Surviving the Mob (6 page)

On a Friday night in late February, Andrew got the news that after six months of pursuit, Todd Alvino was dead. The murderer of Albert Lattanzi was shot to death outside a dance club on Rockaway Parkway and Avenue N in Canarsie. In a bit of irony, this was the same location that had once been home to the Bamboo Lounge, a known hangout for Lucchese family members and associates. It was torched by Lucchese soldier Henry Hill and that scene was reenacted in the 1990 movie
Goodfellas.

Andrew was on a date that night, at the Seaview Diner a few blocks from the shooting scene. Someone came in, said a guy was gunned down outside the dance club, and Andrew ran over. The area was roped off and in the middle of it was Alvino’s brown Caddy coupe.

Later that night, Andrew learned that Alvino had a passenger with him when he pulled up in front of the club. The
passenger went inside to get some cigarettes, while Alvino waited in the car. That’s when he was killed.

The next day was the regular Saturday meeting at the social club. Anthony and Mike showed up later than everyone else. As soon as Nicky saw Mike, he moved everybody out of the way and said, “There’s my fuckin’ man.” They shook hands and kissed each other on the cheek. Then Nicky, Mike, and Anthony walked away for a private conversation.

“Nicky treated Mike with a whole different level of respect that day,” Andrew remembers. “Like an equal. When I heard about the shooting the previous night, I thought Mike might have been involved in it. But after seeing the way Nicky acted toward him, there was no longer any doubt.

“A couple of days after that, I was talking with Anthony. I told him how happy I was the Alvino thing was over. I just wished I could have been there, because I wanted so bad to avenge Albert. Anthony said, ‘It doesn’t matter. If you’d have been there, it would have got done. It happened we were there and it got done. The important thing is that it got done.’ This was the first actual admission I’d heard that Anthony and Mike had killed Alvino.

“The second came a few weeks later while Mike and I were driving around talking. With Alvino out of the way, we were looking for Evan, the guy who had been fighting with Albert the night Albert was murdered. Mike turned to me, made the sign of a gun with his fingers, and said, ‘We put one down. One down and one to go.’ We searched for Evan for a while. We found out he’d moved to Florida and eventually lost interest.

“Here’s what happened later, though. The cops arrested Albert’s stepfather Sal for Todd Alvino’s murder. Sal wasn’t part of any organized-crime family, but he was a very dangerous man. He was looking for Alvino the same time we were. Sometimes we exchanged information with him about where we thought Todd might be. And sometimes we rode together
when we were checking out various locations. So if he was also involved in Todd’s killing, it wouldn’t surprise me. Anyway, Sal was the only one charged. He was convicted and sent to prison. He died behind bars while serving his sentence.

“The other families and crews had been watching to see how we handled the killing of one of our men. When Albert’s murder was finally avenged, it sent the word to them that Nicky Corozzo’s crew was a serious operation, one that deserved respect. In that sense, all our crew members were made the day Alvino died.”

In March, the imprisoned Lenny DiMaria, along with Nicky Corozzo and John Gotti, were among 10 defendants named in a two-count federal indictment. The first count charged them as leaders of a part of the Gambino crime family, in which they conspired together in the enterprise through “a pattern of racketeering activity” consisting of theft, illegal gambling, extortion, robbery, trafficking in contraband cigarettes, and acts and threats involving murder and robbery. The second count also charged the defendants with racketeering. It alleged 15 racketeering acts, in at least two of which each defendant participated.

During the summer, Andrew had to come to the rescue of two of his crewmates, Anthony Gerbino and Mike Yannotti. His assistance was required to discourage a witness, who had seen the pair attempt to steal a car, from cooperating with the police.

“We had a customer order for a red Mercedes convertible. A neighbor of crew-member Vincent Dragonetti had that exact car. We tried to steal it once, but had to abort; the
vehicle had a second alarm we weren’t prepared for. We left some tools behind, so the owner was aware of the attempt.”

One afternoon Anthony and Mike passed that same car parked on the street and tried to steal it again. They popped the hood to see if they could get it started. That drew attention from some of the business owners and pedestrians, so they gave up and left the scene. When the owner arrived and realized there had been another attempt to steal his car, he took action to identify and punish the thieves.

The owner canvassed the area looking for witnesses who could identify the culprits. He found one at the U.S. Military recruiting station. One of the recruiters said he had seen the two guys and would be able to identify them. The owner also filed a complaint with the 69
^th
precinct, which had an Auto Crime Task Force that was already investigating the Gambino and Lucchese car thieves. He even put up reward money for information leading to an arrest.

“All that heat hurt business,” Andrew recalls. “And then we heard that there was a witness who was going to finger Anthony and Mike. They found out it was the recruiter and asked me to do whatever it took to get him to keep his mouth shut.

“At this point, my relationship with Mike was strained over some personal issues. You see, Nicky liked his crew to work well together, but not to be too close. Nicky knew that if two guys were fast friends and one of them had to go, the other guy might not be willing to do the work [the killing]. So he became an expert at instigating and causing friction when he sensed crew loyalty might be in question. He put a little wedge between me and Mike, making us more like rivals than friends. That didn’t matter, though. There was too much at stake for me to refuse to help. It was also a way for me to extend an olive branch to Mike, so I agreed.

“The next day I walked into the recruiter’s office, using the ploy that I was interested in enlisting. After a half-hour
conversation, I lured the recruiter outside where my fellow crew member Mario was waiting. We pounced on the guy before he knew what was happening and beat him with our fists and a lead pipe, warning him that if he didn’t keep quiet about the car incident, we’d come back and kill him. The recruiter never came forward as a witness and no charges were filed against Anthony or Mike for the attempted theft.”

