by Joe Pistone
The two wiseguys stood up and moved away from Lefty’s table when I stepped in. My first thought was, what are they doing here? Did Lefty want these two to get a good look at me to be sure they recognized me if they were supposed to whack me later? Still, on pure hunch, it didn’t feel like a setup, like anything would happen inside Lynn’s, but you never know about hunches. And like I said, I’m a lousy gambler, unlucky at playing hunches.
Nothing for nothing, I thought as I walked to Lefty’s table, I’m here. I sat to Lefty’s side, not across from him. That way if he pulled out a gun, I had a chance at him. And I’d be facing the bar and the two wiseguys.
The two wiseguys sat at the end of the bar closest to the door. I saw that they were boxing me out. They were sitting between the door and me, should I have any inclination to make a broken field run out of the place.
Lefty scowled at me with complete contempt. His eyes were dead and his voice commanding. “Don’t say nothing to me right now. You just sit there and take what you got coming.”
If this is it, I thought, I’m not going down easy. Lefty’s hands stayed on the table. The two wiseguys stayed on their bar stools. We sat in silence. I couldn’t break the silence because Lefty told me to say nothing, to just sit there and take what I got coming.
“You know you fucked up,” Lefty said. “But I don’t know you know how bad you fucked up. Donnie, sometimes I don’t know you know nothing. I know you know what happens when somebody fucks up one-tenth as much as you fucked up in this here. When you got it coming, Donnie, for doing something wrong, you got it coming. I don’t give a fuck who you are.”
“I’m sorry, Left, I’m really sorry. This cost me, too, Left. Some of that was my money. Plus he took my clothes, my belongings, my plane ticket. I’ll make this up to you. I mean it. I’ll get us all right on this. I’ve got some ideas for some scores.”
As the apology mixed with the sound of cash, Lefty looked over at the other two wiseguys and they got up, said goodnight to us, and left. Were they there to make me understand how serious I had fucked up? Did Lefty send them away to let me know he accepted my half-assed apology? Or would they be waiting for me somewhere?
“I didn’t even get a Christmas bonus due to the fact of out there and how it made me look,” Lefty said.
After a lot more of this kind of tongue-lashing and poor-mouthing from Lefty, it turns out, Lefty told me, he wanted to meet me way uptown at Lynn’s at that late hour because he wanted to prepare me for a meeting I was to have in the morning with Mike Sabella and he didn’t want word to get back to Mike that he was doing that. Lefty’s act of preparing me for my meeting with Sabella also told me that Sabella had no intention of whacking me at that meeting, as long as I followed Lefty’s instructions for handling the meeting.
It looked as if my gamble had paid off. My decision not to tell my handlers that I had been sent for had not backfired on me.
Lefty’s advice to me for my conduct at my meeting the next morning with Mike Sabella is advice I pass on to those undercover agents I mentor. Lefty said, “Don’t offer nothing. Only answer the questions. Don’t show him you’re afraid. Look him steady in the eye. Don’t show any fear. Don’t admit you were wrong, even though we know. This Conte piece of shit was our mark and you shoulda never left him go outside by himself. You shoulda kept a better eye on him so he didn’t go chasing after the hostess at the Snug Restaurant, which was Balistrieri’s girlfriend. Some looker that girl, but you don’t even think like that. Mike will confront you on these parts. But don’t you admit none of that. How you fucked this up royally you admit to me some other time, but not to Mike. Look him in the eye. Be respectful. Like I said, Donnie, if I didn’t love you how much I love you you’d be fucking dead. Mike don’t love you like I do.”
Lefty’s advice paid off. I got off with a warning. I never again saw the two wiseguys who had been at the bar. The Donnie Brasco deep cover operation was still in business. And it’s a good thing it was. Because the precise things that happened as a result of my continued undercover work ultimately, many years later, were to bring down the entire Bonanno family hierarchy.
Another potentially disastrous incident happened a few years after my gamble at Lynn’s paid off. It’s another matter I have never before disclosed publicly.
