Donnie Brasco

by Joseph Pistone

  We created some references for Donald Brasco. We set up a couple of “hello phones,” just numbers people could call to check my references. One was my place of employment. I was a manager of Ace Trucking Company. The other was the building manager at my residence. I was the building manager. The only people who answered those phones were my supervisor or my case agent—or sometimes myself.

  I leased a car that fit my role, a yellow 1976 Cadillac Coup de Ville with Florida tags.

  Ordinarily I never wear any jewelry, and I don’t care about sharp clothes. For this job I had to dress up a little, some rings and chains and sport clothes. In our budget that was a onetime expense of $750.

  I went into a branch of Chase Manhattan Bank in midtown to open a checking account. I filled out the forms. There was a space for prior banking, and I left it blank. The officer looked over my application.

  “Where did you do your prior banking?” he asked.

  “Why you asking me that?” I said.

  “Because we have to verify your signature,” he said.

  “I don’t have any prior banking account.”

  “Well, that’s what we require for you to open an account.”

  It was a quick glimpse into society when you’re not playing by ordinary rules. Here I was, looking presentable in new sport clothes, carrying $1,000 in cash for deposit in a new account, and I couldn’t open an account because I didn’t have any banking history. I wasn’t prepared for that. But I didn’t want to get into any argument, because I was caught off-guard by this guy.

  So I said, “Thank you very much,” got up, and left.

  There was a branch of Chemical Bank across the street. I decided to try there. But first I thought over what my answer would be if a bank officer there hit me with the same problem.

  I walked in and filled out the forms. The guy asked, “Where did you do any prior banking during the last two years?”

  “I haven’t done any banking during the last two years,” I said.

  “Then I’m afraid we can’t open an account for you,” he said.

  “You’re discriminating against me,” I said.

  “What do you mean by that?” he said. I wasn’t black or female or any of the other things usually associated with discrimination, and he gave me a strange look. “That’s our rule,” he said, “for everybody.”

  I said, “I just got out of jail. I did six years in the can. Now I’m out and trying to be a good citizen. I’ve paid my debt to society, I got a decent job, I want to open up a bank account and be a decent citizen. I’ve got a thousand dollars with me, and all I want is a checking account. And you’re refusing me an account because I haven’t done any banking lately. I’d like to have your name and position here, because I’m gonna go downtown to City Hall and put in a complaint to the civil-rights authorities that I’m being discriminated against.”

  Suddenly he looked intimidated—I think more because he was probably sitting across from an ex-con for the first time in his life than because of potential discrimination problems.

  He said, “Well, there are some instances where we can make allowances. I think we can help you out.”

  So I had a checking account. Now I needed an apartment.

  I wasn’t fussy about where or how I lived, except for two things: I didn’t want to be right in the heart of my target areas, and I wanted the apartment to be in a relatively big building—both of these things for the sake of anonymity. I needed a place where I could come and go without attracting attention.

  I scoured the papers and looked for a week. Then I found just what I wanted.

  I took a one-bedroom apartment—21—G—in Yorkville Towers at Ninety-first Street and Third Avenue, just a few blocks uptown from the most chic blocks of the city’s Upper East Side.

  I liked the location and the fact that it had an underground parking garage, and it was not too expensive for what you got—$491.60 per month. It had a big lobby, twenty-four-hour doorman security, and a valet service for deliveries.

  I rented furniture for $90.30 per month. I bought sheets, towels, a shower curtain. From my real home I brought in pots and pans and stocked the cupboards.

  I told my wife not to call me at the apartment unless it was an emergency. There was a possibility that badguys might be in the apartment when she called, or that my phone might be tapped by badguys. I didn’t tell her that. I told her I would be using the same name as before—Donald Brasco—and that I would call her and get home as often as possible. I didn’t tell her that I might get involved with the Mafia. Maybe I was being selfish, but to me that was the job.

  I was ready to hit the street as Don Brasco, jewel thief and burglar.

  4

  HITTING THE STREET

  We had a list of places where wiseguy-type fences were known to hang out. This was going to be a seven-day-a-week job, going around to these bars and restaurants and clubs. The target places were not necessarily “mob” joints. Sometimes they were—night spots and restaurants owned in whole or in part by the mob. More often they were just places where wiseguys and their associates liked to hang out.

  I would cruise these places, mostly in midtown or lower Manhattan, have a drink or dinner, not talking much or making any moves, just showing my face so people would get used to seeing me. Places like the Rainbow Room in the RCA Building in Rockefeller Center, Separate Tables on Third Avenue, Vesuvio Restaurant on Forty-eighth Street in the heart of the theater district, Cecil’s Discotheque on Fifty-fourth Street, the Applause Restaurant on Lexington Avenue.

  We didn’t concentrate on places in Little Italy because I would have been too obvious. You don’t just start hanging out in places there without knowing anybody. You’re either a tourist or some kind of trouble. I didn’t try to introduce myself to anybody or get into any conversations for a while. Mob guys or fences I recognized were mixed in with ordinary customers, what wiseguys call “citizens,” people not connected with the mob. After I had been to a place a few times, I might say hello to the bartender if he had begun to recognize me. The important thing was just to be seen and not to push anything; just get noticed, get established that I wasn’t just a one-shot visitor.

