Donnie Brasco

by Joseph Pistone

Lefty chuckles. “Let me tell you something. Sonny’s strength is that he’s close to Rusty.”

  The ABSCAM scandal broke, arrests were made, the story was all over the news. I didn’t pay too much attention to it. I was too busy trying to dope out the power struggle within the Bonanno family.

  I was in Miami with Lefty and a bunch of the guys. At three or four in the morning, after a night of bouncing around, one of the guys suggested that we go to Nathan’s for something to eat.

  I started to sit down with them. Lefty grabs my arm. “Sit over here at this other table. I want to talk to you.”

  We sat at a table over in the corner. “Donnie, what do you know about that boat we went out on?”

  I started to answer when it hit me what he was driving at, and at the same time he whipped out a folded page from Time magazine, opened it up, and slapped it down in front of me.

  “That’s the boat, Donnie.”

  I was stunned. There, as part of a story about ABSCAM, was a picture of the Left Hand, the boat we had partied on, and a description of how the FBI had used it in the sting. My life was on the line right here, with how I handled this.

  “Gee, I don’t think that’s the boat we were on, Left.”

  “Don’t give me bullshit, Donnie. One thing I know is boats. We went out on a fucking federal boat!”

  “I’ll tell you this, Left, if that’s the boat, we were in good company, and we were better than they were.”

  “Huh?”

  “That fucking guy with the boat, he scammed congressmen and senators, and he tried to scam us. If he can scam those people, I ain’t no Phi Beta Kappa that he can’t scam me. But he didn’t get a fucking thing on us, right? We had a great party and we walked away from it.”

  “You sure?”

  “Hey, did they get us? We’re sitting here, Left. We beat those FBI guys!”

  “I don’t know, Donnie,” he says. He keeps shaking his head and looking at the picture. “I hope you know who the fuck you’re messing around with. A fucking federal boat.”

  Lefty called me at my apartment. Tony Mirra was causing trouble. He had gone to the boss and put in another claim on me. Mirra said that I had worked for him at Cecil’s disco when I first came around, and that entitled him to claim me.

  “There’s gonna be a sitdown on this, at Prince Street. Sonny and I have to go to the table and straighten this whole thing out. That’s this afternoon. Last week Mirra won a decision that he gets $5,000 a week from Marco’s.”

  Steve Cannone’s social club was at 20 Prince Street. Marco’s was a midtown restaurant that used to be Galante’s place.

  “Left, no way I’m gonna be with Mirra.”

  “You ain’t got nothing to say about it.”

  17

  THE SITDOWNS

  Around the middle of March, informants were telling the FBI of unusual activity on Prince Street in Little Italy. An apparent series of sitdowns was taking place at 20 Prince Street, the social club owned by Bonanno consiglieri Steve Cannone.

  “I gotta control my temper,” Lefty says over the phone. “You have no idea what we went through. This went on for fucking eight days with this motherfucker, for you. I mean, heavyweights had to sit down. Saturday was the meeting in New York. I had a four-and-a-half-hour meeting about you again today.”

  “For what?”

  “Don’t say, ‘For what.’ ”

  “How come you never tell me? I don’t even know what you’re talking about.”

  “Who else is involved but Mirra?”

  “Well, what’s this guy want now?”

  “I’ll tell you what, you son of a bitch, fucking asshole that you are. You got me aggravated about this Rocky.”

  Mirra was always trouble. And now Rocky. The undercover cop’s name was coming up too often. In addition to taking Rocky out on the ABSCAM boat, I had brought him up to the New York area and set him up in the car-leasing business, the cover for his undercover operation. He had gotten involved with Mirra. That there were sitdowns over me, involving Mirra and Rocky, was not good news. “What about Rocky?”

  “Rocky admitted that you made two hundred and fifty grand in excess amount of money. I’m not burning my phone up, and you know what I’m talking about. That you took a hundred and twenty-five off him!”

  “From where?”

  “Anthony Mirra says that you shook Rocky down and youse made it in fucking junk money!” Lefty’s voice was barely controlled. “I’m fed up with this bullshit over here!”