As 1985 wore on, Andrew became less involved with the car business. He still helped Anthony Gerbino deliver stolen parts, do drop-offs, and move cars around. However, the reduction in the amount of time he devoted to car theft didn’t mean he was getting lazy or having second thoughts about being a criminal. Far from it. Andrew was using the extra hours to increase his drug activities and to add a new business to his repertoire: shylocking.

Andrew made friends with some of the guys in the Carmine Persico faction of the Colombo family and they started networking their drug businesses. He became more directly involved in the drug operations and was making lots of money. Then he got permission from Nicky to start putting some serious money out on the street.

“After Nicky was indicted in March, things got pretty tight. Even though he was out on bail, the heat was on and he knew he had to be very cautious about what he did. Business suffered and he expected everybody to keep a lower profile and tighten their belts. He gave me the okay to make the loans, but the money was tightly controlled and only went to low-risk borrowers.

“Here’s how shylocking works. Interest is based on the point system. One point equals one dollar of interest on every hundred dollars borrowed. That’s a weekly payment, not monthly or annually.

“For example, a six-thousand-dollar loan at three points meant a hundred eighty dollars a week in interest. If I got the money from Nicky at one point, he’d get sixty dollars and I’d get a hundred twenty. I charged different points depending on the size of the loan. More points on small loans because there was less money involved and they got paid off quicker. There were less points on the larger loans, because you didn’t want to choke the customer with interest. If I had a real good customer, I’d sometimes give him a deal called a knockdown loan. Under that scenario, for every four weekly payments, two went for interest and two came directly off the principal.

“There was good money in shylocking. But as careful as I was about who I loaned to, every once in a while I’d get a deadbeat I’d have to chase down and get his attention. Overall, though, it was a good business.”

On the evening of December 16, Gambino family boss Paul Castellano and his bodyguard and driver Tommy Bilotti were gunned down on the street in front of Sparks Steak House in Manhattan. The killings were carried out on the orders of John Gotti, who had developed a hatred for Castellano. Gotti and his friend and confidant Salvatore “Sammy the Bull” Gravano observed from a car parked across the street as the assassinations were carried out.

Castellano’s death elevated Gotti to the throne of power in the family. The new boss’ dislike for Nicky Corozzo caused angst in the Corozzo crew. The jailed Lenny DiMaria sent a message from his prison cell: “What’s going to be waiting for me when I get out? A bullet?”

For Andrew, the year finished better than it started.
The Todd Alvino matter no longer weighed on him. And the manner in which it was resolved had added to his stature. Although there was uncertainty over the direction the family would take under the leadership of John Gotti, the only problem for Andrew personally was the continuing friction with Mike Yannotti.

7

For Andrew, 1986 could be called the Year of Fraud. It encompassed a fraudulent employment scheme, credit-card fraud, and a scam involving rebuildable cars. It also included a confrontation with a Russian gang over drug turf. However, the year began with romance.

Andrew had dated his share of girls as a teenager and an up-and-coming mobster. Now a streetwise 20-year-old, he entered his first serious relationship. The girl’s name was Dina and he was introduced to her by Anthony Gerbino at a club in Sheepshead Bay. Dina was with a guy and they were arguing.

“I walked up to their table and whispered in her ear. I said, ‘You can spend the night arguing with him or you can come home with me.’ She went home with me. After that night, we were together all the time. I was a year older than her and we were just alike. Too much alike, maybe. Our relationship was passionate and tumultuous.”

It began with violence the first day he went to her apartment. Dina told Andrew her ex-boyfriend Ronnie was stalking her. He followed her around and sat outside her window on the fire escape. When Andrew was there, Ronnie started ringing the doorbell. Andrew saw by the look on her face that she was scared. He opened up the door and told Ronnie to
beat it. Ronnie wasn’t happy with that and they had words.

“I pulled my gun out of my pants and pistol whipped him right there in the hallway. When I hit him, he fell two or three steps down the stairs and the gun slipped out of my hand onto the landing. He started back up the stairs toward me and I kicked him in the throat. This time he fell all the way down to the next landing. These were marble stairs. Between me hitting and kicking him and the fall, he was banged up pretty good.

“In the meantime, one of the neighbors called the police. Dina’s brother Larry picked up my gun and took it back into the apartment. When the cops showed up, Dina told them Ronnie was a stalker. One of the cops said there was a report that a gun was involved and wanted to know who had it. Dina told him nobody had a gun.

“Sitting there on the couch, I was getting worried about the gun issue. I knew Larry had hidden it, but it had been in my waistband for so long I figured there was probably a mark from it on my skin. If the cops checked me over, I’d probably be in trouble. They never did, though. Ronnie refused to press charges and they all left. He never bothered her like that again.

“That episode showed Dina another side of me. She knew my reputation on the street and now she knew it was true. She knew her way around, though, and didn’t mind. Like I said, we were very much alike. She introduced me to some people in Bensonhurst she knew. They became my friends and, in some cases, my drug-business associates. That was in addition to my contacts in the Persico crew.

“After a while I took Dina to meet my mother and it didn’t go all that well. It wasn’t that my mother didn’t like her. It was just that to my mother, no girl was good enough for me. It didn’t matter who the girl was, my mother would find fault with her.”

Around April, Andrew landed a job that was almost too good to be true. In fact, it wasn’t true. Thanks to the Gambino family’s influence with labor unions involved in the construction business, he was hired for a job with one basic requirement: Show up only to collect his paycheck.