Surviving the Mob - Dennis Griffin [55]
“I couldn’t fuckin’ believe it. My first parole meeting and I was already in cuffs. And after the search was done, I knew they’d lock me up and throw away the key.
“Then I realized something. They were searching my mother’s house. Whoever had dropped the dime on me must not have known about the other apartment, filled to the rafters with a new load of pot and the rest of the counterfeit money. But there was nothing illegal at my mother’s. They weren’t goin’ to find a goddamn thing. I’m pretty sure a smile crossed my face when it hit me that I was home free.
“About five hours later, the search came up clean. The parole officer was on fire, he was so mad. What he undoubtedly thought was going to be a big feather in his cap had turned out to be nothing. His supervisor walked in and said that since they couldn’t violate me, the most they could do to bust my balls was put me on a curfew. That meant I had to be at my mother’s—really at my mother’s—from seven at night until seven in the morning. My social life would go down to zero and business would suffer. But at least I wouldn’t be locked up. Billy Cutolo got me a parole lawyer to fight the curfew on the grounds that it was harassment. After about a month, it was lifted on the condition I transfer out of Brooklyn.”
Through exceptional good fortune and the help of Billy Cutolo, Andrew had managed to survive his first altercation with the parole people relatively unscathed. However, his friend Billy was in hot water of his own.
For the past nine months, Billy had been delivering payments to a number of lawyers to cover the legal fees for Wild Bill and all of his father’s incarcerated crew members. On this particular day, Billy was in a panic; he didn’t have all the money he needed to pay the lawyers. Andrew was a little surprised. It was common knowledge that Wild Bill was worth a fortune.
What Andrew didn’t know was that when Wild Bill was incarcerated, he gave Billy access to a certain amount of money to cover legal expenses. What happened to that money? Andrew refuses to speculate about it. Whatever the reason, Billy ended up short. He knew that if the lawyers didn’t get paid, his father would find out about it immediately and wonder about the rest of the money. So Billy stalled for a few days to put together the necessary cash. The pressure was on and he called in all outstanding debts.
“I owed about fifteen thousand myself for money I’d borrowed for my shylocking business. When I tried to collect the principal from one or two of the bigger loans I had out, my customers couldn’t do it. One of them was my friend Mike Bolino. He was already backed up a few weeks and had just gotten pinched on top of it. This put a strain on the relationship between Billy and me, but we still worked together to try to find a solution to his problem.
“At this time I was dealing a lot of marijuana with Robert Arena from the Lucchese crew. But I wasn’t making anywhere near the money Billy needed to get out from under those lawyers. What I did do was front him about twenty pounds of pot that he could sell himself on the street. I thought that with Billy’s connections to some major pot movers, it could have been a great opportunity for a steady earn for him. But Billy never made a payment for the pot. I knew I owed him a lot, so I let it go. Besides, Robert and me had started moving some big numbers and shaking down drug dealers as well. So some pretty good money was now coming in. I’d still see Billy and have dinners and hang out, but the money situation had consumed him.
“In December, Wild Bill’s trial was underway. I went to court a few times with Billy to show support for his dad. About a week before Christmas, Wild Bill and his crew were acquitted. I went to the party they threw at Wild Bill’s social club. After having been away myself, I knew the pure joy they were experiencing just to be free. But that mood wore off quickly when Wild Bill started to inquire about how his money had been spent while he was locked up. That led to some dark days for Billy and a shitload