Donnie Brasco (57 page)
Authors: Joseph D. Pistone
Tags: #Biographies & Memoirs, #True Crime, #Organized Crime
We went downstairs. The guy named Ray had left. What none of us knew at the time was that he had left to call Pat Colgan, his contact at the FBI and coincidentally the guy who was running the surveillance team on me. He called Pat to tell him this guy named Donnie had just shown up from Florida, and he was apparently a good friend of Sonny Black’s because they kissed and hugged, and apparently he was a pretty big drug dealer.
Sonny and I went across the street to the Caffe Capri for demitasse and cannoli. We sat at a table in the rear.
Sonny said he was making a lot of changes. “I’m forming a good crew, people you can go to bed with and trust.”
I asked him about Mike Sabella.
“He thought I was gonna clip him,” Sonny says, “but we had a good talk. He said he had stayed with the other side because they intimidated him, but I told him, ‘You’re my man now.’ He was pleased. He’ll be loyal.”
He said that the day before the hits, Tony Mirra had said he was going with the opposition. On the day of the hits, Sonny called Mirra’s uncle, Al Walker, and told him to come to the Motion Lounge. They sat him down, put a guy at either side of him, and made him sweat until word came that the hits had gone down. “When he heard that,” Sonny says, “he turned ash-white. He thought we were gonna hit him too. But I just reamed him out about Tony, told him Tony was no good; and that he’d better recognize that and act right himself. He agreed, Donnie.”
I asked him how Joe Puma and Steve Maruca would feel with me sitting them down and telling them the terms, since they were wiseguys and I wasn’t.
“Don’t worry about it. Long as you’re my representative, they’ll listen to you. I also want you to meet a guy I’m gonna send down with you, in case you need some help. You going to see Lefty later?”
“Yeah.”
“Tell Lefty to call Sally Paintglass and have him meet me at the lounge at ten o‘clock, and you be here too.”
Sally “Paintglass” D‘Ottavio was a made member of the crew who got his name because he owned a couple of auto body shops.
I left Brooklyn and headed for Manhattan. As I went across the bridge I saw that I had picked up a tail. It was an unmarked van with a white guy and a black guy. I was curious, but I didn’t try to shake them. It didn’t matter. I figured they were cops. I was going into Knickerbocker Village. They weren’t going to do anything. I didn’t see them again.
I didn’t find out until two years later, when I was testifying, that these were N.Y.P.D. organized crime cops that had Sonny’s club under surveillance since the hits. They had no idea who I was at the time. So they and the FBI were both surveilling the Motion Lounge at the same time, and neither knew the other was there.
Lefty was home, sick with a cold. We sat on the couch and I started to tell him about my conversation with Sonny.
“I already know what Sonny asked you to do,” he says. “He’s in control of the family now. Donnie, I’m really happy that he’s having you clip Bruno, because it’ll look good in the eyes of the bosses that you did some work. It’s a good contract.”
“Yeah, I’m glad, too, Left.”
“The kid was supposed to be there. He didn’t show because he was all coked up, too high.”
He called Sally Paintglass and set up the meeting with Sonny. I said that before I went back to Brooklyn, I was going over to see my girl for a short while.
“All right,” he says. “I would go with you to Brooklyn, but I’m dying here.”
I did go to Jersey. I went across the George Washington Bridge to the Holiday Inn off Route 80, where I met with agents Jimmy Kosler, Jerry Loar, and Jim Kinne. I told them the whole story of the afternoon. Even though theoretically the conversation had been received from the transmitter and recorded, we couldn’t count on that, so I wanted to relay the information as soon as possible. I gave them the transmitter because the batteries were shot, anyway.
I felt good. I wasn’t a made guy, but I was given a contract to hit a made guy. And I was going to Miami to tell two other guys that they were now under Sonny. All the wiseguys could see how close I was to Sonny, who was becoming the main power in the family—aside from Rusty Rastelli, who was in the can.
The Motion Lounge was crowded at ten-fifteen. Sonny introduced me to Sally. “Donnie is with me, Sally. You can trust him as much as you trust me.”
Sally Paintglass was about 5’9”, sturdy, about five years older than me. He was a tough, greasy-looking guy with a weak chin. We agreed to meet three days later, on May 17, at Joe Puma’s restaurant, Little Italy, in Hallandale.
Sonny says, “This is the first time in over ten years that the family has control over itself instead of being controlled by the Commission. Donnie, watch out for the kid. I got to get him before he gets me, because I can’t rest at night and we can’t go places until we get this kid. That’s our only obstacle.”
The next day I came into the Motion Lounge wearing the same brown-checked sport jacket I wore a lot in Florida.
“Donnie, you got to get rid of that fucking jacket.”
“What’s the matter with it?”
“You look like a fucking tourist. I don’t even like it for Florida. Let’s go get some fucking clothes that don’t embarrass you.”
He took me to a clothing manufacturer who was a friend of his, and I bought a couple of jackets and pairs of slacks. “I feel better now,” Sonny says.
Boobie had told Nicky Santora that I needed some samples of Quaaludes to take back to Florida, and at the club Nicky said that he had to see a guy about it that afternoon. When I was about to leave to catch my plane, Boobie said the samples were over at Boot’s place, the Capri Car Service across the street.
We walked over there. Boobie took a small brown paper bag out of the desk and gave it to me. I put it in my pocket and left for the airport.
