by Joe Pistone
When King’s Court began looking like a real moneymaker for all concerned, we added the idea of running bingo games. That doesn’t sound like much, but in Florida at that time bingo was huge. A charity, like a veterans’ organization, would be the figurehead to make the whole thing legal. It was a license to print money. The veterans’ organization would get a few hundred a night. Sonny and Santo would split the rest, and Santo never had to lift a finger. Lefty watched all this from the outside through a window. Lefty was left out of it. Rusty watched all of this from the inside through prison bars, and no doubt, salivated.
One day Lefty surprised me by telling me that when Rusty got out of jail he was going to demand to go directly under Rusty and he was going to take me with him. We were both going to report to Rusty, the top Bonanno boss, and no longer report to any capo. Lefty claimed that they had been close before Rusty went to jail, and because of things he had done for Rusty he was owed that courtesy by Rusty.
In hindsight I can see that Rusty might have allowed that to happen in some measure because of the appearance of entrepreneurial skill that my handlers and I had created. I had been demonstrating vision and talent, and I gave the appearance of bringing in big money. By reporting directly to Rusty, that money would not be split with a capo or anyone else. Rusty would get a full half with no tax coming out as the money floated upstream through the hands of others. Lefty wanted us to be viewed as a two-man starting rotation bound for the Hall of Fame, like the lefty Sandy Koufax and the righty Don Drysdale. Lefty wanted credit for my projects, credit that was then going to Sonny.
In all the years I spent undercover I never saw any soldier manipulate or fight over the ownership of any mere associate. Nor did I ever see any capo manipulate or fight over the ownership of a soldier, much less a mere associate. During this Paterson, New Jersey knock-around guy’s time with the Bonannos they had me doing the old big band dance tune, “The Jersey Bounce.” Like the little silver ball in a pinball machine, I had been bounced off Mirra onto Lefty; almost bounced to Balistrieri; bounced off Lefty and almost back to Mirra; bounced back to Lefty and then bounced on to Sonny; and was about to bounce back to Lefty when Rusty got out, and ultimately land directly under Rusty. All this bouncing was like the kiss of death for those who were claiming me as theirs.
The only thing that saved Rusty’s hide in this was that I never got to be made and he never personally dealt with me as he was in jail the whole time. Years later during a RICO trial in which I testified against Rusty, I overheard him say to his pals in the hallway during a recess, “He woulda never met me. Even if I wasn’t in the can.”Yeah sure, I thought, unless I had a hundred dollar bill stuck to my forehead. Then I’d have met him.
The decision regarding which one of the likely candidates to go to first with the news that I was an agent was not to be taken lightly. The Bureau provided a psychological profiler for our meeting, one of the behavioral science guys. I gave the profiler all the details I could about the personalities of both Sonny and Lefty. The main consideration for everyone, except me, was which of the two—Sonny or Lefty—we could get to turn. Would the fear of getting whacked, coupled with the promise of lifetime protection in the Witness Security Program, work quickest on Lefty or on Sonny? Speed counted because the longer it took for the candidate to make up his mind the more likely the Mafia would kill him before he turned. The hope was that he’d turn before he even told anyone else about the FBI’s visit to him.
On one issue I was in agreement with the profiler: Tony Mirra was out of the question in my mind and everyone else’s mind. First he was a psycho, and second he was a psycho.
To the rest of them at the meeting, including the profiler, the man most likely to turn was Lefty.
I disagreed.
“I know these two guys,” I said.“There’s no shot either one of these guys will ever roll. It’s not in them. Forget about it.”
Nevertheless, I believed that Sonny should be told first. Sonny would have to get on the phone and self-report his monumental unprecedented fuck-up to bosses so high up that Lefty couldn’t even get them on the phone. Sonny had been the capo that Lefty reported to for two years. If agents first went to Lefty all that Lefty would have done would have been to go to Sonny. Why insert an extra unnecessary step and risk a situation where the message to Sonny was watered down by Lefty’s perception of it? By going directly to Sonny and explaining it all to him, there was a good chance of getting more evidence of the existence of their criminal enterprise from the tap on Sonny’s phone as he made his frantic calls.
