Authors: Joseph D. Pistone

Tags: #Biographies & Memoirs, #True Crime, #Organized Crime

Donnie Brasco (41 page)

BOOK: Donnie Brasco

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We undercover agents were not always given the equipment with the ultimate in advanced secret technology—stuff that spies may have. Eventually we testify in court, and we have to reveal the details of the electronics equipment we used in the investigation. Spies don’t go to court, so what they use won’t be revealed. Electronic stuff that the government wants to keep secret will not be given to undercover agents to use in making cases that go to court.

All these devices have delicate recording capabilities. That means that they pick up
all
sound. A device hidden on your body will pick up your own belches, the rustling of your clothing, and everything else in a room or nearby-conversations, shuffling of feet and chairs, radios and TVs, air-conditioners, street noise. Because of their paranoia that there are bugs planted everywhere, mob guys, whether in hotel rooms or cars or wherever, always turn on the TV or radio to cover the conversation.

Then, if everything else is just right, you still can’t insist that people talk about what you want them to talk about when you want them to talk about it. Our rules governing recording and transmissions were that once you’ve turned a device on, you leave it on for an entire conversation, and that conversation-recorded over the telephone or on the scene or by other agents monitoring your transmissions-is turned in as evidence. It doesn’t matter whether the conversation turns out to be irrelevant or whether it contains irrelevant sections; the whole thing is provided to the courts. While only relevant parts of conversations may be presented as testimony, the entire conversations are available to the defense attorneys so that they can’t claim we were being unfairly selective—trying to distort conversations-in what we recorded on the scene.

You turn on the recorder or transmitter prior to arriving at the scene. It may be hours before the conversation gets around to what you want to hear. Tapes run out. Batteries run down.

You have almost no control over conditions. You can’t test on the scene for sound levels. You can’t arrange people as you would like to for recording. You can’t ask them to raise their voices. You can’t control extraneous sounds that muddy the reception. You might go through hours of conversation laying the groundwork for the conversation you want. Finally he’s telling you everything you want to know. Then when they play the tapes at the Bureau, you got only half the conversation or maybe nothing—you don’t know that until it’s over. You can’t reconstruct that conversation. You can’t go back to the badguy and say, “You remember that conversation we had yesterday? Let’s talk about that again, and this time let’s not walk by that same building because there’s too much steel in it.... And let’s not walk too fast because the car that’s recording this is getting out of range.” Or,

“Let’s go over it again because last time the batteries were bad or the spindles were worn or the tape was dragging.”

That kind of frustration was to me more of a burden, more pressure than all the other undercover work.

I didn’t like carrying any device. It was difficult to hide anything. I was in solid with these guys, and there was always the traditional hugging and kissing of cheeks. There was horseplay, wrestling around. I was with these guys day and night. With Lefty it was twenty-four hours a day. I stayed in hotel rooms with him, changed clothes in the rooms, stripped to swimming trunks to go sit around the pool.

When I did use a recorder or transmitter, I never taped one to my body. The only time I did that was way back in 1975, at the beginning of the heavy-equipment theft operation. I carried the Nagra or T-4 loose, usually in my jacket pocket. With the Nagra I preferred not to risk running the microphone up under my clothes, so usually I wrapped the cord around the machine and stuck the whole thing in my pocket. When I wasn’t going to be wearing a jacket, I would put the Nagra in my cowboy boot. Then I would have to run the microphone cord up under my clothes and tape the mike to my chest.

I never wanted to keep the devices around. There was always a chance somebody would bust into your apartment or car. So when I wanted to use one, I made arrangements to meet the case agent somewhere for a pickup, and afterward for a drop.

The obvious overall advantage to wearing a wire is that you may get a crucial conversation that makes a case. That’s what makes it worth the risk. It was up to me whether I wanted to wear a wire or not in any situation. Altogether, beginning with Project Coldwater, I probably wore a wire a dozen times.

Sonny was pushing for an introduction to Trafficante. He sent Lefty down to Holiday on a mission to try to set up an introduction through intermediaries. We thought Lefty might talk about important people and procedures. It was too hot for a jacket. I put a Nagra in my cowboy boot.

