Текст книги "Donnie Brasco: My Undercover Life in the Mafia"
Автор книги: Joseph D. Pistone
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Текущая страница: 21 (всего у книги 28 страниц)
“No,” say both Pete and Tom.
“Down at Joe Pete’s one night,” I say. “You guys were both drunk.”
They squirm around, embarrassed.
“They brought us a sample, Donnie,” Rossi says. “They said they could supply us with whatever we needed—everything with the exception of the horse, which is what we’re looking for.”
“No,” Tom says, “don’t say without it. We got it. But it’s ... we gotta find out ...”
“Fucking coke is nothing up there,” I say. “Forget about it. You can’t give coke away up there. Everybody is using the horse up there. When you gonna know about the H?”
“I don’t think I want to,” Tom says. “Down there, there’s too many deaths. I been in battles down there. It’s ridiculous. It’s a pain in the ass. Now, if you want, I can take you down there and let you jump on the bandwagon.”
“If we got an introduction,” I say, “we can make it worth your while to introduce one of our guys in New York to somebody down there.”
“Have to find that out,” Tom says.
“I’d have to think about that real hard,” says his dad.
“What about prices on the coke? Where’s it from?”
Tom takes out the sample again. “Fifty-five, sixty. Either Colombia or here.”
“Fifty-five grand?” Rossi says.
“To sixty,” Pete says.
“What we give you, the sample,” Tom says, putting the sample on the desk for Rossi, “that’s what you’re gonna get.”
“Sounds good to me,” I say.
They left the sample with us. The next day the cocaine sample was tested at the Pinellas County Sheriff’s Office lab. It was less than fifteen percent pure.
The day after that, we got the father and son back in the office. Jo-Jo knew these guys, so we had him in there with us. He was pretty uncomfortable.
I say, “I don’t know if you think you’re fucking with some jerk-offs or what. But that sample of coke ain’t even fucking fifteen percent. It’s bullshit. It’s been stepped on nineteen fucking times.”
Pete and Tom start stammering. “Y-you think we’d pull a shot like that, Don? You think we’d do that?”
“You told us it was eighty percent,” Rossi says.
“Just overnight the thought came to me,” Tom says. “It was something I grabbed that night. That’s why I kept it in my pocket. No way I’m gonna do that intentionally. What I’d love to do—really, I’d love to do this, because if what you’re saying is true ...”
“It’s not if what we’re saying is true,” Rossi says, “it is true. Why would we tell you different? We’re hoping it’s ninety percent.”
“Then somebody’s gonna fall,” Tom says. “This guy’s never done that. I been with the guy five years, and this is the first time, believe me. I’m serious.”
“It’s not a question of the money,” Rossi says. “It’s a question of the honorability.”
“Goddamn, man.” Tom shakes his head while his father paces around, shaking his head too.
“Whoever gave it to you is putting you in a fucking box,” Rossi says.
“Donnie, don’t get us wrong,” Pete says, “that we think you’re jacking us off or something like that.”
They are getting real edgy. Pete says, “What we wanna do is drop it. Just give the sample back.”
I get up and walk over to Pete. Jo-Jo is squirming in a chair right behind me.
“Just forget it,” Pete says. “I’ll buy you a drink. Now.” He jabs his finger at Rossi. “Now!”
“What’s ‘now’?” Rossi says.
“Give it back!” He throws up his hands. “All right, don’t give us the sample. Done. I’m really getting pissed off.”
“You can get pissed off all you want,” I say. “But don’t get the fucking attitude, pal, that we’re trying to fuck you with a bullshit sample. Understand what I’m saying?”
I hear Jo-Jo’s small voice behind me: “Donnie ... Donnie ...” He’s trying to tug my sleeve. He’s afraid somebody is going to get killed. I put my finger on Pete’s chest. “How can we be fucking you when we got the sample from you? Because if I take the sample from you and I want to move it, I want good stuff, right?”
Pete backs off fast. “You ain’t got good stuff there.”
