All this time—in fact, for the entire six years of the overall operation—I never made notes of what I was doing. I didn’t know if at any time I was going to be braced—somebody might check me out, cops or crooks, so I never had anything incriminating in my apartment or on my person. Every couple of days or so, depending on the significance, I would phone my contact agent to fill him on what was going on, who I had seen where, doing what.

One thing that went on at Carmello’s was backgammon. Men played backgammon at the bar. I noticed that a lot of local neighborhood guys would hang out in there, come for dinner, then sit at the bar and play backgammon. And some of the wiseguys that were hanging around would get involved. They played for high stakes—as high as $1,000 a game. That looked like a good way for me to get in, get an introduction, get some conversation going with the regulars. But I didn’t know how to play backgammon. I bought a book and studied up. Another agent whose undercover name was Chuck was a good backgammon player. Chuck had an operation going in the music business. He was a friend of mine. He would come over to my apartment, or I’d go over to his, and he’d teach me backgammon. We played and played, in order for me to get comfortable.

Finally, when I thought I was good enough, I decided to challenge for a game at the bar.

It was near Christmastime, so there was a kind of festive mood in the place, and that seemed like a good time for a newcomer to edge in. On this night there were two boards going at the bar. I watched for a while to see which board had the weaker players. The way you got into the game was to challenge the winner, and that’s the board I challenged the winner on.

The stakes for the first game were $100. That made me nervous because I didn’t have a lot of money to spend. I won that first game, lost the next, and ended up the evening about breaking even.

But the important thing was that it broke the ice. I got introduced around as “Don” for the first time. And now I could sit down and talk to people. We could sit around and talk about the games going on.

After a couple weeks I retreated from the backgammon games. The money was getting a little steep. I played two games for $500 each, lost one then won one. My expense account then was maybe $200 to $300 a week for everything, and I couldn’t go over that without going into an explanation for the accountants at the Bureau. It wasn’t worth it, just to play backgammon with some half-ass wiseguys.

Anyway, by then I had accomplished what I had learned backgammon for. I had gotten to know some people, at least enough to be acknowledged when I came in: “Hey, Don, how’s it going?”

So I wasn’t a strange face any longer. I also got pretty friendly with the bartender, Marty. Marty wasn’t a mob guy, but he was a pretty good knock-around guy who knew what was going on. I got to bullshitting with Marty pretty good near the end of December 1976, and early January of 1977. Conversation rolled around gradually, and he asked me if I lived around there, since I was in there so much. I told him, yeah, I lived up at Ninety-first and Third.

“You from around here?” he asked me.

“I spent some years in this area,” I told him. “Lately I been spending a lot of time in Miami and out in California. I just came in from Miami a couple months ago.”

“What do you do?” he asked me.

That kind of question you don’t answer directly. “Oh, you know, not doing anything right now, you know, hanging out, looking around ...” You bob and weave a little with the guy. I said, “Basically I do anything where I can make a fast buck.”

He had a girlfriend that used to come in at closing, then they’d go out bouncing after work, around the city. A couple times he asked me if I wanted to go, and I backed off, said no thanks. I didn’t want him to think I was anxious to make friends.

Still, I didn’t want him or anybody else in there to think I didn’t have anything going for me. So once in a while I’d bring a female in—somebody that I’d met in another bar across the street from my apartment or something—just for a couple drinks or dinner. And sometimes my agent friend, Chuck, would come in with me for a drink. You can’t go in all the time by yourself, because they think you’re either a fag or a cop. And it’s good to vary your company so they don’t see you with the same people all the time and wonder what’s up. The idea is to blend in, not present yourself in any way at all that makes anybody around you uncomfortable.

Marty’s girlfriend had a girlfriend named Patricia, a good-looking blonde who was going out with one of the wiseguys that hung out there, a bookie named Nicky. A couple times she came in when I was in there and Nicky wasn‘t, and she’d sit down for some small talk with me. At first it was just casual conversation. Then I figured she was coming on to me a little, and I had to be very careful, as an outsider, not to overstep my bounds. The worst thing I could do is appear to be coming on to a wiseguy’s girlfriend, because there are real firm rules against that. If I made that kind of mistake I would have shot my whole couple months of work to get in there.

One night this Patricia asked me if I wanted to have dinner with her. “Nicky’s not gonna be around,” she said. “We could take off and find someplace nice.”

“Thanks,” I said, “but I don’t think so. Not tonight.”

Then I grabbed Marty the bartender off to the side. “Hey, Marty,” I said, “I want you to know that I’m keeping my distance from Patricia because I know that she’s Nicky’s girlfriend. But I don’t want to insult anybody, either.”

Marty said, “I know, I’ve been watching how you handle yourself.”

So I established another small building block in my character: The bartender knew that I knew what the rules were with wiseguys. Most guys who hadn’t been around the streets or around wiseguys might have jumped at an invitation from a girl like that—figuring that, after all, if she makes the play, it must be all right. But with wiseguys there’s a strict code that you don’t mess. I mean, strict.

A week or so later Marty came over to me. “Hey, Don, I just want to tell you that Patricia and Nicky broke up, so if you want to ask her out for a drink or something, feel free.”

I said, “Thanks, but I’m not really out hawking it, you know?”

He said, “After work tonight we’re going to the Rainbow Room. Come on with us, and bring her.”

The four of us went to the Rainbow Room and had a good time. I went out bouncing with him a few times more after that, and that got me in pretty solid in that place.

He started introducing me to the other guys that hung out in Carmello‘s, including some of the half-ass wiseguys. I never did anything with them, didn’t get involved with them, but at least they acknowledged me when I came in, and I began to have a “home base” where people knew me, in case anybody started checking.

It was also a place where I could leave messages and where messages would be taken for me. I would tell Marty, If a guy calls here looking for me, tell him I’ll be in here at such-and-such a time. Sometimes I would call and ask for myself, and Marty would take the message and give it to me when I came in. So I established that I had some friends around, people I was involved with.

The important thing here in the beginning was not so much to get hooked up with anybody in particular and get action going right away. The important thing was to have a hangout, a good backup, for credibility. When I went other places, I could say, “I been hanging out at that place for four or five months.” And they could check it out. The guys that had been hanging around in this place would say, “Yeah, Don Brasco has been coming in here for quite a while, and he seems all right, never tried to pull anything on us.” That’s the way you build up who you are, little by little, never moving too fast, never taking too big a bite at one time. There are occasions where you suddenly have to take a big step or a big chance. Those come later.