After all, I argued, prior to the hit on the three capos, Sonny himself told me that he went to Big Paul Castellano’s mansion in Staten Island, the White House, to get approval for the hit. Big Paul was the boss of the Gambinos, the brother-in-law of the deceased Don Carlo Gambino. Big Paul was also reported to be the boss of bosses of the five families of New York. Sonny told me he had done a big favor for Big Paul in exchange for permission to hit the three capos. Sonny implied that the favor was to cut Big Paul in on a share of the Bonanno family heroin import trade with the Zips, and that he had cleared that with Toto Catalano and could report to Big Paul that he had the Zips lined up behind the three capos hit.
I argued that it was possible that Sonny might pick up the phone and call Big Paul after the agents visited him. Such a call could lead to evidence for probable cause to bug Big Paul. Jules ended up agreeing with me and so the decision was made to go to Sonny and let Sonny handle it from there on the phone with the bosses. We’d be on the bugs and taps listening in.
Special Agent Doug Fencl had worked on various Mafia matters for years and had known Sonny in the past. In fact Sonny had once said to me about Fencl, “He’s a nice guy, a gentleman. He doesn’t bullshit. He just tells me exactly what’s on his mind.”
Therefore, it was decided that Doug Fencl would be the leader of the team. To help convince Sonny, we posed for pictures at the motel where we had our strategy meeting. I stood with Doug and the others. They were wearing the Brooks Brothers type of clothing of an agent. I was wearing the slacks and sweater of Donnie Brasco, but I was holding my FBI credentials and smiling at the camera.
On the early morning of July 28, 1981 at 6:00 a.m., Special Agents Doug Fencl, Jerry Loar, and Jim Kinne showed up at Sonny’s third floor apartment at the Motion Lounge. We chose 6:00 a.m. in case Sonny wanted to keep our visit a secret. Sonny recognized Doug and let them in. No doubt Sonny assumed they were there because of his meeting with the high profile Santo Trafficante two days earlier. Perhaps, Santo had been tailed to the Tahitian.
“Sonny,” Doug Fencl said, “you know a guy named Donnie Brasco?”
“Yeah, sure,” Sonny said. “Yeah, I know Donnie.”
Fencl showed Sonny a group photo of me posing with the very agents that were at that moment standing with him in his apartment.
“Recognize the fourth guy, Sonny? Take a good look.”
Sonny said nothing.
“Did you know Donnie Brasco is an FBI agent, Sonny?”
Sonny just glanced at the photo in disbelief without responding for a while. Then Sonny said, “I don’t know the guy, but if I meet him I’ll know he’s an FBI agent.”
Doug nodded and handed Sonny a business card. There was no need to explain. They both knew what that meant. If Sonny chose to make the call he would be protected if he came over to our side.
Doug waited for the implications to sink in, and said, “What do you suppose is going to happen, Sonny, when they find out your friend Donnie Brasco is an agent?”
Sonny said nothing.
“If there’s anything I can do to help,” Doug said, “you can get me at this number. You can call me any time, Sonny.”
Sonny looked at Doug and said, “Doug, you know there’s nothing I can do about this. It’s over.”
At first, the bugs and taps revealed utter and complete disbelief. Sonny told Lefty and some of the rest of the crew at a meeting at the Motion Lounge tha
t I had been kidnapped. “Donnie’s been snatched by the feds. . . . The feds came over and tried to make me believe he’s an FBI agent. . . . Can you believe the balls on these guys?” Sonny went on to tell them that I had been forced to pose with the agents in photographs and was probably brainwashed by the FBI.
Obviously, looking back now, some of the things I revealed here for the first time are things that no FBI agent would be expected to have participated in: burglaries, armed robbery, hijackings, felony assault, and beatings. Sonny had to have been convinced of my authenticity by my performance in general, not to mention specific events like my willingness to walk out the door of the Motion Lounge to get into Lefty’s car and to head to Staten Island to hit Bruno Indelicato.