“That’s what my man says.”
“Well, no deal, no money, no nothing. Hey, we’re friends.”
“That’s right. Because he’s with me. He’s not with anybody else.”
“Of course, he’s with you all the way. Your word is your man’s word.”
“So don’t come into this fucking joint saying that we’re trying to fuck you guys.”
“Can I come in the joint and have a drink?”
Tom is still shaking his head. “In my heart, I can tell you, this is the first time.”
“Hey, this business isn’t fucking in your heart,” I say. “This business is in your pocket. In your head. Not what’s in your heart.”
“What I mean by heart is my head. First of all, ain’t nobody gonna charge you for no sample.”
Rossi laughs. “Charge us for a sample? We get fucking samples of that shit every day.”
At that I walk out. Tom and Pete whine behind me, “Donnie! Donnie! Come back, Donnie!”
We planned our second Las Vegas Night for December 13. Trafficante was going to supply a crew to run the games. When the time came, his people weren’t available, so we postponed the gambling event to January.
Rossi and I went to New York to spend the few days before Christmas with Sonny and the crew. On December 17, he had the big Christmas party at the Motion Lounge. Each captain gives a Christmas party for his crew. Charley the bartender did all the cooking—pasta and sausage and peppers and meatballs. All the guys that belonged to Sonny’s crew came. We just ate and drank and told war stories and had a good time. Rossi and I each gave Sonny $200 as our presents.
Sonny was anxious to get back to Florida to meet with “the Old Man down there to really firm things up.” He said Carmine was going to put up money for an addition on the back of King’s Court, a dance floor and a swimming pool. The main thing now, he said, was to get the Las Vegas Night set up. “Now we’re going to start making money.”
But for the next few weeks he had to stay in New York. “There’s some problems I’m having in Brooklyn.” The Miami cocaine deal had not come through yet, but he had bought a hundred pounds of marijuana out on Long Island, and Nicky Santora had picked it up in a rented U-Haul truck and taken it to Tony Boots’s garage for temporary storage.
Antonio “Boots” Tomasulo—who always wore work boots—had a place across the street from the Motion Lounge called Capri Car Service, at 421 Graham Avenue. I never saw any car-service business go on there. It was just a cluttered place where Boots carried on activities on behalf of Sonny. He was Sonny’s partner in the numbers business, did all the collecting. Sonny often used the phones in there.
Sonny said he had a carbine and several handguns stashed away and that he might give me some of them to take down to Florida in case his crew needed them. Nicky Santora said that he had two .38 pistols wrapped in cloth that he had put in a sink drain at the Motion Lounge before he went to jail. They were still there, but he hadn’t checked them. “I hope they’re not all fucked up with water,” he says. “I wrapped them pretty good in oil.”
After the first of the year Sonny said he was moving out of the Withers social club. We would be meeting at the Motion Lounge.
Rossi went back to Florida to run King’s Court, and I stayed to hang around with Sonny.
I stayed at his apartment, learned more about the pigeons, had many conversations. His estranged wife was causing him problems of some sort. He was concerned about his kids. I would spend a couple of hours a day hanging out over in Manhattan on Madison Street, at the Holiday Bar with Lefty. At night I’d go bouncing with Sonny.
Nicky Santora ran a string of go-go joints out on Long Island. One night Sonny and I had been out bouncing, and we came back to the Motion Lounge at about two A.M. Nicky and a few guys and some of the girls from his joints were partying in the back room.
“You can take your pick,” Nicky says to us. “There’s one that gives a great blow job.”
We look the girls over while they’re partying it up.
“I’ll take the one that gives good head,” Sonny says.
I have to come up with a good quick line here, because Sonny will take the girl upstairs, and I’m staying with him, so I would be expected to take a girl upstairs too. “I’m gonna have to beg off, bro. You go ahead. But I don’t know these broads, they hang around with bikers out there at the joint, and you know how dirty they are. There’s this herpes thing around, and I don’t wanna risk no herpes.”
