Donnie Brasco
Page 31
When we were around other mob guys, it was different. Sonny acted like a captain and commanded respect. On the street and in other business situations, you could see that he was not only respected but feared. But here, when nobody else was around, we just shot the breeze like two equals. He talked about how much he loved his kids. He was very optimistic about Florida. He encouraged me to move on drug deals. He wanted us to get going on plans for another Las Vegas Night.
He gave me my own key so that I could use his apartment anytime I wanted, whether he was there or not. Sometimes he stayed at Judy’s apartment on Staten Island. From then on I stayed at Sonny’s almost every time I came to New York.
When I went back down to Florida, I sent Sonny a pair of ceiling fans for his apartment. He sent me a big package of canned squid, Italian bread, Italian cold cuts and cheeses, because he knew I loved those things and I couldn’t get the best New York-type stuff where I was in Florida.
Sonny was not satisfied with the volume in our bookmaking and shylock business. He wanted to send somebody down from New York to run it. Rossi and I had a better idea: my friend from Philadelphia, an agent whose undercover name was Eddie Shannon. I had known Shannon since 1968, when he was a detective in the Philadelphia Police Department and I was with Naval Intelligence. He had run an undercover bookmaking business in Baltimore.
“I got a guy that could do the book,” I tell Sonny. “He’s not Italian, he’s Irish, but he’s good.” I filled him in. “Next time you come down here, I’ll have him come down. You can get to know him, talk to him alone. If you like the guy, fine. You make the decision. If you want him to stay with us, he’ll stay, because he owes me some favors.”
“Now we gotta deal with a fucking Irishman,” Sonny says.
Sonny came down and spent a couple of days getting to know Eddie Shannon. Then he says, “I like the kid. He’s sharp, knowledgeable. He’s got a lot of loyalty to you, a stand-up guy. I like that. Get him an apartment down here and tell him to move in.”
Shannon got an apartment in the same complex where Rossi and I lived, the same complex in which other agents received and monitored the microwave video transmissions from King’s Court.
Rossi and I were continually working on potential drug deals. That is, we worked to line them up and then tap-danced to keep them from happening. We had to encourage drug sources by promoting our contacts and outlets, how much we could move through “our” people. We had to keep Sonny and Lefty interested by promoting the capabilities of our drug sources. But we couldn’t let any big deals happen. Nor could we have any busts that would compromise our operation. So the trick was to contact sellers, drag information out of them, keep them on the hook, and keep Sonny and Lefty excited—all while keeping the two sides apart.
Our contacts were ready to provide a wide range of products. We had a local guy with coke to sell at $15,000 a pound. We had a guy peddling Quaaludes for eighty or ninety cents apiece, and grass for $230 to $240 a pound. There was a coke dealer in Cocoa Beach. We had a guy with heroin samples from Mexico, and a twin-engined Piper Aztec he used to fly loads in. One local guy said that if we could find him a plane, he could make $1 million in two months on trips to Colombia where he could get cocaine that was ninety percent pure. He needed $25,000 front money to set it up and would charge $50,000 per trip. This same guy said he could get “ ‘ludes” in South America for twenty cents each. We kept talking to them all, going back and forth with prices, questions, promises, broken promises.
“In my FBI file,” Lefty says to Rossi and me, “it says ‘This man hates junk.’ Right next to my picture.”
We were talking about how many young millionaires there were in south Florida who had made their fortunes in the drug business.
Sonny was always talking about heroin, cocaine, marijuana, Quaaludes. One time he tells me, “Don’t bother with the coke right now. The hard stuff and the smoke is what’s selling big now in New York.” He had one outlet immediately for 300 pounds of grass and another for 400 pounds. “I want a steady source that can provide a hundred pounds a week. I could net ten grand a week from the outlets I got. We’ll have twenty grand to pay for the first load up front.”
On the phone, one of our code phrases for drugs was “pigeon feed.” Over the phone I was telling him about a new connection. He said, “Bring a sample of the pigeon feed up to New York,” so he could have it checked out.
