Surviving the Mob (4 page)

As 1983 ended Andrew was becoming a very active and valuable member of the Corozzo crew. He was loyal, an accomplished thief, and a good producer. He’d also developed a reputation as a tough kid who was willing to use a gun. These were all qualities men like Nicky Corozzo looked for in their subordinates.

Over the next several years, Andrew continued to hone his criminal skills and was given more responsibilities by his boss.

5

Andrew’s mother Patrina was no stranger to having criminals in the family. Her husband Vincent was in federal prison from 1966, the year following Andrew’s birth, to 1971 after being convicted of hijacking a truck and criminal possession of a weapon. And, of course, Vincent’s uncle Paddy Macchiarole had been a Genovese family capo.

Patrina and Vincent never got back together after he was released from prison. She remarried in 1975. In 1984, the family, consisting of Patrina, her husband Morris, Andrew, and his twin sisters, lived near the intersection of East 72
^nd
Street and Bergen Court in Brooklyn.

“My mother knew what I was doing and she didn’t approve. But I was on the cusp of becoming a man and my course was laid out. There was nothing she could do about it. She had no choice but to accept what I was. She was my confidant, very protective and always worried about my safety.

“My sisters were three years older than me. They knew how I made my money too. I’m not saying they were happy, but they never hassled me about it. One of them got married and moved out in 1983. The other one got married the following year.

“My father remained in Brooklyn after serving his sentence. We saw each other from time to time. We never had
a normal father-and-son relationship. It was more of a big-brother type. He was a career gambler with a gift of gab who was in and out of my life.

“As a boy and young man I craved my father’s attention and acceptance. As I got deeper into the life with each passing year, I hoped he’d look upon me with the same respect I’d seen him show for Paddy. I never saw my father talk so highly of anyone as he did his uncle.

“With that idea in my head, I tried to follow Paddy’s footsteps into the world of organized crime. I carried myself in the same manner and my reputation grew. But my father was still years away from seeing me the way I wanted him to.”

Although Andrew’s relationship with his father in 1984 wasn’t exactly the way he hoped it would be, his association with the Corozzo faction of the Gambino family became rock solid.

For Andrew, the year 1984 literally began with a bang as he tended to some unfinished business from 1983. The matter involved an ongoing feud with a crew from another organized-crime group, the Lucchese family. This particular Lucchese crew operated in the same areas as Nick Corozzo’s. It was run by Anthony “Gaspipe” Casso and his friend Vittorio “Vic” Amuso. Both men were known killers and extremely dangerous to have as enemies.

The trouble began in 1983 when Vic Amuso’s nephew had an altercation with Andrew’s friend and fellow Corozzo crew member, Sal “Sally the Lip” Bracchi.

“Vic’s nephew and some of his friends from Gaspipe’s crew tuned Sally the Lip up [beat him] pretty good. We wanted to retaliate and send a message that you didn’t fuck around with our guys. The kid knew we were after him and kept a low profile. It took a long time, but in early 1984 we
found out that he was gonna be spending the night at a home right around the corner from the sixty-ninth police precinct on Foster Avenue in Canarsie.

“That night me, Anthony Gerbino, and Albert Lattanzi went to that house and broke into the garage, opening the overhead door just enough to crawl under. There were two cars inside. We’d brought gasoline with us and doused both cars. As we left, we let the gas run down the driveway and make a stream leading to the vehicles. Once we were safely outside, we lit a rag, threw it into the little river of gasoline, and got out of there.

“Somehow the garage door closed when we left, so all the gas fumes were confined inside. When the flame reached the cars, there was a tremendous explosion. The garage door was blown all the way across the street. The heat was so intense that every one of the tires blew out. Nobody in the house got hurt; it was property damage only. But we’d sent a message and figured it was just a matter of time before Gaspipe’s boys figured out who had delivered it.”

After putting the Lucchese crew on notice, Andrew had another obligation to take care of: working off his debt to Jo Jo Corozzo in Florida for the 1983 road-rage shooting incident. That trip took place in mid-April and lasted for three weeks or so.

“Me and several of the crew flew down,” Andrew recalls. “There was Mike Yannotti, Albert Lattanzi, and four or five other guys. Jo Jo treated all of us great. If he was pissed off at me, he didn’t show it.

“We had a lot of fun and did a lot of partying. But we worked too. We did some major credit-card fraud and made some big money.”

The fraud involved buying stolen credit cards, then making
purchases or taking cash advances on them. In addition to the profits, the scam carried an element of risk and excitement.

“We bought the hot cards for three hundred apiece. Back in New York, guys we knew who had credit card machines swiped the cards and told us how much credit was available. We didn’t have those connections in Florida, so we operated blind. When we presented these cards to a merchant or a bank, we never knew for sure what was going to happen.

“We used them to cover our hotel rooms. Sometimes we’d come back to the hotel and be locked out after the card went over the limit. When that happened, we just tried a different card. Other times we found out the cops were looking for us, because when the hotel ran the card, it came back as stolen. In those cases, we had to clear out and find a different hotel.

“The same thing could happen when we bought stuff at a store. The merchant might tell us the sale exceeded the credit limit. If the card had already been reported as stolen, we could usually tell by the clerk’s expression and body language. Once in a while one of them tried to get us to hang around until they could get the cops there. They said something like, ‘Excuse me for a minute while I go in the back room and check on something. I’ll be right back, so don’t leave.’ That was pretty transparent and we were long gone before the door to the back room even had a chance to close.