“Jesus, Donnie, maybe you got a point. Nicky, those broads hang out with bikers. Get them outa here right away, hurry up.”
“What’s the matter?”
“Those fucking broads are gonna give us all herpals.”
“Herpals?”
“Yeah. Don’t touch nothing.”
Nicky complained to Sonny that a guy named Curly was moving in on Nicky’s go-go joints. “We had a sitdown on it yesterday,” Nicky says, “and the decision was that I keep my twelve joints and the other guy that belongs to Curly keeps his ten. Now, this other guy went to one of my joints and threatened one of my girls that she had to kick back money to him in order to dance at my joint.”
“Have Lefty set up an appointment for Monday between me and Curly,” Sonny says, “and I’ll straighten it out.”
One night Sonny and Boobie and I were at Crisci’s Restaurant, not far from the club, at 593 Lorimer Street. It was a favorite place of ours. They loved Sonny. Sonny and anybody with him was treated royally. We wouldn’t even use menus. We’d order whatever we wanted and they’d make it.
We had a couple drinks at the bar before going to our table.
“I’m pleased with how you’re conducting yourself down there,” Sonny says, “what you’re doing, the book, the shylocking. You’re independent, don’t have to be told what to do. You’re not always coming and asking me for money like a lot of the guys.”
“Thanks, bro.”
“The books are gonna open up for membership at the end of the year. I can propose five guys, which I got already. Boobie is number one. Then I’m obligated with four other guys that are relatives of family members. But the next time the books open up, maybe next year, you’re gonna be the first guy that I propose.”
“Hey, Sonny, I really appreciate that. I’m honored. I’m glad you think of me that way.”
“You got any drug arrests?”
“No.”
“Good. The big thing now is drugs, and the cops are always hounding you if you got drug arrests. Keep doing what you’re doing, and you’re the next name I put in.”
“I’m really glad. That’s what I was looking for, Sonny.”
That was the truth. Obviously, no agent had ever become a made guy undercover in the Mafia. What I could accomplish as a made guy was unbelievable.
“Now,” Sonny goes on, “have you checked Tony out completely? You can vouch for him?”
“Sure—you know, much as I can. He’s a top guy, a good earner.”
“If he’s still working with you and earning, Donnie, I’ll put his name in too. You guys deserve it.”
We went to our table. We were eating escarole and beans and Italian bread. I had to take a chance and bring up again the matter of Lefty bleeding Rossi. Rossi and I had discussed it. We were still spending too much government money on Lefty’s entertainment and travel. Since Sonny’s last directive that we cut back on Lefty and report any problems to him, things had not improved. I was increasingly worried that Sonny himself would notice the expenses and blame me for not following his orders.
I wanted Sonny to know that I was keeping on top of things. And after all, I, too, was supposed to be enjoying all this money we were glomming from Rossi.
“Nothing for nothing,” I say, “and I really feel uncomfortable bringing the subject up again. But Tony’s getting very pissed off about spending so much on Lefty, and he’s complaining to me about it all the time.”
“What the fuck you want me to do, Donnie?”
By his tone I figured I’d blown this one. “Sonny, I just want you to be aware in case Rossi decides to pull out—we lose paydays with the club and his connections.”
Sonny picked away at his salad. “You got two choices, Donnie. Either you handle it with Lefty or I’ll handle it with Lefty. And if I handle it with Lefty and he gets smart about it, I’ll chop his fucking legs off. You tell me what you want to do.”
“Of course I want to handle it with Lefty, because I’m with him. I don’t want anything to happen to him.
I don’t want to create any beef between you and
Lefty or me and Lefty. Let’s just leave it at this table, and it doesn’t go any further, just so you’re aware.“
“Okay,” he says, “it stays here. But if there’s any more trouble, I will handle it.”
16
THE RAID
As they had for the past couple of years, my wife and daughters flew in to spend the Christmas holidays with our relatives in New Jersey.
