Surviving the Mob - Dennis Griffin [11]
“The same thing could happen when we bought stuff at a store. The merchant might tell us the sale exceeded the credit limit. If the card had already been reported as stolen, we could usually tell by the clerk’s expression and body language. Once in a while one of them tried to get us to hang around until they could get the cops there. They said something like, ‘Excuse me for a minute while I go in the back room and check on something. I’ll be right back, so don’t leave.’ That was pretty transparent and we were long gone before the door to the back room even had a chance to close.
“And not all the store clerks were honest either. I remember one decided to do some stealing for himself. He told us the card was bad after we tried to charge twelve hundred dollars worth of clothing. But I’d seen him write the authorization number down on a sheet of paper, so he could use it after we left. I jumped across the counter and wrapped the phone cord around his throat, while my partner in crime gave him a beating. He confessed what he was up to. After that we owned him and he worked for us from that point on running the hot cards.”
Andrew and his friends finished their stay in Florida and made it back to New York without incident. But the bad blood between them and Gaspipe’s crew hadn’t cooled during their absence. If anything, it had heated up.
TROUBLE WITH THE LUCCHESES—PART II
When Andrew left New York to visit Jo Jo Corozzo, Sr., in Florida, the feud with the Lucchese crew was in the Gas-pipe gang’s court. The next move was theirs. Shortly after his return to the Big Apple, he got their response.
“On a Friday night, I was at a bar we ran on Avenue L in Canarsie. Somebody told me Nicky was outside in his car and wanted to see me. I went out and found Nicky and his driver sitting in their car. I was standing beside the passenger door with my head inside the window talking. Rocco Corozzo, Nicky’s nephew, came outside and joined us. We were engaged in conversation when out of the corner of my eye, I noticed a figure standing on the sidewalk fifty or so yards away. Then I heard what I thought were firecrackers, but they turned out to be gunshots.
“One round struck the windshield right in front of where Nicky was sitting. I shoved his head down and Rocco jumped in the back seat. After Nicky’s car sped away, I pulled my gun [a 9mm] and started running toward the shooter, firing at him as I ran. He took off down the block and at that point, I went down on one knee and aimed. I call that my T. J. Hooker position, after the old television series where William Shatner played a cop. I fired and missed. I reloaded and started chasing the guy, but I couldn’t catch him.
“A few days later we got information on who the shooter was and why. It was one of Gaspipe’s guys. I was the target in retaliation for the incident at the house where Vic Amuso’s nephew had been staying.
“I took the information to Nicky. I told him we wanted to pursue it and asked what he wanted us to do. Nicky was a very cunning man. He’d never come right out and tell you to murder somebody. But he made the sign of a gun with his index finger and thumb. He said to me, ‘Go and teach this guy a lesson.’
“That night we went out and stole two cars and stashed them. One would be used in the attack when we found this kid and his buddies. The other would be left where we could get to it for use as a getaway car after the shooting. After a while we learned they hung out at a bar on Flatlands Avenue in Canarsie. Across the street from the bar was a funeral parlor. Albert Lattanzi, Anthony Gerbino, a kid named Richie, and me drove one of the stolen cars to the funeral parlor and parked in the lot. A U-Haul truck was already parked there. It turns out the guys we were looking for left the bar and all of them loaded