Donnie Brasco

by Joseph Pistone

  Rossi said he didn’t think scare tactics would work with some of the area garbage collectors.

  Acquafredda persisted. “And you get an outlaw truck and send it out to compete with nonmembers. And if you have a member that you don’t like, kick him out of the association, go after him, and run him out of the business.”

  Lefty called from New York. He said that Sonny was very happy with how things were going with King’s Court. He loved the architectural plans for enlargement. He was so happy with the prospects that he was coming down to see it for himself on April 6.

  Meeting Sonny Black was going to be a big test for me, more of a challenge than Balistrieri had been in Milwaukee. I was better-known now, considered more experienced and responsible, with fewer excuses for making mistakes. My scam got bigger and better all the time, I had more to protect, and I had to keep my confidence up to match it. Sonny was a very important captain in New York. He had a reputation for being unusually tough and savvy, even for a Mafia capo.

  Lefty had vouched for me, and surely Sonny had checked me out with guys on Mulberry Street. Still, he would have to buy me face-to-face. If I didn’t convince Sonny Black that I was who I said I was, if I didn’t give him the right impression, if I gave him any doubts at all, the whole case would come to a halt. If I played my part right, I might gain direct access to him without having to go through Lefty or anybody else, as I had had to with Mike Sabella.

  Rossi and I met them at the airport. Lefty, Sonny, and Sonny’s girlfriend, Judy. Lefty and I shook hands and kissed each other on the cheek. Lefty says, “Sonny, Donnie.” Sonny and I kissed each other. I say, “Sonny, this is Tony, he’s with me. Tony, Sonny.” Sonny shook Rossi’s hand.

  We took them to Malio’s Restaurant in Tampa for dinner and then to King’s Court.

  Sonny, in his late forties, was a sturdy 5’7”, about 170 pounds, with a powerfully developed chest and arms. On his right arm was a tattoo of a panther. He was swarthy, with hair he dyed jet-black-hence his nickname. His face was fleshy, with rings under the eyes that made him look, depending upon his mood, either tired or menacing. When he fixed his dark eyes on you, either in anger or to give an order, he could freeze anybody. Everything dark about him got darker, and nothing was soft. Yet in contrast to Lefty, Sonny had a laid-back style. He radiated confidence, control, and power, but not arrogance. He was younger than Mike Sabella, more observant, harder. He noticed everything. I paid close attention to everything he said. He had a reputation for personal loyalty, a guy who would kill you in a minute if you crossed him.

  After a tour of King’s Court, Sonny took me aside to a table apart from the others.

  “Donnie, before I came here, I did some checking. Talked to some guys from downtown that know you. They say good things about you. Lefty says good things about you. They tell me you’re the kind of guy, you do your business and keep your mouth shut and don’t bother people and don’t make a scene about anything. You’re a good earner and you’re not flamboyant. I like that. From now on you can report to me. You don’t have to report to Lefty.”

  “I’m flattered.”

  “What do you want to do down here?”

  “Maybe some bookmaking and shylocking.”

  “Good. Our people in New York will back it. You want me to send somebody down to help you start the loan-sharking operation?”

  “I don’t think so. I got a guy I brought in, Chico, to oversee things here. I trust him.” “Chico” was an undercover agent we had made the general overseer of the club so that Rossi and I could be free to go back and forth to New York when we needed to.

  “How much do you need to start a shylock operation?”

  “Maybe twenty-five grand.”

  “What’s the vig rate down here?”

  Vigorish is the interest on shylock loans. “Tony says it’s four or five points, depending on the customer and the size of the loan. We’d also like to move into Orlando. ”

  “When we’re ready here, then we can go into Orlando. I got somebody looking into Orlando. I like what I see here so far, the club layout. It looks like we can make a lot of money here. Donnie, remember this: We can all earn. When we’re doing business among friends, we all share everything equally and we don’t try to cheat each other. We got an army up in New York behind us. Nobody can bother us as long as we conduct ourselves in the proper manner.”

