Donnie Brasco

by Joseph Pistone

  Sometimes when frustrations got bad, my wife would holler at me something like, “Either get out of this job or I’m getting divorced.” She never meant it. I knew that. But the kids didn’t know that, and sometimes they overheard it.

  My youngest daughter sometimes pretended that we were divorced. Some of her friends had divorced parents. So she would play this game in her mind that she was a kid from a broken home. Somehow that made it easier for her to get along during some of the tough times, especially when they moved into a new area.

  Then when I did come home, they would resent me. My wife said to me, “I get so excited when you’re coming home, I really can’t wait. Then when you get here, I get furious. It’s bad enough you being gone for long periods of time. But then when you come home, you want to run the show again. You’re home a couple of hours and you want to become boss. You want to run the show. But I’m running it. I’m used to doing things my own way around here.”

  I couldn’t help walking into the house and wanting to be the head of the household, and she couldn’t help her resentments of that. Sometimes it would take us a couple of days to get reacclimated to each other. A lot of the times we didn’t have two days. Sometimes we had only one. Sometimes we had half a day or just a night. She clung to her own system, and I was sometimes an outsider. She found herself even resenting having me crowd her in her bed. So she bought a king-size bed to be able to sprawl like she was used to.

  As the girls were growing up, they had more outside activities. I would get home to find one or two or all of them going out. I would say, “Aren’t you going to stay home with me?”

  They would say, “You never stay home with us.” Or, “We can’t count on you being here, so we can’t make appointments around you, Dad.”

  Sometimes I would get home for a day and would have to leave the next morning before they were up. I didn’t always say when I was going. My youngest daughter cried when I got home and cried when I left.

  I had frustrations too. If I came home for a day and a night and found out there was a problem, I would have to try to straighten things out instantly—there was no time to take time. I would try to make rules. My daughters would tell me that I was like a visitor and had no right to make rules. Sometimes I just seemed to get on people’s nerves.

  Over time the girls developed the habit of going to their mother with everything they wanted to talk about. They went to her first. They told her everything. As understandable as that was, it hurt me.

  They came more and more to resent the job, and the FBI. “What you’re doing is not a job for a married man with a family,” my wife would say. “They don’t care about us. They don’t care about you.”

  My wife was in the hospital for eleven days. And then when she came home, she was nearly helpless. For a long time she couldn’t see well. She had to wear special dark glasses, and even a satin sleep mask at night, because light was agony to her eyes. There were still pieces of glass embedded under her skin. She would need plastic surgery, but first she would have to heal for a year. The cast on her arm allowed her fingers to move. But sometimes when she was holding something, like a cup or a glass, it would just suddenly drop from her hand. Things like that would bother her.

  My wife was always self-reliant, energetic, optimistic. She was athletic, always playing tennis, doing aer obics, on the go. She was always doing things for everybody else. And now, suddenly, she couldn’t do things for herself. Her spirits were down. I wouldn’t say she was depressed. In the thirty years I’ve known her I’ve never seen her depressed. But now she was down, not able to do ordinary things.

  For the first time our daughters saw her in this almost helpless state. They started getting on me harder about not being home more. I wanted to be home more. But what could I say?

  When my wife came home from the hospital, I stayed one more week. We all had a pretty good time, given the circumstances. It was the most time we had all spent together in years. We had outdoor barbecues and everything. I had fun with the girls. It was going to take a while for my wife to heal. Her eyes were still extremely sensitive to light, so she had to keep them covered most of the time. But at least we were together.

  My wife is basically a pretty understanding person. But this was a bad time. She wanted me to quit the undercover job. I could see her point of view. It had come up before: “You’re just away too much at one time. It wouldn’t be too bad if you were gone a day or two, but you’re gone three weeks at a time, then you come home for one or two days.”

  But I had come too far. By now, quitting wouldn’t involve just me. I had brought Lefty around to other operations, and the people running those operations were depending on me to keep their operations going. If I backed out now, a lot of people would be left holding the bag. Quitting was something I couldn’t do.

  She knew I was working with the mob. I gave her a few more details, some of the circumstances in Milwaukee, to try to ease the tension a little bit, to show that my being away weeks at a time couldn’t be helped. She knew of Tony Conte because she had talked with him on the phone a few times. I explained to her that if I pulled out, Lefty and the others in New York would stop working with Conte.

  I didn’t talk to anybody else about these concerns. Nobody. Because nobody else but me was going to make the decision to leave the job or stay. I didn’t feel it concerned anybody else. No matter what anybody said to me, the decision was going to be mine. I had to stay on the job.

  I was in touch with Lefty throughout this time, by telephone. I had left a California “hello phone” number where supposedly he could reach me. He left messages, I called him back.

  I told him my girlfriend was fine and that everything ought to get moving again in Milwaukee after the Fourth of July holidays.

  He was busy spreading Tony Conte’s money around and trying to arrange for a sitdown with the Milwaukee mob. Mike Sabella was entertaining people. Sabella had borrowed $200,000 for a major renovation of CaSa Bella, but the contractor had quit on him. “He’s in trouble there,” Lefty said, “that cocksucker contractor.”