  I didn’t flash around a lot of money because that tags you either as a cop or a mark. A mark is somebody that looks ripe for getting conned out of his money. And a cop typically might flash money when he was looking to make a buy of something illegal, like tempting somebody to offer swag—stolen goods—in order to make a bust. No street guy is going to throw money all over the place unless he’s trying to attract attention. Then the question is: Why is he trying to attract attention? I didn’t want to attract that kind of attention. So to do it right, you don’t go in and start spending a lot of money or showing off stuff or trying to make conversation, because you don’t know them and they don’t know you.

  You take a job like this in very small, careful steps—not just to avoid suspicion but also to leave behind you a clean, credible trail. You never know what part of what you do will become part of your history when people want to check on you. You want to establish right away, everywhere you go, that you don’t have a big mouth, and that you don’t have too big a nose about other people’s business. You have to be patient, because you never know where anything will lead. Basically I wanted to keep my own personality, which was low-key. I felt that the time would come in conversation with somebody what my game was.

  One of the first places I frequented was Carmello‘s, a pleasant restaurant at 1638 York Avenue, near Eighty-sixth Street and the East River. It wasn’t far from my new apartment, and I wanted a place where I could stop in for a late dinner or drink near where I lived. This wasn’t one of the primary places we had targeted, but we knew that some wiseguy types hung out there. Our information was that the restaurant was owned by Joey and Carmine Zito, who were members of the Genovese crime family, headed by Fat Tony Salerno.

  For weeks I roamed around and hung out at these places. Time dragged. I rarely dr
ink alcohol. I don’t smoke. Before I came on the job as an FBI agent, I once had a job as a bartender, and it was one of my least favorite things, hanging out in a bar all night watching people drink and listening to drinkers talk. During these weeks, in the evening at a bar, I might start off with a Scotch, then I’d switch to club soda for the rest of the night.

  Occasionally I saw somebody we had targeted. I recognized them from the pictures I had been shown in preparation. But I never got an opportunity to get into conversation with them. It isn’t wise to say to the bartender, “Who is that over there? Isn’t that so-and-so?” I wanted to get to be known as a guy who didn’t ask too many questions, didn’t appear to be too curious. With the guys we were after, it was tough to break in. A wrong move—even if you’re just on the fringes of things—will turn them off. While I was having a couple of drinks or dinner, I was always interested in what was going on in the place. I was always observing, listening, remembering, while still trying to put across the impression that I was oblivious to who was in there.

  All through October and November I hung out, watching, listening, not advancing beyond that. It was boring a lot of the time but not discouraging. I knew it would take time. It is a delicate matter, maneuvering your way in. You don’t just step into an operation like this and start dealing. Associates of wiseguys don’t deal with people they don’t know or who somebody else doesn’t vouch for. So for the first two or three months I had to lay the initial groundwork that would lead to being known and having somebody vouch for me.

  All this time—in fact, for the entire six years of the overall operation—I never made notes of what I was doing. I didn’t know if at any time I was going to be braced—somebody might check me out, cops or crooks, so I never had anything incriminating in my apartment or on my person. Every couple of days or so, depending on the significance, I would phone my contact agent to fill him on what was going on, who I had seen where, doing what.

  One thing that went on at Carmello’s was backgammon. Men played backgammon at the bar. I noticed that a lot of local neighborhood guys would hang out in there, come for dinner, then sit at the bar and play backgammon. And some of the wiseguys that were hanging around would get involved. They played for high stakes—as high as $1,000 a game. That looked like a good way for me to get in, get an introduction, get some conversation going with the regulars. But I didn’t know how to play backgammon. I bought a book and studied up. Another agent whose undercover name was Chuck was a good backgammon player. Chuck had an operation going in the music business. He was a friend of mine. He would come over to my apartment, or I’d go over to his, and he’d teach me backgammon. We played and played, in order for me to get comfortable.

  Finally, when I thought I was good enough, I decided to challenge for a game at the bar.

  It was near Christmastime, so there was a kind of festive mood in the place, and that seemed like a good time for a newcomer to edge in. On this night there were two boards going at the bar. I watched for a while to see which board had the weaker players. The way you got into the game was to challenge the winner, and that’s the board I challenged the winner on.

  The stakes for the first game were $100. That made me nervous because I didn’t have a lot of money to spend. I won that first game, lost the next, and ended up the evening about breaking even.

  But the important thing was that it broke the ice. I got introduced around as “Don” for the first time. And now I could sit down and talk to people. We could sit around and talk about the games going on.

  After a couple weeks I retreated from the backgammon games. The money was getting a little steep. I played two games for $500 each, lost one then won one. My expense account then was maybe $200 to $300 a week for everything, and I couldn’t go over that without going into an explanation for the accountants at the Bureau. It wasn’t worth it, just to play backgammon with some half-ass wiseguys.

