Donnie Brasco

by Joseph Pistone

  All of a sudden, on an October day, word came down from FBI Headquarters that I was to pull out, end the Donnie Brasco role. The Bureau had found out what had spooked Frank Balistrieri in Milwaukee: Balistrieri had learned that Tony Conte was an agent. By mob rules, Balistrieri’s next move should have been to tell the Bonannos in New York. It was just another quick step to them implicating me.

  The decision had been made at the top without consulting me. I had to talk them out of it. I was certain that I had laid enough groundwork to continue.

  I flew to Chicago to meet with Mike Potkonjak who had been the case agent for Project Timber. I presented my case.

  Evidently Balistrieri had not yet passed on his information to New York. We had to assume that eventually he would. Then what would happen?

  It was true that there wouldn’t necessarily be any warnings if New York got the word and they decided to ice me. But I didn’t think it would happen. It was true also that I had brought Conte in. But I had been very careful to vouch for him only to a certain extent. If Lefty questioned me, I would say, “Look, like I told you, he and I did some things ten years ago and I had no complaints. So maybe he was an agent ten years ago—so what? I didn’t know about it then, I don’t know anything more now.” Lefty would believe me. Plus, Lefty was in a box. In order to convince Balistrieri of Conte’s reliability, Lefty had told Balistrieri that he himself knew Conte, that Conte was a friend of his. And further, at the Icebreaker Banquet, Balistrieri had introduced Conte as his friend from Baltimore.

  Potkonjak was on my side. So was the guy I trusted most in the whole outfit, an old friend, Jules Bonavolonta, coordinator of the Organized Crime Program in New York. But the matter was very intense. We had to work quickly, and all by telephone. We convinced Jimmy Nelson at Headquarters, who was the supervisor on Project Timber and with whom I had worked earlier in New York.

  They went to work on the very top levels at Headquarters. Finally everybody came around. I was allowed to continue as Donnie Brasco. But there would remain a lot of concern in Washington. Every once in a while after that, people got nervous for my safety and thought I should come out. To their credit they were convinced, time after time, that I should stay under—that I could survive, that the stuff we were getting was better and better.

  I was pretty sure I was right. But from then on this circumstance was always in the back of my mind. Every time I was called in for a meeting with anybody in the family, I wondered whether it might be because Balistrieri had finally passed on his information, and my number had come up.

  My wife and daughters flew in to New Jersey to spend the Christmas holidays with relatives.

  The day of Christmas Eve is when all the mob guys go around and pay their respects to other wiseguys at all the social clubs. You have a drink with everybody you know. Lefty and I hit all the spots, including CaSa Bella and other restaurants where guys hung out.

  Christmas Eve I went to Lefty’s apartment and had dinner with him and Louise. They had a little Christmas tree on the table. Lefty and I exchanged presents-a couple of shirts for him, a couple of shirts for me.

  At about eleven o‘clock I went back to Jersey “to see my girl.”

  Christmas Day, I went back down to Little Italy to spend the day with Lefty. We cruised around again to the different spots and hung out. At about four P.M., he packed it in for the day, and I went back to Jersey to spend the rest of Christmas with my family.

  The day after Christmas, we were all back on the job, hanging out and hustling.

  Lefty had finally gotten his son Tommy cleaned up and off drugs. He had sent him to a rehabilitation center in Hawaii. Then he had gotten him a job at the Fulton Fish Market. Tommy was living with a girl and they had a child.

  I walk into 116 one afternoon and Lefty is there, steaming. He tells me that Tommy’s girlfriend called him and said that Tommy hasn’t been coming home, hasn’t been giving her money to buy food and necessities for the child. It looked like maybe Tommy was back on junk.

  Lefty was seething because Tommy wasn’t taking care of his baby.

  “Donnie, he’s supposed to meet me here so I can talk to him. He ain’t showing up. I want you to go find him. I want you to throw him a fucking beating. Then bring him back here.”

  I couldn’t beat up his kid, so I stalled for time. “What’s the problem?”

  “I just told you the fucking problem.”

