Donnie Brasco (48 page)
Authors: Joseph D. Pistone
Tags: #Biographies & Memoirs, #True Crime, #Organized Crime
But for the next few weeks he had to stay in New York. “There’s some problems I’m having in Brooklyn.” The Miami cocaine deal had not come through yet, but he had bought a hundred pounds of marijuana out on Long Island, and Nicky Santora had picked it up in a rented U-Haul truck and taken it to Tony Boots’s garage for temporary storage.
Antonio “Boots” Tomasulo—who always wore work boots—had a place across the street from the Motion Lounge called Capri Car Service, at 421 Graham Avenue. I never saw any car-service business go on there. It was just a cluttered place where Boots carried on activities on behalf of Sonny. He was Sonny’s partner in the numbers business, did all the collecting. Sonny often used the phones in there.
Sonny said he had a carbine and several handguns stashed away and that he might give me some of them to take down to Florida in case his crew needed them. Nicky Santora said that he had two .38 pistols wrapped in cloth that he had put in a sink drain at the Motion Lounge before he went to jail. They were still there, but he hadn’t checked them. “I hope they’re not all fucked up with water,” he says. “I wrapped them pretty good in oil.”
After the first of the year Sonny said he was moving out of the Withers social club. We would be meeting at the Motion Lounge.
Rossi went back to Florida to run King’s Court, and I stayed to hang around with Sonny.
I stayed at his apartment, learned more about the pigeons, had many conversations. His estranged wife was causing him problems of some sort. He was concerned about his kids. I would spend a couple of hours a day hanging out over in Manhattan on Madison Street, at the Holiday Bar with Lefty. At night I’d go bouncing with Sonny.
Nicky Santora ran a string of go-go joints out on Long Island. One night Sonny and I had been out bouncing, and we came back to the Motion Lounge at about two A.M. Nicky and a few guys and some of the girls from his joints were partying in the back room.
“You can take your pick,” Nicky says to us. “There’s one that gives a great blow job.”
We look the girls over while they’re partying it up.
“I’ll take the one that gives good head,” Sonny says.
I have to come up with a good quick line here, because Sonny will take the girl upstairs, and I’m staying with him, so I would be expected to take a girl upstairs too. “I’m gonna have to beg off, bro. You go ahead. But I don’t know these broads, they hang around with bikers out there at the joint, and you know how dirty they are. There’s this herpes thing around, and I don’t wanna risk no herpes.”
“Jesus, Donnie, maybe you got a point. Nicky, those broads hang out with bikers. Get them outa here right away, hurry up.”
“What’s the matter?”
“Those fucking broads are gonna give us all herpals.”
“Herpals?”
“Yeah. Don’t touch nothing.”
Nicky complained to Sonny that a guy named Curly was moving in on Nicky’s go-go joints. “We had a sitdown on it yesterday,” Nicky says, “and the decision was that I keep my twelve joints and the other guy that belongs to Curly keeps his ten. Now, this other guy went to one of my joints and threatened one of my girls that she had to kick back money to him in order to dance at my joint.”
“Have Lefty set up an appointment for Monday between me and Curly,” Sonny says, “and I’ll straighten it out.”
One night Sonny and Boobie and I were at Crisci’s Restaurant, not far from the club, at 593 Lorimer Street. It was a favorite place of ours. They loved Sonny. Sonny and anybody with him was treated royally. We wouldn’t even use menus. We’d order whatever we wanted and they’d make it.
We had a couple drinks at the bar before going to our table.
“I’m pleased with how you’re conducting yourself down there,” Sonny says, “what you’re doing, the book, the shylocking. You’re independent, don’t have to be told what to do. You’re not always coming and asking me for money like a lot of the guys.”
“Thanks, bro.”
“The books are gonna open up for membership at the end of the year. I can propose five guys, which I got already. Boobie is number one. Then I’m obligated with four other guys that are relatives of family members. But the next time the books open up, maybe next year, you’re gonna be the first guy that I propose.”
“Hey, Sonny, I really appreciate that. I’m honored. I’m glad you think of me that way.”
“You got any drug arrests?”
“No.”
“Good. The big thing now is drugs, and the cops are always hounding you if you got drug arrests. Keep doing what you’re doing, and you’re the next name I put in.”
“I’m really glad. That’s what I was looking for, Sonny.”
That was the truth. Obviously, no agent had ever become a made guy undercover in the Mafia. What I could accomplish as a made guy was unbelievable.
“Now,” Sonny goes on, “have you checked Tony out completely? You can vouch for him?”
“Sure—you know, much as I can. He’s a top guy, a good earner.”
“If he’s still working with you and earning, Donnie, I’ll put his name in too. You guys deserve it.”
We went to our table. We were eating escarole and beans and Italian bread. I had to take a chance and bring up again the matter of Lefty bleeding Rossi. Rossi and I had discussed it. We were still spending too much government money on Lefty’s entertainment and travel. Since Sonny’s last directive that we cut back on Lefty and report any problems to him, things had not improved. I was increasingly worried that Sonny himself would notice the expenses and blame me for not following his orders.