  Sonny’s approach to me—telling me I could report to him—put me in a difficult position. If I had been a legitimate badguy, I would have jumped at the chance to hook up directly to a captain and rise up the ladder. But as an agent, I couldn’t jeopardize the operation. If Lefty got angry with me, he could have engineered a squelch of the whole King’s Court deal. On the one hand, I couldn’t appear to be defying Sonny. On the other hand, I had to stay loyal to Lefty. I had to tell him about Sonny’s approach before he heard it from somebody else. And I had to tell him in such a way that I would be protected if my words got back to Sonny. Whatever Sonny heard about me had to include that I was a stand-up guy.

  First thing the next morning I sat Lefty down and told him what Sonny had said. “But I’m still going to be loyal to you,” I say. “Anything that I do with Sonny, I’m gonna run it by you, because you and me started together.”

  “I’m happy you say that,” Lefty says. “But who does this guy think he is if he thinks he can take you away from me? He ain’t got no right to you.”

  The next day we all lounged around the pool at the Tahitian, and Sonny continued to encourage plans. He suggested that a good way to work the bookmaking and shylocking was by using a coffee truck that delivered to construction sites. The driver could run the business right out of the truck. He wanted us to have a Las Vegas Night, a popular event where the gambling is supposedly for charity.

  “Once we have a Vegas Night,” Sonny says, “then it becomes ours. Nobody else can have it. Start lining it up. I’ll send wheels and stuff down from New York.”

  I am an avid reader. In this job especially, I was an avid newspaper reader. I read whatever newspapers I could get my hands on. The guys would say “Give Donnie the newspapers and he sits in a corner and he’s happy all day.”

  But I wasn’t always reading just to read. It was a good cover. While I was reading the New York Post or The New York Times or the Daily News from cover to cover, I was listening to their conversations. I was seeming to read so my listening was not obvious.

  When I was away from New York, whether I was in Milwaukee or California or Florida, Lefty always would bring me the New York Post and the Daily News for that day. He never missed. He would get off a plane, and the first thing he’d do was hand me those newspapers.

  One time I picked him up at the Tampa airport and we were driving to the hotel. It dawned on me that he hadn’t given me anything. “Left, where are my newspapers?”

  “You won’t fucking believe what happened, Donnie. I’m sitting there on the plane reading the Daily News, and there’s this Indian sitting next to me.”

  “What do you mean, Indian?”

  “One of them guys with the towels on their head.”

  “Oh, you don’t mean an American Indian, you mean a guy from India.”

  “He’s a fucking Indian, I don’t know where he’s from. Got a big towel on his head. Don’t matter where he’s from. He’s an Indian.”

  “So what about the newspapers?”

  “I’m reading the paper, reading an article about Ted Kennedy. This guy’s leaning over all the time, looking at the paper. He says, ‘What do you think of Ted Kennedy?’ I ignore him. He don’t even speak English, broken English. He repeats it. I say, ‘Hey, Charlie, do I know you? What the fuck you care what I think about Ted Kennedy?’

  “I finish reading the News and put it down and start reading the Post. This guy touches the paper, Donnie! He starts leafing through my Daily News. When I put the Post down, he touches that too. I wouldn’t bring these papers to you after that towel-head touches them.”

&n
bsp; “Left, nine million people touch that newspaper.”

  “Donnie, I don’t know what this Indian’s got. He could have any disease. I wouldn’t let you touch the same newspaper as this Indian. I left those fucking newspapers right on the plane.”

  Everyplace we went, Lefty had Rossi pick up the tab. Lefty would bring guests for dinner, Rossi would have to pick up the tab. Rossi went to the mall to pick up some shaving stuff, Lefty would join him, pile the cart high with poolside gear and toiletries, and Rossi would pay at the checkout.

  It was Lefty’s birthday. You always exchange birthday and Christmas presents with guys you’re close to in the crew. It’s expected. This day I don’t say anything. I don’t even wish him happy birthday. I just let him stew.

  All day he’s asking me, “Donnie, didn’t you forget something today? Isn’t something supposed to happen today?”

  “Nothing I can think of. Everything’s under control.”

  Finally, at ten o‘clock that night, he and Rossi and I are sitting at our round table at the club and Lefty is grumpy. I say, “Lefty! I forgot! It’s your birthday!”