  “Yeah, but, I mean, is it drugs or the broad or what?”

  “Donnie, just find him, do a number, bring him here to me.”

  Luckily Tommy walks into the bar and comes over. Lefty lights into him, reads him the riot act about taking care of the child. Tommy tries to explain something, but Lefty won’t hear it. He just wants to ream his son out.

  From the fall of 1979 through February of 1980, I gradually cultivated Lefty about King’s Court. I told him a guy I had known from Pittsburgh had come into the Tampa area as a strong-arm, then had opened up a nightclub, and he wasn’t connected with anybody, and he was getting hassled by half-ass wiseguys. There was a possibility that we could move in. Lefty was interested. He wanted me to keep looking it over. Meanwhile Rossi was introducing me to people as his New York connection.

  Finally I called Lefty and told him that I was convinced we could make a good score by becoming partners with this guy, and that now was the time to lay claim to the place before anybody else jumped in.

  “How much money can we get from this guy, Donnie?” Lefty asks me. “We gotta get at least five grand on my first trip because first I gotta get permission from Sonny to come down, and if he gives me the okay, I gotta give him twenty-five hundred, then out of the other twenty-five hundred I give you your end.”

  “Yeah, I’ll make sure.”

  But I tell Rossi, “Tony, we aren’t giving him five grand up front. Most we give him is two grand. He’ll push, but don’t worry about it.”

  Rossi and I had the same relative roles as Conte and I had had in Milwaukee. I was the mob representative, he was the local businessman-though in his role he wasn’t as “straight” as Conte. I would handle Lefty or any of the other New York wiseguys.

  In March, Lefty made his first trip down to King’s Court. Rossi and I picked him up and took him to Pappas Restaurant, a popular Greek place in Tarpon Springs.

  “Donnie,” Lefty says, “tell Tony to tell me what the situation is.”

  I ask Rossi to tell him. He tells Lefty about the club, the card games, the half-ass wiseguys around the club. He says that a guy named Jimmy East, a captain in the Lucchese family, has given him permission to operate games in the area. And that a couple of ex-New York guys named Jo-Jo Fitapelli and Jimmy Acquafredda did some jobs around the club and talked about having heavyweight contacts and were trying to get a garbagemen’s monopoly going.

  “I’m disgusted with these guys,” Rossi says. “They talk about being New York wiseguys, but they don’t come up with anything. I want to get some things going-maybe over in Orlando, too, because I got a D.A. in my pocket. But I don’t want these guys to move in on me because they can’t produce.”

  “Anybody else invested money in your club?” Lefty asks.

  “It’s all my own fucking money.”

  “You got no partners?”

  “No partners. I’m on my own.”

  “Since nobody put up any money and you got no partners,” Lefty says, “that means you and I can form a partnership. Anybody asks, you say I invested fifteen grand in this joint.”

  The rule is, once a wiseguy puts money into a club or operation, he is a partner and no other wiseguy can muscle in, because he’d be taking the earnings from another wiseguy. That’s the protection you have with a wiseguy partner, the “peace of mind” you pay for.

  We went down to King’s Court and sat at Rossi’s round table in the back. Waitresses knew never to seat anybody else at that table unless they were invited over. Behind it were French doors leading to the rear tennis courts. Rossi pointed out A
cquafredda sitting at the bar.

  Lefty says, “Tony, you go tell him that you would like him to meet a very dear friend of yours, Lefty, a wiseguy from New York City.”

  Rossi brings Acquafredda over to the table and introduces him. Supposedly he is a tough guy, but his face is flushed and he seems nervous when he sits down opposite Lefty. Acquafredda says that he knew Rusty Rastelli and some of the other guys on the crew, and that he has a Cartmen’s Association going.

  “I’m here for a few days,” Lefty says, “to visit my old friend Tony here, my partner. I just put a bundle of money into this club. Tony can tell you about that. I’ll come down here once in a while to make sure everything goes smooth. I got sixteen guys in my crew in the Miami-Lauderdale area, they’ll be keeping an eye on things too. Any problems about the club, I can be contacted in New York.”

