by Joe Pistone
CHAPTER 3
THE DEEP END
AS AN FBI AGENT, how deep could I sink into the mud of the underworld of organized crime before I would be too far in to dig myself out? Before I would be off the deep end, out there alone? No undercover had ever been in the position I had been in for as long as I had been in it.
The principal digging tool I had to keep from becoming too deeply involved in criminal activity was what I called the “well-told fiction.” I lived a life of deception all the time when I was working undercover, but sometimes I had to develop an elaborate well-thought-out fiction to get myself out of a jam or to allow the operation to continue without compromising it.
While deception had become a way of life in my deep-cover work, from my family upbringing and as a Catholic who still went to Mass when I could sneak away from the crew, and as an FBI agent who reported every few days or so to my FBI handler, distorting the truth was something that went against my grain. It went against my own deep character.
I understood that my deceptions were for a greater good, as if Nazis came to my door and I lied to save the Jews I was hiding in my cellar. To me—and to any student of ethics—that’s not lying. But at some point if nearly everything you do is deceptive it can become easier for you to deceive in general. At what point would I be in so deep that I would make a decision to deceive the FBI?
When the fictions start to appear to come true after you tell them, the whole house of deception gets more than a bit eerie. The spookiest for me was when Lefty and I were staying in a hotel in Milwaukee waiting day-after-day for word that the boss of the Milwaukee family, Frank Balistrieri, would agree to meet with us to discuss a joint operation I had promoted.
During the time we were waiting for word from Balistrieri’s people, I began to miss my family more intensely than normal and I had a strong desire to dig myself out to see them. I couldn’t get away from this proposed meeting with somebody as important as Balistrieri, the boss of an entire family, without an elaborate fiction. I already had a phony girlfriend who I visited in California whenever I wanted to fly home to see my wife. Now I told Lefty that my girlfriend in California had been injured in a car wreck and I had to leave him to be with her. Lefty was so mad when I said I was leaving I thought he was going to explode, or maybe blow me up.
This meeting with Balistrieri was something I had set up with the help of another undercover going by the name of Tony Conte. Our plan was to forge a partnership between the Bonannos and the Balistrieri family in the vending machine monopoly in Milwaukee. It was an expansion of a scheme the Milwaukee family had going already, one in which honest saloon keepers would be required to use only our vending machines or risk problems from the Milwaukee Mafia family. It was one of the biggest breaks of Lefty’s career in what he called “the underworld field.” This was 1978, a couple years before King’s Court in Florida, and it was one of my biggest coups to date at the time. From the Bureau’s point of view, the operation we had set up was intended to gather evidence to prove the inner workings of a criminal enterprise consisting of a racketeering alliance between the Bonanno and Balistrieri Mafia families.
While I was telling Lefty that this fictitious girlfriend of mine was in bad shape from her car wreck, he was telling me, “She ain’t going to die. What are you worrying about?” Behind my back to Tony Conte, Lefty called me a jerk-off, and wanted to know what was so special about this girlfriend of mine that I never brought her to New York so people could meet her. I withstood Lefty’s wrath, called my wife to pick me up at the airport and hopped a plane.
My wife was nearly killed in a car wreck en route to the airport to pick me up. The young woman driving the oncoming car that crossed into my wife’s lane and hit her head-on was killed. My fiction instantly had come true. This was the most devastating time of my life. I stayed with my family during the eleven days my wife was in the hospital and for another week after that, which, no matter how you slice it, wasn’t long enough. We had barbecues and lived as a family for the first time in a long time. When I was satisfied that things at home were as good as they could be under the circumstances, I returned to Milwaukee.
While we were in Milwaukee working this plan, called Operation Timber, to ensnare the Milwaukee boss in a criminal conspiracy with the Bonanno family, a Milwaukee soldier named Augie Palmisano was blown up in his car. Lefty explained to Tony Conte: “They’re blowing guys up because they done something wrong.”