Early in the evening I went by to wish Lefty and Louise a Merry Christmas. They had their little Christmas tree on the table. I gave Lefty two shirts. He gave me a gift certificate for $100 from Leighton‘s, a men’s clothing store on Broadway. He signed it; “Donny—To a good friend—Lefty.”
Then I went over to Brooklyn and hung out at the Motion Lounge for a little while. Sonny took me into the kitchen and showed me two boxed stereo systems. He said Carmine had bought fifty of them from a truck driver. He had cut the serial numbers off the boxes. “These are for you and Tony,” he says, “for Christmas for your apartments in Florida.”
Then I excused myself to go spend the rest of Christmas Eve “with my girl over in Jersey.”
On Christmas morning everybody met at the club. I had coffee with the crew and hung around until about three or four in the afternoon, then went to Jersey for Christmas dinner with my family.
Two days after Christmas, I was sitting with Lefty and Sonny in the back room of the Motion Lounge.
“Tomorrow morning,” Lefty says, “we want you to take a ride to Monticello. Go to the Monticello Diner. I’ll give you a number to call. Ask for Al. He’ll come down and meet you. He has some guns for us.”
Monticello is a two-hour drive northwest of the city, near the Catskill Mountains. I had been to the racetrack there a few times.
It was as cold as a bastard. The drive was miserable because there was snow and ice on the roads. I got to the Miss Monticello Diner by ten A.M. There was a pay phone inside. I called the number Lefty had given me and talked to Al. “This is Donnie from New York. I’ll be sitting at the counter. I’m six feet tall with dark hair, and I’ll be wearing a brown leather jacket.”
A few minutes later the guy came in. “Donnie? Al.”
Al was heavy, about 5’9” and 200 pounds, wore glasses. He sat down for a cup of coffee. He said that he was from New York but had lived in Monticello for the past five years. We chatted about the weather.
“I gotta get going back,” I say.
“Come on out, I’ll give you your Christmas presents.”
We went out to the parking lot. He was driving a Lincoln. I memorized the license number for my report. He opened the trunk and took out a package the size and shape of a shoe box, wrapped in Christmas paper with a red ribbon on it.
“Thanks for the present,” I say.
“Drive careful.”
On the Palisades Parkway near the George Washington Bridge, I stopped at a service area where there were outdoor telephones. I unwrapped the package carefully, taking my time to make sure I didn’t rip anything. Luckily he didn’t have it taped, just tied with the ribbon.
There were four handguns, each in its own plastic bag: a .22-caliber Burgo six-shot revolver with no serial number; a .45 Colt automatic with a U.S. Army property number; a Ceska Zerojovka-Narodni Podnik automatic whose caliber I estimated at .22 or .32; a .38 Colt Cobra with a two-inch barrel.
I wrote down all the information on a slip of paper. Then I carefully rewrapped the package, sure to get all the creases just the way they had been. I went to a phone booth and called Case Agent Jerry Loar in New York and read off the information. Then I tore up the slip of paper and threw it in the trash can.
I got to Lefty’s apartment at about noon. Lefty wasn’t there. “I just want to leave this package for Lefty,” I say to Louise. “He knows what it is.” I put it under the Christmas tree.
Then I drove to Brooklyn and told Lefty that I had delivered the package.
“Good,” he says. “I’ll check them out, see which ones I want to keep and which ones to send down to you in Florida.”
That evening a bunch of us were sitting around bullshitting about mob business. Lefty began expounding upon deals that he had pulled off, and successful businesses that he had invested in, including the King’s Court, where I was his man. Then he started talking about Milwaukee.
I listened and watched him carefully. He told how he had gotten involved in a vending-machine business with me and how that deal had led to a sitdown between Milwaukee and New York. He said that the New York end of the sitdown had been arranged by Tony “Ducks” Corallo, the boss of the Lucchese family.
Lefty never mentioned Tony Conte. There was no hint that Lefty or anybody else in the room knew anything about informants or undercover agents involved in the Milwaukee operations. It was as if Tony Conte never existed.