While there are some things I had to do that I will take to my grave and never tell a soul, this is more about something I decided to do rather than something I did. In the past I revealed that if there was a situation in which I had to decide between trying to save a wiseguy and risking my own life to do it, or not, I would not jump in and stop the hit on a wiseguy. But I would risk my life to stop a hit on a private citizen. What I didn’t reveal is what I would do if I found myself in a position of having to put two behind the ear of a wiseguy or risk my own life by not doing it.
My mindset was that the wiseguy would go. I knew the FBI would not stand behind me on something like that. Well, let me call it what it is—murder in the first degree. On top of that there would also be a state charge of first-degree murder in the state in which I murdered the wiseguy, and the federal Department of Justice wouldn’t have jurisdiction over the state murder. But to me, I’d rather take my chances with the judicial system than with the Mafia. I’d rather be alive fighting a murder charge.
When you get an order from your boss to kill somebody, you don’t hesitate, you don’t negotiate, and you certainly don’t say, “No thank you, I’ll just stay here and play cards.”
In an undercover operation you always have to know with whom you are dealing, and I did. If you hesitate when you are given a contract, you will be killed, most likely right on the very spot of your hesitation. A wiseguy who says no to a contract is a dead wiseguy.
Even if you are out on a hit with your crew you are not above danger. If you do not do your part and pull your trigger, too, the other guns could be turned on you then or later. And you could find yourself on the same blood-soaked ground as the intended victim. If the contract happens to be yours, you’d better be the first one to pull the trigger, not the one who fires into an already dead body. That’s something a snitch might do.
It goes without saying that, to begin with, you don’t want to be in such a position. Even if you don’t pull a trigger, but you go out on a hit, you are guilty of murder in the first degree under the theory of accomplice liability known as felony murder. The accomplice, the lookout, the wheelman, is as guilty of first-degree murder in the eyes of the law as the triggerman.
In the late spring of 1981 I was given the contract to find and kill Bruno Indelicato—a made man. He was a cokehead and the son of the murdered Bonanno capo Sonny Red Indelicato. Sonny Red was one of the three capos (along with Dominick “Big Trin”Trinchera and “Phil Lucky” Giaccone) who had been sent for to attend a meeting on May 5, 1981, and when they arrived they were whacked. This downsizing in the Bonanno family occurred a few days before I got the contract to find and kill Bruno.
Bruno, also a capo, was supposed to have attended the meeting, but failed to appear and escaped getting whacked in the massacre with his father. Now they had to find Bruno and kill him before he could retaliate against those responsible for his father’s murder.
The May 5th upheaval caused Sonny Black Napolitano, who I had been with for two years by then, to be moved up a rung as acting street boss for the jailed boss Rusty Rastelli. Lefty and I were with Sonny Black’s crew and that meant we were moving on up with Sonny Black. Sonny Black was now as big as you could get without being the actual boss.
As acting street boss, Sonny Black was the boss who gave me the Bruno Indelicato contract. Sonny told me to go to Miami, find Bruno Indelicato, and kill him.
“I think he went to Miami because he’s got a $3,000-a-day coke habit and he’s got connections with the Colombians down there,” Sonny told me. “I want you to find him. When you find him, hit him. Be careful because when he’s coked up, he’s crazy. He’s not a tough guy with his hands, but if he has
a gun, you know. . . . He might be down there with his uncle J.B. If you come across them both, just kill them both and leave them there in the street. I want the body found. He’s like 140, 150 pounds. Smaller than you. Thin-faced kid. Italian-looking, dark. Always complaining about his bald head. In his late twenties. Bantamweight, petite-looking. He’s a dangerous little kid. He’s a wild man when he’s coked up. . . . Leave him right there in the street.”
Sonny gave me a .25 automatic for the job.
I saw Lefty a few minutes later and he already knew I had been given the hit. Lefty told me the Bruno hit would help me get promoted to a made member of the Mafia because it would give me a big hit under my belt. Lefty told me that Sonny had wanted me on the three capos hit, but that Big Joey Massino vetoed it. The prudent Big Joey didn’t think he knew me well enough to include me in something that big. Years later Big Joey would point to this with pride.