To add to his point, Lefty said, “Tony, the responsibility I gave Donnie just now . . . if he fucks up, I’m a dead man.” Lefty told us how he would be killed. “If I get sent for, I don’t know what I’m getting sent for. They just say to come in. And I’d be getting killed for something I didn’t even know.”
When the mission in Milwaukee was pretty much accomplished, as far as evidence gathering was concerned for the Bureau, Balistrieri suddenly ended the partnership. Balistrieri refused to return anyone’s phone calls. The word that came down was that Balistrieri was mad at Tony Conte for doing “something wrong,” something very wrong. According to word from on high, Tony Conte had been seen flirting with Balistrieri’s girlfriend. You don’t ever disrespect a boss in any way and expect to live another day; you especially don’t disrespect him regarding his wife or his girlfriend. As Lefty put it, “That’s worse than being a rat or a pimp.” On top of that, the sudden dissolving of the partnership without explanation by Balistrieri cost our Bonanno bosses a lot of money, and not just in lost profits.
“Maybe he’s a snitch,” Lefty said to me behind Tony Conte’s back. And worse, “I’m in jeopardy over here and you brought him in.” And still worse, “Conte could get whacked at any time over this.”
It was now time to get Tony Conte out of the picture without Lefty and those above him dwelling for long on whether Conte was an informant or an undercover agent or just a bad soldier in need of the ultimate punishment to square things with Balistrieri. Not to mention that, since I brought Tony Conte into our Bonanno crew and introduced him to Lefty and eventually to Lefty’s capo and the family underboss for this limited undercover purpose, I had my own safety to consider. Initially we had Tony Conte fake a heart attack to buy us some time. He actually reported to an emergency room complaining of chest pains. But that was only a temporary fix to get him out of immediate harm’s way.
Next, we devised an elaborate fiction to extricate Tony Conte permanently without blowing up the rest of my Donnie Brasco operation that we still had in play, or blowing us up. That was big for Conte and me, that part about staying alive. This elaborate fiction also converged eerily with reality.
The elaborate fiction was that Tony Conte had a big score coming up. We told Lefty and our capo at the time, Mike Sabella, that Tony was going to participate in a major art theft that was planned to take place in Chicago and had $250,000 coming to him as his share of the take. We chose art rather than, say, jewelry, because art thieves are in a world unto themselves. It is such a specialized field that an art heist is something Mafia mobsters would not be able to look into and check out with a few well-placed phone calls to bosses in Chicago. Why we chose Chicago, I still don’t know.
I told Lefty and our capo, Mike Sabella, that Tony Conte was going to share his Chicago art heist score with us, the way a good crewmember should. All money flows upstream in the Mafia as if that’s the way nature had planned money to flow. And the bosses upstream can never get enough. At least half of the $250,000 would go upstream. Such a fact instantly pushes all other thoughts into the back of wiseguys’ minds, including thoughts of retribution against Conte.
We concluded this operation in Milwaukee over a year before Carmine Galante got whacked in 1979. After Galante got hit, Mike Sabella got demoted from capo to soldier and Sonny Black got upped to capo, and Lefty and I went with Sonny Black. Mike Sabella was happy to be demoted at that time because the alternative was to get whacked. At this time, however, Mike Sabella was a big wheel with a lot of power and commanded the extra
vagant respect these people go for. Big money is a big sign of respect. Waving this kind of big money under Mike Sabella’s and Lefty’s noses made them forget that they were mad at Tony Conte for doing “something wrong,” and for ruining their Milwaukee plans by disrespecting Balistrieri in the girlfriend department.
Now that Tony Conte had an art-theft score to whack up, all of a sudden the word floated down from upstream that it was the inner game of petty Mafia politics—not Tony Conte’s flirting with the wrong restaurant hostess—that had queered the deal with Balistrieri. The bosses upstream took Tony Conte off one hook so they could keep him on another hook, one that would put money in their pockets.