Rossi put a sample in his pocket and we flew to New York. At JFK we were met by Boobie. He introduced us to Nicky Santora. Nicky, an overweight, curly-haired, happy-go-lucky type, was in Sonny’s crew.
Boobie asked if I had the sample.
“The marijuana? Tony’s got it.”
“I thought you were bringing heroin.”
“I thought Sonny meant marijuana. We got our signals crossed, I guess.”
Boobie was upset because he had a friend standing by to test the sample of heroin.
“We’ll bring that on the next trip,” I say.
Nicky drove us to Little Neck, on Long Island, where Sonny was staying temporarily. Nicky talked about the bookmaking business. He had just recently gotten out of jail. “I was convicted for taking four bets over the telephone,” he says. “Can you imagine that?”
Sonny was staying with a guy named John Palzolla in the North Shore Apartments in Little Neck.
Sonny says, “You told me you had a sample of heroin.” “
“No, I didn’t.”
“Well, fuck it. Give the sample to Nicky. Maybe he can do something with it.”
Rossi handed Nicky the small plastic bag of grass.
“The guy wants two hundred and seventy a pound,” I say.
“That’s high,” Sonny says.
“Maybe we can get three-fifty to four hundred a pound in the city,” Nicky says, looking at the stuff.
“It’s got a lot of seeds. I’ll take it out tomorrow and shop it around to a few people.”
A bunch of us met downstairs for dinner at the Chop House Restaurant, which was in the apartment building. Sonny’s cousin, Carmine, was there. Nino, Frankie, Jimmy—last names weren’t used. A few women came around, including one named Sabina. Sabina took a joint rolled from our grass sample and went away for an hour. When she came back, she said, “Gee, that wasn’t bad stuff.”
Everybody talked about what they had going. Carmine said he had a lot of fugazy jewelry available—fake Rolex watches, vermeil trinkets, gold charms. Rossi agreed to take some back to sell at the club.
John was awaiting sentencing for “Ponzi” schemes that he and his brother had conducted around the country. He said a good way to work a Ponzi scheme was to go to some rich guy who needs to put his money someplace and tell him that you have connections with a clothing manufacturer who produces a lot of overruns. And these surpluses—jeans or whatever—are available at a fraction of wholesale. If this person invests, say $5,000, you can guarantee $500 return for the first week. The return is so fantastic that more and more people invest, and they invest more and more. You give them these great interest payments, but you keep the capital. When you get enough capital, you “skip town and never see these investors again.”
Doctors and professional people were the best targets, he said, because they were always looking for ways to invest their cash. Lately his most prominent victims had been chiropractors. He had pled guilty so that other “family” members wouldn’t be hauled into court to testify.
Rossi and I stayed in the apartment with Sonny and John. At about two A.M., we were all getting ready to go to bed. Rossi comes out of the john in his Jockey shorts. Sonny starts rolling on the floor laughing. “Holy underwears!” he spouts whenever he can get a breath. “Holy underwears!” Rossi’s Jockey shorts have holes in the back. Sonny can’t control himself. “Wearing two hundred dollar slacks, hundred dollar shirts, two hundred dollar shoes, and you got fucking underwear on since you were in high school! Holy fucking underwears!”
Two days later Nicky Santora reported
that he had found our marijuana price of $270 to be too high. But he said that he could do business if our source would “front” 200 pounds and wait for payment for a week.
When we went back to Florida, we contacted our source and told him the grass hadn’t checked out to be as good as he said, and that the only way our people would buy it was if they would front 300 pounds and wait two weeks for payment. The guy had to think it over.
The next time Sonny came to Florida, he brought news of a shake-up in the Commission. “They knocked down Funzi Tieri,” he tells me. He said the power was now Paul Castellano, Neil Dellacroce, and Joe Gallo—the top guns of the Gambino family. “They were given the power and are handling it properly,” he says. “I met with Paulie the other day. I did him a big favor which nobody else could do. Paulie has an alliance now with the old man here.” He meant Trafficante.