He had told me that we were going to fly to Miami to meet the son-in-law of Meyer Lansky, the notorious mob mastermind of money and gambling businesses, who supposedly was a friend of Trafficante’s.

At breakfast I say, “I’m still not clear why we’re going down there.”

“Because I wanna see this guy,” Lefty says. “He’s in Miami Beach. He’s gonna introduce me to that guy there who’s going to introduce me to the main guy over here.”

Lefty was complaining as usual about Rossi not giving him enough money. Rossi had booked his round-trip flight from New York but had not offered to pay for his trip from Holiday to Miami, or for expenses he might incur.

“Just sit him down and explain to him what’s going on,” I say.

“That’s your job to tell him. This thing here is his idea.”

“I know it’s his idea, but he hasn’t made any fucking money yet, either.”

“I don’t need this aggravation. Just tell him we’re going to see Meyer Lansky’s son-in-law. Just tell him he’s got to give me the money.”

Lefty had sent Rossi over to the club to look for his Tampa-New York return-flight ticket. He said he had lost it somewhere. But he hadn’t lost it. He confided to me that he wanted to test Rossi’s reaction.

When Sonny had been down to see the club earlier, he had noticed that Rossi’s car had Pennsylvania tags and told Lefty he was suspicious about that. Lefty asked me, and I explained that it was a rented car, so the tags are whatever the car has on it when you pick it up.

But Lefty wanted to check him out a little more. Rossi had booked the New York-Tampa round-trip flight for Lefty on his American Express card. By pretending to lose the ticket, Lefty wanted to see how Rossi reacted. If he was an agent, Lefty reasoned, he would get nervous because he would probably have to account for the ticket to his office, plus he would be worried that somebody “in the underworld business” might meanwhile find the ticket and check out the American Express number to see if it was a government number.

When I had a chance, I clued Rossi in so he could end the search. He told Lefty he would just cancel the ticket and order another one.

We went to the club. Rossi says, “Nothing for nothing, Lefty, but just so I understand, you want me to pay for your ticket to Miami, right?”

“Well, who we going down there to see? I’m gonna see this guy in order to make a move out here. I’m not gonna make this move for myself. Once this guy gives you the green light, you can go anyplace you wanna go. That’s his father-in-law. I meet the old man, he calls this guy over here, and then I get a proper introduction. Now, you gotta give me my regular two-fifty to take back to New York. And a buck and a half to entertain this guy over there.”

“In other words,” Rossi says, “you’re gonna meet with old man Santo.”

“No, he’s over
here.
Gonna meet first old man Meyer Lansky. See, you can’t get an introduction to this man over here unless he sends you over here. He makes one phone call in front of me: ‘Hello, how are you? A dear friend of mine, he’s gonna visit you such-and-such a day at three o’clock.‘ Now I go here. I explain what I’m gonna do in this town. And this is the moves I want to make. I say, ’Do we have your blessings, or do we have to go further with it?‘ Most likely he’ll say, ’You got my blessings.‘ That’s the proper way of doing things. You can’t do it no other way. Now we clear all the middlemen out, all the bullshitters. Now you do what you fucking want in this fucking town. Ain’t nobody can approach you and say,

‘Hey you, what are you doing here?’ Know what you tell them? ‘Go see this fellow—
if
you can see him, which I doubt.’ “

“So you’re arranging a meeting,” Rossi says, drawing him out to get it on the tape, “with Santo.”

“That’s it, I’m making a whole fucking move. Listen. We stood three days in a fucking room-Donnie could tell you-in Chicago. Three days they made me lay in. Finally: ‘Come on, get in the limousine, let’s go.’ I didn’t know where the fuck I was going, but I got in the limousine. They took me to a big, big fucking cabaret. It was closed. It was the off-season. ‘Wait here.’ And from there went to a fucking restaurant. ‘Wait here.’ Then the main guy come out. He said, ‘Come on, let’s go in the office. You’re well recommended.’ And that was it.”

