with all that was going on [with the Colombo war], he didn’t need the heat the Karkis killing would have brought on the crew. But the hypocrite bastard was lying to me. Mike Yannotti had already told me that our crew had done work [murdered people] during the war to make it look like a retaliation hit from the other side. With the Colombos getting blamed for the killings, the Gambinos were able to keep their hands clean.

“After that bullshit, Nicky gave me this fuckin’ lecture about the family. He said it was bigger and more important than him or me as individuals. We needed to do what was right for the family, and at the time it was best not to kill Sammy. And then he looked me in the eye and said, ‘But now that you’re home, we won’t let you walk around with egg on your face. Now we’ll take action and put this kid to sleep.’

“My answer was easy. I said, ‘Nicky I love you and I’d
do anything for you. But I needed you when my hands were cuffed. No disrespect, but I can do this all by myself now. I’ve dreamed of doing it for the past four years.’ With that I walked out the door. And from that day on, our relationship was never the same.”

Andrew’s disenchantment with Nicky prior to going to prison was growing. Not only had his boss denied him when he was in need of money before his trial, he was now lying to him to cover for his lack of loyalty.

“Look at it from my perspective,” Andrew continues. “This guy was my leader. I just got home and he didn’t even put a hundred-dollar bill in my pocket to help me get off and running. But friends of ours from other crime families showed a lot more class than Nicky. Wild Bill Cutolo and his son Billy Junior of the Colombos gave me a thousand-dollar welcome-home gift. Danny Pagano from the Genovese family sent me a thousand for pocket money. But not Nicky. He didn’t come up with a goddamn dime. The only guy from my own crew to help me out financially was Mike Yannotti. And I didn’t know if he did that out of guilt for us not speaking all those months or because of the Karkis thing. In spite of our differences recently, Mike and I always had mutual respect over the years. I decided I didn’t have time to dwell on what his motivation was. I had to start earning.”

It didn’t take Andrew very long to get back in harness. A friend he’d made at Hudson Correctional named Mike Bolino had also made it into the work-release program and was assigned to Edgecombe. The two men quickly found something to help them make some money and pass their time: watches.

“Work release was like a breeding ground for criminals in some respects. On our sleep-in nights, a lot of the guys sat around and planned crimes. My buddy Mike was from the Court Street area in downtown Brooklyn and was affiliated with the Colombos. We wound up on the same floor at
Edgecombe and right away started working together. Mike had a connection with a guy who had access to very expensive Chaumet watches from France. I must have sold eight or ten of them my first week home. As I remember, the average price was around fifteen hundred. This was just the head start I needed. With the cash I made from the watches, I bought a few pounds of marijuana from a very good friend of mine. I gave the weed to Mike to sell and we split the profit.”

Besides selling the stolen watches and marijuana, Andrew found a supplier of men’s sweat suits, sneakers, and even some designer clothes to add to his inventory of hot merchandise. These sales took the financial pressure off Andrew and he needed those sources of income. Even though he was getting paychecks from the cleaning company, he was unable to access that money for a couple of reasons. First, the rules of work release prohibited the worker from cashing his check. The checks had to be surrendered to a parole officer and were held until the inmate was paroled. Second, since Andrew didn’t actually perform any work at the airport, his checks were primarily loans used to create a paper trail of employment and the money had to be paid back. Andrew’s arrangement was that when he was paroled and received the checks, he would cash them and then give the money, plus any withholdings for taxes, to his friend at the cleaning company.

In addition to the job scam, Andrew also violated the work-program rules by secretly taking up residence in a friend’s apartment rather than staying at his mother’s. This gave him a relatively safe place to stash money, marijuana, or contraband without exposing his mother to legal problems.

As the days went by and Andrew’s earnings increased, he had to show up every so often to see the crew and pay his tribute to Nicky. Other than that, he spent most of his time with Billy Cutolo Junior, a man Andrew came to like very much.

“Billy was a great guy and Wild Bill, his father, was a highly respected man with the Colombos. In fact, he was one of their biggest earners. Billy and I hit the nightclub circuit together. Eventually, I started spending every Wednesday night at his father’s social club with his whole crew. It was the same kind of thing my crew did on Tuesdays and Saturdays. During those Wednesday-night dinners, I got to meet a lot of new guys I became friends with. I even did business with some of them from time to time.

“My friendship with Billy was heaven sent in some ways. It allowed me to make money independently. And because Billy was a generous guy, I didn’t need Nicky’s help in situations where I might want to get involved in a business deal that required a large amount of capital. I even started to loan money out with Billy as my silent partner.”

It didn’t take long for word of Andrew’s close association with the Cutolos and their crew to reach Nicky Corozzo. The wayward crew member was summoned to meet with his boss and straighten out a few things.