He didn’t tell me what the favor was. But the Gambinos were big in the drug business. In any case, Sonny was indicating that he was now in tight with the new boss of bosses.
He was waiting for Santo Trafficante to come to the motel. Trafficante arrived, and they went to Sonny’s room. Permitted by a court order, we had his room bugged. But right away they turned up the TV volume to cover their conversation.
Sonny and I were having dinner alone. Sonny didn’t wear a lot of jewelry or anything flamboyant, but he did have some nice rings. If he had a gold buckle on his belt, he would wear gold; with a silver buckle, white gold. It is common for wiseguys to wear pinkie rings. But he had one that I really liked, a white-gold horseshoe with tiny diamonds in it. I loved that ring. It was his favorite too.
“Sonny, one of these days I’m gonna get a ring like that.”
“Like what?”
“That diamond horseshoe ring. I really like that ring. I always wanted one like that. But they’re too expensive, and I never could get one in a score. One day I’ll get lucky.”
“You like it? You just got lucky. Here.” He slid the ring off his finger and put it down by my hand. “It’s yours.”
“Hey, Sonny, I can’t take that from you.”
“Why not? You like it, you got it.”
I really couldn’t take it from him. I couldn’t accept an expensive gift like that in my position. I would have to log it and turn it in just like any other evidence; otherwise, I would compromise myself in the investigation. I guess I could have taken it and then given it back when the operation was over, but if it got lost, or Sonny got whacked or something before, it would really bother me to have accepted it.
I didn’t want to offend him, either, because he did it from the heart. He would do things like that, never make a big deal out of it. “I really appreciate it because I know how much you like that ring.” I pushed it back across the table with my fingers. “I can’t take it, but thanks.”
He shrugged and slipped it back on his pinkie.
The next afternoon we’re in the coffee shop at the Tahitian.
“I feel strong today,” he says.
“So? What does that mean?”
“I feel strong enough to beat you at arm wrestling.”
“Sonny, you never beat me. What’s gonna make today any different?”
“How strong I am. Come on.”
“In here?”
“Come on.”
We put our elbows up on the table and go through all the gyrations of getting ready, lock our hands in.
“You ready?” He looks me in the eye.
“Yeah.” “
“I’m gonna beat you.”
“Go ahead.”
“Go!”
We strain our arms together. Then he spits in my face, I flinch, and he slams my hand down.
“I didn’t tell you how I was gonna beat you.”
Sonny had a scheme. You couldn’t get really good Italian bread anywhere in the area. We asked around why that was, why the bread was so much better in New York. Nobody knew. We asked a baker, an Italian guy from New York.
“The water,” he says. “The water in the New York area is the best there is. It’s crucial. Something to do with how the yeast reacts. That’s why you can’t bake Italian bread that good anyplace else in the country.”
Next thing I know, Sonny had set up a deal with this guy. He’s going to bake for us. Sonny is going to get a fleet of tanker trucks, like those that deliver milk, and truck New York water down to Florida and have this guy bake our Italian bread and make a fortune.
Tony Mirra got out of prison. When he was in the can, guys kept reporting to Lefty that Mirra was calling people and was pissed off because he heard that Lefty and I had made a ton of money in Milwaukee and were making a ton of money in Florida, and some of that should be his because he brought me around to the crew in the first place.
Lefty tells me, “I told him, ‘You better have friends when you come out.’ I says, ‘You better stop knocking people, knocking their brains out.’ ”
When I was alone with Sonny at the Tahitian, he says, “I gotta ask you something, Donnie. Is Rocky a wire?”
“Hey, Sonny, I been dealing with him for over six years without any problems, and I been using him to buy and sell merchandise. No problems. That’s all I can say.”
“Well, Mirra branded him a wire. But, of course, that’s Mirra’s style.”
