Surviving the Mob by Dennis Griffin Page B

life immediately prior to the shooting. That accomplished, Andrew can tell his side of the story, explaining what happened that day and in the days that followed.
    “At that time my relationship with Dina was strained. We weren’t living together. She was staying with her mother and I’d started dating another girl. Had she not been carrying my child, we probably wouldn’t have been in contact at all. But Dina said she wanted me to be at the hospital when the baby was born and asked me to attend Lamaze classes with her. She also told me she needed a car to get to the classes and doctor appointments. So I gave her a substantial amount of cash to buy a car. She said she had an uncle who ran a car lot and she’d get something from him. A day or two later, she came to the horse room on Stillwell Avenue drivinga green Tnunderbird. She said she’d purchased the car from her uncle.
    “That night, I went to her place to go to the Lamaze class. My new girlfriend was using my car, so we took the Thunderbird. On the way, the cops pulled us over for a traffic violation. They ran the plate and checked the insurance card and found everything had expired three years earlier. I asked her how her uncle could have let her drive out of his dealership with no insurance and expired plates. She gave me a story that I bought, but it turned out to be a lie.
    “After the class we went back to her mother’s and I spent the night. The next morning we went outside and as we approached the car, I saw this guy there changing the windshield wipers. I’d never seen him before and had no idea who he was. He was about ten years older than me and looked like a weight lifter. He wasn’t that tall, but he was stocky—around two hundred forty pounds or so. I thought maybe he worked for Dina’s uncle and he’d been sent over to put on the new blades.
    “I didn’t know it at the time, but I learned later that as I was getting close to the car, Dina was walking behind me gesturing to this guy to get out of there. When we got to the Thunderbird she said, ‘Andrew, this is Ralph.’ Ralph didn’t say hello or offer to shake hands. He just turned around and walked away.
    “I asked Dina who in the hell he was. Did he work for her uncle? Now the tears and the truth came. She told me that Ralph was the guy she bought the car from, not her uncle. She’d been afraid to tell me that.
    “I asked her how much she paid for it. She said she hadn’t actually given him any money yet. He was letting her use the car for a while. The more I heard, the less I liked the arrangement. The lies had me pissed off. And I knew deals like that usually come with strings attached.
    “Dina drove me back to my house and I called my buddySammy [Karkis]. I told him I had a situation that was buggin’ me. I wouldn’t get my own car back until later and asked him to drive me around to look for this Ralph guy, so I could get to the bottom of what was really going on. Sammy picked me up and we drove back over toward Dina’s. As we drove down East Second Street, there was Ralph, walking down the block.
    “I got out of the car, walked up to him, and told him we had to talk. I said we had to get the car business straightened out. Dina didn’t need favors from anybody. If he wanted to sell the car, we’d buy it. That’s the way it had to be.
    “Ralph had a bad attitude right from the start. He said that was a matter between him and Dina and he wasn’t going to talk with me about it.
    “I said, ‘You’re telling me that what goes on between you and Dina is none of my fuckin’ business? I’ll tell you somethin’ right now. If you want trouble, you’ve got the right guy. This is your lucky day.’
    “Ralph wasn’t impressed. He said, ‘I don’t give a shit who you got in that car or who in the fuck you think you are. I’ll give you a beatin’ and him too.’
    “Now I was really pissed off. This motherfucker thinks he’s going to tell me that what he does with the