Surviving the Mob - Dennis Griffin [74]
As 1997 began, the pressure on Andrew increased regarding his personal safety. But his financial situation improved as he finalized the marijuana operation with his San Diego connection. He and his partner put in $100,000 to cover setup expenses. His partner and their new associate, the guy who had prepared his fake identification, traveled to Las Vegas to get things moving. Andrew stayed in New York to receive the shipments.
Marijuana came in from Mexico to San Diego. It went from there to Las Vegas on the friend’s tractor-trailer. In Vegas the load was broken down and shipped to Brooklyn by UPS and a private trucking company. On the first run, they got about five hundred pounds. The second time yielded about three hundred. But on the third or fourth trip, the fake-document guy got pinched in Vegas with about 150 pounds of marijuana and around $65,000 in cash. And that was the end of the marijuana business.
“My partner told me that we needed to bail the guy out right away; otherwise he might start cooperating with the law. We got him out a few days later. A short time afterward, my partner was implicated in that same drug deal and was arrested in Vegas as well. When he got out on bail, they both returned to New York. I met them at my partner’s house to discuss the case against them and what we could do to help with their legal fees.
“I had suspicions from the start about the way this thing had come down. I couldn’t put my finger on it, but alarm bells were going off in my head big time about these two guys. When I went to the meeting, I even considered killing them both right there. But that was a spur-of-the-moment thought. I had no plan in place. My car was parked on the street and I didn’t know if they’d told anybody else about the meeting.
“The decision not to kill them turned out to be a wise one, as I found out later on. And that was the last meeting I had with them.”
As winter turned to spring, Andrew was living in a shell and maintained regular contact only with Charlotte and the members of the bank-robbery crew, as they were planning another score. He lived a day at a time and made no long-range plans. As each day dawned, he didn’t know if he’d have to take someone’s life or if someone would try to take his. And, of course, the law was still anxious to catch up with him.
“They were stressful, stressful times,” Andrew recalls. “Around April Mike Yannotti reached out to me and wanted to meet. We talked about Junior Gotti. We’d never received the order from Nicky to carry out the hit. Junior had been arrested in February and was still behind bars. It didn’t look like he stood much chance of getting bail, so there didn’t seem to be a great deal we could do about him for the moment. Mike tried to get me to another meeting later on, but I didn’t show.
“On the morning of May seventh, me and the Genovese guys had plans to rob the same bank in New Jersey. They hadn’t changed their procedures after the first robbery and we figured they’d never expect us to come back. But we had to postpone the job until I came up with the stolen license plates we needed to put on our cars. I planned to do a dry run that morning, though, just to make sure there hadn’t been any last-minute changes at the bank or on the escape route, like road construction.
“Charlotte picked me up at my apartment at ten o’clock, driving my Mercedes. She came into the basement apartment and I remember asking her about the weather. She said it was nice, so I put on a light jacket. I locked my door and we took two steps up to the street level. And then all I could hear was racing car engines and squealing tires. I looked to my left and saw a minivan approaching with the side door already sliding open. I shoved Charlotte into the bushes next to us and started to run down the driveway. I saw two men running toward me from