“And not all the store clerks were honest either. I remember one decided to do some stealing for himself. He told us the card was bad after we tried to charge twelve hundred dollars worth of clothing. But I’d seen him write the authorization number down on a sheet of paper, so he could use it after we left. I jumped across the counter and wrapped the phone cord around his throat, while my partner in crime gave him a beating. He confessed what he was up to. After
that we owned him and he worked for us from that point on running the hot cards.”

Andrew and his friends finished their stay in Florida and made it back to New York without incident. But the bad blood between them and Gaspipe’s crew hadn’t cooled during their absence. If anything, it had heated up.

When Andrew left New York to visit Jo Jo Corozzo, Sr., in Florida, the feud with the Lucchese crew was in the Gas-pipe gang’s court. The next move was theirs. Shortly after his return to the Big Apple, he got their response.

“On a Friday night, I was at a bar we ran on Avenue L in Canarsie. Somebody told me Nicky was outside in his car and wanted to see me. I went out and found Nicky and his driver sitting in their car. I was standing beside the passenger door with my head inside the window talking. Rocco Corozzo, Nicky’s nephew, came outside and joined us. We were engaged in conversation when out of the corner of my eye, I noticed a figure standing on the sidewalk fifty or so yards away. Then I heard what I thought were firecrackers, but they turned out to be gunshots.

“One round struck the windshield right in front of where Nicky was sitting. I shoved his head down and Rocco jumped in the back seat. After Nicky’s car sped away, I pulled my gun [a 9mm] and started running toward the shooter, firing at him as I ran. He took off down the block and at that point, I went down on one knee and aimed. I call that my T. J. Hooker position, after the old television series where William Shatner played a cop. I fired and missed. I reloaded and started chasing the guy, but I couldn’t catch him.

“A few days later we got information on who the shooter was and why. It was one of Gaspipe’s guys. I was the target in
retaliation for the incident at the house where Vic Amuso’s nephew had been staying.

“I took the information to Nicky. I told him we wanted to pursue it and asked what he wanted us to do. Nicky was a very cunning man. He’d never come right out and tell you to murder somebody. But he made the sign of a gun with his index finger and thumb. He said to me, ‘Go and teach this guy a lesson.’

“That night we went out and stole two cars and stashed them. One would be used in the attack when we found this kid and his buddies. The other would be left where we could get to it for use as a getaway car after the shooting. After a while we learned they hung out at a bar on Flatlands Avenue in Canarsie. Across the street from the bar was a funeral parlor. Albert Lattanzi, Anthony Gerbino, a kid named Richie, and me drove one of the stolen cars to the funeral parlor and parked in the lot. A U-Haul truck was already parked there. It turns out the guys we were looking for left the bar and all of them loaded into that U-Haul truck. The shooter who had tried to kill me was identified as being in the group. That was it. The target was acquired and we were going after them.

“We followed them until they rolled up to a stop sign. We pulled alongside the truck. Anthony was driving and Richie was in the front seat with him. Albert was in the back seat driver side and I was on the passenger side.

“Richie opened fire first with a shotgun. He shot out the front tire and the engine. The truck was stopped dead in its tracks. I fired next, throwing a couple of rounds into the back of the truck. I was far enough back that I couldn’t get a good shot at the guys in the cab. I leaned out the window as far as I could and let a couple of rounds go at them anyway. After I emptied my clip, Albert sat on the driver-side rear window sill and fired at the truck across the roof of our car. We then drove away to where we had left the getaway car.

“During the drive, Richie went into a panic. He started
whining, saying things like, ‘Andrew, what did you do? We’re gonna go away for murder.’

“I told him, ‘What the fuck did you think we came here for tonight? You threw the first shot.’ After a while he calmed down.

“We made it to the second car and drove that back to our hangout. Mike Yannotti was waiting there and we told him what went down. He then torched both of the cars we’d used to destroy any evidence.

“At that time I assumed we’d killed one or more people. And then we got word that nobody was dead. Our main target was injured, but he’d survive. It was disappointing at the time. But looking back at it now, I thank God it turned out that way.”

Following that incident, Gaspipe Casso made his displeasure with Andrew known to Nicky Corozzo. He wanted Andrew dead and expected Nicky to agree that his young crewman deserved to be executed. When the two bosses got together to discuss the matter, Nicky played his trump card.

“Mob protocol says that you can’t kill a made man without getting permission for the hit,” Andrew explains. “Up until that meeting, Gaspipe wasn’t aware that Nicky had been sitting in the car that night and a bullet had struck the windshield right in front of him. When Gaspipe said he wanted me for the torch job on the house Amuso’s nephew was at and the U-Haul thing, Nicky said, ‘You want this kid for that? Let me tell you something. I was sitting in the goddamn car the night your guy started shooting. One of the bullets hit the windshield right in front of my fuckin’ head. I was lucky not to be killed. What about that?’

“That was the end of the conversation. Nicky had made his point. And under the circumstances, Gaspipe had nowhere
else to go with his beef. That should have been the end of it. With a guy like Gaspipe, though, you always had to wonder if it would be.”