  One day he said to me, “You see that David Suskind Show last night? They had two informers, you know, paid by the government. On TV. You know, guys that already cooperated, and now the government gave them a different identification and put them out there. They said they got 2,250 informers and half of them are in the San Diego and L.A. area.”

  “Wow.”

  “So these guys, some guy that’s writing a book accidentally cracked it out about them. So now they’re ratted out, and guys are looking to get rid of all these guys.”

  “Whack ‘em out, right?”

  “Yup. They don’t give a fuck, the government. So these two stool pigeons say anybody that becomes a government informer is fucking crazy. Unbelievable. How’s your girl?”

  Over a period of time I got so I could understand just about everything Lefty said. Two guys in the federal Witness Protection Program had been accidentally exposed, so now they had bared their resentments about the government’s carelessness over TV, and that the mob was looking for all these protected informants.

  “My girl’s good. Everything’s all right.”

  “Why can’t your girl come into New York or Milwaukee with you?”

  “She’s working. She don’t get vacation now.”

  “Well, you gotta get back out there and get the groundwork. And once you get that, you’re gonna stay there a long time.”

  “Yeah, I know. We gotta start making some ends out there. When are you going out there, after the Fourth?”

  “When I’m gonna get out there, I don’t know. I’m feuding with the wife now. We had a fight about she wants to go away somewhere for a vacation. I gotta go reach out for people for late this afternoon. Tonight I got an appointment. Tomorrow night I got an appointment. I got meetings in Philadelphia.”

  “Mike likes this Milwaukee deal, right?”

  “Right. No question about it. I’ll tell you something: E
verything’s green lights.”

  Lefty had been given the full go-ahead by a message from Carmine Galante in prison. While he was arranging for the sitdown, I went back to Milwaukee. For the first couple of days I didn’t tell Lefty because I wanted some time with Conte to go over things without having to account to Lefty for every minute of every day. Then Conte and I hit some more spots, trying to place machines, and again ran into a stone wall. But we were gathering evidence of the case, and by being seen by more and more people, we were establishing more credibility as guys trying to hustle a buck. We were also insuring that word got back to the Balistrieri people that we were out there pushing a vending-machine business.

  We made a visit to Pioneer Sales and Service, a vending-machine wholesaler in Menomonee Falls, to look over the various machines available. Along with Conte and me was Conte’s “employee” that he had told Lefty about. The “employee” was another undercover agent who went by the name of Steve Greca. Conte told the president of the company that he wanted to buy machines for distribution in the Milwaukee area, and that he would also be interested in purchasing any vending routes that became available. He told him that Best Vending was a serious, licensed operation, not fly-by-night, and he showed the guy the city and state licenses for the business. The president said he would be happy to cooperate with Best Vending, and he gave us a tour of the place, showing us the various machines, and handed us a mess of brochures.

  Just to give the impression that we were moving the business along, I called Lefty and told him that Conte had ordered some machines—when in fact he hadn’t.

  The mob blew up a guy in Milwaukee. Somebody put a bomb under the car of a guy named Augie Palmisano. The murder was in the newspapers, plus our people came up with some information about it. Palmisano was with the Balistrieri family, and the mob suspected he was an informant. The word was that guys were starting to put remote-controlled starters in their cars.

  The killing made Conte and me a little nervous.

  Lefty called and told Conte, “I got a meeting tonight with those people from Chicago at my man’s place. We reached out, you know. I might have to fly out there later to get a proper introduction. That’s the way they do it. We didn’t sleep on this thing. I’ve been with people every day. But everything is fine. No problems whatsoever.”

  “I’m glad to hear that,” Conte says, “because they’re playing kind of rough around here. Did Donnie tell you about they’re blowing guys up here?”

  “Forget about it,” Lefty says. “Doesn’t mean shit. They’re blowing guys up because they done something wrong.”

  “Yeah, but I wanna make sure I don’t do nothing wrong.”

  “You’re not doing nothing wrong.”

  “Okay.”

  “Let me tell you something,” Lefty says. “Once you start rolling, I’ll be there with you for the first ten days. When I get it set up and I come out to Chicago, you gotta meet the people. Understand? Once I get the proper introduction, I’ll have dinner with you and them. There’s no problem over here. We’re in like Flynn. Put Donnie on the phone.”

  I take the phone.

  “Donnie,” he says, “he didn’t sound too enthused what we’re doing here. He’s worried about people bombing out there.”

  “He’s enthused, but he’s nervous. He doesn’t know what’s going on.”

  “I don’t blame him for being nervous,” Lefty says. “But that’s got nothing to do with us. The guy might have been a stool pigeon. The guy could have been anything. Tell him not to worry about anything. And to keep near that beeper, because I might have to reach him anytime now, now things are moving.”

  “Donnie, is Tony there with you?”

  “Yeah, Lefty.”

  “Tell Tony, where’s Rockford?”

  “Rockford, Illinois?”

  “Yeah. ”

  I ask Conte where Rockford is. “He says it’s about ten miles outside of Chicago, Left. Why?”

