Surviving the Mob - Dennis Griffin [30]
“About seven the next morning, Joey called me and wanted to know when I’m gonna drop off the bank. I asked him what the hell he was talking about. I’d given him the money last night. Then he told me to stop fucking around and bring him the money or there was going to be trouble. I told him to go fuck himself and hung up. About five minutes later Nicky’s son-in-law Scotty called. He said to get over to the luncheonette right away because Nicky wanted to see me.
“When I walked into the diner, the whole crew was there staring at me. Joey started right off with, ‘Where’s the money, kid? You think you can rob us and get away with it?’
“I started laughing and told Joey to screw himself. Nicky had been with me and knew the truth. I was waiting for him to step forward. But he kept quiet and let Joey talk, digging himself a deeper hole. Finally, Nicky jumped up and grabbed Joey by the shirt. He said, ‘You motherfucker. I was with the kid last night when he dropped off the goddamn money.’
“Joey’s face turned white and I thought he was going to faint. And then he started to cry and told how the girl he was with at the bar had rolled him. She took the money, all of it. He had been too ashamed to admit it so he made up the story that I never brought the money to him. Nicky said, ‘You’re lucky you’re a relative or I’d let the kid kill you right here.’
“I would have killed the bastard, too. The Mob doesn’t take internal theft lightly. If I hadn’t given Nicky that ride home, my body would probably have ended up in a landfill or in the trunk of an abandoned car.
“But Joey and I both walked out of the luncheonette alive. His punishment was exclusion from all crew businesses. My reward was that I was made the sole manager of the Stillwell Avenue horse room.
“Business continued to boom. To some guys it became a home away from home. We had such crowds every day that sometimes the beat cops would knock on the door and ask that the people who were double- or triple-parked move their cars. The only reason I can think of that they didn’t try to shut us down is that they thought it was just a social club.
“Pretty soon I was fencing stolen property too. Guys started coming in to get rid of hot jewelry, mink coats, televisions, weapons, and audio equipment. You name it, they brought it. Some days I was able to pocket thousands of dollars without leaving my chair.”
With all that money rolling in, Andrew took certain precautions to protect it from the law and limit his liability in the event of a raid.
“I had two places close by that I used to stash money when I thought we had too much cash on hand. One was two doors down at a deli my friend owned. The other was an apartment I kept a couple of blocks away. By keeping a relatively small amount on the premises, we wouldn’t lose it all in the event of a pinch. And the charges if I got arrested were more serious the higher the amount of money seized. So I kept a smaller bank, but the money was close enough that I could get it fast if somebody hit a big win.
“The success of the horse room earned me a nickname from Nicky. Every time I reported to him the profits were soaring, so he started calling me ‘Good News.’”
EVERYBODY WALKS
Andrew wasn’t the only one Nicky Corozzo heard good news from early in the year. On March 13, four days before his 47th birthday, he received an early present. A jury acquitted him of the federal racketeering charges for which he had been indicted in 1985. Nicky’s six remaining co-defendants, including John Gotti, also left the courtroom as free men. Everybody walked. The government’s case, which had once seemed so strong, had failed to produce a single guilty verdict.
Leading up to and during the trial, Gotti had predicted that very outcome. That confident forecast could have been made by an innocent man who trusted the criminal-justice system or perhaps one with great faith in the abilities of his lawyer.