I say, “He wants to make sure that when we make these moves, we get protection from anybody that wants to come in.”

“I know that,” Lefty says.

“Not you, Left. I’m not talking to you.
Tony’s
got to know it.”

“The thing is, Lefty,” Rossi says, “nothing for nothing, but I gotta start earning.”

“Just a minute,” Lefty says. “Are we opening the doors for you right now? Another thing, we gotta get a tent for here. Free food, free drinks. Gambling in the tent. Why should you lose a Friday night business in the club? That’s the biggest mistake you made. And what about a Sunday afternoon?”

“We gotta operate in the bigger cities,” Rossi says, “like Orlando.”

“They own Orlando too. That’s the first thing I’m gonna get is Orlando.”

“And Tampa,” Rossi says.

“He
owns
Tampa. This is what the fuck I’m making a move for. I was with the fucking people all day yesterday, in New York.”

“Don’t misunderstand,” Rossi says. “I’m not trying to be disrespectful. I got a lot of respect for you. But I got to work hard in my life. Stealing ain’t easy today.”

“Well, let me tell you something, my man. Just a starting point. You just caught the off-season. You got the football season. Donnie’s going out and help you. You’re gonna have a lot of fucking action over here. You can’t close on Sundays, though, because Sunday’s your biggest fucking day.”

“But you still can’t go on betting on the fucking come, you know,” Rossi says. “Eventually you got to start earning. And the big money is still not here.”

“It’s in Tampa,” Lefty says. “And what the fuck you think we’re going to fucking Miami for? You think I like to ride in motherfucking planes? I don’t like restaurants, for number one. I don’t like traveling in a suitcase, for number two. Donnie knows what I like. Fucking weekends I’m home watching fucking TV, me and my wife. I don’t even want to go to a fucking joint. I don’t even go to Mike’s no more because I’m sick and tired of a fucking joint.”

“You understand what I’m saying.”

“I understand. All right, Donnie, go get your clothes. Let’s get the fuck out of here, do what we got to do. You know what I would like, Tony? I can make it myself. A nice cold spritzer.”

Johnny Spaghetti picked us up at the airport in Miami and took us to Joe Puma’s Restaurant, Little Italy, at 1025 E. Hallandale Beach Boulevard in Hallandale, just outside Miami. Joe Puma was a Bonanno guy who had been under Mike Sabella until the Galante hit, then was put under Phil “Philly Lucky” Giaccone. Lefty wanted me to meet Puma and Steve Maruca, another made guy. Maruca had recently been released from prison. He was more intimidating than Puma. He was a rugged-looking guy, about 6’2”, with a big voice and big hands.

Puma and Maruca were both under Philly Lucky. There was nothing wrong with us getting together with guys under another captain, but with the unstable circumstances of the Bonanno family at the time, I didn’t know what was up with Lefty wanting me to meet these guys, what it might mean, who was on what side in the factions maneuvering for control under Rusty Rastelli. But I knew that Puma and Maruca were important in the family.

Lefty was exploring another route to Trafficante, through a relative of Santo Trafficante’s. Supposedly he would introduce Lefty to the relative, who would introduce him to Santo.

Neither of the meetings came off. Both guys were out of town.

Sonny called and told me that he and Boobie were flying down for Memorial Day weekend. I call Lefty to tell him. That set him off about his turf.

“What do you mean, Sonny’s coming down tomorrow?”

“I don’t know. I asked him if he had talked to you, because I wanted to make sure you knew about it. He said, ‘Don’t worry, there’s no problem with Lefty, I’ll see him tomorrow before we go.’ ”

“I don’t believe this fucking guy over here. This is my fucking operation.”

“Left, I’m gonna be with you, you know that.”

“Ain’t the question. Why’s he coming down there?”

“Maybe he wants to come down for a vacation.”

“Don’t give me that fucking bullshit, maybe he wants. He ain’t supposed to be in that town without me. Who’s paying for his fucking plane fare?”

BOOK: Donnie Brasco

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