  “What are you talking about, junk money? I never cut any junk money with him. Who did Rocky tell that

  I cut two hundred and fifty grand?“

  “Anthony Mirra and his men—don’t you understand, you fucking jerk-off? I just got off the table.”

  Out of the blue, I was being accused of secretly splitting up a $250,000 drug deal with Rocky. Next to being a snitch, the worst thing you do is not split a big score with your bosses. I didn’t know what Rocky was involved in. I didn’t know what, if anything, he was really telling Mirra. I couldn’t risk trying to contact Rocky because I couldn’t trust his phone, and I wasn’t sure I could even trust him—I didn’t know what kind of situation he was in. There was no way I could find out anything right now except from Lefty, and I had to handle this conversation very carefully. I couldn’t afford to say the wrong thing or give a wrong answer that would further jeopardize either me or Rocky. But without knowing the circumstances I couldn’t be sure what were the right things to say. All I knew immediately was that this kind of situation with sitdowns can result in a decision that somebody has to go. I had to react with badguy strength—I couldn’t be pushed around. “Rocky’s lying, Left. I never cut any junk money with him.”

  “I know he’s lying.”

  “So what are you hollering at me for?”

  “You’re fucking laxed!”

  “He’s a liar. And Mirra’s a liar.”

  “But your word don’t count.”

  “Why does his word count?”

  “Rocky already said it.”

  “Just because he said it first?”

  “This son of a bitch passed a remark. You only get a denial. This thing has snowballed. It’s a very, very dangerous thing. Now it’s beyond Sonny. It’s out of Sonny’s hands now, your case. It’s going all the way to the top. I got sent for today. Sonny didn’t tell me what he wanted to talk about. Then when I was there, he says, ‘Lefty, I want you to stay here.’ Why? He says, ‘Sally’s coming down.’ ”

  Sally Farrugia, the acting boss.

  “All of a sudden Mirra walks in with two guys, give a kiss and all that. Sonny don’t warn me what’s going on. Another big sitdown. They had people from Canada down to represent this mother’s claim over you, to represent this fucking scumbag because they heard big money, you understand? I warned I’m not giving you up. I die with you. If the Old Man was out, we’d have no fucking problem. Sally can’t say nothing. He feels bad, but his hands are tied. He can only listen to people, and they’re all making up stories. I went at Mirra today. I got up from the table, and I went at Mirra at the end of the bar. I called him all the cocksuckers in the world. I grabbed him. He says, ‘I never said you got the money, but Donnie and this guy cut it up.’ I says, ‘Don’t ever mention that fucking word junk money, you dirty cocksucker,’ and that was it. Sonny says, ‘Break it up.’ I went at the fucking captains. His captain—visualize the guy that was in the papers where the old man went bye-bye—he put his hand on me. I says, ‘Get your hand off me.’ He says,

  ‘You know who you’re talking to?’ I says, ‘Get your fucking hand off me! I don’t even know you.’ The whole joint heard it. ‘I’m no fucking mutt!’ I says.“

  Mirra’s captain was Caesar Bonventre, the zip who was one of Galante’s bodyguards when he got hit, and one of those we figured was in on the hit.

  “I’m in trouble. Then when I blow my top, Sonny says, ‘You’re supposed to listen.’ ‘I listen to my prick,’ I says. I had a b
ig fight with Sonny. I stuck to my guns. I got witnesses. Consiglieri Stevie was there. Another main guy like Sonny”—Joey Massino, another powerful capo—“told me, ‘Lefty, stick to your guns, I’ll go back and tell that guy in the can.’ ”

  “Was Rocky there today?”

  “Are you kidding? Why would a scumbag like that be with us? Oh, I’ll win you. But it’ll go to the top.”

  “I thought this was settled. You told me two weeks ago.”

  “He wanted to be on our backs again. That’s why I got mad at Sonny in front of him. In front of all the bosses I said, ‘What are you, a piece of shit? This thing was settled with everybody, our family, our boss. This fuck does a thing like this again and gets away with it—why don’t you open your mouth?’ Then I went at the captains and got in trouble. I was chased off the table.”

  “What’s with this guy?”

  “Mirra is a low-life bastard,” Lefty says. “He’s a pimp, a fucking fag. With the bosses they called him a rat stool-pigeon bastard.”

