Read Online The Good Rat by Jimmy Breslin - Free Book Online Page B

allowed to do anything he wanted. He stopped in a no-parking space because he felt like ice cream from a Carvel stand. He was also there to meet a guy selling stolen corporate checks.
    Instead Hydell, Bering, and Guido pulled up. While appearing to park legitimately, they scraped the driver’s side of the car being driven by Gaspipe, whose gangster instinct sent him crawling across the seat and scrambling like a crab out the passenger door.
    Guido had a near-perfect shot at Casso. He had a nine-millimeter semiautomatic weapon and could have hit the man twenty times. But the gun was clogged. Why not? These people live busy lives and don’t have time to be cleaning guns.
    Hydell, sitting in the backseat, then broke out his shotgun, which he fired five times.
    Casso remembered for police, “I just finished parking the car. I just shut the engine off. When I seen the car pulling up very close like, too close to my car, and then I turned around, and then I seen the flash of the gunfire.”
    Casso was hit in the shoulder and neck. He fled the car and ran into the Golden Ox restaurant. He was on therestaurant’s kitchen floor with his back against a freezer, bleeding.
    The car carrying Bering, Hydell, and Guido rushed away, but an off-duty police officer caught the license plate.
    Other lawyers and prosecutors from around the courthouse have come to hear Burt Kaplan tell the story. The jury is breathless.
Q: After the shooting of Casso, did you have a conversation with Vic Amuso about it?
A: Yes.
Q: And, again, who was Vic Amuso at that time?
A: He was a capo in the Lucchese crime family.
Q: Okay. What did Amuso say to you about the shooting or after the shooting?
A: He came to my house. I had relatives from Ohio over my house, we were all sitting on the porch, and he called me down. And I went to speak to him, and he said, We’ve got a problem. He said, They tried to kill our friend. I said, Who? What? He said, They tried to kill Gas. I said, What happened? He said, They started to shoot him in the car, and he’s in the hospital, and I want you to go to the hospital and find out what’s going on.
I said, Vic, I’m on parole. If I go to the hospital and talk to him, I’m going to get violated. And he said, You’re right. I didn’t think about it. He says, I’ll handle it, and he left.
Q: Okay. Do you know what police precinct Casso was shot in?
A: Six-Three.
Q: And do you know whether Mr. Eppolito had worked in that precinct at all?
A: Yes, at that time he worked in the Six-Three.
    In the investigation file, Detective Caracappa found the license-plate number of the car containing the thugs who tried killing Casso. He used that to put together a packet of information on the shooters. Shortly after, Burt Kaplan received a visit from his old prison buddy Frank Santora, who brought a present.
A: He comes and meets me with a manila envelope with a bunch of papers from a crime-scene investigation and some—a couple of pictures, and I opened it and I looked in it, and there was a picture of Jimmy Hydell. Then I read the crime-scene reports, and it named who the participants were, what kind of car they were driving, what license-plate number, where they lived. It was very, very helpful, very efficient, and I said to Frankie, This is terrific, Frankie, what do we owe you? And he said, This is a gift from my cousin and his partner. This is just to show you the kind of things that they would do. They wouldn’t take no money, because this was someone looking to hurt you, andthey wouldn’t take money under those circumstances. We’re not that kind of people.
Q: So after you got this packet of information, Mr. Kaplan, what did you do with it?
A: I made an arrangement to meet Casso.
Q: When you wanted to meet with Casso, how would you typically contact him?
A: I would—now that I was on parole, I would send Tommy Galpine, kid who worked for me, to his house to make an appointment. I made an arrangement to meet Gas at a social club