by Joe Pistone
Maybe if we hadn’t been such close friends he’d have let me risk it.
And make no mistake, while a Mafia war did not ensue following the May 5th shootings of the three capos, the Sonny Black crew was anticipating a shooting war and we were all armed. The three murdered capos had their own crews who were loyal to them. This amounted to a small army that had been under them, some of whom were relatives, like Bruno. Vendetta is a word of Italian origin which seemed to be in play at this time. In contrast, following the Galante hit, no one went around armed; there was no talk of retaliation.
Over a month after the three capos hit, on June 20, 1981, there was a wedding in Staten Island involving the daughter of Sonny Black’s crewmember and made man Boobie Cerasani. We all were loaded with arms at that wedding reception. I had my .25. It was a wedding, but that didn’t stop it from being a gathering where wholesale vengeance could be carried out. In fact, capo Big Joey Massino was too afraid to attend. He told his good friend Sonny he thought it might be a trap and none of his crew showed up, thereby disrespecting both Boobie and Sonny. Big Joey risked certain ridicule and opted for caution. Lefty referred to Big Joey as a “jerk-off ” for not coming to the wedding.
For his own purposes later on after I surfaced, Big Joey claimed he didn’t attend Boobie’s daughter’s wedding because he didn’t trust me. He knew better than to be fooled by me. But we know what he told Sonny at the time and it had nothing to do with me. Analyzing it, if he thought the wedding could be a trap, then Big Joey considered the possibility that Sonny might be behind the trap, making a clean sweep. Paranoia reigned everywhere.
The next thing I heard from Lefty about Big Joey was even more paranoiac. Lefty told me, “Sonny and Joey are feuding because Sonny’s got more power. So Joey got an unlisted telephone number now. He ain’t talking to anybody because of this feud with Sonny.”
So the danger that Jules Bonavolonta put on one side of the balance sheet was potentially a realistic danger when he made his decision.
On the other hand, the FBI is a paramilitary organization. Anyone who joins an army voluntarily does so with the certain knowledge that death is a real and present danger. On the streets of America, every few days or so, a cop is shot and killed. Even with the advances in emergency medical care and even with the extra precautions cops have learned to take since crime escalated in the sixties—precautions such as body armor—cops get shot protecting us and they die from their wounds in the line of duty. So do FBI agents. I volunteered for that risk when I joined in the summer of 1969 and was no less ready to accept that risk in the summer of 1981.
Some supervisors at Headquarters were less concerned about my safety and more afraid I would push the envelope and whack somebody and tarnish the Bureau’s image. The Mafia soldiers on the other side of this crime war, like cops, also signed up knowing that death was a risk for them.
As for the Bureau’s image, Hall of Fame second baseman Joe Morgan once said something to the effect of, “Show me a batter who cares what he looks like at the plate and I’ll show you a batter you can get out.” Getting good wood on the ball should be a batter’s only concern. The Bureau’s only concern should have been public safety, to get as many murderers and heroin merchants of death and suffering off the street as quickly as possible.
Some supervisors at Headquarters had gained prominence in the Bureau under J. Edgar Hoover. It was a well-established principle under Hoover before he died in 1972 that undercover operations were forbidden because of the danger that undercover work could potentially corrupt the undercover agent. To gather intelligence on the Mafia, Hoover opted for black-bag operations instead. These were illegal bugs and wiretaps. They were illegal in the sense that whatever facts were gleaned from the taps and bugs were unusable in court. They were illegal in the further sense that to plant a bug an agent often had to secretly break and enter into private premises without a warrant. But in a broader sense the valuable intelligence that was gained could be used out in the field to thwart criminal activity and to build cases with other legally admissible evidence. Lives were actually saved by the bugging when the targets of a hit were forewarned and scooped up off the streets.
