Pulled the gold caps off his teeth too.
Somebody owed and somebody came to collect.
You have to dig through the stories to find this: “Left behind by the bandits was Early’s stolen bridgework bling, found sitting in the middle of Maurice Ave. in Maspeth near a spent shell casing.”
So they didn’t really take the gold ‘grillz’ with them.
Now, whether he, or the club, was the primary target will probably be swept under the carpet, but the firebombing suggests that he was just collateral damage.