Donnie Brasco

by Joseph Pistone

  I sat down alone in a room with the guy, whose name was Marshall. We had to get a sense of each other, decide whether we could trust each other enough to risk our lives together. He was massive, maybe 6’1”, 250, with reddish hair, a thick red beard, and huge hands. He wore overalls. He was a truck mechanic who could steal anything. I told him I didn’t know how to steal cars and trucks. “No problem,” he said. “I can teach you that in a minute.” We talked about our attitudes, experiences, families. I felt comfortable with him. He felt comfortable with me. He said that prior to meeting me he had the impression that agents were guys with wing-tip shoes and pin-striped suits who didn’t know anything about the street. But I was different. “You seem like you could handle yourself okay,” he said, “and come off as a thief. I can work you in.”

  For this operation I needed a name. I didn’t give it much thought. For some reason a name had stuck in my head from an old movie or book or something: Donald Brasco. That’s who I became. The Bureau furnished me with a driver’s license and credit cards under the name. The plan wasn’t conceived originally as being long-term undercover. But it ended up extending over about six months.

  Marshall gave me a rundown. The head of the ring was a guy named Becker. A lot of the thieves who scouted locations and actually hooked the stuff were young guys, nineteen or twenty years old. Heavy equipment was usually stolen from construction sites. Cars were stolen right off the new-car lots. Customers were construction companies and businessmen. In the case of the luxury cars, customers were just people with enough money.

  Marshall had to deliver a stolen Ford XLT pickup to a couple of guys in Lakeland, Florida, who were supplying trucks to outfits working the phosphate mines. That was the first thing I would go along on.

  We were about to leave when the agents in charge of the case said they wanted to wire me up. They wanted me to wear a Nagra tape recorder. I wasn’t in favor of it because it was so hot and muggy that you couldn’t even wear a windbreaker. I had on a Banlon shirt and Levi’s. “How the hell am I going to conceal a Nagra?” I asked. “We’ll tape it to your back,” they said.

  This was my first outing, and I didn’t want to seem like a prima donna, so I agreed to it. They taped the recorder, which is four by six inches, three-quarters of an inch thick, to the small of my back. In the mirror I looked like I had a growth under my shirt.

  Marshall said he would introduce me to the other thieves as a guy he met through a guy named Bobby, who had been killed in an automobile accident. He told me enough about Bobby to get by. Since Bobby was dead, nobody could question him.

  We drove the pickup to the storage garage where we were to meet the customers. We got out and met the guys. They walked around the truck, looking it over. I had to keep moving so that I was always facing them and nobody got behind me, because I had this hump on my back. The customer, Rice, was talking about how many trucks he can sell to the guys in the phosphate mines, and how much other equipment he can use, and he kept moving around, so I kept moving around to keep my back from his view.

  The price we put on this truck was $1,500. In 1975, it was worth probably $4,000. Finally Rice decided that this particular truck didn’t have enough extras to suit him, so we would have to hook him another one.

  When I got back to the Holiday Inn where Marshall and I were staying, I called the agents. “That’s the last time I’m wearing a goddamn wire,” I said. “I felt like a hunchback.”

  As it turned out, the machine malfunctioned and the tape didn’t come out, anyway.

  In a couple of days we were supposed to meet the ringleader, Becker, in Panama City, Florida, out on the panhandle on the Gulf. We stayed at a motel in Lakeland, east of Tampa. Marshall spent the weekend teaching me the business. He taught me how to get into a vehicle using a tool called a “slim jim” that you slide down between the outer door panel and the glass to hook the locking bar. He taught me how to take out a dashboard in five minutes to get at the vehicle identification number. The VIN was stamped in metal and riveted. We would pop the rivets and replace the metal with plastic tape stamped with a new number. He taught me how to “hot-wire” ignitions and how to punch out the ignition barrel on the steering column by using a “slide hammer.” Once the ignition is popped out, you’ve bypassed the ignition lock and can start the engine. You replace the ignition the next day with a part from an auto-parts store. He taught me how to disconnect steering-wheel locks from under the car. It was a real school.

  We went to Panama City to meet Becker. He was a rough, ruddy, fast-talking ex-convict and con artist. He bragged about having friends in the mob, in motorcycle gangs, on the docks.

  He pumped me on how long I had known the late Bobby and on what I did. I said I hadn’t known Bobby all that long, but we did a few jobs together and so on. I didn’t try to pass myself off as a longtime car thief because I still didn’t know all that much about it. I said I was mainly a burglar and that lately I had spent most of my time in California and Florida.

  He bought it because Marshall was there to vouch for me.

  I also asserted myself. I told Becker that some of the gang may have more technical knowledge than I do about hooking cars and trucks, but I knew about planning, organization, security. So if I was going to go out with these young punks, I was going to have a say in how the operation proceeded. I said I wasn’t going to be just a $100-a-night car thief; I wanted to be in on the business end of it too.

  I had to take a leadership attitude, because I had to keep these guys in check when we went out on jobs. While we were getting evidence I had to steer the thing away from violence. So I told Becker that Marshall and I had to call the shots.

  He said okay, he would pass that on to the younger guys.