This ordered hit on Bruno was one matter I clearly and quickly told my handlers. I called Jules the first chance I got, which was 3:30 in the morning. Now that Jules knew, both the FBI and the Mafia would be out there looking for Bruno. That made me figure that my chances of finding Bruno first were almost nonexistent. If the FBI found him they would arrest him to get him off the street so I wouldn’t have to kill him. If other wiseguys stumbled on him in their ordinary course of activities they wouldn’t wait for me to get there to kill him. Whatever wiseguy found him first would kill him first. If I somehow did find him first, I’d have called my handlers in the FBI to snatch him off the street. Unless other wiseguys happened to be along when I found him. Then I’d probably have to kill him or be killed with him.
Because Sonny Black sent me to Miami figuring Bruno would want to be near a supply of coke to feed his huge habit, I danced around all the usual coke haunts in Miami, getting seen everywhere. I was making sure Sonny Black would hear back in New York that I was taking my assignment seriously.
It did occur to me that Bruno Indelicato might get wind that I was the one that had the contract and try to get a shot at me first, or have one of his men who I wouldn’t know or even recognize to get off first. But I kept a watchful eye and told myself that the last thing Bruno Indelicato needed to do was go out of his way to try to shoot a shooter. He needed to lay low and keep on the move. Of course, where does it say that a cokehead like Bruno always does what logic dictates?
Nevertheless, in my gut I felt that if Bruno was going to try to whack anybody it was going to be Sonny Black. Sonny Black could never really rest easy until Bruno was gone, and that’s why the new acting street boss had given me the assignment in the first place.
A side assignment Sonny gave me while I was looking for Bruno was to drop in on two made men operating for the Bonannos in Hallandale, Florida, not far from Miami. Joe Puma and Steve Maruca were two soldiers who had been under one of the three murdered capos, Phil Lucky, and owed allegiance to the three capos who were massacred. My job was to reassure Puma and Maruca that they were not going to be whacked and to tell them that they now owed their allegiance to Sonny Black.
In a strange way, this assignment was more significant under the Mafia code than the assignment to kill Bruno. Anyone—made, connected, or just some nut—could be given a contract to hit someone. But to have a sit-down of any magnitude with a made man, you had to be at least made. Here I was, a connected man only, not a made man, going to Florida to a sit-down in order to reassure two made men that they wouldn’t be hit if they did the right thing. In the sit-down I would be expected to evaluate them both for the slightest attitude or sign of disloyalty or even disappointment that their friends, the three capos, had been whacked. And they would know that I, a mere associate, was sizing them up.
Puma had been so scared after the hits that he hurried to New York to pledge his allegiance to the new power. Maruca made it clear that the three capos’ deaths were a part of Mafia life. “Things like this happen. You can’t question,” he said.
After I was down in Florida awhile Sonny Black called me to fly back to New York. I figured or hoped that my contract to kill Bruno had expired and we would get back to whatever daily scheming presented itself to us in the Motion Lounge in Brooklyn and King’s Court in Tampa.Among other things, I was hoping to hear more talk and get more evidence against those who participated in the hit on the three capos.
Which brings me to the other bad incident nobody knows a thing about. One night we were sitting around in the Motion Lounge playing cards and chatting away. Lefty, Jimmy Legs, Nicky Santora, Sonny, and I—all just doing our usual ritual when the phone rang. It was a pay phone on the wall. Sonny Black answered it and I could tell from his look and the tone of his voice when he grunted that he was getting excited.
Sonny hung up the phone and said, “Bruno’s in a house in Staten Island.”
Lefty got up from the card table and said, “Let’s go.”
Let’s go, I thought. Jimmy Legs and Nicky Santora got up, too. I got up. My getting up, under the law of conspiracy to murder, was an overt act. Immediately upon committing that overt act, I was guilty of conspiracy to murder Bruno.
Lefty’s maroon Caddy was parked right outside the front door of the Motion Lounge. Sonny Black, as capo, would not be going, and everybody knew that. Sonny Black gave Lefty the address and directions. Meanwhile I’m thinking, there is no way out. Everybody’s heavy, including me. We’ve all been loaded up since the three capos got whacked, in case that multiple hit set off a full-scale Mafia war. I still had my .25 automatic from Miami in my pocket. The others had .38’s to .45’s. Lefty had a shotgun in the trunk.
