He had some Enigma perfume for me, $250 a case, which contained fifteen boxes. “This stuff retails for forty dollars a box,” he said. I bought a case.
I told him I had made a score, and had fifty to sixty watches and a good haul of fine turquoise jewelry. I showed Vinnie two sample wristwatches—gold Pateau Mitsu Boshi Boeki digitals, which were fairly new at the time, with red faces, worth maybe $80 apiece—and he bought them for $20 each. “I’ll show these to Jilly in Brooklyn,” he said, “and see how many more he wants.”
Most of the “swag” I sold was stuff confiscated by the Bureau, loot recovered from previous thefts but which could not be traced back to the owners. These watches and jewelry were not from the Bureau. I had wanted the stuff in a hurry to make this deal, so I had bought them at a wholesale place on Canal Street. I worked it this way a few times. It meant there was no paperwork, nobody would know where the stuff was going. Like some other things I did, it might have left me open to internal criticism, but I had to make the decisions about my own security and pace. And nothing I did was a shortcut that would damage a case.
Vinnie said that he and his partner were about to make a score on a load of Faded Glory jeans, for which a buyer had already agreed to pay $125,000. “The load is a hundred and twenty-five thousand pairs,” he said, “so it comes out to a buck a pair.”
Three weeks later he called and said he wanted fifteen more watches, which I sold him for $300, and some of the turquoise jewelry. I sold him necklaces and bracelets for $150.
I said, “Did you get that load of jeans?”
“Part of it. The guy who took it, he made a couple other deals. So we only got part. You know how it is.”
These small deals helped me get accepted by the crew at Jilly’s store and by the people they associated with. One of the first things Jilly himself offered me was a white sable coat, part of the haul they had taken in a burglary the night before. “It’s worth eleven grand,” Jilly told me. “You can have it for twenty-five hundred bucks if you want it.”
I passed on that, told Jilly I didn’t think I could move it.
There wasn’t any sense in buying anything expensive that I couldn’t identify, couldn’t eventually trace back to the owner. If you can’t trace an item back to the owner, you can’t prove anything in court. Jilly didn’t tell me where he got the coat, and you don’t ask somebody where they got something like that. Unless he had, say, seven or eight of them—a really big score. Then you might say, “Hey, where’d you make a score like that?”
At that point the only reason I had for buying the stuff was to establish credibility, as I’d done with the perfume. But I didn’t need to spend $2,500 for credibility.
The crew was either talking about, or bringing in, loads every day. Price isn’t always negotiable. Even if a potential buyer feels that the price is too high, that doesn’t mean the sellers will drop the price. The high price probably means that they have to give somebody else an end of it: Whoever they got it from wants x amount of money, so for these sellers to make anything they have to put a few bucks on top of that, and they can’t really drop the price. No deal is ever really dead, it just keeps being shopped around.
Tommy the Chief was a fat hood, probably in his fifties. He brought in a case of crushed salted almonds, the kind used in making ice cream. He told Jilly he had fifty-eight more cases in his cellar, stolen from Breyer’s Ice Cream in Long Island City. He had a list of other stuff he said he could get—cocoa, dried milk, and so on, from Breyers. “We got it set up with one of their guys that works as a roaster inside,” Tommy said. “And we also got the security guard who will be on duty when we go in next week. The haul will be worth a hundred G’s.”
Jilly decided to go for it, to rent three twenty-two-foot trucks to haul the stuff away, and a garage to store the swag in over the weekend, until it was moved to the buyer. They brought one truckload of cocoa to the club. They just parked the truck right on the street, and I helped unload it. In that neighborhood, who’s going to say anything about what goes on at the Acerg store? Two days later the load was sold to some guy in Yonkers.
One night Guido took a crew to burglarize a warehouse. They were going to heist four thousand three-piece men’s suits. They had some kid with them to be the outside man, the lookout. While they were inside, somebody tripped a silent alarm. The owner arrived at the warehouse. The outside man panicked and took off without notifying anybody inside. The crew heard the owner coming in and managed to sneak out the back.
