Surviving the Mob - Dennis Griffin [5]
“But the first sign of trouble came quick. This neighborhood guy named Mike Yannotti had a talk with Tommy and me. Mike, who was known on the streets as Mikey Y, was a couple years older than us and was already connected with Nicky Corozzo’s crew. He had a reputation as a tough guy and he was. In fact, I met a lot of dangerous guys over the years and in my opinion, Mikey Y was the most dangerous of them all.
“Mike told us that the bagel-shop guys we were shaking down owed Nicky Corozzo a lot of money from gambling. If we continued making them pay us, they couldn’t pay him too. We better back off.
“After that conversation, Tommy and I had to make a decision. We were a little pissed off that we were told to stop the shakedown without being offered some other way to replace that income. We said to hell with Nicky Corozzo; we weren’t backing down.”
That decision would probably have led to another less friendly visit from Mike Yannotti. But something else happened first.
A couple of weeks later, one of the teens got caught by the owners of the bagel shop with his hand in the register. He told his boss that Tommy and Andrew had forced him into stealing the money and giving it to them. The owners called the cops, then headed across the street to the park where Tommy and Andrew hung out to confront them.
“At that time we carried brass knuckles. When the brothers grabbed us, the knuckles came out and the fight was on. We beat one of them up pretty good. I think he ended up needing about a hundred stitches in his head. During the heat of things, a cop grabbed me from behind and spun me around. Tommy and I threw the brass knuckles, but the cops found one set of them. We were arrested, taken to the station, and charged with assault. We were never charged or even questioned about the extortion scheme.”
Andrew hired a lawyer who argued that the owners initiated the fight. In fact, Andrew and Tommy pressed assault charges against them and the whole thing ended up in a draw. All charges were dropped and everyone walked away clean.
After that, Andrew started spending more time with Mikey Y and some other guys in Corozzo’s crew. Even though he wasn’t part of them yet, they did a lot of stealing and some other things. They all made money, some of which went to Nicky.
A couple of months later in early 1983, Andrew met Nicky in person. At that time Nicky hadn’t been made an official capo yet. He was an acting capo. Nicky and his friend Leonard DiMaria ran the crew together as co-captains. Andrew already knew Lenny. He’d taken his daughter to the high-school prom and hung around with his nephew. But he’d never met Nicky before.
“They used to hold meetings at a private social club every Tuesday and Saturday. The meetings started around eleven in the morning and went until four or five in the afternoon. The crew members and others they did business with attended.
“One Saturday morning, I was riding in a car with some of the crew. I knew they had to go to the meeting, so I told them to drop me off and I’d see ’em later. One of the guys said that Nicky mentioned they should bring me along. So I went.
“When we got to the club, I was introduced around. Everybody socialized while Nicky conducted business in another room. He called in his people one at a time. In private he told them what he wanted done; they let him know if they needed something from him. If he had a job that involved more than one guy or the entire crew, he called them all in at once.
“Nicky approached me around mid-afternoon and took me into the other room. He said he’d heard a lot about me and knew I was acquainted with his nephews. I was doing some good things. ‘You’ve got a friend here,’ he said.
“Then he told me that if I ever needed anything to come to him. If I needed stolen merchandise disposed of, come to him. If somebody was giving me trouble, come to him. Whatever I needed, come to him.
“After that he told me about the Tuesday and Saturday meetings. I