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).