Surviving the Mob - Dennis Griffin [86]
What would it be like when he got out of prison and had to start fresh as a brand new person who had never before existed? Andrew DiDonato, the career tough guy and criminal, would be gone. Who would replace him?
And then there was his son, whom he hadn’t seen in two years. It didn’t appear that Dina was doing anything to help him salvage a relationship with the boy. That issue was never far from his thoughts. He feared losing his son to the very life he’d just walked away from. Even today, he gets nauseous when he remembers the feelings of sadness and helplessness he experienced at that time.
Those feelings were compounded in late May when news from the organized-crime world hit the witness unit like a bolt of lightning. And it struck Andrew particularly hard: Colombo family underboss Wild Bill Cutolo had gone missing. In Andrew’s former life, that meant the man was either on the run or dead. And there was no reason to believe that Wild Bill was on the run.
“A lot of things went through my mind,” Andrew remembers. “I thought about my old friend Billy Junior and what he must be going through. And I thought about Wild Bill. Even though we’d had our differences, I’d always respected him. I really felt bad when I remembered that last time I’d seen him on the street corner with Danny Cataia. I was pissed off that day and said things to Wild Bill I shouldn’t have. But I said what I said and there was no way to take it back.
“The theory around Wild Bill’s disappearance was that it was a repercussion from the Colombo war. Wild Bill had backed the Vic Orena faction of the family in trying to forcibly take control away from Carmine Persico. Orena lost and Persico stayed in power. It figured that Wild Bill’s disappearance was related to challenging Persico and coming out on the losing side.
“Looking at it from the outside, it seemed that Carmine probably saw Wild Bill as a threat. He was a very powerful boss with a crew and financial backing. He had a lot influence with the other crime families and Carmine probably thought he might make another try to take over.
“If Wild Bill was dead, I wondered what chance Billy Junior had to stay alive, if any. In the life, if you decide to kill somebody, it’s always advisable to take out anybody who might want to seek revenge. And there was no doubt in my mind that if Billy Junior knew or found out who made his father vanish, he’d want retribution. So I didn’t see much chance of him staying alive for very long.
“Thank God I was wrong.”
WILD BILL CUTOLO
The disappearance and presumed death of Wild Bill caused Andrew to regret his words during their last heated encounter. And his concern for the safety of his friend Billy Jr. made it a double blow. But certainly the man suffering the most over Wild Bill’s loss was Billy Jr. himself. In the following paragraphs, Billy talks about his father, the day he went missing, and the ensuing years.
“My name is William P. Cutolo, Junior. I’ve also been known as Billy, Junior, Bones, and Rat. That latter name is one I despise.
“My father was William P. Cutolo. By some he was called Wild Bill or Billy Fingers. And the latter name he despised. He was the number-two guy in the Colombo crime family out of Brooklyn, New York. For those who don’t know the details of such a despicable life—Mafia, Mob, organized crime—the second slot meant he was the ‘Underboss’ of the family. He was second in command to Carmine ‘The Snake’ Persico, who occupied the number-one slot.
“My father was a man larger than life. He was an extremely smart man and had the brains to be whatever in life he wanted to be. He dressed in custom-made suits and hand-painted ties. Seeing him on the street in the morning and not knowing any better, the average person would have thought he was just some white-collar guy on the way to his job in New York City.
“One of the reasons for his success