Donnie Brasco (60 page)
Authors: Joseph D. Pistone
Tags: #Biographies & Memoirs, #True Crime, #Organized Crime
Jimmy Legs was packing a .45. Nobody used holsters. You carried your pistol in your sport-coat pocket or your belt. Jimmy Legs had a big belly, but the rest of him was skinny. He had no hips or butt. So when he’d walk around, the .45 kept falling down through his pants legs. He had this bright idea that he would sew a pocket on the inside of his pants at the small of his back and carry the gun in that pocket. So this evening he had just installed the pocket and was using it for the first time.
We were bullshitting about the world situation and how the United States should be tougher on other countries and not be pushed around. About how the liberals running our spy business should learn something from the methods of the KGB, which could do anything it wanted to in order to be effective.
Somebody brought up the different ways you could kill people in the spy business.
I told them a story about one of the methods. A KGB agent had an umbrella with a sharpened tip, and they put poison on it, and he’d walk by somebody and just prick him in the leg or arm with this umbrella.
They thought that was the greatest thing in the world. The CIA should be able to do that stuff and not be so answerable to Congress anymore, like it had been since Watergate.
We got to laughing at some of the stories, and Jimmy Legs suddenly took off for the john.
A few moments later we heard a commotion. Jimmy Legs came out of john dangling his .45 from his thumb and forefinger. “I had to shit so bad that I forgot about my gun pocket, and when I took down my pants and began, the gun fell in the bowl so I had to fish it out. Hey, if we had to go to war and I had to kill somebody, I’d just leave a little shit on it that’d get on the bullet, and all I’d have to do is nick somebody and I’d kill them with that poison just like the fucking KGB!”
The wedding reception for Boobie’s daughter was scheduled for seven P.M. at Shalimar Caterers, 2380 Hylan Boulevard, on Staten Island. We started gathering at the Motion Lounge at about five P.M.—Lefty, Nicky Santora, Boots Tomasulo, Bobby Capazzio, Sonny, Charlie the bartender, and others.
The rules were that we would all stay around Sonny at all times, not leave his side, because this would be a good time for retaliation against him. Other families were going to be represented at the wedding, too, so we didn’t know who might do what.
Some guys brought their wives or girlfriends. We were going to travel in a caravan, so we discussed how to get there and who was going with who.
We had to make sure everybody was packing. Nicky had a .45 that was too big for his waistband, so he gave that to Boots, and Nicky carried a little .32. I, of course, had my .25 automatic.
I drove with Boots and Nicky. Everybody was at the reception. Lefty and Louise, Jimmy Legs, Jerry Chilli, Mr. Fish Rabito, Dennis the cop, Nicky Marangello, Mike Sabella.
One notable absence was Joey Massino, which really ticked off Sonny and Lefty.
“That jerk-off is afraid to get caught out in the open,” Lefty says, “that’s all.”
I sat at Sonny’s table with Nicky, Charlie, and Boots. Everybody had a girlfriend except Boots and me.
It was a big, fancy reception with an open bar, a band, a prime-rib sitdown dinner. All kinds of wiseguys were there from different families, including Jerry Lang, the acting boss of the Colombo family. Boobie was proud, but quiet and controlled as always. We sat around Sonny and kept our eyes open.
There were photographers cruising around the room, but Sonny’s rule was no photographs at any tables where his crew sat.
At about eleven P.M., we all went back to the Motion Lounge to relax for a while.
Sonny gave me $4,000 to put on the street in Florida as shylock money.
I flew back to Tampa the following day. I couldn’t carry the gun Sonny had given me on the plane, so I took the handle apart, scratched my initials and the date on the metal underneath, put it back together, and handed it to another agent at the airport for him to take to Florida.
On July 12, Nicky Santora called. “You know that kid from up here? We got word he’s down there.”
“Oh, yeah?”
“So we just wondered, maybe you could get a line on him or something. I think Miami. We’re not positive, you know. It’s more logical that he would be down there.”
“I’ll make a couple phone calls. Some good people down there.”
“But, Donnie, you know, be careful, watch yourself.”
On July 23, Lefty called. “That guy’s coming out tomorrow. He’s got something in the back of his head.
I don’t know what the fuck’s happening.“
Lefty had been feuding with Sonny for the way the crew was being handled.
“Have I ever told you what the fuck he did? He took half of my guys away. Who do you think he gave them to?”
“Who?”
“You’ll never guess, Donnie. Who’s our enemy?”
“Don’t tell me he gave them to Al Walker.”
“Thank you. The whole neighborhood is blowing their tops. He gave him Mike. He gave him Joe Puma. They’re all disgusted. They’re all gonna quit.”
“You gotta be kidding me.”
“And the trouble he’s causing. He wants to know what they’re doing for a living. They’re all gonna rebel. So I went to see him. I said, ‘Are you blowing your fucking top?’ I start arguing with him. He said, ‘I know what I’m doing.’ ”
“He’s making those guys stronger,” I say. “He’s giving Al Walker, who’s an enemy, other guys that are his enemies.”