For ten days Sonny kept the news within his own crew. He spent more than a week looking for me in New York, Florida, California, Milwaukee, and Chicago. Finally, Sonny’s disbelief turned to acceptance and he made the incriminating calls we expected. Sonny called Trafficante personally, rather than go through one of Trafficante’s people. That was protocol; the kind of respect Trafficante was due. But also, by calling Trafficante himself, if Trafficante chose to spare Sonny he could do so without concern that he would be setting an example of leniency within his own family. The old school Trafficante barely replied.
Sonny got word to Rusty Rastelli in Lewisburg Prison in Pennsylvania. As we had hoped, Sonny called Big Paul Castellano, boss of the Gambino family and the boss of bosses. Castellano gave the same non-response Trafficante had given.
Seventeen days later Sonny Black became the first blood drawn. On August 14, 1981 all the calls from Sonny’s phone stopped. On that day Dominick Sonny Black Napolitano disappeared after handing his watch and house keys to Charlie the bartender and going to a meeting in Staten Island. Sonny had been sent for. Sonny knew why and Sonny went. Sonny had the nerve to go to that meeting.
Sonny had two rules: number one, not to rat; and number two, not to run. I told my fellow agents when he disappeared, “When you see them dismantling the pigeon coops on top of the Motion Lounge, then you know he’s gone, he’s dead.” The next week they took down his pigeon coops. I was right about Sonny; he’d rather die than turn.
A few months after Sonny’s disappearance, his girlfriend Judy called Headquarters and asked to meet with me in Washington. We took precautions and I agreed to the meeting. I assured Judy that Sonny was gone and urged her to get away from these people and make a new life for herself. Judy confided to me Sonny’s deepest feelings when he learned I was an agent. “You know what he said?” Judy asked. “He told me, ‘I really loved that kid.’ He was really broken up when he found out that you were an agent, but he said that wouldn’t change the way he felt because of the type of guy you were. You did your job and you did it right.”
Others didn’t feel that way at all. During the time between Sonny’s disappearance and the taking down of his pigeon coops, we got word from informants that a half-million dollar open contract—open to anyone—had been put on my head, and that guys had been sent around the country with pictures of me to get the word out and to find me if they could. Commission members may come and go, but the Commission has its own sources of money, and a half a million in those days was a small matter to them.
Precautions were taken and security increased for my family and me. Here I was out of the Mafia and my family and I were in more danger than I was in when I was in the Mafia. Agents visited the bosses of each of the five New York families who had put out the contract to warn them not to even think about bothering me in any way. The bosses all feigned innocence and denied any knowledge of the contract.
Normally, the American Mafia knows better than to kill anyone in law enforcement. There is a line dividing law enforcement and the Mafia that they do not cross over. Even the Mafia understands that law enforcement officers are merely doing their jobs. But this was a unique operation. Had I crossed over the dividing line? I spent Christmas mornings with them and their families. In 1978 I was Lefty Guns Ruggiero’s best man at his wedding to his wife Louise. To their way of thinking, by attending their children’s baptisms and weddings and birthday parties, had I blurred the line between an agent doing his job and a member of their Mafia nation?
Because of my participation in their criminal activities—armed hijacking, warehouse burglaries, the contract on Bruno—had I become no longer an agent? Had I become one of them? Had I become their property to dispose of the way they saw fit? Because I had adopted their rules as my own, had I become subject to the punishment their world meted out for breaking their rules? Had the convincing job I’d done caused a backlash? It looked that way. The informants who told us about the contract also told us that the Mafia Commission viewed me as having crossed the line into their world, and that by doing that I made myself a murder target.
