Donnie Brasco (5 page)
Authors: Joseph D. Pistone
Tags: #Biographies & Memoirs, #True Crime, #Organized Crime
If these guys get caught, how are they going to react? Are they going to try to fight their way out of it? If a cop comes across three or four guys stealing cars, what’s his reaction? If one of the guys makes a move, will the cop start shooting?
If we’re all busted together, what position does that put me in? How do I protect the operation? How do I protect Marshall? How do I protect myself?
All this stuff, all these angles, are going through your mind when you’re out pulling or casing a job. And we were stealing five to ten pieces a week.
We had an order for three Cadillacs. We found what we wanted near Leesburg, Florida, in the middle of the state, two on one lot and one on another. That night I went in with two other young guys and got the Caddies. We headed for Lakeland, to our hotel. Marshall drove the tail car. Naturally we were in a hurry. These cars have new-car stickers on the windows, and we wouldn’t have the fake registrations until the next day.
We’re spread out along the highway, booming along. All of a sudden flashing red lights show in my mirror, and I get pulled over by the Florida Highway Patrol. In these early days I carried a 9-mm automatic, which I had stashed under the seat.
So I get out of the car right away and ask the officer what the problem is.
“You were going over the speed limit, sir,” he says.
I have a Donald Brasco driver’s license, but no registration for the car, and a gun under the seat, so I figure I better be right up front with him, defuse any interest he may have in looking in the car. While I take out my license and hand it to him, I say, “You know what, Officer, you’re probably right. I’m transporting the car from a dealer in Leesburg to a dealer in Lakeland, have to get there so they can clean it up and have it ready on the lot by first thing in the morning.” I give him the name of a dealer in Lakeland. Since it’s about three A.M., I know there’s no risk of him calling the dealer to check. “So I don’t even have the papers with me.”
He is a real nice guy. “Okay,” he says, handing me back my license. “But take it easy, because the next guy may not be so understanding.”
I never carried a gun in this operation after that.
Every time we got an order, I called in to the contact agent and told him what we were looking for. Then later I called to tell him we’d found it. After we hooked the vehicle I’d call as soon as I could and give a description of what we hooked, where we took it from, everything about the job, so the Bureau could keep a record, then, later on, after the operation, could work with the insurance companies and dealers in getting the vehicles back.
Becker had finally located a buyer for the White Freightliner that we had stashed near Miami. These guys were dopers. They moved stuff between Florida and California, hiding cocaine and marijuana among boxes of vegetables and fruits in refrigerated trucks.
Marshall and I were staying at our usual place, the Holiday Inn in Lakeland. Becker said his customers would be calling us.
They called and told us to leave the hotel and check into another one. We did that. We waited for two days, and finally these guys came to our room. Two guys, rough and dirty, long hair, in their mid-twenties, both with gun bulges under their belts.
They said they had made the deal with Becker to take the truck for $10,000.
“Bullshit,” I say. “The price is fifteen grand.”
“We made the deal with him,” one guy says, “and you guys were just supposed to deliver the truck.”
“We’re going to deliver it and make the exchange,” I say, “but I’m not just working for this guy; we’re partners. He can’t make a ten-grand deal on his own when we had all decided on fifteen. That means I would lose more than a grand of my cut on this deal.”
“That’s your tough luck, pal, because we made the deal and that’s all we’re paying.”
I’m hassling these guys because the original price that I knew of was $15,000, and as a thief you don’t just accept somebody’s word that the price was changed. Plus, if I accepted their word without checking with Becker, it might make
him
suspicious. If I was such a hotshot, why would I accept a deal different from our original price from guys I didn’t know?
him
suspicious. If I was such a hotshot, why would I accept a deal different from our original price from guys I didn’t know?
If the deal had been changed, Becker should have let me know. But maybe he didn’t let me know on purpose; maybe he wanted to see how I’d handle it.
Marshall went into the other room and called him. Becker affirmed the deal. We had had the truck too long, it was too hot, and we needed to get rid of it.
“Okay,” I tell these guys. “But anything else you want like this is gonna cost you fifteen grand.”
“We’ll worry about that when the time comes,” the one guy says.
“We won’t worry about it at all,” I say.
We made arrangements to meet at noon the next day near Miami, at an exit off the Sunshine Parkway.
The next morning Marshall and I drove to Miami and went to the Department of Transportation yard and got the Freightliner.
We meet the guys at the highway exit. “Before I give you the keys,” I say, “I want the money.”
“Sure,” he says. He puts a soggy, grimy, stinking brown paper bag in my hands.
“What the hell is this?” I say.
“That’s the money,” the guy says. “What we do with our cash money is, we bury it.”
Becker got a contract to hook two Caddies down in Miami. He had this dealership staked out, had found two cars fitting the order. Marshall and I went back there with him about an hour before closing time and parked across the street at a Burger King. We hung around waiting for the dealer to close, checking how often the sheriffs patrols went by.
When the place closed, we saw that they had a guard wandering around the lot. We hadn’t known about the guard. Now we had to plan to deal with him.
Becker wanted to go around to the back of this big lot and make noise to draw the guard off back there while the other two of us would hook the cars and go out the front. I didn’t like that because of the chance for violence with the guard. I started trying to talk him out of it, saying it was too risky.
A sheriff’s car pulled into the Burger King lot and parked near us. Two cops on their coffee break.
