I had to try to talk them out of it. First, with all this handcuffing and so on, somebody was going to get hurt. Second, because of that first reason, there was no way I could go along on the job, and when the shit hit the fan and the operation got busted up—which in all likelihood would happen—I didn’t want the fingers pointing at me as the snitch.

“Well, it sounds good,” I said. “But how long is it going to take to load up the trailer and get out of there?”

Two hours, was the answer.

“Wait a minute,” I said. “Quitting time is five o‘clock. What happens when the husbands and boyfriends of the women who work there come to pick them up? They just gonna sit and wait in the car for a couple hours without checking inside, while their wives are inside handcuffed and you load your truck? Or if a husband is home at five-fifteen and his dinner isn’t on the table by five-thirty-his wife isn’t even home—what’s the first thing he’s gonna think? That she’s out screwing somebody. What’s the first thing he’s gonna do? He’s coming to this factory and backtrack to find his wife. They’re all gonna come right down to the factory. It’s gonna be like a zoo. You’re gonna have a hundred fucking people coming down there while you’re loading the trailer. What are you gonna do, barricade the fucking doors while you load the trailer and everybody’s handcuffed inside? I think it’s a pretty stupid idea.” “

Patsy started fuming. “Every time we plan to pull a fucking score, you got something to say, throw a monkey wrench in. We think this is a pretty good fucking idea.”

“You’ll be back in the can,” I said, “thinking up such good ideas. But you do whatever you want. I don’t have to be in on it. I’m just trying to save your ass. But I ain’t the boss.”

Jilly said, “I don’t think it’s good. That joint is only half a mile from here. Too close. Not good.”

Jilly was the boss. So that blew off that plan. But there was a lot of heat in that room.

6

THE BONANNOS

One morning not long afterward, I walked into the store. Everybody was there, but nobody was saying much. Jilly took my elbow and said, “Don, let’s take a walk.”

We went outside. He said, “Look, Don, nothing for nothing, but Patsy and Frankie, they don’t feel comfortable around you. They got a beef.”

“What’s the problem?”

“They feel like they don’t know you well enough. They don’t want you involved in any more jobs until they know more about you. They want the name of somebody that can vouch for you down in Miami where you said you did a lot of work, so they can feel more comfortable with you.”

“Well, how do you feel, Jilly?” I said. “We’ve done stuff together, right? You know who I am. You got any problems with me?”

“No, I got no problems with you.” Jilly was uncomfortable. “But I grew up with these guys, you know? They been my partners for years, since before they went to the can. So they got this little beef, and I gotta go along with them. Okay?”

“Fuck them, Jilly. I’m not giving them the name of anybody.”

“Let’s just take it easy, okay, Don? Let’s go in and talk it over, try to work it out.”

Jilly was the made guy, the boss of this crew. I had rubbed these other guys the wrong way, and they had gone first to Jilly and put the beef in with him, which was the right way to do it. He had to respect their wishes because of the proper order—he had known them longer than he knew me, even though he had faith and trust in me. It was their beef, but it was his responsibility to get it resolved one way or the other. He was handling it the proper way. He came to me and talked to me first.

Then, when I hard-nosed it, said no right up front (I couldn’t give in right away, I had to string it out and play the game), he said we had to sit down and talk about it. When you sit down, everybody puts their cards on the table and airs their beefs out. And Jilly had to lean toward them in granting their request about getting somebody to vouch for me in Florida. At that point I wasn’t worried; because things were being handled in the right way, according to the rules.

We went back in the store. I went over to Patsy and said, “You got a beef?”

“You say you pulled off all those scores down in Miami before you came here,” Patsy said. “But we don’t know nothing about that. And you seem to want to say a lot around here. So Frankie and me wanna know somebody you did those jobs with, so we can check you out.”

“You don’t need to check me out,” I said. “I been around here five-six months. Jilly and the other guys are satisfied. I don’t have to satisfy you just because you were in the can.”

“Yeah, you do,” he said. “Let’s go in the back and sit down.”

Everybody walked into the back room. Patsy sat down behind the desk. “You could be anybody or anything,” he said. “Maybe you’re a stoolie. So we want to check you out, and we need the name of somebody to vouch for you.”

“I’m not giving you any name.”

Patsy opened a desk drawer and took out a .32 automatic and laid it on the desk in front of him. “You don’t leave here until you give me a name.”

“I’m not giving up the name of somebody just to satisfy your curiosity,” I said. “You don’t know me? I don’t know you. How do I know you’re not a stoolie?”

“You got a fucking smart mouth. You don’t give me a name, the only way you leave here is rolled up in a rug,” he said.

“You do what you gotta do, because I ain’t giving you a name.”

It was getting pretty tense in there. Jilly tried to be a mediator. “Don, it’s no big deal. Just let him contact somebody. Then everybody feels better and we forget about it.”

I knew all along, from the time he pushed it to the gun, that I would give him a name. Because once he went that far in front of everybody, he wouldn’t back off. But even among fellow crooks you don’t ever give up a source or contact easily. You have to show them that you’re a stand-up guy, that you’re careful and tough in protecting people you’ve done jobs with. So I was making it difficult for them. I acted as if I were really torn, mulling it over.

Then I said, “Okay, as a favor to Jilly, I’m gonna give you a name. You can check with this guy. But if anything happens to this guy, I’m gonna hold you responsible. I’ll come after you.”

I gave him the name of a guy in Miami.

He said, “Everybody sit tight. I’m gonna go and see if we can contact somebody down there that knows this guy of yours.” He left the room and shut the door.

I was nervous about the name I gave him. It was the name of an informant, a thief in Miami who was an informant for another agent down there. It had been part of my setup when I was going undercover. I had told this other agent to tell his informant than if anybody ever asked about Don Brasco, the informant should say that he and Brasco had done some scores together, and that Brasco was a good guy. The informant didn’t even know who Don Brasco was, just that he should vouch for him if the circumstance came up.

So now I had a couple of worries. That had been seven months before. I wasn’t absolutely sure that the informant got the message, and if he had been told, would he remember now, seven months later? If the informant blew it now, I was going to get whacked, no doubt about it. The other guys in the crew here didn’t care; they were on the fence. But Patsy or his pal Frankie would kill me, both because of the animosity between us and because they had taken it too far to back down.

While Patsy was gone, I just sat around with the other guys playing gin and bullshitting as if everything were normal. Nobody mentioned the problem. But I was thinking hard about how the hell I was going to get out of there at least to make a phone call.