Sonny’s “Brooklyn problems” kept him from going to King’s Court for New Year’s Eve. I stayed in Brooklyn too. It was important for me to spend as much time with him as I could. I slept at his apartment. We took care of the pigeons together. We hung out at the club and the Motion Lounge, played gin. We went across the street for espresso at the Caffe Capri, a little shop with ornate white grillwork over the front windows and five or six small tables inside. Once in a while we’d go to Manhattan, to Little Italy, maybe take in a crap game on Mott Street.
It was obvious that I got more respect from the crew now because I was Sonny’s man. I was always with Sonny when I was in New York. Guys in the crew talked more freely around me.
Sometimes when we were up on the roof with the pigeons, Sonny would lean on the railing and look out over the rooftops of the neighborhood where he had lived all his life. I wondered what he was thinking about.
He didn’t mention that Tony Mirra was raising a stink over me, insisting that I belonged to him and not to Lefty and demanding a piece of King’s Court. I wasn’t supposed to know about this because this was mob business and I wasn’t a made guy. Lefty told me as a favor. Sonny knew, but he didn’t say a word.
We walked out of Peter Luger’s Steak House in Brooklyn. Sonny stopped at the door for a minute to talk to someone he knew. I went on to get the car, which we had parked on the street.
A block away, a guy walked up to me. He came straight up to me and stopped right in front of me. He looked like a normal guy. Then I saw he had a knife. He stood close, like we were going to have an intimate chat, and pressed the tip of the blade against my belly.
“Gimme your money, slow.”
I am more afraid of a knife than a gun, if the guy knows how to use the knife. He was welcome to my money.
Sonny came walking up from behind me and kept right on walking past us, evidently thinking I was talking to somebody I knew and it was none of his business. Suddenly he spun back and delivered a pow erhouse right at the base of the guy’s skull. The guy dropped like a stone and lay there.
“Come on, let’s get out of here,” Sonny says, “before you get into any more trouble.”
A week into the new year, I went back to King’s Court to push through plans for the Las Vegas Night and help set up another meeting between Sonny and Trafficante.
Lefty was irate because I was reporting things to Sonny before I told him. I had told Sonny that we lost $2,400 on the book. Any loss for us was a loss for Lefty too.
“You didn’t call me this morning,” he says over the phone. “You were supposed to call me last night. You can’t pick up a phone?”
“I missed you, then I called the club. Didn’t he tell you I called?”
“The man never told me nothing. He’s playing games with me. He knows I’m feuding with him because I don’t like what’s going on. I’m hurting, I’ll tell you. I’m feuding and fighting with everybody because I can’t get along with these people. I can’t pay my bills. ”
“I called Boots’s joint and asked for you, and you weren’t there so he put Sonny on.”
“How come he didn’t tell me a goddamn thing? Let me tell you something. You’re losing a lot of prestige because I’ll tell you why. I’ve been scheming all day about there’s something wrong. I hope you bail out next week, because we’re not gonna owe a dime because whatever we owe next week, everybody is chipping in. This year is a different ball game or I’ll send my own men down there.”
“Why you getting mad at me? What’s going on up there?”
“That don’t concern you, Donnie. You’re nobody as far as what we’re talking about, him and I. You’re on the outside. At least I give you the satisfaction of me telling you I’m arguing with him. You don’t make no phone calls, what I gotta put a stop with you. I think it’s gonna come to a head, and we’re gonna break up with him and youse all belong to me.”
“That’s all right, I don’t care.”
“I gotta know where I’m at, that’s all I’m telling you. Lot of people invest a lot of money out there. I ain’t like him. Throw a broad at him and he’s happy.”
Lefty never really went out chasing women. Sonny did a little more chasing, a fact that gnawed at Lefty.
