Surviving the Mob - Dennis Griffin [61]
“At approximately five o’clock the next morning, January twenty-seventh, my telephone rang. It wasn’t Mike calling me to go to work. It was a childhood friend telling me that Robert Arena and a neighborhood kid named Thomas Maranga had both been shot and killed. They were murdered in Robert’s car as he pulled out from a parking space in front of his apartment. The way he described it to me sounded like a massacre. Robert was in the life, but Thomas wasn’t. He’d apparently just been in the wrong place at the wrong time.
“I was a tough guy—a gangster. But after I hung up the phone, I cried. I was sad, depressed, and angry all at once. Robert’s loss was overwhelming. It left me with a feeling of helplessness. Why did this happen? Why wasn’t I there to help my friend like he would have helped me? I asked myself those questions over and over.
“And then it hit me like a bolt of lightning. Mike Yannotti. He and Robert only lived about a block apart. Was Robert the work Mike needed help with? If it was, why hadn’t he called me to help like he said? One possibility was that if he included me on the hit, I might have found a way to warn Robert. On the other hand, they could have brought me along and got rid of Robert and me both at the same time. After all, there was no love lost between Nicky and me. He suspected I was holding back money from my scores. To him, I’d become a real pain in the ass.
“At this point, I didn’t know who to trust or what to think. I definitely knew that Danny Cutaia wanted me dead. Wild Bill Cutolo was near that point, if he wasn’t already there. And maybe Nicky Corozzo had come to the conclusion that his life would be better without me in it. So it was me against the life from that moment on. I’d have to play dumb until I could figure out who was who and what was what.
“I waited an hour, then called Mike Yannotti. I gave him the news about Robert and Thomas as though I didn’t connect him to it. I asked him how he thought I should play it. He didn’t seem very surprised. I asked if he thought the killings had anything to do with the drug thing Robert and I had been involved in. He wanted to know if Thomas looked like me. I said no. He said he didn’t think I had anything to worry about. We arranged a meeting for a few hours later. When I arrived in Brooklyn I called Mike to confirm our meet. He said he couldn’t see me then, because the cops were all over the place.
“I drove over anyway to check things out. Sure enough, when I tried to turn the corner to Mike’s house, I couldn’t. The block was closed off because the cops were still investigating the murders. A radio news report said that Robert was armed at the time, but he didn’t fire a shot. The police said Robert was a known shooter and his failure to use his gun indicated he knew his assailant and was caught by surprise. All things considered, I was becoming convinced that Mike was involved in the killings. He may have acted alone or with help. But there was no doubt in my mind that he was in on it.”
Andrew’s suspicions about Mike were confirmed the next day when the two men met at Yannotti’s apartment. Also present was Nicky Corozzo’s son-in-law Vincent Dragonetti and another crew member.
“We talked about the murders and Robert’s funeral. Then Mike said to me, ‘Listen, Vinny came over to deliver a message from Nicky. We’re not goin’ to Robert’s funeral. He wasn’t at Tough Tony’s, so we’re not goin’ to his. But you’re gonna go. You and Robert were friends and it would look funny if you didn’t show up. So you go and take the temperature. See if anybody asks you anything. And remember, we’re denying having anything to do with this to the fullest extent.’
“I said, ‘Well, we didn’t. Did we?’ I knew the only reason we were having this meeting was because we were guilty as hell. I had to keep up my act, though. I didn’t expect an answer and I didn’t get one.
“After that we talked about how to handle Robert’s crew. My relationship had been with Robert; I wasn’t that friendly with the rest of them. And of course Danny Cutaia hated