  Acquafredda nods respectfully and returns to the bar.

  Jo-Jo is on duty at the door, which has a peephole and a buzzer for entry. Lefty tells Rossi to bring him over.

  I knew from my first visits that Jo-Jo was interested in making a move soon on the club. I could tell he was disturbed that with my connections I might interfere with his plan.

  After introductions Jo-Jo says he has a cousin in New York who has recently become a made member of the Lucchese family, and this cousin is planning to come down to the club next week to look it over.

  “Since I’m Tony’s partner,” Lefty says calmly, “there’s no reason for your cousin to come down unless it’s for a vacation. If he wants to talk about anything regarding this club here, he can contact me on Madison Street or Mulberry Street. Just ask for Lefty, everybody knows me.”

  Fitapelli nods and goes back to the door.

  “You won’t be bothered now by nobody,” Lefty says to Rossi. He turns to me. “Okay, Donnie, let’s talk about money. Tell Tony how much money is he gonna give me.”

  I start to ask Tony, but Lefty says, “No, Donnie, take him outside.”

  We go through the French doors.

  “What the hell is going on?” Rossi asks.

  “This is the way things are done.” I explain that Lefty’s thinking—like a lot of wiseguys—is that if he doesn’t hear extortion or a conspiracy being discussed, he can’t be breaking those laws. “On the money, we’re gonna go back in and I’ll tell him your answer, then he’s gonna want something else, and we’re gonna walk outside again. But we won’t give him all he wants. Stick to the two grand, no matter what he says.”

  We go back in and sit down, Rossi right across the table from Lefty. I say, “Lefty, I know I told you he was gonna give you five grand, but he only has two.”

  “I told Sonny five, Donnie. I got to split with him, and I got to spread this around when I make appointments to see people regarding this situation. Talk to him.”

  “Lefty, he says all he’s got is two. Maybe he can come up with another thousand by the time you leave.”

  “Donnie, tell Tony how much he makes a week and how much of that he’s willing to give me as his partner.”

  We go outside. Whatever we say he makes in a week, Lefty’s going to take half. We don’t want to give Lefty too much or too little. Eventually when the cases are tried in court, we don’t want it to look like we were just throwing taxpayers’ money at these wiseguys. But we have to give him enough to keep him interested. The enticement is the money. You have to show that this is an attractive deal, that the club is a big potential money-maker. If we played it right, I knew Lefty would bring Sonny Black down and we’d have a good chance of getting something going with Santo Trafficante. We stay outside enjoying ourselves long enough to have discussed this.

  Back at the table, I say, “Lefty, he takes five hundred a week, and he says he’ll give you two-fifty a week.”

  “Okay, tell him that I’ll accept two-fifty a week, which he should mail every Wednesday so I get it by Friday, plus the two thousand, plus a grand before I leave.”

  I repeat all that, the partnership is made, and the conversation becomes more normal. “You got peace of mind now,” he says to Rossi. Lefty says he will contact “the right people” to clear the way for Rossi to expand operations into Orlando and other parts of Florida. He wants to know how much the club makes on the card games.

  “We just started gambling,” Rossi says. “The last game netted two hundred and forty-seven bucks.”

  “No, no, that ain’t nothing, that there. What you do is, the game is a twenty-dollar limit with three raises, and that would bring eight hundred to a thousand bucks a night cut for the house. So we gotta get that going.”

  Lefty also wanted the club expanded outside: an Olympic-size swimming pool, four racquet-ball courts, fifteen cabanas, a lot of landscaping.

  “Get an architecture out here,” Lefty says, “to draw up the plans. Go call one up.”

  “First thing in the morning,” Rossi says, because now it’s two A.M.

  “Naw, get one now. Check the Yellow Pages, find a home phone. Tell him you’re Tony, owner of the King’s Court. He’ll know you. Tell him you’ll buy him a steak dinner and throw him a hundred dollars. He’ll come right over.”

  I say, “Left, you think there will be any problems with Santo Trafficante, with us operating here in the Tampa area?”

