“When you start talking to your people and these people here,” Tony says, “I’m out of place. I know I can’t do that, I won’t even try. I’ll let you do it. With the ordinary chump on the street, I can bust heads as well as anybody else, but ...”
“That don’t cut no ice. Wiseguys only need to know what car you’re driving and where you live. Donnie understands all this. I’m just giving you an idea of it.”
“I feel better now,” Tony says.
“From what I see here, Tony, this ain’t no small town. Forget about it. There’s fucking money in this town—you can see it. There’s room here for everybody. Maybe one or two syndicates have got this, and they gotta honor me. First thing I would tell the guy who approaches you with any beef, ‘What, are you crazy? You can’t take a living away from me. That’s the law of the land. Wiseguys are known all over the world.’ Our main guy says, ‘No matter where you go in this world, give me one day’s notice and I’ll get you somebody to see.’ He’s in the can now.”
“What’s it look like with him?” I ask, referring to Carmine Galante.
“On the twenty-ninth he’ll find out if he does twenty more months or they gotta release him. They’re not gonna release him. He’s gotta go back to Atlanta. I gotta send him cigars. He smokes the best Cuban cigars. He calls Mike every night. He asks Mike about me. He says, ‘How’s Mike’s bad boy doing?’ Mike tells him I’m in Milwaukee. The Old Man’s got a lot of confidence in Mike. He’s got lemon groves in Miami, and mansions. He’s got men all over the country. So I gotta take care of Mike, you understand? Like with that money you sent. Because he’s gonna be entertaining a lot of people on this here. Whatever expenses he goes through, he’s gotta get back. My man don’t come up with no money. This is your project. He says you take care of it.”
We went by Conte’s still bare office. “Don’t go crazy fixing it up,” Lefty says. “Just an indoor-outdoor rug, desk, phone, and your beeper. You gotta go around to the places. Go to the bartenders, give them your card. You tell them that if they can see their way clear to put one of your machines in there, there’s a nice Christmas bonus in it for them, a good week’s pay. And tell the guy maybe you’ll throw in an extra fifty bucks a week. And you’re partners with the guy fifty-fifty on the machines. Try to get partners with the owner of the joint, buy in, and you got your machines in there. Leave your cards. Don’t stay long, just one drink in each joint. How many machines you got?”
“None. They’re ordered. You got to buy ten, initial purchase. They average about two thousand apiece. My truck’s supposed to be delivered in two weeks. Mechanized lift on the back. To drive it I got a kid I used to work with.”
“Is he reliable? You know this guy, right?”
“Very reliable. I know him four or five years.”
He wanted Conte to invest in buying a bar and grill, building up credit. “See, in New York City you can buy any fifty-grand joint with seventy-five hundred bucks and financing. So over here, how much could a gin mill cost? Say a neighborhood bar and grill is worth fifteen grand. So you put two grand down and finance the rest. And you put your machines in there. You ain’t getting fifty percent on your machines no more, you’re getting a hundred.”
“Businesses are going good here, they don’t want to sell,” Tony says.
“Listen to me. I don’t care where we go in the world, a lot of business people are in trouble for gambling, with taxes and stuff. Gambling is ... forget about it, I know about gambling. In Vegas you got two type of crowds. You got the Texans. You got the Arabs. And you got the Japanese. Now, Atlantic City’s gonna be—forget about it when New York City opens up. Jews cater to wiseguys. The thing about a Jewish person, he’ll give you fifteen percent of the money he makes, as long as he’s got the peace of mind. So the point is, over here you’re liable to catch a guy that’s a gambler, in debt to shylocks, and wants to get out of his gin-mill business. That’s where you step in. He sells to you.”
“You’re thinking bigger than me,” Conte says.
“My mind works overtime. I’m thinking about the opportunity you got in front of you. Business is good, somebody approaches you and wants to give you thirty grand for the joint. You take that thirty grand and buy a fifty-grand joint, build that up and sell it for eighty.”