When Guido was telling Jilly this the following day, I wondered what the punishment might be on the kid. The crew boss had a wide range of options. Punishment depended on who the boss was and what kind of mood he was in. If Jilly was really ticked off, they might do a bad number on the guy.
Jilly decided they would go back in the next night. As for the lookout, all he said was, “I don’t want that cocksucker with you when you go back in. He can’t come around no more.”
They went back into the warehouse. They didn’t get all four thousand suits. They got about half of them.
I was always on the lookout for an opening to get to the bigger fences, the guys Jilly’s crew was selling to. But whenever I’d suggest that I might be able to use a couple of contacts, they’d say something like, “Give it to us, we’ll bring it to the guy. Don’t worry about it.” And if I said I might have some big score coming, their reaction would be, “Hey, you got a big load, we can get rid of it for you.” They weren’t about to give up their fences.
There was no acceptable reason for me to push to meet the bigger fences, except by coming up with bigger swag to sell.
I wasn’t spending all my time in Brooklyn. I kept poking around in other directions. While bouncing around the Manhattan night spots with the Colombo guys, I met Anthony Mirra. I was introduced to him in a disco then named Igor‘s, which later became Cecil’s, on Fifty-fourth Street.
I knew who Tony Mirra was. He was a member of the Bonanno crime family. He had done about eighteen years in the can for narcotics and other convictions, and he had only gotten out a year or so earlier. I knew that he was involved in anything and everything illegal to make money—gambling, drugs, extortion, and muscle of the type that leads to “business partnerships.” I knew that he was a contract man, with maybe twenty-five hits under his belt. He was mean, feared, and well connected, a good guy for me to know.
I started hanging out with Mirra while I was still running with the Brooklyn guys. Through Mirra I met a good thief. I needed some more potent swag to bring to Jilly’s crew. This thief had a haul of industrial diamonds. I decided to take a shot with these diamonds. I asked the thief if I could take a few samples on consignment to see if I could “middle” them—be the middle man for selling them off. He agreed and gave me ten diamonds.
Selling stolen property like this would not have been sanctioned by the Bureau. I didn’t want to argue with anybody about it. I decided it was worth the chance.
The diamonds I had were worth about $75,000 on the street. I didn’t really want to sell them to Jilly’s crew, I just wanted to show them what I could do. I decided on a price that would be higher than a good street price—to discourage the sale—but not so high that it would look like something was wrong or I didn’t know what I was doing.
I brought the pouch of diamonds into the store and showed them to Jilly and the guys.
“I hit a cargo cage out at the airport,” I said. “I got a guy inside. I give him a cut. I got a buyer already, down on Canal Street. But if you could sell them, I’ll give you the shot. All I want is a hundred grand out of the deal—seventy—five thousand for me and twenty-five thousand for my inside man.”
“That’s kind of high,” Jilly said, “a hundred grand.”
That price would force them to ask for $150,000 to $200,000 in reselling them.
“Hey, what can I tell you?” I said. “My inside guy that set it up wants twenty-five grand. The guy on Canal Street is willing to give me a hu
ndred grand. I’m giving you a shot because I’m with you guys. I need seventy-five grand. So if you could sell them for more than a hundred, anything over that is yours.”
Jilly said to give him a couple days to check with a guy who was out of town. I did. He checked with the guy and said to me, “He’s willing to go for seventy-five.”
“I can’t do it, Jill. I would only get fifty thousand out of the deal, and it’s not worth it. I’ll just off ‘em to the guy down on Canal Street.”
“Yeah,” he said.
Jilly understood, which was just what I wanted. I had made some moves, got some stones—no cop is going to come up with $200,000 of diamonds to sell—showed them that I knew what I was talking about. If Jilly had come back with an offer of, say, $125,000, I couldn’t have backed out of the deal. I would have had to keep my word and sell them to him. That was the chance I took.
It gave me a jump up in credibility, up from the ground floor.