  Anyway, by then I had accomplished what I had learned backgammon for. I had gotten to know some people, at least enough to be acknowledged when I came in: “Hey, Don, how’s it going?”

  So I wasn’t a strange face any longer. I also got pretty friendly with the bartender, Marty. Marty wasn’t a mob guy, but he was a pretty good knock-around guy who knew what was going on. I got to bullshitting with Marty pretty good near the end of December 1976, and early January of 1977. Conversation rolled around gradually, and he asked me if I lived around there, since I was in there so much. I told him, yeah, I lived up at Ninety-first and Third.

  “You from around here?” he asked me.

  “I spent some years in this area,” I told him. “Lately I been spending a lot of time in Miami and out in California. I just came in from Miami a couple months ago.”

  “What do you do?” he asked me.

  That kind of question you don’t answer directly. “Oh, you know, not doing anything right now, you know, hanging out, looking around ...” You bob and weave a little with the guy. I said, “Basically I do anything where I can make a fast buck.”

  He had a girlfriend that used to come in at closing, then they’d go out bouncing after work, around the city. A couple times he asked me if I wanted to go, and I backed off, said no thanks. I didn’t want him to think I was anxious to make friends.

  Still, I didn’t want him or anybody else in there to think I didn’t have anything going for me. So once in a while I’d bring a female in—somebody that I’d met in another bar across the street from my apartment or something—just for a couple drinks or dinner. And sometimes my agent friend, Chuck, would come in with me for a drink. You can’t go in all the time by yourself, because they think you’re either a fag or a cop. And it’s good to vary your company so they don’t see you with the same people all the time and wonder what’s up. The idea is to blend in, not present yourself in any way at all that makes anybody around you uncomfortable.

  Marty’s girlfriend had a girlfriend named Patricia, a good-looking blonde who was going out with one of the wiseguys that hung out there, a bookie named Nicky. A couple times she came in when I was in there and Nicky wasn‘t, and she’d sit down for some small talk with me. At first it was just casual conversation. Then I figured she was coming on to me a little, and I had to be very careful, as an outsider, not to overstep my bounds. The worst thing I could do is appear to be coming on to a wiseguy’s girlfriend, because there are real firm rules against that. If I made that kind of mistake I would have shot my whole couple months of work to get in there.

  One night this Patricia asked me if I wanted to have dinner with her. “Nicky’s not gonna be around,” she said. “We could take off and find someplace nice.”

  “Thanks,” I said, “but I don’t think so. Not tonight.”

  Then I grabbed Marty the bartender off to the side. “Hey, Marty,” I said, “I want you to know that I’m keeping my distance from Patricia because I know that she’s Nicky’s girlfriend. But I don’t want to insult anybody, either.”

  Marty said, “I know, I’ve been watching how you handle yourself.”

  So I established another small building block in my character: The bartender knew that I knew what the rules were with wiseguys. Most guys who hadn’t been around the streets or around wiseguys might have jumped at an invitation from a girl like that—figuring that, after all, if she makes the play, it must be all right. But with wiseguys there’s a strict code that you don’t mess. I mean, strict.

  A week or so later Marty came over to me. “Hey, Don, I just want to tell you that Patricia and Nicky broke up, so if you want to ask her out for a drink or something, feel free.”

  I said, “Thanks, but I’m not really out hawking it, you know?”

  He said, “After work tonight we’re going to the Rainbow Room. Come on with us, and bring her.”

  The four of us went to the Rainbow Room and had a good time. I went out bouncing with him a few times more after that, and that got me in pretty solid in that place.

  He started introducing me to the
other guys that hung out in Carmello‘s, including some of the half-ass wiseguys. I never did anything with them, didn’t get involved with them, but at least they acknowledged me when I came in, and I began to have a “home base” where people knew me, in case anybody started checking.

  It was also a place where I could leave messages and where messages would be taken for me. I would tell Marty, If a guy calls here looking for me, tell him I’ll be in here at such-and-such a time. Sometimes I would call and ask for myself, and Marty would take the message and give it to me when I came in. So I established that I had some friends around, people I was involved with.

  The important thing here in the beginning was not so much to get hooked up with anybody in particular and get action going right away. The important thing was to have a hangout, a good backup, for credibility. When I went other places, I could say, “I been hanging out at that place for four or five months.” And they could check it out. The guys that had been hanging around in this place would say, “Yeah, Don Brasco has been coming in here for quite a while, and he seems all right, never tried to pull anything on us.” That’s the way you build up who you are, little by little, never moving too fast, never taking too big a bite at one time. There are occasions where you suddenly have to take a big step or a big chance. Those come later.

  Finally it was time for me to make my move with Marty the bartender. Typically, what an undercover cop will do, in a buy-bust situation, is try to buy something from you. Cops always buy, never sell. I was going to sell. So I brought in some pieces of jewelry. A couple of diamond rings, a couple of loose stones, and a couple of men’s and ladies’ wristwatches.