Surviving the Mob (14 page)

But for better or worse, Andrew was only at Sing Sing for a few hours before his final transfer. He was placed on a bus to the Coxsackie Correctional Facility, 27 miles south of Albany. On the trip he made a friend.

“I was shackled to an Irish kid named Patty O’Keefe. We hit it off right from the start. He was tough and seemed to know his way around. He told me this wasn’t his first rodeo [trip to prison] and schooled me about what would happen when we got to Coxsackie. He said that first and foremost, we had to stick together. If we did, we’d be a force to be reckoned with.

“His words proved true within our first few hours at Coxsackie. We were in a reception unit where transfers in and out of the facility were processed. We were locked down awaiting our first recreation period, which in the reception unit lasts two hours. As we waited, I overheard a black inmate who was being transferred out of the facility telling a group of new black prisoners about how to extort the white convicts. I’d gotten a taste of racism in the House of Detention, so what I heard didn’t surprise me. It did piss me off, though. I knew I had to cut the problem off at the knees, just like I did in Brooklyn. If I didn’t, I’d be in for a real bad time.

“No sooner did I come to that realization than I looked out the window of my cell door and saw Patty O’Keefe staring back at me from his cell across the corridor. I could see the rage on his face and knew he’d heard the same things I did. Using sign language, we motioned to each other that when the gates opened for recreation, we would attack the racist bastard. He was too fuckin’ arrogant to see it coming. Somebody like him would never think a couple of new white guys would have the balls to come after him.

“When the doors opened, I got out of my cell fast and
waited for the extortionist to show his face. When he stepped from his cell, it was pretty obvious he’d been upstate for a while and spent a lot of his time lifting weights. As he walked by me to get to the rec room, Patty came from behind and tapped him on his shoulder. When he turned around Patty hit him a shot and he landed on the floor right at my feet. That’s when I started putting the boots to him. Patty joined me and we hollered, ‘Extort us, you motherfucker!’ as we beat him unconscious. The other blacks froze, not knowing what to do as they saw their fearless leader beaten and kicked to a pulp by two white guys—the same whites they’d been told they could victimize. Now their teacher was a victim himself. A victim of his own methods.

“Seconds later, the response team rolled in, pinning me and Patty to the wall and cuffing us. I was kept locked in my cell until the next day. Then an officer came and told me I was released from lockup. Patty wasn’t, though. He took all the weight for the beating. I figured he might have been pissed off about that. But when I looked across at his cell, he was standing there smiling at me. That moment cemented our friendship. At least for the time being.

“Within a day or so, I was out of reception and into general population. I hit the main yard and was immediately greeted by Joey Urgitano, whose father was a wiseguy with the Harlem crew of the Lucchese crime family. He said he’d spoken to Teddy Persico’s girlfriend on the phone. She told him I was coming, so he was there to extend the olive branch. He told me I missed Teddy by a week. He was serving twenty years for a drug-related offense and had been transferred to Elmira [Correctional Facility] for disciplinary reasons. Joey was a great kid with a heart as big as any I ever saw. He was kind and had courage and we soon became the best of friends. Within days we both got permission to correspond with Teddy.

“After about a month in Coxsackie, I learned the politics
of the place—who was who, where I was welcome, and where I wasn’t. Joey, another guy from our neighborhood named Phil ‘Fat Philly’ Stasio, and me soon became inseparable. On the weekend we had jobs in the school building working for a sergeant who was also from the neighborhood. He was related to the Randazzo family that ran a very popular restaurant in Sheepshead Bay. Almost immediately, me and the sergeant became very good friends. On my birthday in November, he brought me a cake from outside. He even let us cook pasta and other Italian dishes. This was obviously a great arrangement for us. But it caused jealousy among the other white inmates who resented us for our connection.”

As Andrew got acclimated to prison life, he learned many valuable lessons about how the system worked. They included not only what he needed to do to make his life easier, but also the pitfalls he had to avoid.

In society in general and prison in particular, the strong prey upon the weak. If an inmate is gullible or doesn’t have the physical skills or lacks the will to defend himself, he becomes a target for the predators lurking all around him. He can be taken advantage of through violence or the threat of violence, or in more subtle ways. Andrew saw both methods in action.

“When I was at Coxsackie, the Hispanic inmates represented the majority, probably around fifty percent. Blacks were a bit behind, say forty percent or so. White inmates were the distinct minority at about ten percent. That disadvantage made it critical that we stuck together and let it be known there were no soft touches among us. But some inmates just weren’t cut out to be in the prison environment. And they weren’t just whites. They came in all colors. Those
that didn’t measure up were destined to become victims. That’s just the way it was.

“When a new inmate arrived, he was watched closely by the other cons. They learned who he hung out with, whether he had any connections, if he was willing to stick up for himself. Then they found out if he had any money, how much was in his commissary account. If the guy had some buying power and was short on balls, he was targeted.

“One way to get to him would be to befriend him. The guy making the move would start talking with him. He’d ask, ‘Where you from? Whatcha in for? How long?’ All nice and friendly, just like he really gave a fuck. And then he’d get around to talking about commissary day—when it is, how much you can spend, what’s good to purchase that can be used as prison money. Things like tuna, cigarettes, cookies, and coffee. After that comes the hook. He says that since you’re new and won’t be able to go to commissary for a few days, as your new friend he’ll front you some stuff until you can shop for yourself. Here are some cookies. Here’s a pack of smokes. And when you go to the store next week, you can pay me back three packs of cigarettes and two boxes of cookies. Once the mark agrees to that, the door is wide open.