“Geez, I don’t know, Lefty. I don’t know how to make all these deals.”
“That’s why I’m instructing you, if you’ll just pay attention to me. Tony, you got right now sixty grand to invest. With that you can get a hundred grand in credit. That’s a hundred and sixty grand without you lifting a finger, that you’re worth. When you got a joint, maybe you take in a partner, and you take four hundred bucks a week out of the joint, without even working there. So if you get ten or twelve joints like that, that’s five grand a week. You’re not even there working for it. Your machines are there, and you’re getting one hundred percent for them. What the fuck, in five years time you got yourself a million dollars. Am I wrong or right, Donnie?”
“Right. ”
“First thing you know, you got forty or fifty gin mills in this town. Then I might move out here. Or if they need me in New York, I could still come out here weekends.”
“They tell me some places to make a deal to get a machine in you got to pay the liquor license, six hundred bucks a year,” Conte says.
“That’s all right, forget about it. Let me tell you something. Once you pay it, you got him. Jesus Christ can’t stop you. Remember that there. Donnie, I wish to hell you could stay here, give Tony a hand, answer questions he can’t answer, ‘cause he ain’t got the head for it.”
I had told Lefty I was going back to California to visit my “injured girlfriend.” I was getting desperate to get home to see my family. Lefty resented it anytime I said I wanted to go to California. So now I had come up with the story that my girlfriend had been in a car crash. So he had to agree to let me go. “Monday I’ll come back,” I say, “just three days. I’ll keep in touch with Tony every day from L.A.”
“It ain’t the question, keeping in touch. Question of what are you gonna do out in L.A.?”
“Once I see that she’s all right and everything ...”
“Donnie, let’s not kid ourselves. She lasted this long, she’s gonna be all right. Let’s hope she’s not disfigured. I happen to like that girl.” (He had never met her, of course.) “Listen, she can’t go back to work for a couple weeks, right? So why don’t you bring her over here and help Tony set it up? Use your noggin, Donnie. She’s going on a plane, she’ll be happy. And you got the most beautiful place, this is gorgeous over here. So you spend a week or two out here.”
“That’s what I’ll do, then.”
“The thing is, Donnie, I can’t see you laying out there because the girl’s in the hospital. Don’t get me wrong. It’s just that it’s ridiculous.”
When Lefty spotted a situation and a mark, energy poured out of him. Conte was handling him perfectly, using just the right touch of innocence to suck him in.
“Once everything is set out over here,” Lefty says, “then we can branch out someplace else. Because Mike is very sincere. You know what he likes about me? I was on the balls of my ass when I gave him my speedboat. I coulda sold it, he knew it.”
“Does he like the speedboat?” I ask.
“Forget about it. It goes seventy-two on the water. Imagine going seventy-two miles on the water. It’s a fucking jet. Shooo! I would like to take that boat to New York from here.”
“How would you do that, Left?”
“Hug the shoreline. Tell me one thing. I seen all kinds of land where we drive. Where’s the ocean around here?”
“There’s no ocean,” Tony says. “There’s the lake.”
“There’s no ocean in this town, Milwaukee?”
“A lake.”
“I don’t like lakes. I like the ocean.”
“This is a pretty big lake, Lefty.”
“Let’s go see that lake.”
We
drive down to the shore of Lake Michigan.
“That’s a lake?” Lefty gapes. “That looks like a fucking ocean. Look at the boats out there! Ships! How the fuck can that be a lake if them kind of things go in there?”
“It’s a big lake,” Tony says. “Ships can come in from Europe through the Saint Lawrence Seaway.”
“I don’t believe it. You ever see anything like this, Donnie? What’s the name of this lake?”
“Lake Michigan. On the other side is Michigan, maybe fifty miles away.”
“You sure it’s not the ocean and they just call it something else? Un-fucking-believable. Now let’s get a fucking pair of trunks, because we’re gonna sit outside by the pool; we’re going to iron this whole fucking thing out.”