  “Some people are making some phone calls and I got to go out there, to see people out there. They will set up an appointment for me. I gotta wait for a call. He’s gonna make a call to this place Rockford, wherever that is. He’s gonna give my name and when I’m coming out. And I gotta lay the cards on the table what I’m doing there. That’s the whole thing in a nutshell. Mike entertained six of them last week. He didn’t give me the bill. He ain’t worried about it.”

  “Everything at Mike’s went all right?”

  “Everything is perfect. The guy kissed me on both cheeks. We can do anything. I stood with them about an hour and a half, then I excused myself. Because Mike was still with them. They were bullshitting about old times. Tell Tony to keep near the beeper.”

  A guy had a pizza joint next door to Lefty’s social club. Lefty decided he didn’t like him anymore, so he beat him up and threw him off the street. The guy was an ordinary citizen, and he now wanted $2,000 cash for damages. Lefty said if he didn’t come up with the money, the guy would press charges and Lefty could face six months in the can. Mike Sabella thought Lefty should take over the joint and make it his own pizza parlor. Also, Lefty was still getting muscled over the jam his son got into when he tried to rob a guy for diamonds and the guy turned out to be connected. They were leaning on him for $3,500 more.

  So, while pushing the matter of the sitdown on Milwaukee, Lefty was poor-mouthing as always.

  “Some people wanna meet me tomorrow at Newark Airport,” Lefty told Conte over the phone, never giving Conte as much information as he would give me, his partner. “Here’s the situation now. You see, we’re broke. I have no goddamn money. You understand? Now I got to entertain these people. I ain’t even got a car to get out there tomorrow. And then I gotta come out there where you are by plane. You gotta get me a reservation. Now, I gotta see if I can scheme tomorrow morning for some bread someplace and a car to get there. And when I do come out where you are, you gotta meet me and we’ll go see these people out there, because they’re gonna have to know you better than they know me. Because you’re representing me. Understand?”

  “Yeah.”

  “But the question is, I got exactly twenty-three bucks in my pocket. How the fuck do I get out there tomorrow?”

  “Maybe we could do a car-rental deal,” Conte said, stringing him out.

  “This guy tomorrow is giving us names. Bosses. They’re the main guys, you know. They’re looking to help our situation over there. One hand washes the other. I gotta entertain this guy all day. The guy is eighty-one years old. He’s a heavyweight. The guy owns hotels out there at Newark Airport. How do I entertain these people all day with twenty-three bucks?”

  “Well, I’ll have to send you some bread,” Conte says finally.

  “Yeah, but I’m embarrassed because Donnie says you don’t feel too enthused about all this here, how we’re breaking our ass over here.”

  “Hey, I never said I wasn’t enthused. Certainly I’m enthused.” “

  “Let me tell you something. That’s why I got mad at Donnie. Guy’s a jerk-off. Says you weren’t enthused. I says, ‘Don’t you think he’s gonna meet these people?’ Because when you see these people, forget about it. And you’re gonna sit down with these people with me.”

  “I don’t want nothing to happen to me,” Conte says. “I do what you tell me, right?”

  “Right. There’s no problem. Where is Donnie now?”

  “He’s out.”

  “I don’t understand this frigging guy. He’s out. See, the question is, if Donnie wasn’t gonna do nothing out there with you, he shoulda been in with me. Now he could run around with me. But here I’m stranded by myself.” “

  “I’ll send you a grand in the morning, Western Union.”

  “Make it as early as possible. And tell that guy Donnie not to do nothing but stay by you. I will definitely have to come right out there after I see these people tomorrow. You’re gonna sit down with these people and me. We’re gonna entertain them people, you and I and Donnie. Take them t
o dinner. We’ll get everything straight. And everything that you listen to, you know from the ground floor in. Everything that’s going on. And we got no problem. You stay by that beep. The first beep you get from New York, I’ll tell you what plane I’m taking and everything.”

  The man he was to meet at a motel near Newark Airport was Tony Riela, an aging Bonanno captain with contacts to Chicago. It was Riela that had kissed him on both cheeks at CaSa Bella. The understanding was, Riela would make the calls to Chicago to set up a meeting. The Chicago people would call people in Rockford. And those people would make the introductions to Balistrieri in Milwaukee.

  Lefty had a successful meeting in Newark. The day after, he called to announce that he was coming to Milwaukee for the sitdown. It was now July 24. More than a month had gone by so far in arranging for the meet. He gave Conte the flight information and told him to write it all down. “Get me that same room in that same Best Western, right? Them people come from right in that town. I’ll explain everything when I see you. Where’s Donnie?”

  Conte hands me the phone.

  “He wrote everything down?” Lefty says.

  “Yeah, he got it all.”

  “Listen to me carefully.”

  “I’m listening.”

  “Don’t let it go any further.”

  “Okay.”

  “I got me a sitdown with the two main guys in that town where you are now. I can’t get no names until I get out there. When I get there, I gotta make a phone call back into New York at six o‘clock, tell them where I am, what room number. They call the Chicago guy. He’s gonna come and pick me up. They’re gonna take me away. They’re gonna talk to me. And they’re gonna check this guy out completely.”