On the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, a car pulled alongside me. It was agent Pat Colgan, who was heading the surveillance team. He motioned for me to follow. We pulled off the road near the airport. I took the bag out of my pocket and opened it. The pills were in a plastic bag inside the paper bag. We counted twenty-five. We initialed and dated the bag, and Colgan took it with him to turn it in.
I went on to La Guardia and flew to Tampa.
19
THE CONTRACT
Rossi and I drove across Florida to Hallandale and went to Joe Puma’s Little Italy restaurant. We walked in at seven P.M. Sally Paintglass was already there. We went over and sat down.
“Joe ain’t here,” Sally says. “I can’t find him. The people here, his wife, they don’t know where he is.”
Puma, afraid we might be coming to whack him, had fled.
“I know. I just talked to Lefty. Sonny is ripping.”
“His partner is supposed to be here at eight o‘clock. I drove down from New York, drove straight through. Then I found out this guy ain’t here. I was fucking mad.”
“The other guy know where he went?”
“I spoke to him on the phone. He went up north. So let Sonny put him on a fucking plane and let him come.”
“That’s what Lefty told Sonny: Tell these fuckers, Joe and Steve, to come up here. Sometimes Sonny’s too easy.”
“He figures the guys will be nervous if you call them up there,” Sally says. “They’re both a little scared. See, we’re doing them a favor to come over here in their home grounds.”
“Yeah, so they feel at ease.”
“I brought my wife so the cocksuckers would feel comfortable. Because the other guy was dodging me all night. I said to him, ‘Come to the hotel and have coffee. My wife’s here, bring your wife.’ ”
It was a simple, if ominous, proposition. We were there to tell these guys that they belonged to Sonny. We wanted them to accept that and relax. We didn’t want them to think they were still on the other side and be gunning for
us.
us.
Steve Maruca came in. He always looked like an intimidating old-time gangster. “Geez, it’s hot in here,” he says, sitting down with the three of us.
Compared to the last time, though, when I had seen him with Lefty, he looked nervous and whipped. His voice was a little shaky. “Ain’t it hot here?”
Sally turned to me privately. “I don’t want to be rude or nothing, but I don’t know Tony. Could you tell him to go sit at another table while we discuss?”
Tony went to a table by himself.
Maruca fidgeted. “You say you got those three, uh...”
We explained to him that the three captains were gone, there was new leadership, everybody was now under Sonny Black.
“Does everything look good?” Maruca asks. “Everything’s settled?”
“Everything is finished,” Sally says. “Just with that one guy. If you hear anything, right away call.”
“I seen him, only met him once, at the wedding when Mike’s son got married. I talked to him for a minute.”
“It’s a must,” Sally says. “Anybody who sees him, it’s a must.”
I say, “He sniffs, you know. Three thousand dollars a day, he sniffs coke. That’s why he’s gotta come out of the woodwork, to get that shit.”
“Wow,” Maruca says. “How do you keep a habit like that?”
“He’s a no-good fucking kid,” Sally says. “Wanted to live off his father’s record. Sonny Red. Very nice guy.”
“I only met Sonny Red about three times,” Maruca says, distancing himself quickly. “I don’t know him.”
“He was a gentleman,” Sally says, “but everybody makes mistakes.”
“Things like this happen,” Maruca says. “You can’t question.”
“No, there’s no questions,” Sally says. “One thing you gotta realize. Anything happens, it happens for a reason. ”
Maruca clears his throat. “And you can’t bring it up and you can’t give opinions.”
“There’s a reason for everything that’s right,” I say.
“I wasn’t aware, you know. Mike called me and said, ‘Listen, everything’s fine, just stand pat, and there’s no more talking about it.’ ”
“Right.”
“This is why they sent me down here at a big expense,” Sally says, “because youse guys would feel comfortable. I mean, they didn’t want to send two guys you didn’t know.”
“If they sent somebody we didn’t know,” Maruca says, “we can’t talk to him. Gotta send somebody we know.”
“What good is strangers?” Sally says. “So now you’ll feel comfortable?”
“Yeah, yeah. Because I didn’t do nothing wrong. When you don’t do nothing wrong, you ain’t got nothing to worry about, right?”
“Right,” we say.
“Now my crew’s in power,” Sally says. “But Sonny Red, Phil Lucky, I’m gonna sit down and argue with them? They were in power long enough. Under-the-table power.”
“But they were there,” I say.
“Calling the shots,” Sally says.
“I didn’t know what the fuck was going on,” Maruca says. “He wasn’t telling me nothing at all. He was telling me very little.”
“Now we’re working under an honor system,” Sally says. “You gotta be honorable amongst our fellows, right?”
“That’s the way it’s supposed to be,” Maruca says.
“Well, you’re with the right guy,” I say, “with Sonny.”
“Yeah, he’s gonna be a big shot now,” Sally says. “Because if the doors open up there, he moves. We’re all under Sonny Black. Everybody.”
“In other words, you told them—Sonny Black.”
“Any problem, you call me,” Sally says.
“There ain’t no problem,” Maruca says. “What have I got to lose here?
“You did the right thing,” I say.
“If I’d have done something wrong, I’d have been loony.”
We got back on the subject of Anthony Bruno Indelicato, my target. “See, he’s got to come out,” I say. “That stuff, when you take it, you’re only high like twenty minutes. Then you need more. It’s not like heroin where you stay four or five hours. That’s why they get crazy.”
“Marone,”
Sally says, “this guy needs sacks full.”
Sally says, “this guy needs sacks full.”
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