  “Hey, that’s right.” He grins.

  I lean over and give him a kiss and hand him an envelope. In it, wrapped in tissue, are seven diamonds, confiscated by the FBI. “This is from Tony and me. Happy birthday!”

  He opens it. “Aw, Donnie, you didn’t have to do this. What a great present! I’ll give one to my wife, one to each daughter, one to each grandchild.”

  “Tony and me figured you’re worth it.”

  “Aw, gee.” He gives me a big hug and kiss. “What’s Tony giving me?”

  Rossi is sitting right there.

  “The diamonds are from both of us,” I say.

  “Donnie, I can’t tell you, that’s the nicest present. That’s why I love you. You make mistakes, but times like this are just—What about Tony, he forget?”

  “Left, we both are giving you this.”

  “Is Tony gonna give me anything?”

  Finally Rossi gets up, goes into the office, puts three $100 bills in an envelope, comes back, and gives it to Lefty. “Happy birthday, Lefty,” he says.

  “Aw, Tony, you didn’t have to do this. You could have shared with Donnie and both give me the diamonds, that would have been enough.”

  We decided to hold our first Las Vegas Night on Friday, May 9. Sonny sent down a roulette wheel, blackjack tables, cards, dice, and so on, by the Airborne Airfreight Company. The sender on the bill was

  “Danny Manzo, Italian Veterans Club, 415 Graham Ave, Brooklyn N.Y.” We made up a sign announcing the event and saying that proceeds would go to the Italian-American War Veterans Club.

  Captain Joseph Donahue of the Pasco County Sheriffs Office made one of his regular visits to the club. As usual, he was not in uniform and came during the afternoon when the club was closed. Donahue was in his early sixties. He liked to brag that he had been a cop in New York City for sixteen years, something we could never confirm.

  Rossi told him we were planning a Vegas Night. Donahue assured him he would keep everything under control. If a deputy did show up, Rossi asked him, could he be barred at the door, since this is a private club? Donahue said that a deputy couldn’t be kept out but that no locked rooms could be searched without a warrant. Donahue said that he would stay on duty during Las Vegas Night to make sure there was no trouble.

  Rossi gave him $200 for the visit.

  We set up the club as a game room. In another room we had a long table with a free buffet—cold cuts, salads. Sonny came down with Lefty and a couple of pros Sonny provided to work the games. Maybe two hundred people came to that first Vegas Night. Rossi had paid off the cop, Donahue, $400 to make sure we weren’t hassled. Everything was going smoothly until a couple of sharpshooters tried to hustle an old guy running one of the crap tables.

  We had imported a couple of old-timers from Miami to run the tables. These guys were good at running street games, but they weren’t used to the complexities of the real Las Vegas crap table. So these two customers are trying to bulldoze the old guy, whose name was Ricky.

  Ricky comes over to me. “Donnie, a couple of guys working together are murdering us at the table. To be honest with you, I can’t handle this table as well as I thought I could. They’re too fast for me, and I know they’re cheating.”

  I walk over to take a look. I know these two Greek guys, a couple of heavy-hitting gamblers. I see that they are claiming bets they didn’t make and intimidating Ricky. So I intervene.

  I step in front of these guys and speak so that the whole club can get the message. Also, I know that Sonny’s eyes are on me, and this is the first time he’s seen me in action.

  “You guys are trying to burn this table,” I say. “This is an honest game. You got a fair shot at cleaning house. But I’m telling you now, you don’t come in here and fuck with any of our people or our games. Because you do it one more time, I will personally carry you out of here. And before I carry you through the door, I will take all the money you got in your pockets.”

  “Oh, no, we weren’t trying to do anything... just got on a hot streak... playing it straight.”

  “You can stay at the table. Wherever I am in the club, I’ll be watching you.”

  They stayed. I had caught them early, and they had already pocketed a couple grand off the table. Now Ricky went back at them. He recovered it all.

  We went all night. Sonny was pleased with the crowd and the performance and the few G’s that he walked away with. It would help lead to a meeting with Santo Trafficante. He said we should make a deal with owners of other clubs that we’d run Vegas Nights in their clubs, and they could keep the liquor sales and a piece of the Vegas money.

