Donnie Brasco (30 page)
Authors: Joseph D. Pistone
Tags: #Biographies & Memoirs, #True Crime, #Organized Crime
They rode in silence for some moments.
“They had your fucking joint spotted,” Lefty says. “Good thing I was out here or they fucking break up our business.”
“Yeah. You remember about two days ago, I had the feeling you saved my life?”
“That’s right, I did. The guy says, ‘Who the fuck is he to come into my town? I own this town,’ he says.”
“Can you imagine what would’ve happened if I tried this on my own?” Conte says.
“Yeah. They were looking for you now. They didn’t know I represented you. In other words, if you hung in your store, they box you in and that’s it.”
“The way he looked at me when he first met me. He said, ‘I been looking for you.’ ”
“He was hot. Now you got a big thing. That’s a boss, you know. Not many people like you ever get to meet a boss. In New York you can’t sit down with a boss. Forget about it. But now you’re gonna have one of the biggest operations in the country. Jesus Christ can’t touch you, because I represent you.”
“But if I knew in the beginning what I know now,” Conte says, “I wouldn’t have even done it.”
Lefty was grousing all the time because I wasn’t in Milwaukee. The fact is, I took my wife on a vacation. She couldn’t fly, because of her lung. Her eyes were still sore. Her arm was still in a cast for her shattered wrist. Otherwise she was coming along well. We drove nine hours to get to this particular beach where we could lie in the sand for a few days. I was on the phone with Lefty and Conte for several hours every day. She said it wasn’t very companionable of me to go away and be on the phone all the time when we were together on our first vacation in years.
I was gone only ten days, but Lefty was frustrated by my lack of concentration on the Milwaukee scene. He thought I was in California. Conte’s story had been to tell him I had lined up a score. The last time I had lined up a big score as an excuse for being away, I had disappointed Lefty with a few hundred dollars instead of several thousand. I told him I had been cheated on my end of the score.
“It’s a ridiculous thing what you’re doing out there,” Lefty says. “The other guy tells me you got some other score or something out there. Forget about it. They’re making a fool out of you. You said you didn’t make enough the last one, you got cheated. Forget about it, cancel it out, because you’re in on the ground floor over here. What are you laughing about? There must be something wrong, pal. I think your girl has got you fucked up. That’s the trouble with you, Donnie. All right, take your girl with you. What the hell, I don’t care.”
“No, I’m laughing at him, at Tony. He was telling me about when he walked into it at the sitdown, you know, and the guy said ...”
“All right, listen, don’t worry about that. Everything’s taken care of.”
“If I run into that guy, Left, I don’t wanna have them start blasting somebody.”
“No, no, you’re like Allstate, pal. It’s all straightened out. He’s well satisfied. Everything’s beautiful out there.” “
Frank Balistrieri’s lawyers, who were his sons Joe and John, would be drawing up papers for the partnership, Lefty said. The partnership would not include the Balistrieri name. Somebody else’s name would be put on the papers. Balistrieri would be a hidden partner. Tony Conte would be his beard, putting machines in, buying up routes and maybe other businesses as well. Their split would be fifty-fifty with Conte. Lefty would get his end out of Conte’s split.
“One thing, Donnie,” Lefty says. “Tony’s gotta get rid of that guy Steve that works for him. Frank said that. He said no outsiders can be involved, not even as a hired hand. And I can’t vouch for this guy, and you can’t vouch for this guy, and so only Tony can vouch for this guy, and that ain’t good enough. Tony can just give him a week’s pay and tell him to look for another job.” “
So agent “Steve Greca” had to leave the operation.
On that basis, the marriage was formed between the Balistrieri family and the Bonanno family in New York. This was a coup for us, the FBI agents. We were now into two Mafia families. And we were actually in partnership with a boss.
“Now, what’s on your mind about coming into Milwaukee?” Lefty asks.
“Well, what are you gonna do?”
“I gotta come out there, but I’m short. I dropped $500 at the airport today, I went over there. Diner’s Club turned Louise down for a credit card. I got hit with a subpoena today. The agents grabbed me 3:10 this afternoon outside the club. Grand jury for the little guy, my man Nicky. For the fifteenth of August.”
Nicky was Nicky Marangello, the Bonanno underboss.
“What the hell they doing with him?” I ask.
“Nothing. They got nothing on the guy. Ain’t got nothing to do with me. I’m not under investigation. I’ll take the Fifth and be in and out. Forget about that. Donnie, listen to me. You’re not up-to-date. See, it’s so ticklish now. Don’t be insulted when I tell you I gotta ease you in. When I go back out there, I’m gonna introduce you as my representative for when I’m not there, and I’m gonna say you’re my blood. These people are heavyweights out there. And the guy out there, he’s under the impression that you don’t wanna come in.”
“Tony? Oh, no, I’ll be there.”
“We’re gonna set you up with a bar and grill out there. And get an apartment near the office.”
“Okay.”
“Now listen. You gotta give me a number where I can reach you.”
“I ain’t got one.”
“Listen, pal, don’t tell me you ain’t got one. You’re laying up someplace. I don’t understand you. You live in a hotel? You sleep in subways?”
“I’m at her house, but she’s got no phone. She wasn’t paying her bills, so they disconnected it.”
“My schedule is not like yours, Donnie. Because I gotta account for myself. You make me laugh.”
11
FRANK BALISTRIERI
I rejoined Conte. We worked the vending business just enough to make it look real. We ordered a few machines and placed them in four or five bars and restaurants. We spent most of our time pushing the investigation.
