Surviving the Mob - Dennis Griffin [51]
“My answer was easy. I said, ‘Nicky I love you and I’d do anything for you. But I needed you when my hands were cuffed. No disrespect, but I can do this all by myself now. I’ve dreamed of doing it for the past four years.’ With that I walked out the door. And from that day on, our relationship was never the same.”
Andrew’s disenchantment with Nicky prior to going to prison was growing. Not only had his boss denied him when he was in need of money before his trial, he was now lying to him to cover for his lack of loyalty.
“Look at it from my perspective,” Andrew continues. “This guy was my leader. I just got home and he didn’t even put a hundred-dollar bill in my pocket to help me get off and running. But friends of ours from other crime families showed a lot more class than Nicky. Wild Bill Cutolo and his son Billy Junior of the Colombos gave me a thousand-dollar welcome-home gift. Danny Pagano from the Genovese family sent me a thousand for pocket money. But not Nicky. He didn’t come up with a goddamn dime. The only guy from my own crew to help me out financially was Mike Yannotti. And I didn’t know if he did that out of guilt for us not speaking all those months or because of the Karkis thing. In spite of our differences recently, Mike and I always had mutual respect over the years. I decided I didn’t have time to dwell on what his motivation was. I had to start earning.”
It didn’t take Andrew very long to get back in harness. A friend he’d made at Hudson Correctional named Mike Bolino had also made it into the work-release program and was assigned to Edgecombe. The two men quickly found something to help them make some money and pass their time: watches.
“Work release was like a breeding ground for criminals in some respects. On our sleep-in nights, a lot of the guys sat around and planned crimes. My buddy Mike was from the Court Street area in downtown Brooklyn and was affiliated with the Colombos. We wound up on the same floor at Edgecombe and right away started working together. Mike had a connection with a guy who had access to very expensive Chaumet watches from France. I must have sold eight or ten of them my first week home. As I remember, the average price was around fifteen hundred. This was just the head start I needed. With the cash I made from the watches, I bought a few pounds of marijuana from a very good friend of mine. I gave the weed to Mike to sell and we split the profit.”
Besides selling the stolen watches and marijuana, Andrew found a supplier of men’s sweat suits, sneakers, and even some designer clothes to add to his inventory of hot merchandise. These sales took the financial pressure off Andrew and he needed those sources of income. Even though he was getting paychecks from the cleaning company, he was unable to access that money for a couple of reasons. First, the rules of work release prohibited the worker from cashing his check. The checks had to be surrendered to a parole officer and were held until the inmate was paroled. Second, since Andrew didn’t actually perform any work at the airport, his checks were primarily loans used to create a paper trail of employment and the money had to be paid back. Andrew’s arrangement was that when he was paroled and received the checks, he would cash them and then give the money, plus any withholdings for taxes, to his friend at the cleaning company.
In addition to the job scam, Andrew also violated the work-program rules by secretly taking up residence in a friend’s apartment rather than staying at his mother’s. This gave him a relatively safe place to stash money, marijuana, or contraband without exposing his mother to legal problems.
As the days went by and Andrew’s earnings increased, he had to show up every so often to see the crew and pay his tribute to Nicky. Other than that, he spent most of his time with Billy Cutolo Junior, a man Andrew came to like very much.
“Billy was a great guy and Wild Bill, his father, was a highly