I wanted Sonny to know that I was keeping on top of things. And after all, I, too, was supposed to be enjoying all this money we were glomming from Rossi.
“Nothing for nothing,” I say, “and I really feel uncomfortable bringing the subject up again. But Tony’s getting very pissed off about spending so much on Lefty, and he’s complaining to me about it all the time.”
“What the fuck you want me to do, Donnie?”
By his tone I figured I’d blown this one. “Sonny, I just want you to be aware in case Rossi decides to pull out—we lose paydays with the club and his connections.”
Sonny picked away at his salad. “You got two choices, Donnie. Either you handle it with Lefty or I’ll handle it with Lefty. And if I handle it with Lefty and he gets smart about it, I’ll chop his fucking legs off. You tell me what you want to do.”
“Of course I want to handle it with Lefty, because I’m with him. I don’t want anything to happen to him.
I don’t want to create any beef between you and
Lefty or me and Lefty. Let’s just leave it at this table, and it doesn’t go any further, just so you’re aware.“
“Okay,” he says, “it stays here. But if there’s any more trouble, I will handle it.”
16
THE RAID
As they had for the past couple of years, my wife and daughters flew in to spend the Christmas holidays with our relatives in New Jersey.
Early in the evening I went by to wish Lefty and Louise a Merry Christmas. They had their little Christmas tree on the table. I gave Lefty two shirts. He gave me a gift certificate for $100 from Leighton‘s, a men’s clothing store on Broadway. He signed it; “Donny—To a good friend—Lefty.”
Then I went over to Brooklyn and hung out at the Motion Lounge for a little while. Sonny took me into the kitchen and showed me two boxed stereo systems. He said Carmine had bought fifty of them from a truck driver. He had cut the serial numbers off the boxes. “These are for you and Tony,” he says, “for Christmas for your apartments in Florida.”
Then I excused myself to go spend the rest of Christmas Eve “with my girl over in Jersey.”
On Christmas morning everybody met at the club. I had coffee with the crew and hung around until about three or four in the afternoon, then went to Jersey for Christmas dinner with my family.
Two days after Christmas, I was sitting with Lefty and Sonny in the back room of the Motion Lounge.
“Tomorrow morning,” Lefty says, “we want you to take a ride to Monticello. Go to the Monticello Diner. I’ll give you a number to call. Ask for Al. He’ll come down and meet you. He has some guns for us.”
Monticello is a two-hour drive northwest of the city, near the Catskill Mountains. I had been to the racetrack there a few times.
It was as cold as a bastard. The drive was miserable because there was snow and ice on the roads. I got to the Miss Monticello Diner by ten A.M. There was a pay phone inside. I called the number Lefty had given me and talked to Al. “This is Donnie from New York. I’ll be sitting at the counter. I’m six feet tall with dark hair, and I’ll be wearing a brown leather jacket.”
A few minutes later the guy came in. “Donnie? Al.”
Al was heavy, about 5’9” and 200 pounds, wore glasses. He sat down for a cup of coffee. He said that he was from New York but had lived in Monticello for the past five years. We chatted about the weather.
“I gotta get going back,” I say.
“Come on out, I’ll give you your Christmas presents.”
We went out to the parking lot. He was driving a Lincoln. I memorized the license number for my report. He opened the trunk and took out a package the size and shape of a shoe box, wrapped in Christmas paper with a red ribbon on it.
“Thanks for the present,” I say.
“Drive careful.”
On the Palisades Parkway near the George Washington Bridge, I stopped at a service area where there were outdoor telephones. I unwrapped the package carefully, taking my time to make sure I didn’t rip anything. Luckily he didn’t have it taped, just tied with the ribbon.
There were four handguns, each in its own plastic bag: a .22-caliber Burgo six-shot revolver with no serial number; a .45 Colt automatic with a U.S. Army property number; a Ceska Zerojovka-Narodni Podnik automatic whose caliber I estimated at .22 or .32; a .38 Colt Cobra with a two-inch barrel.
I wrote down all the information on a slip of paper. Then I carefully rewrapped the package, sure to get all the creases just the way they had been. I went to a phone booth and called Case Agent Jerry Loar in New York and read off the information. Then I tore up the slip of paper and threw it in the trash can.
I got to Lefty’s apartment at about noon. Lefty wasn’t there. “I just want to leave this package for Lefty,” I say to Louise. “He knows what it is.” I put it under the Christmas tree.
Then I drove to Brooklyn and told Lefty that I had delivered the package.
“Good,” he says. “I’ll check them out, see which ones I want to keep and which ones to send down to you in Florida.”
That evening a bunch of us were sitting around bullshitting about mob business. Lefty began expounding upon deals that he had pulled off, and successful businesses that he had invested in, including the King’s Court, where I was his man. Then he started talking about Milwaukee.
I listened and watched him carefully. He told how he had gotten involved in a vending-machine business with me and how that deal had led to a sitdown between Milwaukee and New York. He said that the New York end of the sitdown had been arranged by Tony “Ducks” Corallo, the boss of the Lucchese family.
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