“Thank you. Jimmy Legs don’t even want to come around, and he belongs to me. I’ve got Steve in Florida.”
“Instead of keeping them under control,” I say, goading him, “he’s giving them away.”
“Thank you. I’m glad you understand all these things. That’s what’s gonna make us much stronger when the shit hits the fan. Listen, Donnie, I want to be under the, uh, the guy that’s coming home. I’m allowed that request.”
“Is that right?”
“Now, if I got it, I don’t answer to nobody but him.”
“That means I can go with you over to him, huh, Left?”
“That’s it. You stay with me and we don’t answer to nobody. Follow me?”
“Well, what do you want me to do now with this guy when he comes down here?”
“Go along with him. Just play it cool.”
“All right.”
“He’s making all kinds of efforts. And so you know what the zips said? ‘We don’t like this guy, we don’t trust him.’ ”
“Is that right?”
“They don’t want him. He went over their heads. There’s a feud going on. I don’t care, Donnie. My guys are happy. I don’t bother them, you know?”
“What’s Joey M. doing?”
“Now they don’t bother each other. He’s buried himself. Joe Puma’s in the hospital, and he makes the guy check in every day from the hospital. Ever hear anything like this? ‘And don’t go back to Florida until you check out with me,’ Sonny tells him. Does not make sense. Well, that’s good in our favor.”
“Yeah.”
“We don’t bother our people.”
“That’s right.”
“But this guy, I don’t know what he’s doing to himself. I’ll tell you, Donnie, Sonny Black is in a fucking fog.”
So Lefty was going to put me with him directly under the boss, Rusty Rastelli, when he got out of prison in a few weeks. I could never relate as closely to Lefty as to Sonny. But one thing about Lefty I could rely on: Everything he ever told me about the Mafia turned out to be true.
I prepared for my final weekend in the Mafia, my last days as Donnie Brasco, as the host of Sonny Black.
20
COMING OUT
Sonny was anxious to get back in Santo Trafficante’s good graces, make sure everything was straightened out so we could move ahead and make all the money we could make through our hookup with Trafficante. He felt that a large part of his future was going to be in Florida.
Sonny and Nicky Santora came down on Friday, July 24, and had Rossi call Benny Husick to see if they couldn’t set up a meeting for Saturday—not in Tampa, because Sonny felt there was too much heat on the both of them there, but in Holiday. Rossi reached Husick at the Bayshore Country Club in Miami. Husick said they would try to be in Holiday by five P.M. Saturday.
This weekend we had planned to pump Sonny and Nicky for everything we could get. For the last several weeks there had been a million little things to do to tie up loose ends, and we still played our normal roles so we didn’t tip our hand. Now we were really coming to the end, and we could go for it, like a pitcher airing it out in the last couple of innings. We knew it would be the last time we would see them. We wanted them to talk about the murders, of course, but we would push conversations into any mob area we could bring up and grab anything that we could. It didn’t matter if we went too far, because everything was history after this weekend.
We wanted to loosen them up right away. Friday night we went to Pappas Restaurant to eat, then bounced around to a few places. We went to Clearwa ter Beach to a hotel where there was a comedian performing. We went back to the club and finished up at about six A.M. Saturday morning. They were having a good time. They didn’t talk business.
Trafficante and Husick arrived at the Tahitian Motor Lodge on the dot at five P.M. Saturday and went straight to Sonny’s room. A few minutes later the three of them left the room and went to the coffee shop. They talked there for about forty minutes, then Trafficante and Husick got up, shook hands with Sonny, and left in Trafficante’s Cadillac.
Sonny called Rossi and me into the coffee shop. He was ecstatic. The meeting had been terrific. He said that he had given Trafficante $2,000 and Husick $1,000 to split with the people who had worked that Las Vegas Night. Trafficante had said that the bust was “just one of those things.”
“So we’re back in his good graces,” Sonny says. “Now you guys got to get your asses moving and start producing because I got us back in with this guy.”
Bingo, gambling, numbers, dog tracks, drugs—everything was going to go big now, teaming up with Santo Trafficante. Florida was going to be ours.
They were in such a great mood that all they wanted to do was party. They wanted to celebrate and anticipate. It turned into a constant “go” weekend—they wanted to keep partying, we wanted to keep them up and talking as late as possible.
We partied all night at the club—Nicky Santora, Sonny Black, Eddie Shannon, Tony Rossi, and me. We had managed to get a little sleep Friday night. Saturday night, we didn’t go to bed at all. Neither Nicky nor Sonny was interested in talking business, no matter how we tried to maneuver conversations. In addition to our own cocktail waitresses and bartender, waitresses from other local joints and regular customers came in and joined the party. In the early-morning hours Sonny took one of the girls back to the hotel.
The sun was up on Sunday morning. These were the last hours for the club and the operation. I took Nicky on ahead to Denny’s for breakfast. Rossi and Shannon had to stay behind for a little while to check out the cash register and help the staff clean up.
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