  “You believe him or you believe me?”

  “How many times you was in Cecil’s?”

  Cecil’s was the disco that Mirra had a piece of, where I had hung out with him years before. I didn’t know what this angle was, what answer was the safe one. I didn’t know whether it was better for me to have been in Cecil’s a little or a lot. I had to read between the lines and think quick. I hedged. “I was there like two, three times.”

  “He says you was there three, four times at the door.”

  “Left, I was at that door once.” He was looking for evidence of whether I had worked for Mirra, which would give Mirra an edge in his claim of me. “I never got a dime. You know what I got? Free drink.”

  “While you were hanging in that joint, Cecil‘s, was Anthony Mirra a wiseguy then?”

  “It was right around that time. I’m not sure.”

  “I said he wasn’t a wiseguy when he got Cecil’s because I wasn’t married then. He’s only straightened out three and a half years. I was six months after him. If Mirra wasn’t a good fellow at the time you was there, his argument is no good. Sonny will check it out. Sonny’s going to the Commission, you know, find out when he was straightened out, then they’re going to revive it. I told him you met Anthony Mirra at my joint. I got you through the little guy”—underboss Nicky Marangello—“because I liked you very much. That’s on record.”

  The question was whether Lefty or Mirra had introduced me into the crew. The fact was I had known Mirra first. Lefty was claiming he had introduced me to Mirra. In either event, way back then Lefty had gone to Marangello and put in an official claim on me—something Mirra had never done, as far as I knew.

  “Caesar’s on his side,” Lefty goes on. “He says you were with him every night.”

  “I never saw Caesar there at Cecil’s. He wouldn’t know me.”

  “Donnie, you’re fooling around with a dangerous man. I want this guy’s head because he’s looking for mine. He’s telling his people, ‘I live in Lefty’s building. He lives on the eighth floor, I live on the sixth. If I got no coffee or butter or like that, some morning I’ll stop and knock on Lefty’s door.’ In front of his men he says that. I says, ‘I tell you what, Anthony Mirra, you stop at my door, I’ll shoot you right in the head, because you’re not my friend.’ I want Rocky bad. I would hurt him only because he lied. I says to Mirra, ‘You tell that motherfucker he belongs to me. I catch you in the fucking car with him, I shoot him in the fucking head. If you’re in the fucking way, you die too.’ The joint is bugged, Donnie. But I said what I had to say. I said I’m gonna put two bullets in his eyes, and I specify what caliber it’s gonna be. Nobody in Brooklyn could control me today. You’re not allowed to drink at a meeting. You know what four and a half hours is sitting down with politicians?”

  “I know.”

  “No, you don’t know. The fucking trouble with you.”

  “Well, you never explain to me.”

  “I can’t explain to you. What I’m telling you now, you ain’t supposed to know. See, you’re treated like a friend, understand? Now, did you bring Rocky in town?”

  This was the most delicate and dangerous subject of all. “Yeah, he came up there, why?”

  “Now, Rocky come in through you. How I know Rocky is through you?”

  “That’s right. I met him down there. I met him in Lauderdale at the bar down there, I told you that, at Pier 66.”

  “The guy belong to you?”

  “No.”

  “Donnie, we ain’t saying different. But now you came in with him, you gave him the job. Remember what you say now. You put the guy there. Somebody put him in there. The guy that put him there was on the federal boat, the guy is a federal stool pigeon. Something’s wrong with that joint.”

  This was Lefty at his most dangerous. He circled around, jumped here and there, but when he was on to something wrong, he wouldn’t let go. Now he was circling around the truth, which was something that could get Rocky or me killed if it wasn’t handled right.

  “You put the guy there, Donnie. Now, who owns the joint?”

  “I don’t know who owns it now, Left.”

  “Donnie, who owned it before? Who’s Rocky working for? You brought the guy down. The guy didn’t know anybody in the fucking town. When I went there for a car, I had to check it out with Donnie. Donnie was the boss. The joint never left the hands. Now, Donnie, where do you take it from there? You can’t answer that question. It’s a serious thing. Where does this go, Donnie?”

  “Left, I don’t know.”

