Surviving the Mob - Dennis Griffin [13]
“One night Albert said he wanted to go out. I told him to hang around the house we were at. I said we were going to order some Chinese food and rent a couple of movies. He said the rest of us were having girlfriends over and he just needed to get out. He planned to go out on Long Island where he wasn’t likely to run into anybody that knew him. I couldn’t force him to stay at the apartment, so he went. He usually carried a gun, but on that night he went unarmed.”
Albert hooked up with a guy from their crew named Mario and a Lucchese associate named Bobby. Bobby wasn’t with the Gaspipe crew and he was friendly with Andrew’s crew. But instead of going to Long Island, they went to a new dance club on Coney Island Avenue in Brooklyn.
At the club, Albert met up with a girl; she was Mike Yannotti’s cousin. They talked for a while and she said she needed a ride home when the club closed. Albert told her he’d make sure she got home okay. She then left Albert to socialize.
Later on, she started dancing with a guy named Evan, a drug dealer for the Lucchese family. They’d muscle him into working for them the same way Andrew did with dealers in his neighborhood. She and Evan hit it off.
When it was time to go, Albert and Evan got into an argument over who’d drive the girl home. That deteriorated into a fistfight. As they rolled around on the ground, Todd Alvino, one of the Lucchese guys Evan was dealing for, walked up, drew his gun, and shot Albert dead. Alvino had a bad cocaine problem and it’s likely he was hopped up at the time.
Andrew picks up the story. “After Alvino shot Albert, he turned the gun on Mario. The gun either jammed or was out of rounds and didn’t fire. Mario was a legitimate tough guy and he was armed. For some reason he froze. He never pulled his gun to avenge Albert or defend himself. He was damn lucky to get out of the place alive. Alvino commandeered a car and got away.
“When we got the call that Albert had been murdered, we wanted Alvino bad. Mike, Anthony, Richie, and me geared up [armed themselves]. We stole a car from a neighbor and headed out looking for revenge. We knew Alvino’s father ran a newsstand in the neighborhood and that he’d be there in the morning to open up. We decided to kill him for starters. But as we calmed down and began thinking more clearly, we discarded that idea. We all had fathers. They were civilians and Alvino’s old man didn’t have anything to do with Albert’s death. We went out looking for his son, though, but couldn’t find him. Alvino surrendered to the cops a few days later, then got out on bail.
“From that point forward, the hunt was on. We literally worked in shifts and stalked him night and day. We went to known Lucchese hangouts, bars, social clubs, and after-hours joints. We kept an eye on his house on Ralph Avenue. We came close a couple of times, but couldn’t catch up with him.
“Alvino and the Luccheses knew we were looking for him, of course. Nicky was onboard with what we were doing, but in order to prevent the Lucchese bosses from requesting a sit-down that would have stopped the hunt, Nicky had to deny that Albert had been part of his crew. That way he could say the whole thing was none of his business.
“Even though we were after Alvino around the clock, he dodged us month after month. Nicky mentioned the amount of time it was taking. He said, ‘If this happened to a friend of Lenny and me, the guy that did it would be dead already.’
“Another time I was talking with Nicky in a small social club we hung out at on East Ninety-Third Street at Avenue L in Canarsie. The Luccheses had a club in the back of a laundromat right across the street. Nicky pointed to a car parked out in front and said, ‘What if I told you I know that by the end of the day, the guy you’re looking for is going to get into that car?’
“I said that I’d stay right there and shoot him when