Kicking and screaming, some of these old Hooverites had to change their minds and go along with undercover operations a few years after I joined the FBI in 1969.Two years before I joined the FBI, President Lyndon Johnson’s brand new Attorney General (and one of Saddam Hussein’s current lawyers, Ramsey Clark) ordered the shutting down of black-bag operations such as those under the direction of the legendary FBI Agent Bill Roemer. Roemer’s various bugs and taps were yielding great results against the Chicago Mafia during the years Bobby Kennedy was in charge of the Justice Department. Roemer always felt that LBJ closed down these black-bag operations because LBJ was afraid a bug had uncovered evidence of corruption against one of LBJ’s political allies.
One of these old Hooverite supervisors at Headquarters had gone so far in my case as to express his belief at a meeting concerning me that I had become corrupt and gone over to the other side. “Nobody’s that good that he can go native,” this supervisor actually said to Jules Bonavolonta. All these years later that comment still brings out the fight in me.
The ultimate devastation to the Mafia resulting from the Donnie Brasco operation—devastation that has been twenty-five years in the making—could have taken a mere couple of years if I had been allowed to stay in just six more months.
During my last year under I was told repeatedly that I would be made. Sonny Black told me around Christmastime in 1980 over dinner at Crisci’s, a restaurant in walking distance from the Motion Lounge. Sonny told me that if I kept my “nose clean and didn’t take a drug bust” I would be made the next time “the books were opened up” to allow the making of new members.
The only time I was involved with drug deals was when Sonny and Lefty were also involved, so that didn’t concern me. It was just a matter of time and a matter of the books opening up. Sonny apologized for not making me right then at Christmas, but he had only one opening and Boobie Cerasani had been with him longer and had earned the right to that spot on the basis of Boobie’s seniority. The clear implication was that I, a man who had been with Sonny Black a mere year and a half, was on the fast track to being made on the basis of my production and the projects for earning money that I came up with, such as the then blossoming King’s Court gambling operation in Florida.
Meanwhile, Lefty was schooling me in the way of the wiseguy for that golden moment when I would be made. He even described the quasi-religious ceremony to me. He told me I had to dress up in a suit and tie. There would be three or four capos there and a couple of other associates there to get their button. My capo would give me the important formal introductions to the other capos. Then we’d go in another room, one at a time. In addition to the ritual and the oaths, they would question me. Lefty told me, “If they ask you what you would do if your wife or your mother was in a hospital bed dying and you were called in for a meeting, your answer has to be that you would leave that hospital and come in for a meeting without even asking what the meeting was for or nothing. You just would come. No questions asked, no matter how close to dying your mother was or your wife.”
Imagine if I had been made. It would have been the biggest humiliation the Mafia had ever suffered. And it was the one chance the FBI would ever have to pull it off. There is no chance another undercover agent will ever reach that stage again. After I surfaced, the Mafia immediately changed the rules to require that two members vouch for the prospect, and one of those members has to have known the prospect for ten to fifteen years. Especially in today’s politically correct climate where public safety often takes a back seat to some principle or other, there is no way an undercover agent could do the dirty work it takes to spend ten to fifteen years inside a crew. Especially in terms of intelligence gathering, there is a world of difference between sting operations—where agents go under for a defined period for a specified purpo
se—and going deep.
Imagine the embarrassment for the Mafia from coast to coast and all the way to Sicily when the news got out that the exalted Bonanno crime family had made an agent. This organization depends on the sanctity of its rules and traditions to attract new members and to frighten their victims and the public. How susceptible would they have appeared? How low would their soldiers’ morale have sunk? Don’t forget, this ceremony of theirs, as dumb as it may sound to outsiders, means the world to them. You expose this ceremony as vulnerable and you hurt them where they live. Making an agent would have had the opposite effect on them that the morale-boosting movie, The Godfather, had on wiseguys like John Gotti. I say movie and not book because we’re not talking about readers when we talk about these people. There was a no-questions-asked killer they actually started calling Luca Brasi after Don Corleone’s loyal enforcer in The Godfather.