“You know me when I go out of town with you,” Lefty says. “I don’t bother nobody, and I act the part of a man. Broads don’t bother me. How the fuck could you invite your own sweetheart that you live with, then next day want to bring a cunt in? Boobie says, ‘You bringing your wife down?’ I says, ‘Hey, Boobie, don’t ever classify my wife with Sonny Black’s girls. My wife’s got too much class. I bring my wife when you bring your wives. Judy would understand, she’s a good kid. But a tramp? The guy’s sick, he’s definitely sick.”
While he was talking, the recording system on my phone was malfunctioning. I was afraid he would pick it up, so I brought it up first. “You hear this static?”
“Forget about the static.”
“It’s hard for me to hear.”
“We’re not talking about static! Let me explain something to you. When you had the problems with Mr. Mirra, he gave you up and he threw it in my lap. You know what hurted me, a slap in the face? I was there New Year‘s, wished Sonny and everybody luck. Mirra calls him up. And he takes the phone call. But listen, I’m not a phony. As long as I’m around, you’re around. We don’t accept no girls, shit like that.”
“Why didn’t he tell you I called?”
“He didn’t tell me nothing because he thinks he’s King Farouk. The whole world is disgusted with him.”
“Hey, if we get stuck, he’s gotta come up with the money.”
“He has to come up with it. But that ain’t the idea.
He didn’t tell me a goddamn thing. I says, ‘You better stop bothering people.’ That’s all I told him, and I walked away from him. I said, ‘Nobody understands you anymore.’ I’ll straighten this whole thing out. It’s all bullshit. Let’s stop this fucking nonsense. That’s all
I can tell you. Say hello to Tony.“
I finally managed to get hold of Trafficante’s man, Husick, and set the date for the Las Vegas Night: January 17.
Rossi, Shannon, and I met with Captain Donahue in the office at King’s Court. Rossi told him that we had scheduled another Las Vegas Night and that important people would be there from both New York and Florida, so he wanted to make sure there wouldn’t be any problems. Donahue assured us he would take care of everything.
Rossi handed him $200, “a little something for Christmas.”
Lefty wasn’t coming down for Las Vegas Night. He had been sick off and on for a month with flu or colds.
“It’s fucking eight degrees here,” he says over the phone. “Fucking weather don’t wanna break. That’s why I’m scared to come out. I might get sick down there. Or drop dead on the fucking plane.”
Also, Sonny had directed him to go to Miami instead, to consummate a deal for two keys of cocaine.
Two days before the event, Rossi, Shannon, and I picked up Sonny and Carmine at the airport. Sonny handed Rossi a brown paper bag. In it was $10,000 to be used as the “bank” for the Las Vegas Night. “Don’t let this out of your sight,” Sonny says.
Sonny had asked me to take $1,000 out of the shylock money for him. I handed him the ten $100 bills.
“Let’s go to a mall,” he says. “I want to find a card shop.”
“Somebody’s birthday or what?”
“I want to buy a card for Santo.”
We drove to the Gulfview Square Mall in New Port Richey. He picked out a card that had a message about being such good “friends.”
“This is cute,” he says.
Made guys refer to each other as “friends,” the same as saying “members.” Sonny tucked the $1,000 inside the card.
On the day of the Las Vegas Night, Trafficante came to the Tahitian Motor Lodge and went to Sonny‘s room. We had the room bugged. Right away Trafficante said, “We can’t talk in the room.”
Afterward Sonny told us that everything was in order, and the money split for the night would be a third to us, a third to Trafficante, and a third for the guys that they brought up from Miami to work the games.
“He loved the card,” Sonny says.
Everything was set up in the club. I had an antique slot machine in my apartment, and we decided to put it in the club for the night. There wasn’t any money in it. It was just for fun. Captain Donahue had been paid, and he said he would make sure that the cars were all patrolling on the other side of the county.
We had a crew of six to work the games, plus our regular bartender and hostesses. We had a guy on the door. To get in the front door, customers buzzed from outside. The person at the door looked out the peephole to see who it was, make sure it was members or friends. Rossi and Shannon were going to sell chips and handle all the money out of the back storage room. I was going to work the front, collect the chips from the tables, and bring them back.
