Surviving the Mob - Dennis Griffin [69]
“After they left, I went to a pay phone around the corner from my place and called my mother. I told her to take a cab straight from work and meet me. When she got there, we grabbed another cab to her house. I put almost all of my money—a hundred thousand dollars—into her clothes hamper. I only kept a few dollars for myself.
“When the robbery crew met up later, we took Sal to a restaurant in Bay Ridge. Sal was a great guy and his guys really liked him. They chipped in five thousand apiece to him. We had a nice dinner and did some talking. Sal said he had a friend who owned his own armored-car service. He’d bid on a job and promised that if he got the bid, he’d provide us with the key to the vault and we could empty it out. We had our fingers crossed for the next two weeks that this guy would get the bid. But he didn’t, so we had to look elsewhere.”
In late September, Andrew received a phone call from Mike Yannotti. He said they needed to meet, so he could relay some messages from Nicky Corozzo. When the two men got together, Andrew found that Yannotti seemed to have developed a slightly different attitude toward him and his situation.
The first thing Mike told him was that the problem with Wild Bill Cutolo needed to be resolved. Mike and Nicky had heard about the New Jersey bank robbery and that Andrew had some cash. According to their thinking, it was time for him to settle the account with Wild Bill.
Andrew told Mike that he didn’t owe Wild Bill all the money he claimed was owed. He refused to admit that his son had blown some of the stash he’d left and he was trying to get it back out of Billy’s friends. He wasn’t going to let Wild Bill shake him down and he didn’t care how pissed off he got.
“The next day Mike called me again and said he needed to see me right away. I went to his house and he said that he thought it was better if we talked outside. We’d go out through the garage in case anyone was watching the house. As I followed him down the steps, I remembered our dry run when we were planning to kill my brother-in-law. My heart started to race. I pulled the gun from my waistband and held it inches from the back of Mike’s head. If I was about to meet the same fate as Robert Arena, Mike wouldn’t be around to brag about it. At the first sign of a trap, he was a dead man. But as we entered the garage, enough light came in from around the overhead door that I could see we were alone. I put my gun away. When Mike reads this book—and I know he will—it will be the first time he’ll know what could have happened that day.
“After we got out to the back yard, Mike said that he and Nicky were considering killing Danny Cutaia. If they decided to do it, they’d want me to be a part of it. Then he went back to the Wild Bill situation and that it had to be taken care of.
“And then he said something that confirmed what I already thought. My problems with the parole people were related to Robert Arena’s murder. Regina had been telling me things she heard from Robert’s family. The cops thought I was involved and it was said the two detectives that came to the parole office that day were from Homicide. Like it or not, I was a suspect. Mike suggested that I turn myself in. He figured when they questioned me, they’d tip their hand as to how strong their evidence was and what kind of case they were building against him.
“I told him that I was doing better than I had in a long time. And I was. I had the cash from the bank score, was driving a brand new Mercedes, and I’d resurrected my deal with the marijuana dealer in California. Money was starting to come in on a regular basis. And because I was on the run, it gave me an excuse not to have to see Nicky as much. I said that law enforcement was going to have to earn their money