Our case was that by forcing Conte into a secret partnership in order to do business in Milwaukee, and by forcing other businessmen out, Balistrieri was committing extortion and creating a monopoly and interfering with interstate commerce.
We wanted to see what else we could get on him. ,We had information, for example, that he had a big bookmaking operation, that he was involved in skimming the take at the Las Vegas casinos, that he was involved with illegal union activities. There was always a chance you could clear up some murder cases. Things like that.
Lefty flew in for a Friday night meeting with Balistrieri to “ease me in.” The three of us drove to Snug‘s, Frank’s large, busy restaurant.
Lefty’s instructions were: Let Balistrieri initiate conversation. This is a social function, so don’t discuss business. Frank might not want the others to know that he’s in business with us. Only answer his questions. Don’t get inquisitive about anything.
“Donnie,” Lefty says, “do me one favor. I love you. I’d rather do five years than lose your friendship. Do everything right over here because you can name your own ticket, believe me.”
Tony and I went to the bar to await being summoned. Lefty was taken directly to Balistrieri’s table, near the large front window, where there was a lot of fuss made over him and the usual kissing of cheeks.
After an hour we were escorted to the table by the maître d‘. Frank Balistrieri, in his early sixties, was short and pudgy, with a jowly face and black, slicked-back hair. He was immaculately dressed in a dark blue suit, like an old-time Mafia guy out of the movies.
Tony had already met him at the sitdown. Lefty introduced me. “Frank, this is Donnie. He’s with me, and he’s with Mike.” Frank introduced those around the table. Among the half dozen was his right-hand man, Steven DiSalvo, short, hard-looking, with just a monk‘s-fringe of hair around the ears.
Frank ordered bottles of $70 wine. He talked with Lefty about various New York Bonanno people he knew, like our boss, Carmine Galante, whom he called by his nickname, Lilo. He had some education, wasn’t a “dese-and-dose” type.
When he started telling us about an incident regarding a vending business in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, where he had a piece, his face and voice turned mean, and he put a fist on the table. He said he had been down there during the past week to collect his end. The guy with the business had put $45,000 in cash on the table. Frank said he swatted the money off the table and told the guy, “Wipe your ass with forty-five grand. My end is at least a quarter million.” He needed somebody like Lefty, he said, to take care of the vending business in Florida, straighten people out.
I thought, This guy could lull you to sleep, but he is nobody to mess with.
Out of the blue, Frank invited us to his home for dinner the next night, Saturday.
When we left the restaurant, Lefty was ecstatic. “Donnie, you remember when we used to have to stand outside Sabella’s joint when Lilo was inside? We couldn’t even go inside the joint. He’d come out and he wouldn’t even say hello to you. Tony, in New York you can’t even sit at the same table with a boss. And here we’re sitting down with a fucking boss, and tomorrow night we’re going to his house for dinner. Tell him, Donnie, would this ever happen in New York? Never.”
“He’s right, Tony,” I said.
“But listen. He can be moody, nasty. Frank can be maybe Jekyll and Hyde, a man who can be a fucking animal. He don’t forget. He don’t like that guy from Rockford, that Phil, because he played him for a sucker once, years ago. That’s why the call to Rockford came through Chicago, for my introduction, because Chicago was hoping to heal that there between Rockford and Milwaukee.”
“What do those guys in Rockford control, Left?” I ask.
“That’s it, only Rockford. This guy here controls. He’s more in charge than anybody else.”
“Even though those guys are older out there in Rockford?”
“What do you mean, older? Age? There’s no age limit on this here. Mike says this guy’s the biggest man in the Midwest. He didn’t get what he’s got just by staying in Milwaukee. He owns Kansas City. Cleve land and Detroit belong to Frank. I just found that out. He’s on a plane every day. He stays here one, two days a week. This guy has a limousine he uses for his mother once a week to go to church. A 1978 limousine parked, Donnie. This town, there’s nothing you can do, you gotta go through him. He’s got every union.”
“Does he ever come to New York for anything, Left?”
“Once, twice a year, that’s all. In and out. Who he’s gotta see, mostly he goes to the West Coast, does his business out there. Like Vegas.”
“Has Frank got any say back in New York?”
“He’s got say all over the world. Mostly that’s all over this country. You kidding me? They got the Commission. They settle everything. He was on it. The last war, him and the Chicago boss kicked Joe Bonanno out. He knows all the bosses. When he used to go to New York, he’d go to the Old Man’s house, Gambino’s. Equal boss.”
“How’s he get along with Lilo?”
“They love each other,” Lefty says. “I’m a-scared of him sometimes. Tony, let him do the fucking talking. You just blend into the situation.”
“I did something wrong?” Tony says.
“You told that one guy at the table, ‘Where do you come from?’ That shook me up. They don’t like that. Never ask anybody where they’re from. Because, why you asking? You a cop? That got me fucking chilled to my fucking death. I’m glad that went over Frank’s head. Because he could turn around and say, ‘Who the fuck are you to ask my friends where they come from?’ God forbid you get into a conversation.”
“Okay,” Tony says. “Now I know. I’m learning.”
“Lemme tell you something, Tony. By next summer you’ll be so polished in the underworld field that you won’t need me. And I’m gonna turn around and say I’m very proud of you. But we ain’t talking about that. Tony, we gotta emphasize to Frank that we’re getting spots for machines, we’re going after routes, taking over companies, easing other guys out. You can’t be lax in this field. That’s a tough guy there. Not somebody like that mutt, Anthony Mirra. He’s got a real empire here, Frank has. So far the people are very nice. You know that Steve DiSalvo, Frank’s guy you met at the table? I’m impressed by him. He’s got almost as many hits as I do.”
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