Lefty had a lion. Some guy who raised animals in New Jersey gave Lefty a little cub. Lefty loved it. He took it with him when he drove around in the car. He kept it at the Motion Lounge, and we played with it. It was a nice little pet. Lefty never gave it a name. We just called it “lion.” It stayed in the front of the club at the bar. We also had a regular house cat that stayed in the back.
After a couple of months the lion was growing into a real lion. It started leaving claw marks on the leather seats of Lefty’s car, so he couldn’t drive around with it anymore. It clawed you when you played with it. It got to be the size of a large dog. Pretty soon we couldn’t even take it out for its usual walks. It stayed at the club during the day, but it couldn’t be left there all night anymore. Sonny’s cousin, Carmine, owned an empty warehouse not far away from the Motion Lounge, so Lefty would take the lion over there every night in a van. Guys would go there every day and feed it. It was costing around $200 a day to feed, because the guys were giving it prime steaks.
I was on the phone from King’s Court one day, talking to Boobie at the Motion Lounge. “Lefty’s across the street loading the lion in the truck,” Boobie says. “We got to get the lion out from under the bar. Somebody ratted him out. It could cost us a $10,000 fine.”
Somebody in the neighborhood had spotted the lion in the club and called the police. By the time the police came, Lefty had taken the lion to the warehouse. What the cops found was the house cat sleeping on the pool table in the back room.
The cop says to Charlie the bartender, “I’m talking about a lion.”
“What we got is that cat,” Charlie says. “If we got a lion, that’s it.”
After that, the lion had to stay full-time at the warehouse.
Lefty called me in Florida. “We gotta get rid of the lion. It’s tearing up the walls in the warehouse. It eats the wires. How about you take it down there? You got five acres. Just put a chain-link fence over one of the tennis courts. We’ll ship it down.”
“You’re crazy. They’re not gonna let us keep a lion in a tennis court.”
One night they loaded the lion into the van and took it to a park in Queens and tied it by its leash to a bench.
Lefty called me. “Get today’s Post. They found our lion. It escaped. They got it at the ASPCA. That lion is making some news. It’s all over television. Pretty bastard.”
The front page of the New York Post had the headline: KING OF THE JUNGLE FOUND IN QUEENS! A big picture showed the lion between two cops, one holding its leash. The story said that a man had found this six-month-old lion cub wandering outside St. Mary’s Cemetery in Flushing, Queens. Nobody had the slightest idea where the lion had come from.
“In other words,” he tell me over the phone, “who’s responsible has to die.”
“They’re not worried about Tony, are they?”
“Let’s put it this way: You’re not, I’m not, but they are. We gotta go to his background.”
“Okay.”
“We got Rocky around us. And what’s that guy?”
“Eddie.”
“Eddie, yeah. And we got Chico, right?”
“Well, Chico had another argument with his girl, and he took off.” Agent Chico had left the operation.
“I don’t like that. You see, that’s another thing I gotta check out there. That’s another thing that’s no good.”
“Well, this broad is driving him crazy.”
“I understand that, but it’s no good. You’re involved in all these things. I can’t account for everything. Like now, they’re letting it slide about Rocky out there.”
Rocky, the undercover cop I had helped introduce into the mob world for a separate operation, the one who had gone on the boat trip with us, had a car business not far from New York City. I helped Rocky set up this business as a cover. When Tony Mirra got out of prison, he started hanging out with Rocky. That put Lefty in a bind. Since I had introduced Rocky to him, Lefty felt that Rocky belonged to him and owed him a share of anything he did. At the same time, Lefty didn’t want to have anything to do with Mirra.
“He’s hanging out with that stool pigeon,” Lefty says, meaning Mirra. “I don’t know what you’re gonna do with him. I don’t know what’s going on. This guy does something wrong, Donnie, you and I are going bye-bye. I know this guy is gonna send us to our death. I gotta talk to you about it.”
It put me in a bind, too, because I didn’t know what was going on with Rocky and Mirra, either.