What a purge there would have been! The ruling Commission of La Cosa Nostra would have had every capo in the room at my ceremony whacked.
Around the time Sonny Black gave me the contract to hit Bruno Indelicato, we went up to his pigeon coops on the roof of the building above the Motion Lounge. “Donnie,” Sonny said, “I’m going to put you up for membership to get made when the Old Man gets out.” By his telling me that in those words, I knew that Sonny had already put me up and cleared it with the Old Man, Rusty Rastelli, who was due to get out that December, 1980. That’s how they do it. Before they tell you that you are going to be made or get anything from on high, they get pre-approval. Sonny would not have put himself on the line like that without already knowing that our boss approved me, at least. I had no history with the other bosses that would stand in my way. I was approved by a boss I had never met and that would be good enough. I was approved on my resume and Sonny’s say so, a capo who had developed more and more credibility in Rastelli’s eyes as a result of the projects I had set up for him. I was approved by a boss with a twinkle in his little dead eyes behind bars.
As if reading my thoughts, Sonny added, “You’re going to get made, Donnie. You’re already up. There won’t be a problem. I would have put you up last time, but I had to put Boobie up.”
There was a rule that to be made you had to go out on a hit, at least as a witness. Both Sonny and Lefty were under the impression that I had killed people before, people who had cheated me on a score. Lefty explained that a hit was different. It was the killing of someone who had never done anything to you. It was the killing of someone who may or may not have deserved to die, but you had no choice. You whacked the guy because you were given the order to do so, or you got whacked yourself.
But both Sonny and Lefty made it clear that capos sometimes lied by omission on that issue to get a guy made. For example, close friends or relatives were proposed without ever having “done any work.” The boss doesn’t ask the capo about a particular hit the proposed Mafia associate has been on. The boss assumes the capo knows the rules and when the capo proposes someone that associate has already “made his bones.” It was well known that one dummy, Joey “The Mook” D’Amico, was made because his mother, Tony Mirra’s sister, paid off a capo.
Sonny Black had been trying to steer a hit my way. Like Lefty, Sonny also told me that he had wanted me to be in on the May 5th hit on the three capos, but that Big Joey Massino had vetoed it because Big Joey didn’t know me. It was clear now, up on the roof with the pigeons, that whether or not I found and whacked Bruno, Sonny Black had already lied by omission to get me pre-approved by Rusty.
There it was. I was in. That was June and December was just around the corner. I swelled with pride the way one of Sonny’s pigeons would puff up his chest and prance around the coop. Holy shit, I thought, how this is going to wreck the Mafia forever.
Sonny’s news did take me by surprise a little in that nobody had hinted that the books were about to be opened up. Plus it looked like it was a time of war. I just thanked Sonny and assured him of my loyalty.
Wait till I tell Jules this one, I thought. During this phase I was being kept under a week at a time. I had to plead my case to stay under on a weekly basis. My ace in the hole had been an upcoming meeting in Florida at the end of July between Sonny and Santo Trafficante that I had to attend and that would put more nails in both men’s coffins. I had convinced Jules that I could manage to stay alive and not get whacked until that meeting. But that ace in the hole was a deuce compared to this news. It never occurred to me that the Bureau wouldn’t take advantage of this unprecedented opportunity and keep me under at least until I was made.
My man Jules and I already had had some hellacious fights over the phone about my coming out, but they got nuclear after that conversation with Sonny. Sonny’s news didn’t faze Jules at all. My supervisor and friend didn’t budge. He believed the operation had to end.
And I wasn’t alone in wanting to keep me under a while longer. We had a meeting at a motel in Washington attended by the heads of field offices from around the country who had set up stings through my personal help in the form of all-important introductions as a Bonanno gangster. They did not want their operations to fold prematurely before they had completed their missions. In some cases, money and time had been invested and there would be no arrests to show for it if I came out then.