When I first met Jilly, he wasn’t made. Nobody in that crew was. He told me he had grown up in Brooklyn, had been stealing all his life. His dream was to get made, become a true member of the Colombo family.
One morning in early May, I arrived at the club to see Jilly all dressed up—pin-striped suit, dark tie, the works. You don’t usually hang out in a suit and tie. He looked excited, strutting around. He also looked nervous.
He was just leaving when I came in. “Jill,” I said, “where you going dressed like that?”
“I gotta go somewhere,” he said. “I’ll tell you about it later, when I get back.”
He left, and I turned to Vinnie. “What the fuck’s going on?”
“He’s getting his badge today,” Vinnie said. “He gets made.”
We waited all day for Jilly. When he came back, he was ecstatic, as proud as a peacock. “Getting made is the greatest thing that could ever happen to me,” he said. “I been looking forward to this day ever since I was a kid. Maybe someday you’ll know how it feels. This is the fucking ultimate!”
“Hey, congratulations!” I said. “Who you gonna be with?”
“Charlie Moose.”
Charlie Moose was going to be his captain. “Charlie Moose” Panarella was well-known to law-enforcement people. He was a mean guy, an enforcer. He was a high-ranking captain, and Jilly would now be a soldier in Charlie Moose’s crew, and Jilly couldn’t have been prouder.
That night we all partied together for his celebration. But now everybody treated him with more respect. He was a made guy now.
To become a made guy, to a street crook who is Italian, is a satisfaction beyond measure. A made guy has protection and respect. You have to be Italian, and be proposed for membership in the Mafia family, voted on unanimously by bosses and captains, and inducted in a secret ceremony. Then you are a made guy, “straightened out,” a wiseguy. No one, no organization, no other Mafia family can encroach on the turf of a made guy without permission. He can’t be touched. A Mafia family protects its members and its businesses. Your primary loyalty is to your Mafia family. You are elevated to a status above the outside world of “citizens.” You are like royalty. In ethnic neighborhoods like Jilly‘s, nobody has more respect than a made guy. A made guy may not be liked, may even be hated, but he is always respected. He has the full authority and power of his Mafia family behind him.
One Friday, Jilly was keyed up over a big score he was setting up for the weekend. He had a man inside a trucking company who was going to give him the keys to three trailers loaded with furs and leather jackets. That same inside guy was going to deactivate the Babco alarm systems in the trucks.
Monday morning, Jilly was pissed off with everybody. On Sunday night they had gone into the truck yard. They had opened two of the trailers. When they opened the third, the alarm went off. The whole crew panicked and took off from the scene without grabbing a single item.
It drives the guys crazy to miss a score like that when they were so close, just because somebody fucked up. It also makes them look bad. Jilly had had to get permission to take those loads. On a big score like that, when you’re a low-echelon made guy, a soldier, you have to get permission to make sure you’re not stepping on anybody else’s toes—and also to put the higher-ups on notice that some money will be coming in.
For permission Jilly had gone to his captain, Charlie Moose.
Your captain gets a piece of the action on whatever you do. So you go to him and tell him you’re going to pull a big job. If you don’t tell him ahead of time and he finds out about it, or you tell him after the fact, the captain might start thinking, They got more out of this job than they’re telling me, and that’s why they didn’t ask me up front.
Because that’s what happens all the time. It’s all a big bullshit game. You go to your captain and tell him you’re going to pull off a job worth a hundred grand. Usually the split is half with your captain. So right off the bat you have to give him fifty percent. The captain in turn has to kick in, say, ten percent upstairs, to the boss.
Captains are greedy, just like everybody else. And each captain sets the rules for his crews. He can set any rules he wants. So maybe a captain says, “I want sixty percent, instead of fifty.” Because what he will do is keep fifty and give the other ten percent to the boss. Instead of taking it out of his end, he’s taking it out of yours. Some captains demand that each one of their guys give them a certain amount of money per week, say $200, like a rent payment. That insures they get some money. Plus a percentage of the action.
