Surviving the Mob - Dennis Griffin [10]
“As a boy and young man I craved my father’s attention and acceptance. As I got deeper into the life with each passing year, I hoped he’d look upon me with the same respect I’d seen him show for Paddy. I never saw my father talk so highly of anyone as he did his uncle.
“With that idea in my head, I tried to follow Paddy’s footsteps into the world of organized crime. I carried myself in the same manner and my reputation grew. But my father was still years away from seeing me the way I wanted him to.”
Although Andrew’s relationship with his father in 1984 wasn’t exactly the way he hoped it would be, his association with the Corozzo faction of the Gambino family became rock solid.
TROUBLE WITH THE LUCCHESES—PART I
For Andrew, the year 1984 literally began with a bang as he tended to some unfinished business from 1983. The matter involved an ongoing feud with a crew from another organized-crime group, the Lucchese family. This particular Lucchese crew operated in the same areas as Nick Corozzo’s. It was run by Anthony “Gaspipe” Casso and his friend Vittorio “Vic” Amuso. Both men were known killers and extremely dangerous to have as enemies.
The trouble began in 1983 when Vic Amuso’s nephew had an altercation with Andrew’s friend and fellow Corozzo crew member, Sal “Sally the Lip” Bracchi.
“Vic’s nephew and some of his friends from Gaspipe’s crew tuned Sally the Lip up [beat him] pretty good. We wanted to retaliate and send a message that you didn’t fuck around with our guys. The kid knew we were after him and kept a low profile. It took a long time, but in early 1984 we found out that he was gonna be spending the night at a home right around the corner from the sixty-ninth police precinct on Foster Avenue in Canarsie.
“That night me, Anthony Gerbino, and Albert Lattanzi went to that house and broke into the garage, opening the overhead door just enough to crawl under. There were two cars inside. We’d brought gasoline with us and doused both cars. As we left, we let the gas run down the driveway and make a stream leading to the vehicles. Once we were safely outside, we lit a rag, threw it into the little river of gasoline, and got out of there.
“Somehow the garage door closed when we left, so all the gas fumes were confined inside. When the flame reached the cars, there was a tremendous explosion. The garage door was blown all the way across the street. The heat was so intense that every one of the tires blew out. Nobody in the house got hurt; it was property damage only. But we’d sent a message and figured it was just a matter of time before Gaspipe’s boys figured out who had delivered it.”
EASTER BREAK
After putting the Lucchese crew on notice, Andrew had another obligation to take care of: working off his debt to Jo Jo Corozzo in Florida for the 1983 road-rage shooting incident. That trip took place in mid-April and lasted for three weeks or so.
“Me and several of the crew flew down,” Andrew recalls. “There was Mike Yannotti, Albert Lattanzi, and four or five other guys. Jo Jo treated all of us great. If he was pissed off at me, he didn’t show it.
“We had a lot of fun and did a lot of partying. But we worked too. We did some major credit-card fraud and made some big money.”
The fraud involved buying stolen credit cards, then making purchases or taking cash advances on them. In addition to the profits, the scam carried an element of risk and excitement.
“We bought the hot cards for three hundred apiece. Back in New York, guys we knew who had credit card machines swiped the cards and told us how much credit was available. We didn’t have those connections in Florida, so we operated blind. When we presented these cards to a merchant or a bank, we never knew for sure what was going to happen.
“We used them to cover our hotel rooms. Sometimes we’d come back to the hotel and be locked out