  Sonny wanted us to try a lot of things. He asked me if I had any cocaine or marijuana connections in the area, because he wanted to increase his sources. “I used to have some contacts in Miami,” I said, “but lately I haven’t been fucking around with dope. Two or three months ago I was getting it for forty-eight grand a key, but I don’t know what it would be now, or whether I could get back with the same people.”

  He said that his man Bobby in Orlando had cars to transport drugs to New York. He wanted us to keep our eyes open for outlets for plywood, paint, and counterfeit designer jeans that he had access to. He wanted me to check around and see if a numbers business would be a good idea, and if it was, he could send a guy down from New York to run it.

  “I’ve already got a book set up for the football season,” I say.

  “I’m gonna talk to Rusty about putting some family money in here,” Sonny says. “Rusty knows about your work here. I want to bring Stevie down to look at it because he’s handling the money for the family. It’ll probably take a couple of weeks to get it. You’ll have to pay it back at one and a half points.”

  Steve “Stevie Beef” Cannone was the consiglieri of the Bonanno family. Naturally I would welcome a chance to meet him.

  Sonny said he had a deal going in New York where he had to put up $400,000 for loads of some semipre cious metals that would bring him $1 million. “The guy that owns some factories that produce this stuff is supposed to be giving up these loads to me. He promised a load and he didn’t come through with it. I burned down one of his factories. I’ll burn down another building every time he fucks me around with a load.”

  When we were alone, Sonny says, “What’s going on with Lefty? There’s something wrong between him and Rossi.”

  The night before Las Vegas Night, we had all gone out to eat, and Lefty had invited some of the hostesses from the club. He ordered several bottles of expensive wine. Then he stuck Rossi with the tab. Sonny didn’t like that. He wouldn’t say anything at the dinner because he’s not going to embarrass a wiseguy in front of citizens. Also, he wanted the facts first.

  But I have to be careful about what I say. Anytime I am brought into a situation between wiseguys, it is like walking on eggshells. I don’t want to offend or insult anybody, b
ecause I want to keep the operation going. But I have to act like a stand-up wiseguy. Here’s a captain asking me about one of the top wiseguys in his crew. I don’t want him to think I give up a guy right away. On the other hand, maybe it’s a good time to put a clamp on Lefty’s bleeding of Rossi. I lay it off on Rossi.

  “Well, Sonny, Rossi’s been complaining to me that Lefty’s bleeding him too much. He doesn’t mind the two hundred and and fifty bucks a week. But all the other stuff—meals, trips.”

  “Tell Rossi that other than the two fifty, he doesn’t give Lefty any more money. You tell him that he’s only to answer to me.”

  “Okay, I’ll tell him.”

  I didn’t say anything to Lefty. If Rossi and I were legitimate badguys, I would have followed Sonny’s instructions to the letter. But I was walking a thread here because I didn’t want Lefty to dump Rossi, which he could have done easily, just by lying to Sonny about him. He could say to me, “He don’t want to give me any more money? Fine, I’ll just tell Sonny x, y, and z, and Rossi’s finished.” I couldn’t appear to be ignoring Sonny’s directive, either. Rossi and I would just have to make it seem that Lefty had backed off on the money thing.

  Sonny was joined in Holiday by his right-hand man, John “Boobie” Cerasani, who came down from New York. I had known about Boobie since 1978 because he used to come around Lefty’s. Boobie was taller and leaner than Sonny, balding at the temples, with a hawklike face. He was quiet and smart, a chess lover. He was one mean fucker, very closemouthed, a hard guy to get to know. If you got him to talk to you, he was all right. Sonny wasn’t close to a lot of people. Boobie was his confidant, capable of doing whatever was needed, which included watching Sonny’s back. “I trust Boobie,” Sonny says, “and that’s it.”

  Sonny called me from New York. He asked me if I knew anything about paintings. I said I didn’t. He said they had burglarized a Brooklyn warehouse where the Shah of Iran had stored various kinds of expensive artworks and he needed somebody to fence the stuff right away.