  Becker told me about orders he had lined up, specific models, colors, extras. We were selling everything at a price around one quarter to one half of retail value. For Lincolns and Caddies loaded up with extras and worth maybe $12,000, he was getting $2,500. White Freightliner truck-tractors were bringing $10,000 to $15,000. Pickups were bringing $1,500 to $2,000, dump trucks $4,000.

  The payoffs we got went to the FBI. Marshall received a monthly fee as an informant. He couldn’t keep anything from these jobs.

  Becker wanted us to hook a White Freightliner. He had spotted one in a lot just outside Panama City and had a customer in Miami willing to pay $15,000 for it. The next day Marshall and I went to case the lot. We parked across the street at a liquor store. We wanted to see where the truck was, whether it was being moved, and to time the operation.

  We’re sitting there twenty minutes when a sheriff’s car pulls in and the officer comes over to us. He says the liquor-store owner has become suspicious and wants to know why we’re sitting there.

  “Just making up our minds what to buy, Officer,” I say. “Now we know.” We go into the liquor store and buy some beer.

  That night, before we went back to hook the tractor, Marshall gave me the rundown on it. I was going to hook it myself, to see if I could do it. From memory he described the wiring and what I had to do. The White tractor was a snub-nosed job, complete with a sleeper compartment and air-conditioning, the cab up over the engine. Everything I had to do could be done from inside the cab.

  We went to the lot and cased it for a while to check when the sheriffs patrols went by and how much time there was between them. Marshall stayed outside as the spotter. I went into the lot. It took me five minutes to get in, start the engine, and drive the tractor out.

  I drove it the first leg, three hundred miles to Lakeland, where we would sleep a few hours during the day before heading on to Miami. We parked it in the parking lot at our motel. While we were sleeping, our agents went over the Freightliner, getting all the numbers and data from it for records.

  The next day we drove the tractor to Miami and met with Becker and the customer. The customer was supposed to resell it to a contractor for road building in Europe. But the customer had changed his mind and didn’t want it.<
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  Becker had to go back to Baltimore. He told us: “You guys stash this thing somewhere around here until I can find another buyer.”

  Where were we going to stash a White Freightliner in Miami? I told our guys about it. The guys from the State Highway Patrol said we could stash it at the Department of Transportation yard, outside of Miami. I wasn’t too hot on that, putting our stolen truck in a government yard. But they said it was a big yard with several barns and it would be well hidden.

  So that’s where we put it, for the time being.

  Most of the car and truck lots had no special security, just lights and a chain across the entrances. Usually we had maybe fifteen minutes or a half hour between police patrols. If everything went smoothly, we could hook a car in five minutes.

  When we went out on a job, I was on my own. There was no surveillance by the FBI or the Highway Patrol. On an undercover operation like this you don’t want either the badguys you’re working with or any law-enforcement agency to spot a surveillance. Cops aren’t clued in about what’s going on. The fewer people who know about it, the better.

  I carried no FBI identification. I didn’t want to risk getting caught with it. There was no official policy about carrying ID. Some guys carried credentials undercover. My feeling was, carrying ID was just another thing to worry about. You get stopped by cops, you talk your way out of it. Or you take the bust—that’s no big deal. If you got into a jam, I felt that one of the most important things was not to tell any law-enforcement officer what was going on. You take the bust and let the people running the operation decide what they want to do. Law-enforcement credentials are part of what you have to leave behind you when you’re working undercover.

  Hooking the stuff was easy, but when I went out to do a job, the adrenaline really flowed. Even though this was a sanctioned operation, I was out there by myself, without surveillance or protection. When you’re stealing cars with hardened thieves, ex-cons, guys who may or may not be packing guns, you don’t know what’s going to happen, and a lot of things are going through your mind.

  You want to get the evidence for the case. You’re keeping an eye on the subjects to make sure they’re not deviating from the plan and heading for something disastrous. You’re worrying about getting caught.

  If these guys get caught, how are they going to react? Are they going to try to fight their way out of it? If a cop comes across three or four guys stealing cars, what’s his reaction? If one of the guys makes a move, will the cop start shooting?

  If we’re all busted together, what position does that put me in? How do I protect the operation? How do I protect Marshall? How do I protect myself?

  All this stuff, all these angles, are going through your mind when you’re out pulling or casing a job. And we were stealing five to ten pieces a week.

  We had an order for three Cadillacs. We found what we wanted near Leesburg, Florida, in the middle of the state, two on one lot and one on another. That night I went in with two other young guys and got the Caddies. We headed for Lakeland, to our hotel. Marshall drove the tail car. Naturally we were in a hurry. These cars have new-car stickers on the windows, and we wouldn’t have the fake registrations until the next day.

  We’re spread out along the highway, booming along. All of a sudden flashing red lights show in my mirror, and I get pulled over by the Florida Highway Patrol. In these early days I carried a 9-mm automatic, which I had stashed under the seat.

  So I get out of the car right away and ask the officer what the problem is.

  “You were going over the speed limit, sir,” he says.