“The old protection racket probably comes next. See those guys over there? They’re looking to hurt you. For a carton of smokes I can protect you.

“And there’s the more direct way to get the new guy’s stuff. The real wild bunch will just wait for him to leave commissary and attack him on the way back to his unit. If he doesn’t put up a fight, they’ll rob him every time he goes to the store. Those things happen all the time in prison.”

Andrew believes corruption is inherent in the criminal-justice system. Below he explains the reasons for his feelings.

“As far as local jails, such as the Brooklyn House of Detention before it was closed and Riker’s Island, corruption was in the everyday fabric of the institution. For instance, many of the correction officers are African-American and some live in the same housing developments where a lot of the prisoners they’re in charge of come from. The gangs these inmates are associated with make it pretty simple, ‘We know you and we know your family. You do what we want, like bring in drugs and money or arrange sexual visits, or we’ll hurt your family.’ I know that some guards have actually been initiated into the gangs.

“In the state and federal facilities, the corruption runs a little different. At Sing Sing during the eighties, if you had two hundred dollars and the right connection, you could have a steak dinner and get laid. As for Coxsackie, that one sergeant was looking out for me and my friends. He gave us the best jobs and arranged special assignments, like going to the school building on Sundays, so we could cook pasta dinners. And he brought me that birthday cake from a pastry shop in my old neighborhood.

“When Nicky and Lenny were in the MDC [the federal Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn], they had a guard on the payroll for five hundred a week. He brought them food and alcohol from the outside and arranged for them to have extra visits. He even looked into guys’ cases to see who was cooperating against them or the crew. He was one of about ten officers ultimately arrested at the MDC after an investigation into corruption at that facility. Nicky and Lenny were put in the hole until they were transferred to a federal prison.”

The general perception among the public is that most prison inmates are gang raped or engage in homosexual activity
at some point. However, Andrew didn’t find that kind of activity to be as prevalent as one might think.

“I can only tell you what I saw over the years I was incarcerated. But before I get into that, let me say this: The first rules of thumb in prison are don’t gamble, don’t fuck around with drugs, and don’t mess with the homos. It’s best for the new inmate if he knows that coming in or learns it damn quick. If he does, he’ll avoid about eighty-five percent of the prison problems. And people need to understand that a lot of the homos in prison aren’t the weak sissy-types you might find on the streets. They’re some very dangerous individuals who will kill in a heartbeat. If the new inmate starts playing their game, he’s taking a big chance.

“That said, my take on homosexuality in prison is that there are two types of homos. You have your flaming type, the kind who flaunts his sexual orientation. This is the guy who alters his prison uniform and personal appearance to be what he thinks is sexier and more appealing. He wears lipstick, has his hair in a ponytail, the whole bit. The other type is the tough guy who’s doing a very long sentence. His attitude about his acts is, ‘Hey, I’m just livin’ in the moment. I have to get my ass any way I can, but I’m not really gay.’ These guys live in denial. They figure that if they’re the dominant partner in the relationship, they’ve kept their manhood. I find it ridiculous, but that’s the way a lot of them think.

“For the most part, I’ve never seen the gang rapes that movies and television show so much. I’m not saying it doesn’t happen. But in my years away, I noticed that most of the guys who got turned out were curious to begin with—making friends with individuals they knew from first sight were homos. A lot of very young kids who come through the system think if they can dominate a homosexual relationship, they’ll prove their prowess. So they start hanging out with the homos, looking for someone they can control. But in the end, they become the victims.

“I’ve seen many so-called tough guys doing long stretches get hurt trying to take another tough guy’s homo partner. Lifers will kill to get or keep a steady partner. Anyone who threatens those kinds of relationships is dealt with violently. I’d say that about ninety percent of the submissive partners come into the system already gay or with gay tendencies. The rest get turned out after they get inside.”

The animosity some of the other inmates felt toward Andrew and his friends over their perceived special treatment by the sergeant festered for several weeks. Tensions boiled over in early December, a time Andrew remembers vividly.

“I knew trouble was brewing when Patty O’Keefe approached me. He said our school jobs had to stop, that correction officers were the enemy and our cozy relationship with the sergeant didn’t look good. And then a guy was caught trying to smuggle drugs into the facility. The apprehending officer was our sergeant friend. Almost immediately, rumors began to circulate that Fat Philly had given him the information about the drugs. In reality, that was bullshit. It was all about jealousy. Some of the other white inmates just couldn’t stand the idea that me and my friends had a good deal going.

“A few days later, we were out in the yard. It was snowing that day with about six inches of snow on the ground. Patty asked Joey Urgitano to take a walk with him to talk about the drug thing. I watched them as they walked across the yard. I could tell there was a heated exchange of words and then Patty hit Joey. Joey fell to the ground and Patty jumped on top of him. I ran through the snow toward them as fast as I could and pulled Patty off Joey. Patty started swinging at me and we exchanged blows. Joey got to his feet and tried to go after Patty with an ice pick he’d had concealed in his clothes. But in the melee he wasn’t able to get close enough to use it.
And then one of Patty’s friends joined the fight.