Rossi wrapped up Sonny’s $10,000 in a box with Christmas paper and hid it in the furnace room, which adjoined the storage room. In there he also hid $2,000 of FBI money in the bottom of a brown paper bag under Christmas tree lights. He had a .22 Derringer Magnum pistol in a wallet holster. He hid that by taping it to the back side of the furnace. He kept his Walther .32 in a briefcase next to him.
The Las Vegas Night started at seven P.M. Sonny and Carmine were there representing New York. Husick and other cohorts were there representing Trafficante. By midnight the action was strong, the room was crowded with maybe a hundred gamblers. They were lining up in the storage room to buy chips. We already had a profit of several thousand dollars, and it was growing.
At one-fifteen A.M., I was in the storage room with the line of people buying chips. The warning buzzer sounded. Immediately I herded the customers out and locked the door behind me, leaving Rossi and Shannon locked in with the money and receipts.
I went to the front door. Nick, the guard, had hit the alarm buzzer. “Donnie, there’s two uniformed cops outside.”
I saw them through the peephole. They were Pasco County Sheriff’s officers; one was a sergeant. “Don’t open the door yet.” I figured there was nothing to worry about since we had paid for protection, but I walked around the room to make sure there was no money on the tables, no cash anywhere, just chips.
Sonny was at our round table with Husick and others. I whispered to him, “There’s two sheriffs guys outside. I’m going to talk to them, see what’s going on.”
I opened the front door. “Hi, Officers, what’s the problem?”
“We had a complaint that there was a disturbance at the club,” the sergeant says.
“No disturbance, no problems at all.”
“Mind if we come in?”
I ushered them in. “Have something to eat? Drink?”
“I got an anonymous telephone call,” the sergeant says, “and the caller stated that he had been gambling here and had lost a lot of money playing blackjack.”
“There’s no gambling here. We’re running a charity event. Everything is chips. Nobody lost any money here.”
He wanted to see the office. I walked him through the lounge.
“You got some pretty big people here,” he says. “Some of the best clientele in Tarpon Springs.”
“Well, people like to contribute to charity and have a good time.”
The other cop came into the office. “I just won money on your slot machine. That’s gambling.”
“What are you talking about?”
He said that he had put a quarter in the machine and won a quarter back. He said that before they came in, he could see through a crack in the doorway that people were playing the slot machine and gambling at the tables.
“Come on, you couldn’t see in here.” The way the club was laid out, you couldn’t see anything from the doorway. “And anybody can see that that’s an antique slot machine.”
“What are you, some fucking smart guy?”
“No. People are having fun and we’re not bothering anybody.” I couldn’t let them push me around in front of Sonny. I couldn’t let it get out of hand, either.
“Why are you bothering us? Why don’t you leave us alone?”
“Who’s the owner of this place?” the sergeant says.
“I don’t know.”
“Who are you?”
“I’m just a customer, here to contribute to charity.”
“Why you doing so much talking? You the spokesman around here?”
“Because I answered the door and let you in and you’re asking me questions. Somebody’s gotta answer your questions.”
“What’s your name?”
“Donnie Brasco.”
“A fucking New York guinea, aren’t you?”
“Well, I am from New York and I am Italian.”
“You guys like to come down here and take over. Let me see some identification.”
“I don’t carry any.”
“What’s your Social Security number?”
“I don’t have one. I don’t work, and if you don’t work, you don’t need a Social Security number.”
“You are maintaining a gambling place here. I’m gonna close the place down. I’m gonna call for a search warrant.”
“I can’t give you permission to use the phone.”
He picked up the phone and dialed.
I hurried out to tell Sonny what was going on.
“Okay,” he says, “get all the people out the back way.”
I and the hostesses got everybody out of the club through the French doors while the two cops were in the office.
Sonny sat by himself at the round table, scowling. “That fucking Rossi. I thought he had the guy paid.”
“He did, Sonny. I was right there when he talked to the guy. I saw him pay him off, and the guy said everything was taken care of.”
