Donnie Brasco (26 page)
Authors: Joseph D. Pistone
Tags: #Biographies & Memoirs, #True Crime, #Organized Crime
“That’s a lot of up-front money for me right now, Lefty, because the business isn’t going.”
“That’s just for good faith. You keep your business and your life, that’s a good investment. You’ll have peace of mind, Tony.”
“Okay. I have to go home to get the money.”
“I’ll have Donnie go back out there with you, look the whole thing over. Because you can’t afford to let much time go by on this here.”
When we’re leaving the bar, Lefty says quietly to me, “Make sure he has what he says, Donnie, and that he does what he says.”
I went out to Milwaukee with Conte. Lefty, as a made guy, would have to have his captain’s permission to check out something in somebody else’s territory. As a connected guy with the Bonanno family, I could go out on Lefty’s permission alone. It’s a very delicate situation when you’re dealing between two families, especially when you’re trying to go into another family’s territory and open a business that that family has a sole lock on. If you don’t do things right, you start a war and get people killed.
The Milwaukee boss might be tempted into a deal like this because he might appreciate having another good man out on the street working for him, and he might like having a good link to New York. There’s always a chance you’ll want a favor done.
Lefty had not mentioned the name of Balistrieri, so we proceeded as if we didn’t know who the power was.
By now Conte had a two-room office at 1531 North Farwell Avenue, a neighborhood of apartment buildings and bars. He had business cards. “THE BEST VENDING CO. Prompt Service is the ‘Best’ Way. Anthony Conte, President.” He took me around to neighborhood bars and restaurants and clubs where Balistrieri had his vending machines. We wanted to be seen together giving the impression that we were doing what we were supposed to be doing, in case Lefty or anybody else checked up or asked questions.
He told the owners how he was starting a new business and wanted to bring in his machines. The owners of the places said they didn’t want to change companies. Some of them said they didn’t want any trouble with the company they already had. Nobody mentioned Balistrieri, but we knew what they were talking about. After a couple of days I called Lefty and told him the situation looked good. I told him that Conte had an office, a truck, a few machines, some good potential outlets.
He said he would get permission from Mike Sabella and come out right away. “Did you send the twenty-five hundred?” Lefty asked. “Because I got to give Mike fifteen hundred before I come.”
To send a soldier into another family’s territory, Sabella had to get permission from Bonanno boss Carmine Galante. Galante was back in prison for parole violation. As a known mobster, Sabella couldn’t be on the visitor’s list. Somebody on the visitor’s list was the courier for information back and forth between Galante and his captains. Word came from Galante that permission was granted for Lefty to visit Milwaukee.
In Milwaukee, we recorded Lefty for the first time. For his Milwaukee operation, code-named Timber, Conte’s car was wired with a Nagra tape recorder. I never had my car wired in New York because of how my dashboard had been taken apart by the Colombo guys in Brooklyn. Recording of conversations by the FBI is not done lightly. When an agent makes a recording, he must turn it in to the FBI and have it logged as an official document. Even if there turns out to be nothing important said, once the recording is made, the cassette must be dated and initialed by the agent. And subsequently, when a case comes to trial, the tape is made accessible to defense attorneys.
On the night of June 21, Tony and I picked up Lefty at Chicago’s O‘Hare Airport and drove him to Milwaukee. Lefty and I checked in at the Best Western Midway Motor Lodge on South Howell Avenue. The next morning the three of us met for breakfast prior to taking a tour of the city so Lefty could assess the town and the possibilities.
“My people are checking this whole thing out,” Lefty told Conte, “who’s who up here and everything. And my boss is gonna be entertaining people in New York now, who he’s sending for.”
Lefty and Mike Sabella had begun the long, careful process of getting the Milwaukee and New York mob families together. Nothing is done directly. You go through friends of friends. In New York, Sabella was reaching out for the network of Bonanno people and intermediaries that would lead properly to the Balistrieri people in Milwaukee. There would be a lot of wining and dining at CaSa Bella, Lefty pointed out, and that would cost money. It would cost Conte money.
Lefty begins instructing Conte right away. “First thing is you got to get a beeper. See what doctors got? That’s a beeper. Every successful businessman has it. It’s the most fantastic thing going. You’re in the car, you got that on you, a machine goes bad someplace and they try to reach you, you pull over to the side and make your call. You don’t lose three or four hours. Also, I need to be able to reach you twenty-four hours a day. Call the telephone company and tell them you want a beeper and they’ll fix it all up.”
“I’ll call them right away,” Conte says.
Lefty takes out a pen and scribbles on a napkin. “Now, I’m gonna give you five numbers where I can be reached day and night. If anybody bothers you, anybody approaches you, you throw a name at them. You tell them you got a partner in New York, on Mulberry Street, and he’s very well connected.”
He hands the napkin to Conte.
We ride around the business and industrial areas of the city. Conte points out the strips of motels, bars, and restaurants where he figures he should get business. “Look at the bars here,” Lefty says. “It’s like Hoboken.”
“They like their beer here,” Conte says. “All these places got machines already, but they’re not happy with them. But they don’t want to change.”
“Let me explain something to you,” Lefty says. “I know the machine racket better than the back of my hand. I been in that racket for thirty years. This town is connected, you better believe it. When you put your machines in, anybody approaches you, first little beef you get, you say I got a partner in New York. But it ain’t gonna be the owner that approaches you. He’ll be a working man. You say to the guy you want a name. You say you’re being very nice about it, if he’ll give you a name, then you will contact your partner in New York and give him that name and everything will be straightened out. You listening, Donnie?”
“I’m listening.”
“Because this is important, this here. Tony, you tell the guy, ‘Don’t be foolish and make a mistake.’ If he tells you to get your fucking machine out, you say,
‘Hey, look, don’t make a mistake in telling me things like that. Because it’s only a two-hour ride from New York, and my man won’t stand for it.’ You tell him your man is very reputable, known in the five boroughs, known all over the country. Jesus Christ Almighty, I’m known all over the fucking world. You say, ‘I’ll have my man up here in two hours.’ And you show the guy you got a beeper, too, you can be reached twenty hours a day. They come up with a name, we’ll meet. You’re out of the picture and they can’t make a move until it’s all checked out.“
“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.”
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