Lefty needed a “cabana set,” which meant that somebody else was to provide it. “My waist is thirty-three,” he told Conte, “and I wear a 9½D shoe.” Conte went over to the Southridge Shopping Center and bought the items for Lefty. We sat by the pool at the motel. Lefty drank his usual white-wine spritzers, and chain-smoked his usual English Ovals, as he had been doing all day in the car.
“The town is nice,” Lefty says, “I like it. I gotta tell them when I go back, I’m all for this project. I’ll get a green light all the way through. This is easy living, Tony. It’s a clean town. You can breathe the air here. You’re gonna be very successful out here. You’re gonna make it. You’re gonna be very contented.”
“You don’t know me yet,” Conte says. “When you know me, you’ll find out that I make a plan, I work it hard until I get what I want. You’ll find out someday.”
“I ain’t saying different,” Lefty says. “Now, as soon as I go back, I’ll probably have to shoot right back here again to meet the people over here who he is finding out about by entertaining in his restaurant over there.”
The next morning Tony and Lefty dropped me off at the Milwaukee Airport for my trip to “California” to see my “injured girlfriend.” Tony took Lefty on to O‘Hare for his trip back to New York.
“You think Donnie might end up marrying this girl?” Tony asked.
“I know he’s crazy about her,” Lefty said. “But Donnie ain’t the type to settle down.”
I hadn’t been home in three weeks. When I called to say I was coming home, my wife told me that the house across the street from ours had burned to the ground. There had been a strong wind and sparks had gone everywhere. She had been out helping people water down nearby roofs where the embers were landing, including ours. Everybody had been scared to death.
It was Friday, June 23. She would pick me up at the airport as always. My flight was due in at 3:45 P.M. She never made it.
10
THE ACCIDENT
I arrived at the airport that served my new home-town. My wife was not at the gate. I was met by another agent whom I knew only slightly. He said, “Your wife has been in an accident.” He said it was a head-on car crash; both drivers were women, similar in appearance except that one was younger. The younger one had been killed. He wasn’t sure which one that was. He said other stuff, but that’s all I remember.
We went to the hospital. My wife had not been killed. She was in intensive care, in critical condition, attached to machines and tubes. Her eyes were covered with bandages. Both her corneas had been lacerated. Her face was a web of gashes. She had a collapsed lung, a broken wrist, a broken collarbone. She was hooked up to a lung machine. She couldn’t see. She could barely talk. She squeezed my hand.
My daughters were there. The youngest, who was nine, had gotten sick at the sight of her mother and gone into the bathroom to throw up. I hugged the others, who were fifteen and thirteen, and tried to smile and act like everything was okay.
My wife told me that on her way to the airport a car coming toward her had veered out to pass another car stopped in that lane and hit her head-on. My wife climbed out of the car somehow and ran to the side of the road, afraid the cars were going to blow up. She heard bubbling in her chest, and as a nurse she knew that her lung was punctured. There were two women who had witnessed the accident. She asked if she could please lay her head down in the lap of one of them, because it would help her breathe. Her contact lenses had been smashed into her eyes. She thought she had lost at least one of her eyes. She told the women that in her car was a notebook and her husband’s flight number. She asked them to call the FBI and ask for an agent to pick me up at the airport and to call a friend’s house where the girls were staying. And then the ambulance came and she was brought to the hospital.
She was in terrible pain and scared. When I saw her, she didn’t know that the other driver was dead, and I couldn’t bring myself to tell her. Her friend Ginny was there. I went out in the hall. Later my wife said that Ginny had told her I was crying, and she said, “I told Ginny, ‘I’m sorry I missed that, I’ve never seen Joe cry.’ ”
I stayed with her at the hospital. My youngest daughter couldn’t bear to visit her because she was so mutilated. She sent notes instead.