“In late November Nicky called me in,” Andrew recalls the incident. “When I saw him, he wanted me to tell him everything I was involved in. After we discussed my many new ventures and who I was associating with, Nicky gave me a little speech. It went something like this, ‘I’m glad you’re home and seem to be gettin’ on your feet. And I appreciate the money you been sending my way. But if you need help in any of your future ventures, your flag is here. You come to me and I’ll give you what you need. As for Billy, he should know better than to try to steal you from us. You be careful, because the war over there is still lingering. He’s just using you to have more shooters around him. Now listen close. I don’t give a fuck who you sleep with or who you earn with. Just as long as at the end of the day when the sun sets, you come back to Sorrento [home to the crew]. You got it?’

“I smiled and said, ‘One hundred percent, Nick. I was just
trying to build a little something for myself.’ We embraced and I walked away. When my back was to him, a big grin crossed my face. I remember thinking, this motherfucker wouldn’t give me a dime when I got released and now that I’m earning with Billy, he wants to help? And I still hadn’t forgotten about that loan he denied me when I needed money for my lawyer. Fuck Nicky Corozzo! I’d still kick some of my earn to him, but I was going to hold back more for myself.”

As Christmas 1993 neared, Andrew was doing pretty well financially, but his personal life was a shambles. He thought he might be able to rekindle his relationship with Dina and he gave her a Chaumet watch worth twenty-five hundred. They dated a few times, but the writing was on the wall and divorce was in the air. That was their last Christmas as husband and wife.

For Andrew, 1994 began on an up-and-down note. Although he was technically still doing time, work release was more of an inconvenience than a deterrent to his criminal activities and his earnings were on the rise. But while his social and business relationships with the Cutolos were bearing fruit, they were also further alienating him from Nicky Corozzo and his crew. Of course, there was also the unpleasant matter of his divorce from Dina.

In spite of those issues, Andrew preferred to look at the glass as being half-full.

“I started the year with optimism that I was headed in the right direction as far as my street life was concerned. As for my home life, that was a different story. Dina and I had grown apart to the point that divorce was the only option. It was unfortunate, but that’s the way shit happens sometimes.

“I wasn’t the only one with a headache, though. Billy Cutolo faced a crisis of his own. His father and several members
of his crew were arrested for racketeering and held without bail in the federal Metropolitan Correction Center. This placed a lot of the responsibility for the crew’s day-to-day activities on Billy’s shoulders. He wanted very much to prove to his father and others that he was capable of handling things and could be a good earner, but that placed him under a lot of pressure. For the most part, Billy did a good job in his new role.

“Under the circumstances, I tried to help Billy out as much as I could. But the work program prevented me from giving him all the time he needed. Parole officers stopped at the airport every so often to verify that I was at work. The beauty of it was that my work was in a secure area and they couldn’t just pop in unannounced. They were stopped at the gate until my boss cleared them to come in. Sometimes I’d be hangin’ around the office playin’ cards, so everything was okay. But if I was out taking care of business, the boss had to beep me to come in. I’d get my ass there as fast as I could and tell the parole officer I’d been working in hangar so-and-so and came back to the office as soon as possible. That story always worked, but I had to stay within a reasonable distance of the airport to pull it off.

“Finally, Billy got permission from his father to hire me at the Gregory Hotel on Fourth Avenue in Brooklyn, which Wild Bill owned. This was a real score for me. I think I was gettin’ six hundred a week and all I did every day was sit in Billy’s office with him and brainstorm ways for the two of us to earn. Within a few months, we developed a healthy shylock book by loaning money to guys I knew. We also made a few dollars selling marijuana with another member of Billy’s crew. But above all, Billy’s idea of the quick buck was to bet on sporting events. I’ve gotta give it to him: He was a ballsy gambler. He’d bet four or five games a night, sometimes at five thousand a game.

“During that summer, all the time I was spending with
Billy, bouncing around the city, and going to mob-related meetings got me some unwanted law-enforcement attention. It started when a kid close to Billy’s father was subpoenaed to a grand-jury hearing. After the hearing, he came back and told Billy and me the FBI had all these photos of us. They wanted to know who I was and my relationship to Billy and the Colombo family. This is what I loved about the FBI in New York City. They never shared the information they had with other agents. If they’d shown my pictures to the other organized-crime units, the Gambino agents would have identified me. But they didn’t. It took months for them to get my name when they could have had it in minutes.

“It just so happened that at that same time, I was dating a stenographer in the federal courts in Brooklyn. I mentioned the hearing and my photos to her. When she went pale, I knew she’d worked that particular hearing. Oh, how I tried to get her to give me the inside scoop. But she was a company woman and wouldn’t budge. She was a great girl and I liked her very much. I didn’t want to get her into any trouble, so I backed off.

“A couple of weeks later, a Lebanese guy, one of Billy’s shylock customers, came into the Gregory while Billy and I were having lunch. The guy was looking to get out from under his loan and wanted to do a trade. He said he was in possession of two hundred thousand dollars worth of counterfeit hundred-dollar bills. He offered to give Billy several thousand dollars of them for free. And he’d sell him the rest cheap; I think he wanted twenty dollars each. In a matter of days we had our hands on the whole lot.