The informants, connected guys in the Mafia, believed that the Mafia was dead serious about killing me. One other consideration was the Zips under Toto Catalano.The Sicilian Mafia has no compunction about killing a law enforcement officer. At that time the Sicilian families that spawned the Zips that came over to handle the drug trade for the Bonanno family routinely killed judges, prosecutors, cops, and their wives and children in Sicily.
On his way to his scheduled execution, Lefty was arrested on a Sunday afternoon and taken off the street the same month—August, 1981—in which Sonny had disappeared and a contract had been put out on my life. I was right about Lefty. Lefty knew what was going to happen to him when he was sent for, but he was on his way there anyway when our agents, who heard it on a wire, moved in and saved his life. Lefty too would rather die than turn.
Ironically, a couple of days before FBI agents saved Lefty’s life by arresting him, they heard this gem by Lefty on one of the bugs: “Any FBI agent comes to bust me, I’m gonna fucking kill him first.”
Tony Mirra was finally caught up with on February 18, 1982, a little over six months after my coming-out party and exactly six months after Sonny disappeared. Mirra was found dead in a car in a parking garage near the apartment building of Bonanno family consigliere (adviser), Stevie Beef Cannone. Mirra had four bullets put into his head. He was in long-term parking—real long. Mirra had been set up by his uncle Al Walker Embarrato and his cousin Richard “Shellackhead” Cantarella. Mirra’s nephew, Joey the Mook D’Amico—the spoiled brat whose mother, Mirra’s sister, had paid off a capo to have her son get made and who’s now in the Witness Protection Program—was the one who shot his Uncle Tony.
The last man to die as a result of my Donnie Brasco operation was that cop I bribed in the Pasco County sheriff’s office in Florida. His job was to keep all the cops under his command off our backs while we operated our illegal gambling and drug distribution out of the King’s Court club. After he was served with a federal indictment for his role in King’s Court in 1983, Captain Joseph Donahue was found dead in his bathroom. Rather than face the charges, he’d killed himself.
The rest of the wiseguys who crossed paths with Donnie Brasco would soon get whacked by the U.S. Justice Department.
CHAPTER 6
BEHIND THE LEGEND
THE STORY THAT AN UNDERCOVER puts together about his past life of crime is called a legend. My legend was that of Donnie Brasco, or “Don the Jeweler,” a jewel thief and fence. To help establish that legend I had to attend gemology classes. I have a couple of friends who are jewelers and they added to my education. Being a jewel thief gave me a certain distinction and a bit of freedom because I could always say I had a score to make out of town. As long as I returned with money to split up and send upstream, nobody bothered me.
If I was asked something about jewelry that I didn’t know, I said so. There was no point in trying to bluff. What I did know, I did know. No professional knows all there is to know about his profession. I certainly knew enough to pass as an expert in jewelry. One night when I was still with the Colombo family, a crewmember showed up at the social club with a giant diamond he had stolen in
a house burglary. I took a look at it and could see it was a fake. I told him, “It’s a fugazy.” From that point on he held a grudge against me like it was my fault that his diamond was junk.
Another part of my legend was that I had grown up in an orphanage and had no parents or other family. That was very handy. So was being unmarried and having no children. I didn’t have to produce a wife for Bonanno family cookouts. I did claim I had that very serious girlfriend in California, and that gave me protection from any attempts to fix me up as well as a reason to get out of town to visit her.
My legend had me spending a lot of time in California and Florida over the years. As a precaution, we told an informant who was mobbed up that if he ever got a call about a Donnie Brasco, he was to simply vouch for him as a stand-up guy and to claim they did scores together. One night with the Colombos, a couple of crewmembers who had just gotten out of jail and resented my status with the crew challenged me on my background. They put a gun on the table and told me to give them a name they could call to vouch for me or I wouldn’t leave the social club alive. I gave them the informant’s name, hoping he would remember his assignment and not screw it up. It took a while for the call to reach the informant, but when it did he did his job well. I was cleared. They put their gun away. The first thing I did was to punch the lights out of the one that was closest to me, until the others broke it up. I did it for effect, but a part of it was real for what he had put me through.