Not to beat a dead horse, but as a made man I would have had access to discussions that were out of my league as a mere connected associate. Whenever I was introduced to a made man, the wiseguy doing the introduction would say, “Donnie’s a friend of mine.” That was a signal that I wasn’t made and to watch what was said in front of me.
If a made man was with us he would be introduced in a different way: “Lefty’s a friend of ours.” As a friend of “ours” Lefty could stay, but I would have to go to another table.
When you plant a spy you want him to have access to information. Otherwise, what’s the point? As a mere connected guy I could not mingle with made men from other families unless someone like Sonny called ahead of time or unless I was formally introduced and had a made man with me. If I had been a made man I would have had the freedom to go wherever I wanted and hang out with Gambino men under John Gotti; Genovese men under Fat Tony Salerno; Colombo men in Brooklyn under Carmine Persico; and Lucchese men under Tony Ducks Corallo.
I would also have had the freedom to hang out with other crews in the Bonanno family, like eventual boss Big Joey Massino’s crew at J & S Cake. In between scores, these crewmembers have almost nothing else to do but play cards and talk about crew business, gossip, brag, and bullshit. The intelligence alone that I would have harvested from such access as an equal would have been fantastic. We still don’t know how much we don’t know about the Mafia despite the flood of turncoats of the past decade. These turncoats play it very close to the vest. They still consider ratting a sin, and they only tell as little as they can get away with telling to get their own charges dropped.
Intelligence gathering was a huge part of what I did undercover. For example, for years the Bureau saw an influx of made Sicilians coming over and being absorbed into the Bonanno family, primarily, but also into the Gambino family. And for years no one fully understood why these Zips were coming over. The intelligence I gathered from just being talked to by Lefty revealed that these Zips were in America to facilitate the smuggling of heroin and cocaine hidden in imported cheese, pasta, or other shipments from the Sicilian Mafia. Some of the narcotics went into Montreal, where the Bonanno family had a crew of Zips under the Sicilian capo Nick Rizzuto. Most of the narcotics were smuggled into New York by the Zips who lived on Knickerbocker Ave., the same Brooklyn street where Galante was whacked at Joe and Mary’s restaurant. The Knickerbocker Ave. Zips were under their own Zip capo, Toto Catalano, a baker by trade. If I got that much from Lefty as a connected guy, as a made man I’d have heard deeper secrets, and gotten details—who, what, when, where, how—that had been off limits to me.
Nothing for nothing, but after all these years my last day as Donnie Brasco st
ill stings a little. You keep a guy under six years, long hours day after day living with gangsters on their round-the-clock schedules, hurting his family life and depriving his family of their man around the house, their father, destroying his hobbies and his social life with friends of his own choosing, risking his life, risking going to jail himself, and when he’s one rung away from totally devastating the Mafia you yank him off the ladder.
I wouldn’t have just been made, which would have been plenty good enough for an enormous payoff. I would have been made by the acting street boss of the family, with all the added prestige that that would have brought under their own rules.
I spent that last day undercover in Florida at the Tahitian Court Motor Lodge. Santo Trafficante’s driver drove the boss up there for that final meeting to discuss arrangements for King’s Court. Under their ways of doing business I had to be present for that meeting to take place because I had introduced the other undercover agent involved in King’s Court. Introductions are another important ritualistic part of the Mafia. They take their introductions very seriously and there are serious consequences for bringing the wrong guy around to be introduced. Even though I was needed at the meeting because I had started the ball rolling on the alliance between the families, because I wasn’t made I had to excuse myself and wait outside while they talked. Other agents had placed a bug in Sonny’s room, but once again the old fox Santo had the TV turned up real loud so our bug picked up nothing but daytime television.
When their meeting was over Trafficante drove back to Tampa. I drove Sonny Black to the airport for his flight to New York. On the drive Sonny was ecstatic with how the meeting with Trafficante had gone.