And that’s because everybody’s playing this same bullshit game, trying to keep as much as they can, pass along as little as they can get away with, regardless of what the rules say. They always fudge. They figure they’re out doing the job, who wants to give up half of what they get to somebody that’s not even there?
So you never told anybody the whole story with money. If you made $100,000 on a score, you might tell your captain you came out with $80,000. That was the standard. It goes that way right up the line. That’s why nobody totally trusts anybody.
Later on, when my position became a connected guy, I had to split whatever I supposedly made on scores with the soldier I was under. He kicked in to his captain. That shows the captain two things: that the soldier is out earning; and that he’s loyal in kicking into the treasury. Same thing with the captains; they keep in good favor by throwing a piece of the action to the boss and the underboss.
Simply put: When you’re operating within the mob, for every score you do, you know that you’re going to split it with somebody at one point or another; you’re going to give some of your earnings up. Everybody plays the game of holding something back. Just so you don’t get caught.
Now, the thing is, it’s a dangerous game, because if you get caught, you’re liable to get whacked—killed. Holding out money from partners, captains, and bosses is, in a business strictly based on greed, a serious offense. If you did get caught, the questions are: How much did you skim and who did you keep it from? Some captains or bosses would have you whacked for withholding $5,000. The thing to remember is, no amount of money is insignificant to these guys. You might get whacked for $200—if it wasn’t your first time skimming, or if other guys needed to be shown a lesson, or if your captain or boss just felt like having you whacked.
So the practice of skimming, from your own family, was common, and so was the result of getting whacked. It would be nothing to have these guys whacked, the guys in Jilly’s crew. They weren’t even heavyweights, just underlings.
So in this case, Jilly and the failed score on the loads of leathers and furs, he had gotten permission from Charlie Moose to take the load, and then he had to go back to Charlie Moose and tell him that the score fell through. Nobody likes to be in a position of having to give his captain such news because, first of all, Charlie Moose would be very disappointed to hear that the money he counted on will not be forthcoming; and second, it would be obvious to Charlie Moose that this crew of Jilly’s fucked up like nitwits.
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br /> That was why Jilly was pissed off that particular morning.
Charlie Moose squeezed his crews. That was a subject of common complaint among Jilly’s crew. They’d bitch and moan about Charlie Moose. They’d complain that they couldn’t do anything without his say-so and that he was taking too big a cut of every score. They were all agreed that they’d short him every chance they got.
“What that lousy son of a bitch does,” Guido told me one day at the store, “is whenever anybody in the crew makes a score, you have to take all the money into him, and then he divides it up. He don’t trust us, then we don’t trust him. Fuck him. We pull in a hundred grand, we tell him we got seventy-five. How the fuck’s he gonna know the difference?”
Jilly said, “You better shut up with that stuff. You’ll get us all killed talking like that.”
One way Charlie might know the difference was if somebody there was a snitch, a rat. But that was unlikely. The mentality of these guys is: Once a snitch, always a snitch. So if a snitch rats out these guys to Charlie Moose, even though it might be to the captain’s benefit, Charlie is thinking, “These are the guys he’s with all the time, his own crew, and if he’s willing to rat them out, how do I know that if he gets caught in a box sometime, he’s not gonna snitch to the cops?”
So a snitch would be running at least as much risk as the guy he was ratting on. Nothing is hated more in the mob than a snitch.
While I was not getting to the big fences, I was getting a lot of information. Every few days, or when there was anything significant to report, I passed on the information to my contact agent. Occasionally, when they had pulled a particularly big job, we were tempted to have them busted from the outside. The contact agent and I talked it over. But we couldn’t do that. Since I was the new guy on the block with this Colombo crew, if any busts did go down, the finger would point at me. I’d be the guy that was the snitch. I was caught in the middle. Like everything else I was involved in at this stage, we couldn’t make any busts that might compromise me as a snitch. So a lot of my information just went into the files for later. And later—years later in some cases, because of my continued involvement—the Bureau busted people for some of these scores, or we turned the information over to local police departments for action.
Donnie Brasco Page 8