If I hesitated in front of my capo, my own soldier, and my crewmates, I would not have left the Motion Lounge alive. I was on a fast-moving train. I could go to the bathroom, but there were no cell phones in those days. I positively couldn’t go outside to use a pay phone at a time like this. There was no way I could contact anyone. I was alone. The statement “Let’s go” from Lefty was all it took and everybody knew what to do. This wasn’t the first time these guys had done something like this. It never even entered my mind to bolt and run away. They’d get in Lefty’s car, catch up to me in a block and I’d be the victim of a drive-by shooting. And then they’d go kill Bruno.
As an FBI agent you’re trained to question information you get. Who told you Bruno was there? How reliable is the source? How stale or fresh is the information? Was Bruno seen in the house? What’s the layout of the house? All those things went through my mind, but it didn’t make any difference. As a Mafia soldier you get to ask no questions. There are no questions in Mafia business. You’re trained to go on the word that’s given to you. There could have been something else in that call. For all I knew Sonny Black had been told there were three of Bruno’s men there with Bruno Indelicato, and maybe Sonny Black chose not to tell us.
Almost from the beginning of my deep-cover penetration into the Mafia my mental toughness mindset had prepared me for this moment. The people I had been assigned to infiltrate engaged in murder the way a cabbie goes through a yellow light. I had to be mentally prepared for the near occasion of murder. I had long ago made my decision of what to do when this predictable occasion arose. If Bruno’s there, he’s gone. If I have to put a bullet in his head, I will, and I’ll deal with the federal government and the Staten Island D.A. later. There’s no doubt they would both charge me for murder. The Bureau would brand me a rogue agent and hang me out to hang. My wife, my daughters, my parents, would all be crushed right along with me, but my decision when it had been made was firmly made.
Meanwhile, we could be walking into a death trap. If not a death trap, then at least a bloody situation. We just killed Bruno’s old man. He knows we’re out to kill him. He’s a cokehead. He’s not going to come easily. There will probably be a shootout. Any of his men that are there with him to guard him will be killed, too. I could be facing multiple murder charges. Or worse yet, I got that old dreaded feeling that I would die as a gangster.
We
were half out the door and on the street when the phone rang again. Sonny Black ran over and got it, said, “Hold it,” and waved us back in while he took the call. We shut the door. When he hung up, Sonny Black said, “It’s bad information.”
“That’s too bad, Sonny,” I said.
In my mind, all these years I’ve been calling that the “miracle of the second phone call.” The Higher Power I looked up to each day for protection was looking out for me.
CHAPTER 4
“YOU’RE GOING TO GET MADE”
MY INTERPRETATION OF EVENTS that I’ve tried to offer in this book—for example, my breakdown in the last chapter about the impact my King’s Court gambling casino and the meetings with Santo Trafficante had on the rise of Sonny Black in Rusty Rastelli’s eyes—is not the kind of thing I had time to think about while I was under. In those days I was too busy staying alive and trying to commit details to memory so that I would be able to verbally report the intelligence and evidence I was gathering. The past twenty years since my first book, Donnie Brasco, came out, have provided me more information and time to reflect. Still, at the time I was working my deep-cover operation, I knew I was having an impact and that I was about to have a dramatic impact when I surfaced. But I wanted to stay under, and to this day I think it was a mistake for the Bureau to have pulled me out before I had a chance to get made and to operate as a made man.
Could it have been my ego, my competitiveness, that caused such feelings? I gave it a lot of thought then and I’ve given it a lot of thought over the years, watching events unfold, and I come out the same way every time: I should have stayed under at least until I was made.
But I understand their thinking. My handler, Jules Bonavolonta, who made the final decision, was afraid for me. He did not want to lose an agent, and a close friend at that, in the middle of a Mafia war. “You’re in a war here,” Jules said, “a shooting war, and you’re right in the middle of it. I’m not going to risk getting you whacked just to get more information.”