The next day my two older daughters were leaving to drive home. My fifteen-year-old had just gotten her driver’s permit. Within sight of the hospital they were broadsided by another car that ran a stop sign. They were brought back to the emergency room by ambulance.
The nurses in the emergency room already knew them from their mother’s accident. The nurse called upstairs for me. I told my wife I was going to get a Coke and take a walk. In her condition I couldn’t tell her right then that the kids had been in an accident. But she knew something was wrong. “Why aren’t they coming to visit me tonight?” she asked. “They’ve got a lot of homework,” I said. “I told them to stay home.”
Our girls were not seriously hurt, just bruises and stitches. They were treated and released. My wife’s parents had flown in the night of her accident, and so were on hand to help take care of their injured grand-daughters as well.
I started thinking, What the hell’s going on here? What have I done wrong? I had been on this job since the summer of 1976. Now it is the summer of 1978. Two years and I haven’t been home two months. And everything could have been wiped out in the last two days.
I wish my circumstances allowed me to describe my family more completely, what they looked like, their relatives and friends, where we lived. At least to use their names.
Actually they changed their names—their last name. They dropped Pistone and adopted a new name. We never traveled under Pistone, anyway, and I used different names for everything, so it wasn’t such a big deal. Also, the girls had always been teased about their last name—Yellowrock, Wetstone, etc. So they were happy to be rid of Pistone. And my feeling was, they would probably eventually get married and change their last names, anyway.
But I used various names, just to make it a little more difficult for anybody ever to trace me. That got to be a pain for everybody but me. Sometimes my wife would get confused at an airline counter when she couldn’t remember which name she was supposed to be using that day. Or when she went to pick up things I had left at the cleaners, she often had to try several names before she came up with the one that I had left the clothes under.
My long absences were bothering my family more and more. “What kind of marriage is it,” my wife would say over the phone, “when the husband is never home?” The fact is, if we hadn’t had so strong a marriage, it probably wouldn’t have survived these years.
The way she coped with it was to develop a life of her own, even more independent of me—almost, she would say, as if she didn’t have a husband. It was not in her nature to brood or to feel sorry for herself. The family had moved to its present home only a few months before, and it had not been easy. My wife was recovering from major surgery she had undergone shortly before the move. And in the first weeks after the move, the kids were having trouble adjusting. They wouldn’t go to school. I offered advice, support, whatever, mostly over the phone. My wife dealt with it all on the scene. Friends included her in everything, with or without me.
She encouraged our daughters to have kids over, and she cooked for bunches of teenagers all the time. She went out with our oldest daughter—just girls out on the town having a good time.
Her way of avoiding worry about me was to maintain a semblance of normalcy in the home. The hardest thing for her, she would tell me, was that when I went undercover, she had to start taking care of all the bills. That was the one thing she had never done, and she hated it.
She kept so occupied, she said, that she could go for long periods without ever thinking about being alone. Except that when I would call, she’d turn angry. Frustrations would pour out, sometimes in strange ways. She had focused so totally on the household that she would want to talk about that. The lawn mower wouldn’t start. The washing machine was broken. I’ve only got five minutes to talk, I would say, I don’t want to talk about that stuff. “To me,” she would say, “this is the real stuff, right here at home. I can’t see any further right now than what’s bothering me here.” Sometimes we would yell at each other.
The telephone became our link, our lifeline. When I called, I wanted to talk to everybody in turn. My wife always filled me in on everything that was going on with the kids. That was important. Often there were problems—school, discipline, personal—and my wife would tell me about them over the telephone and I’d try to straighten things out. But more often than not, I couldn’t straighten things out over the telephone. There’d be crying and screaming and everything. Everybody would be upset, and all I could do was put my two cents in. The kids were upset that I was away so much. I couldn’t defend myself very well, except to say that I had a job to do. Their mother would try to make them understand about my dedication to the job. What did they care about how dedicated I was? They were kids. They wanted their father home.
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