  “Don’t worry about it. You just concentrate on building up this business here.”

  I went back with Lefty to the room at the Best Western Tahitian Motor Lodge on Route 19. He was still moaning about not getting $5,000.

  “Left,” I say, “let’s not pressure the guy right from the beginning because we got a good thing going.”

  “Okay. But, Donnie, you gotta make sure that if Sonny ever says anything, you tell him that’s all I got, because I don’t want him thinking that I’m holding out on him.”

  “I’ll back you up.”

  He dialed a number on the room phone. “Sonny? Everything here is all right. I am satisfied with the situation here.”

  Lefty went back to New York. A week later, the day after Easter, Sonny sent him back down to dictate an official partnership agreement. The agreement, back-dated for a month to preclude any challenge from another family, stated that they were fifty-fifty partners, that the second partner had invested $15,000 in the club. They went to a notary. Rossi signed “E. Anthony Rossi.” Lefty signed “Thomas Sbano,” the name of his son.

  Lefty called a member of his crew in Miami, Johnny Spaghetti, and asked him to drive to Holiday to look the operation over. In case both Lefty and I were in New York and Rossi got into a beef with somebody, Johnny Spaghetti could shoot up from Miami and settle things.

  Johnny Spaghetti got there that afternoon. A big, rough-and-tough type, about 6’, 220 pounds, with silver hair. He used to work on the docks in New York until he hurt his back. He started getting workman’s compensation, moved to Miami, and continued to do jobs for the family. Lefty told Rossi to give Spaghetti $40 for gas expenses for the trip from Miami.

  That night we went to the Derby Lane greyhound track on the outskirts of Tampa. Rossi gave Lefty his $250 weekly salary plus his $200 cut from recent card games. Lefty lost it all to the dogs.

  At the motel coffee shop the next morning, Lefty said I should talk to Rossi about the rest of the original $5,000 he was supposed to get. “Tell him he’s gonna have peace of mind for the two thousand more. Tell him, Donnie, that if it wasn’t for you being involved and being my partner, I would have walked away from the deal when he couldn’t come up with the five grand. I need another two thousand to put this whole thing together up in New York, Donnie.”

  That night Rossi and I discussed it and decided it was worth it. Lefty had Sonny interested—what’s another $2,000 when it’s going to lead us to putting Sonny Black together with Santo Trafficante?

  13

  KING’S COURT

  We were establishing ourselves and King’s Court as part of the local underworld scene. Rossi was taking me around and letting people know that I was his New York guy.
I had to prove myself right away to both New York and Florida people so that I could have freedom to operate.

  He took me to a restaurant called Joe Pete’s River Boat. Joe Pete was an ex-New Yorker, a half-ass tough guy who bragged about his connections and his Italian food. He also ran a gambling operation.

  We sat down in the restaurant and were eating when Joe Pete came over from the bar. “Tony, how you been? Good to see you.”

  Rossi says, “Joe, like you to meet Donnie. He’s my new partner. He’s from New York.”

  “Oh, yeah?” Joe Pete says. He went into the who-do-you-know-that-I-know game.

  I had a cold, and my voice was hoarse. Rossi and I kept eating.

  Joe Pete says, “Geez, Donnie, you don’t sound too good.”

  “I don’t feel too good. Maybe it’s from your food.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I felt good until I started eating your fucking food. Now I feel like I’m gonna die from this meal.”

  He got very offended. “Why you say a thing like that?”

  “I say what I gotta say. Your fucking food, I feel like I’m gonna die from it.”

  He got up. “Maybe you might die from something else.”

  “Naw, just the food.”

  We got a reputation. Out of the local woodwork came drug deals, swag deals, connections.

  Jo-Jo Fitapelli and Jimmy Acquafredda were acquainting Rossi with means of recruiting and keeping members in the Cartmen’s Association.

  “You need a little muscle,” Acquafredda says. “If you scare somebody where you pound him and put a scar on his fucking head-you know, mentally—he’ll stay if you scare him the right way.”