  I have a Donald Brasco driver’s license, but no registration for the car, and a gun under the seat, so I figure I better be right up front with him, defuse any interest he may have in looking in the car. While I take out my license and hand it to him, I say, “You know what, Officer, you’re probably right. I’m transporting the car from a dealer in Leesburg to a dealer in Lakeland, have to get there so they can clean it up and have it ready on the lot by first thing in the morning.” I give him the name of a dealer in Lakeland. Since it’s about three A.M., I know there’s no risk of him calling the dealer to check. “So I don’t even have the papers with me.”

  He is a real nice guy. “Okay,” he says, handing me back my license. “But take it easy, because the next guy may not be so understanding.”

  I never carried a gun in this operation after that.

  Every time we got an order, I called in to the contact agent and told him what we were looking for. Then later I called to tell him we’d found it. After we hooked the vehicle I’d call as soon as I could and give a description of what we hooked, where we took it from, everything about the job, so the Bureau could keep a record, then, later on, after the operation, could work with the insurance companies and dealers in getting the vehicles back.

  Becker had finally located a buyer for the White Freightliner that we had stashed near Miami. These guys were dopers. They moved stuff between Florida and California, hiding cocaine and marijuana among boxes of vegetables and fruits in refrigerated trucks.

  Marshall and I were staying at our usual place, the Holiday Inn in Lakeland. Becker said his customers would be calling us.

  They called and told us to leave the hotel and check into another one. We did that. We waited for two days, and finally these guys came to our room. Two guys, rough and dirty, long hair, in their mid-twenties, both with gun bulges under their belts.

  They said they had made the deal with Becker to take the truck for $10,000.

  “Bullshit,” I say. “The price is fifteen grand.”

  “We made the deal with him,” one guy says, “and you guys were just supposed to deliver the truck.”

  “We’re going to deliver it and make the exchange,” I say, “but I’m not just working for this guy; we’re partners. He can’t make a ten-grand deal on his own when we had all decided on fifteen. That means I would lose more than a grand of my cut on this deal.”

  “That’s your tough luck, pal, because we made the deal and that’s all we’re paying.”

  I’m hassling these guys because the original price that I knew of was $15,000, and as a thief you don’t just accept somebody’s word that the price was changed. Plus, if I accepted their word without checking with Becker, it might make him suspicious. If I was such a hotshot, why would I accept a deal different from our original price from guys I didn’t know?

  If the deal had been changed, Becker should have let me know. But maybe he didn’t let me know on purpose; maybe he wanted to see how I’d handle it.

  Marshall went into the other room and called him. Becker affirmed the deal. We had had the truck too long, it was too hot, and we needed to get rid of it.

  “Okay,” I tell these guys. “But anything else you want like this is gonna cost you fifteen grand.”

  “We’ll worry about that when the time comes,” the one guy says.

  “We won’t worry about it at all,” I say.

  We made arrangements to meet at noon the next day near Miami, at an exit off the Sunshine Parkway.

  The next morning Marshall and I drove to Miami and went to the Department of Transportation yard and got the Freightliner.

  We meet the guys at the highway exit. “Before I give you the keys,” I say, “I want the money.”

  “Sure,” he says. He puts a soggy, grimy, stinking brown paper bag in my hands.

  “What the hell is this?” I say.

  “That’s the money,” the guy says. “What we do with our cash money is, we bury it.”

  Becker got a contract to hook two Caddies down in Miami. He had this dealership staked out, had found two cars fitting the order. Marshall and I went back there with him about an hour before closing time and parked across the street at a Burger King. We hung around waiting for the dealer to close, checking how often the sheriffs patrols went by.

  When the place closed, we saw that they had a guard wandering around the lot. We hadn’t known ab
out the guard. Now we had to plan to deal with him.

  Becker wanted to go around to the back of this big lot and make noise to draw the guard off back there while the other two of us would hook the cars and go out the front. I didn’t like that because of the chance for violence with the guard. I started trying to talk him out of it, saying it was too risky.

  A sheriff’s car pulled into the Burger King lot and parked near us. Two cops on their coffee break.

  We’re leaning against our car. Suddenly Becker puts his arm around my shoulders in a chummy way. He nods toward the patrol car. “Don’t worry about cops. I been in this business a long time,” he says, “and I can smell cops, even plainclothes guys. The easiest to spot, though, are the FBI agents.”

  “Oh, yeah?” I say. “Why is that? I never met any FBI agents.”

  “The way they dress, talk, act. I can smell them miles away.”

  I am thinking: Why is he suddenly talking about FBI agents? Is he testing my reaction? Is he suspicious because I’m trying to talk him out of hooking the two cars across the street? He’s never been chummy with me before. I put my arm around his shoulders. “How’s your nose now?” I say. “You smell anything?”

  “No, nothing more than those two cops in the car.”

  I was able to talk him out of that job because of the guard. He decided we’d go back up north to hook cars. He had to go back to Baltimore. He sent Marshall and me up to the area around Orlando to scout.

  We found two satisfactory Caddies again. Marshall brought along two of the younger guys. Marshall was the spotter outside the lot; the other two guys and I cut the chain and went in.

  The sheriff’s patrol car comes by. Apparently he notices the chain down over the entrance, because he turns into the lot and starts flashing his spotlight around.