Donnie Brasco (63 page)

Authors: Joseph D. Pistone

Tags: #Biographies & Memoirs, #True Crime, #Organized Crime

BOOK: Donnie Brasco

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The time undercover barely changed me on the surface, either. I haven’t had any problem dropping any of the habits or mannerisms I adopted during the course of the investigation.

I have retained some of the wiseguy attitude, however.

Wiseguys don’t make reservations. They just waltz into a restaurant and give a name. Invariably, the maître d’ says, “I’m sorry, we don’t have a reservation in that name.” And the wiseguy says, menacingly, “Whaddya mean, you don’t have one?” And he gets a table right away.

I’ve done that a couple of time as a “citizen.” Out of the corner of my eye I’ll see Peggy shaking her head ... but it works.

Most people back down from a confrontation in public, but in the wiseguy world, you don’t back down. Not from waiters or salesmen or anybody. Instead of saying “forget about it” to yourself, you take the offensive right away. It’s not bullying, at least in a physical sense.

But my brother will see me act this way, and he’ll say, “Joe, you’re not out with the wiseguys.” My answer is,“Why should you be intimidated by somebody when you know you’re right?”

Of all the mobsters I worked against, I’ve been asked the most questions about Lefty Guns Ruggiero.

Do I expect Lefty to try to kill me when he gets out of prison? He’s eligible for parole in 1992.

I expect it. I also know the Mafia will try to kill him, since he took me in as an associate.

Here’s a guy who is definitely of the old school. Lefty knows what he did was wrong, he knows a Mafia contract was put out on him, yet he has not turned stoolie. He has more resilience than most of the younger guys. Honor is so ingrained in him that it’s more important than the strong possibility that he might get killed by his own peers. Lefty had steadfastly refused to cooperate with the government and join the federal witness protection program to reduce his sentence.

It’s ironic, of course, that the Bureau arrested Lefty in the first place to protect him, and that they have continued that protection during his trials and imprisonment, yet he has sworn to kill me—and that I am not eligible for federal protection. But that’s the way it is. I have to depend on myself.

If Lefty survives long enough after his release to come after me ... I can’t worry about it. Whether he does it out of revenge, or if some other mobster tries to kill me to collect the $500,000 contract on my life, I’ll be prepared. I carry a .38-caliber pistol at all times, and may the best man win.

I’m better than anyone I’ve ever met in or around the Mafia. I’ve got to feel that way. I’m one of the good guys—I didn’t do anything wrong. I just did my job.

I take the normal precautions and live each day and try not to think about that contract.

I said try. I think about it sometimes. But I don’t have nightmares about it.

The Mafia is not the first organization in the world to believe there’s no such thing as bad publicity. Word on the street is that most of the wiseguys read this book when it came out in hardcover. Informants told FBI agents that, with the exception of Lefty, the wiseguys liked it. However, they added that I should not have written it. Their reactions didn’t go any deeper than that; wiseguys are not proficient book reviewers.

While we don’t know any more about their feelings about the book, those bare-bones comments tell a lot about the Mafia society. The remarks remind me of something Lefty said when he took it upon himself to educate me in the ways of being a wiseguy: what was so great about being a wiseguy, Lefty said, was that you can lie, steal, cheat, kill and it’s all legitimate.

The people I met in the mob all regarded themselves as legitimate. Wiseguys do not think of themselves as being criminals or gangsters. They come from a subculture where crime is acceptable, normal, even “honorable.” So the wiseguys are apparently happy that I portrayed them true-to-life.

The second reaction, that I shouldn’t have written the story, may be a sign that they still think of “Donnie Brasco” as having been “one of them” and that, in their minds, I betrayed them. That would figure. Mob guys believe cooperating with the government is morally reprehensible, that it is “criminal.” When a wiseguy turns from the Mafia value system, he disgraces himself and his crime family, and the family loses respect in the neighborhood and with business associates.

Lefty’s reaction to my book would be different, of course. It’s a public reminder of the mob contract on his head.

I have been out of the FBI since September 1986, and as of this writing, I am still testifying for the government in cases against the Mafia. I am looking forward to the day when my testimony is no longer needed and I can put the past to rest and get on with the future.

I plan to write another book and to produce a movie about my career. Maybe I could hit the bestseller list again, or even win an Academy Award, but no one in my family will ever brag about it.

I’m referring not only to my immediate family, but also to my parents and my brother and sister, to Peggy’s parents and brother and sister, and to other relatives.

My years undercover altered my relationships will all of them. I could never tell them what I was doing.

They knew I was undercover, but they worried about me because they didn’t know when or if I was being secretive because I had to be, or if because somehow my personality was changing. That has happened to some undercover agents. I could never put their minds at ease during those years.

During the Mafia Commission and Pizza Connection trials, life got worse for our families instead of better. When I became a witness and my name and identity became public, I was guarded twenty-four hours a day. Peggy and the girls were safe, living far away under a different name. But the members of my family, and Peggy‘s, were frightened. My father-in-law was scared to start his car in the morning. No one would mention my name on the phone, fearing the lines might be bugged. Before long, it seemed danger existed everywhere. A few years ago, my sister-in-law and her husband owned a restaurant in New York. As it turned out, a man who ate there had ties with the mob. After my story broke in the newspapers, he told one of the Mafia chiefs he knew a way to get to me.

As for Peggy, the girls, and myself, my whole experience with the Mafia has changed our lives forever.

My oldest daughter still has not read this book. She says she does not want to relive the memories of my years undercover.

Today, Peggy, the girls, and I use different names when we travel, sometimes taking roundabout routes and separate flights.

When we meet people we have to invent stories about our past. We can’t even say I was an FBI agent, something Peggy and I are proud of.

But those six years . . . Peggy says if it were to happen again, she would find a way out, that six years without a husband is too much.

I don’t dispute it.

Including the six years during which I gave testimony as a key witness in the major trials, my family has now been involved with the Mafia for more than twelve years.

In fact, I have spent as much time with the lawyers representing the government’s case as I spent with the mobsters.

As of this writing, we’ve moved six times in those twelve years, and the future holds more of the same.

Would I do it again? As I’ve said before, professionally, I would. Personally ...

Put it this way. If Lefty and I meet again, I know we’re not going to talk. And I know he isn’t smart enough to be ironic. But I can imagine one last conversation:

“I’m proud of what I did, Lefty. If I had to do it all over again, yeah, I would,” I’d tell him. “I exposed the Mafia. We got over a hundred convictions—”

“Yeah,” Lefty would say. “That’s real nice, good for you. You exposed us.

“But if you did so good exposing us, Donnie, whyzit you and your family gotta live a coverup for the rest of your lives?

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Special thanks are due the following friends and colleagues:

Richard Woodley who made my story readable.

Michaela Hamilton, my editor, with the fastest blue pencil in the East.

Carmen La Via and Peter Sawyer, my own special agents (literary) from the Fifi Oscard Agency.

Last but certainly not least the man who made it all possible

Mr. Louis Di Giaimo

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

JOSEPH D. PISTONE
was an
FBI
Agent for seventeen years. He now lives under secret identity in an undisclosed location.

RICHARD WOODLEY
has written numerous books, including DEALER: PORTRAIT OF A COCAINE MERCHANT and ROOKIE (with Dwight Gooden).