No sooner had we devised this Chicago art heist elaborate fiction and told Lefty and Mike Sabella, then out of the blue a real-life art heist worth $3,000,000 was carried out in Chicago. All the big news outlets around the world reported the heist and the enormous value of the art that was stolen. Lefty and Mike Sabella licked their chops. Another fiction of mine instantly had come true. More than spooky. Nothing for nothing, but from the time I went undercover to this very day, everything about everything just seemed to fall into place like it was all meant to happen. Art theft? Chicago? Not Boston, not Los Angeles, not Paris, France—but Chicago? And more than enough value to justify a $250,000 share to Tony Conte? The coincidence was enormous, and enormously helpful.
The rest of the fictitious plot I reported to Lefty, who reported to Mike Sabella, was that Tony Conte had to meet with his confederates to get his share of the three million. The plot twist in our fiction was that the undercover agent they believed was Tony Conte, was simply not going to return from that meeting with his accomplices.
But Lefty was one step ahead of our plot devices. Lefty gave me a firm order, saying, “I’m holding you responsible. You fly back to Chicago with him. And then you don’t leave his side. You go with him to pick up the money, and then you come back in here with him and that money.”
I was already responsible for Tony Conte and now I was responsible for this money. People like Augie Palmisano in Milwaukee had been killed for a lot less trouble than I had already caused and was about to cause. When I called Lefty and told him my brand new plot twist—that Tony Conte had gone to the meeting but couldn’t take me with him because his pals had told him to come alone, and that Tony Conte had not returned to our hotel room—Lefty said many things. None of them was good.
I’d never experienced Lefty so mad. Among the outpouring of words from Lefty that became embedded in my mind and stuck with me were:
“There ain’t a punk in the street that hangs out with a wiseguy could get away with what you two guys done. Forget about it. Youse won’t last five minutes in the city of New York.
“I’m so fucking mad. I don’t even want to get mad at you right now. I’m fifty-two and I’m willing to spend the rest of my life in jail over this. . . .
“I’m blowing my top here. You weren’t supposed to leave his side. That’s why you’re there.
“You put me in fucking mean positions with these guys.” These guys were Mike Sabella and the other Bonanno bosses all the way to the top. Just as Lefty held me responsible, under penalty of death, Mike Sabella held Lefty responsible, with the same penalty looming.
“Could this fucking guy be a fucking agent, Donnie?”
At that last statement, I thought, why would Lefty’s mind go straight to the notion that I might have specific knowledge or insight about something like whether Tony Conte was an agent? If Conte was an agent, shouldn’t I be as ignorant of it as Lefty?
And the bar-none scariest words any undercover agent can ever hear about his phony stories while he’s telling them was, “Something’s fishy.”
When enough time had passed to make it obvious to Lefty and Mike Sabella that, whatever the truth might be, Tony Conte was not going to return to the hotel with the money, Lefty called me in Chicago.
“Get on a plane late tonight and come back to New York.”
“Why late tonight?” I asked, even though it could only add to my jeopardy by questioning an order. “Why can’t I come in now during the day?”
“Because that’s the way it is,” Lefty said flatly. “You’re being sent for and you come in. You come in late at night. You get a cab at JFK and you come directly to Lynn’s Bar on 71st. Don’t go nowhere else. Don’t be seen by anybody. Don’t tell anybody you’re coming. Straight from JFK to Lynn’s. Be there alone at midnight.”
Lynn’s? A small place that would be empty at midnight. Not too many people would even be on the street at 71st and 2nd at midnight. I couldn’t ask Lefty why we weren’t meeting in Little Italy where we normally met, a neighborhood with 24-hour-a-day pedestrian traffic. Midnight. Alone. Straight from JFK. Don’t be seen by anybody. Don’t tell anybody I’m coming.
This was not the way Lefty had ever talked to me. But I knew Lefty had to do whatever he had to do for putting Mike Sabella into this bad position. And that included whacking me. As Lefty once said, “A little violence never hurt anybody.”
“Something’s fishy.”
Something’s fishy on both sides of this equation, I thought. I remembered what Lefty had said to Tony Conte and to me, “If I get sent for, I don’t know what I’m getting sent for. They just say to come in. And I’d be getting killed for something I didn’t even know.”
I’m a lousy gambler. I never win at gambling. But I would be gambling with my life if I went to this meeting.