  “Think about it and don’t go to sleep. Go sit down and have a cup of coffee and call me back.”

  I couldn’t talk to Rocky. I couldn’t talk to Sonny because I wasn’t supposed to know any of this was going on. I needed to pump Lefty for information. If we had been face-to-face, at least I could have been gauging his expressions, sensing him better. I couldn’t let any time go by. I called him back in a few minutes.

  “Listen,” Lefty says, “I’m asking you a question. The man admitted you made $250,000. Why would he rat you out?”

  “That’s because Mirra put the words in his mouth.”

  “Could you prove it?”

  “How am I gonna prove it? Because he’s probably scared of Mirra, that’s the only reason. I’m sure the guy is okay. But I don’t know why he would say, unless Mirra made him say it, that we cut up two hundred and fifty grand in junk money.”

  “He’s a fucking stool-pigeon bastard. I won you and I’m gonna keep you. I says, ‘I go all the way and die with the kid.’ Ain’t nobody having you. I don’t like what Sonny did. He wants to compromise. He wants to give up Rocky for you. Sonny says, ‘We own Donnie and we’re giving up Rocky.’ ‘You give up my prick,’ I says. Then, when I blew my top, he says to hold off. ‘You don’t want him,’ he says. No, I don’t want Rocky, but he can’t have him. Mirra’s a fucking swindling bastard. He’s on the payroll out there, you know. He’s out there every day from eight to three in the afternoon. Just tell me about Rocky and make me feel happy and go to bed with a clear head. You’re not answering me, Donnie. Who put him there, Donnie?”

  I hesitated, trying to think three questions ahead, how to slip out of this noose about my involvement with Rocky and the car business. “I just told you, he came up from Florida with me.”

  “Donnie, don’t stutter to me. Ain’t the question. You was the boss there. He admitted that. Everybody in the neighborhood knew it. You was the boss.”

  “So what’s the big deal?”

  “Whose business was it? Why’d you give it up?”

  “Were we making any money out there?”

  “Wasn’t the question, that there. Who owns the company?”

  “Left, I told you, it was a guy in California.”

  “A guy opens up a motherfucking Corvette joint with all new cars, you don’t know his name.”

  “Left, there were three cars there. They closed that joint. All they’re doing i
s running swag outa the back. Rocky told me—”

  “Oh, come on. Swag to pay that kind of rent? What are you playing, games? Are you a fucking nitwit? The idea is, who put everybody there? Where’d it all stem from? Where’d youse meet? How come Rocky mentioned to Anthony Mirra about junk money and don’t mention the boat, the stool-pigeon boat, the FBI boat? How come Rocky don’t mention the federal boat? Take a guess who got him out of jail?”

  “Who?”

  “Go ahead, it’s a guess you got coming.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Oh, you ain’t gonna believe it. Rocky got him out.”

  “Rocky got Mirra out of jail? How?”

  “I don’t know, through paperwork. You figure it out. Rocky got him out, and he’s paroled to them people out there. And he’s on the payroll out there. So you figure it out.”

  I couldn’t figure it out. It was news to me. “That’s a good one.”

  “It ain’t a good one. You got caught in the web. Donnie, you’re my friend. I trust you an awful lot. Many times I had doubts about you. You don’t understand the ins and outs of anything.”

  “So what do we do now? We just let this guy bullshit and lie to everybody?”

  “Ain’t the question. I didn’t want to scare you from coming in.”

  “Hey, Left, I ain’t afraid of anybody.”

  “You can’t help me out. I have to handle it without you.”

  “I ain’t afraid of Mirra, either.”

  Lefty gave a low chuckle. “Let me tell you something. Get off your fucking high horses and call me back later. You’re fucking aggravating me.”

  “I’ll listen to you, go ahead.” Now I wanted to keep him on the phone. I didn’t want to risk losing contact, or letting him leave the house. I needed to know as much as possible, as soon as possible, about what was going on in the family and what I was facing.

  “Donnie, what the fuck am I coming to Florida for? What am I, an impressionist? At least Jerry Chilli goes out there and has got fifty things going. He gets five grand a day. What have I got with you, Donnie? I got nothing but aggravation.”