We’re leaning against our car. Suddenly Becker puts his arm around my shoulders in a chummy way. He nods toward the patrol car. “Don’t worry about cops. I been in this business a long time,” he says, “and I can smell cops, even plainclothes guys. The easiest to spot, though, are the FBI agents.”
“Oh, yeah?” I say. “Why is that? I never met any FBI agents.”
“The way they dress, talk, act. I can smell them miles away.”
I am thinking: Why is he suddenly talking about FBI agents? Is he testing my reaction? Is he suspicious because I’m trying to talk him out of hooking the two cars across the street? He’s never been chummy with me before. I put my arm around
his
shoulders. “How’s your nose now?” I say. “You smell anything?”
his
shoulders. “How’s your nose now?” I say. “You smell anything?”
“No, nothing more than those two cops in the car.”
I was able to talk him out of that job because of the guard. He decided we’d go back up north to hook cars. He had to go back to Baltimore. He sent Marshall and me up to the area around Orlando to scout.
We found two satisfactory Caddies again. Marshall brought along two of the younger guys. Marshall was the spotter outside the lot; the other two guys and I cut the chain and went in.
The sheriff’s patrol car comes by. Apparently he notices the chain down over the entrance, because he turns into the lot and starts flashing his spotlight around.
I and the other guys dive under cars. I don’t know what’s going to happen if the cop finds us. Maybe these guys are carrying guns. Maybe this cop will be trigger-happy. I have this vision that I am going to die right here under this car, shot as a damn car thief.
The cop drove around for about five minutes, then went out. We hooked the two Caddies and got the hell out of there.
Becker had stolen a bulldozer in Baltimore and wanted us to deliver it to the customer in Lakeland, so we drove up and put the bulldozer on a flatbed trailer to haul it back. Becker said he was filling contracts for airplanes. He had already had a twin-engine job flown out to Caracas, Venezuela, and now he had another customer for a single-engine Cessna.
When we got the bulldozer back to Lakeland, Marshall and I scouted small airports and found the plane at a strip where nobody was on duty at night. Another guy was going to fly it out, so we took that guy out there that night. Marshall got in and wired the plane up and got it started, and the pilot took off. We didn’t want this plane to get out of the country, so I had tipped off our guys ahead of time and they had made arrangements with the FAA to divert the plane to Miami. So when this guy took off, I called in, and they ordered him to land in Miami. So as not to blow our operation, they used as a reason that they suspected it was a drug plane.
A couple of the car thieves lived in Daytona, and one Sunday afternoon we went over there. They lived with their girlfriends in this dumpy little house, and there were two little kids running around in diapers. The place was a mess, and there was nothing in the house to eat except junk food and beer.
Marshall and I went out and bought a load of groceries, including baby food. They served the baby food to the kids while I cooked up pots of spaghetti sauce and pasta and sausage and peppers for the adults. So we had a big meal with the thieves and their girlfriends and kids that Sunday afternoon.
Because we had things going all the time, I got home only twice in five months. In addition to the separation, the operation was putting a financial strain on my family.
At that time all an undercover agent got was a per diem for expenses. Out of that you had to pay for hotel and meals. It was never enough. Often when I was with badguys, I picked up a check, and often it came out of my own money. I called home a lot, and for security reasons I didn’t want any phone numbers on my hotel bill, so I always called collect. I didn’t get reimbursed for my home phone bill, so I ended up eating that, which was a big sum over the long haul. Sometimes I had to ask my wife to wire me money because I had run out of cash. Naturally, my wife wasn’t happy about seeing our money used this way. In the end I used a total of about $3,000 of my own money in this operation. But I couldn’t stop the operation to argue with the office about expenses.
The office had a strict policy about having receipts for everything. I got into a flap over the time when the guys were buying the White Freightliner and they asked us to switch hotels. I had two hotel bills for one day. The auditors at the Bureau rejected my reimbursement claim because the rule was one hotel room per day. I drew the line, flat out refused to eat that expense. I explained about how it was operating undercover, how expenses didn’t always fit the normal routine. Eventually that was straightened out. I was given a larger weekly amount, to use how I saw fit.
The problem was, this kind of extended undercover operation was new to everybody.
In February 1976, the FBI and Florida Highway Patrol arrested Becker and the entire ring—thirty people—and recovered a million dollars’ worth of stolen vehicles from Florida, Maryland, South Carolina, Pennsylvania, Missouri, Alabama, Georgia, and Virginia. They said it was one of the largest, most lucrative theft rings ever busted.
Trials went on for more than two months. In exchange for his cooperation in busting the ring, and his testimony, Marshall went into the federal Witness Protection Program, on which he and his family were relocated to an undisclosed place and given new identities.
For my work I got a letter of commendation from Clarence M. Kelley, Director of the FBI, and an award of $250.
What meant more to me than that was a letter that one of the defense attorneys sent to Director Kelley. The letter said, in part, “Mr. Pistone ... was a most impressive witness and had obviously done an excellent job in his undercover capacity, but the most outstanding elements of his character were his candor, dedication and sincerity.”
For a defense attorney who lost the case to take the time to write such a letter—that gave me real satisfaction.
I came back to New York to resume work with the Truck and Hijack Squad. But the success of this operation had changed the course of my career and headed me toward the Mafia.
3
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