I never told anyone about this conversation with Lefty, or the ensuing sit-down, until now. I decided to keep the meeting a secret, go to it and take my chances. If I told my FBI handlers that Lefty had ordered me to a sit-down at midnight in an abandoned bar, they never would have let me go. They would know that if they planted backup agents for protection inside an empty Lynn’s at that hour, the backup would have been spotted and made. And having backup outside Lynn’s would have done me no good. Therefore, having me go to the meeting would have been unacceptable. Having me skip the meeting and return to New York on my own time would have been sure grounds for being whacked—also unacceptable. For all intents and purposes, if I told my handlers about being sent for and the sit-down that would soon follow, the Donnie Brasco operation would have been over.
I decided not to tell the FBI. I was finally in so deep that I was lying to the FBI by omission. Because of my job, I lied by omission regularly in my personal life to those I was closest to, especially my wife. There was so much about what I did that I could not tell her. But she knew it and she didn’t expect me to level with her about the things I was doing or the danger I might be in. The FBI, however, expected me to tell them everything. I was finally in the mud at the deep end.
Would this lie by omission to the FBI cause the web of lies I had been telling Lefty and the rest of the wiseguys to come true instantly—like my wife’s car wreck and Tony Conte’s Chicago art heist? Would I become just another dead rat, a Mafia associate who had done something wrong and paid the price he knew he would pay if he ever fucked up as badly as I had? Would I be dying from the lie I had been living? Was I lying to myself that I could handle this gamble, that it was worth the risk? On that point, I don’t think so. And not just because the gamble paid off.
When I teach agents who are about to go deep, I tell them that their most important asset is their mental toughness. People don’t realize the power of mental toughness. A lot of people out there don’t understand how much you can accomplish just with mental toughness and focus. I saw a lot of it growing up in my Sicilian and Italian neighborhood in Paterson, New Jersey. It was prized and I had it. That doesn’t mean I didn’t appreciate the danger of meeting with Lefty at that time in that place, but I was focused and I refused to let go. As I look back, I know I couldn’t let go. I didn’t have it in me.
I knew that Lefty would go when sent for, and later, when I got to know Sonny Black, I knew that Sonny Black would go when sent for. If I didn’t go when sent for, Donnie Brasco was histo
ry. If I didn’t show up for the midnight meeting, the whole operation would be prematurely over and I would have had to pull myself out of it. Because if I didn’t show up when sent for, I would surely be whacked. That’s one of the principal grounds for a death sentence—disobedience. And especially failing to come when called. It’s actually a part of the Mafia oath when an associate is made; you always come when called. Period.
Lefty knew when he spoke to me on the phone that I had to be thinking that this could be it for me. He’s the one who taught me that when they send for you it could be to whack you for something that you didn’t even know about. But if I showed up and everything was okay, I would go way up in Lefty’s estimation as a stand-up guy who comes in when called for even when it could be the end for him.
Mental toughness includes preparing well in advance to handle whatever could be thrown at you, rehearsing it in your mind like a boxer before a fight. You roll the imaginary camera in your mind and study the film of your opponent’s last fight. If you’re prepared that way in advance, you don’t get confused or panicky by having to make decisions on the spot.
First, I decided I’m not going into any back room. Not that that matters so much, because many hits occur the instant you walk through a door from the outside. Two times .22 with a silencer, behind the ear. I could get it walking in the joint before I even closed the door behind me. I could get it stepping out of the cab. I had to keep my eyes open from the moment the cab pulled up.
Second, I decided I’m going on instinct. If something doesn’t feel right when I open the bar door, I’m closing it and turning right around. I pictured myself doing just that.
Mental toughness, at least for me, includes faith. Not a day went by as Donnie Brasco that I didn’t subconsciously ask a Higher Power to look over me for the day.
The threat of death was a very real threat to me when I finally opened the front door and took that first step inside. I tried to look as relaxed and normal as possible. I could see Lefty sitting with two wiseguys I knew, but hardly. Otherwise, the place was empty of customers. Not a good sign.