After a couple of hours I figured everybody had relaxed, so I said, “I’m gonna go out and get some coffee and rolls. I’ll take orders for anybody.”

“You ain’t going anywhere,” Frankie says, “until Patsy comes back.”

“What are we here, children?” I say. “I got no reason to take off. But it’s lunchtime.”

“Sit down,” Frankie says.

If it came to it, I would have to bust out of there somehow, because I was not just going to sit there and take a bullet behind my ear. There was a door out to the front, which I figured Patsy had locked when he went out. There was a back door, which was nailed shut, never used. And there were four windows, all barred. I didn’t have many options. I could make a move for the gun on the desk; that was about it. But I wouldn’t do anything until Patsy came back with whatever the word was, because I might luck out. And if I could stick with it and be lucky, I would be in that much more solid with the Colombo crew.

We sat there for hours. Everybody but me was smoking. We all sat and breathed that crap, played cards, and bullshitted.

It was maybe four-thirty when Patsy came back. Instantly I could see I was okay—he had a look on his face that said I had beaten him again.

He said, “Okay, we got an answer, and your guy okayed you.”

Everybody relaxed. Everybody but me. With what had gone down, I couldn’t let that be the end of it. You can’t go through all that and then just say, “I’m glad you found out I’m okay, and thank you very much.” The language of the street is strength; that’s all they understand. I had been called. I had to save some face, show everybody they couldn’t mess with me. I had to clear the air. I had to smack somebody.

The gun was still lying there. But now we were all standing up, starting to move around and relax. I wanted to take Patsy first. But Frankie was the one between me and the gun. I circled around, casually edging over to him. I slugged him and he went down. Patsy jumped on me and I belted him a few times. Then the rest of the crew jumped in and wrestled us apart. I had counted on the crew breaking it up before it got out of hand, so I could make my point before the two of them got at me at once.

Patsy was sitting on the floor, staring up at me.

“You fucking punks,” I said. “Next time you see me, you better walk the other way.”

Guido, the toughest of all of them, stepped in front of me and looked at everybody else. “That’s the end of it about Don,” he said. “I don’t want to hear nothing else from nobody about Don not being okay.”

Sally’s club was a place where everybody tended to let their hair down during the long Tuesday lunches. They would bullshit about scores, about guys they had beefs with, about things that got fucked up. They would like to laugh and break each other’s chops.

The next lunch at Sally‘s, the matter of the fugazy diamonds was good for ball busting. They called me “Don the jeweler” and said I probably thought all diamonds were fake. They got on Patsy for getting so high on a fake diamond. “Patsy’s gonna get some real diamonds someday,” somebody said. “But he can’t show them to Don, because Don’ll say they’re fake and Patsy won’t know the difference.” Everybody laughed.

Patsy and Frankie didn’t mess with me after that, even though we continued to be involved with each other. They treated me with some respect. Later on, ironically, Patsy turned informant and was put in the federal Witness Protection Program.

I had met Anthony Mirra in March of 1977. He invited me downtown to Little Italy. He had a little food joint called the Bus Stop Luncheonette at 115 Madison Street. We used to hang out there, or across the street at a dive called the Holiday Bar.

Mirra also introduced me to Benjamin “Lefty Guns” Ruggiero, like himself a soldier in the Bonnano family. Like Mirra, Lefty was known as a hit man. He had a social club at 43 Madison Street, just up the street from Mirra’s Bus Stop Luncheonette. Mirra used to hang out there. He introduced me to Lefty on the sidewalk outside the club. “Don, this is Lefty, a friend of mine. Lefty, Don.”

Lefty was in his early fifties, about my height—six feet—lean, and slightly stoop-shouldered. He had a narrow face and intense eyes.

Mirra turned away to talk to somebody else. Lefty eyed me. “Where you from?”

He had a cigarette-raspy voice, hyper. “California,” I said. “Spent a lot of time between there and Miami. Now I’m living up at Ninety-first and Third.”

“How long you known Tony?”

“Couple months. Mainly the last few months I’ve been hanging out in Brooklyn, 15th Avenue. With a guy named Jilly.”

“I know Jilly,” Lefty said.

Prior to that introduction, I was never invited into Lefty’s club, and you can’t go in without permission when you’re not connected. From that time on, I would go down to Lefty’s almost every day to meet Mirra. So I got to know Lefty.

I then began dividing my time between Mirra, Lefty, and the Bonanno guys in Little Italy, and Jilly and the Colombos in Brooklyn. Since I wasn’t officially connected to anybody, it was permissible, if not encouraged, to move between two groups. But it was also a lot to handle when you’re trying to stay sharp on every detail.

My time became triply divided with Sun Apple. The “Sun” part of Sun Apple was not proceeding as well as the “Apple” part. Agent Joe Fitzgerald had set himself up with an identity, an apartment, and the rest, just as I had, and we did basically the same thing. Fitz was doing a good job working the street in the Miami area, and he fingered a lot of fugitives for arrest. But for whatever reasons, the operation there didn’t catch on as readily. Most of the guys Fitz was able to get involved with were guys that were chased out of New York, small-time dopers, credit-card scammers, and the like. No real heavyweights.

Now that I had some credentials with both the Colombo and Bonanno people, we thought that maybe I could help stimulate some contacts in Miami. So from time to time I would go down there and hang out with Fitz, letting people know that I was “connected around Madison Street” and in Brooklyn.

I had a dual role, hanging out with Fitz. First was to help him if I could, by being a connected guy from New York who he could point to for credibility. Second was to build up my own credentials. I would tell people in New York that I was going down to Miami to pull some sort of job. I would be seen down there hanging out in the right places. Word always gets back. So you always had to stay in character.

One time we were at an after-hours joint named Sammy‘s, where a lot of wiseguys hung out. We were at the bar. Fitz was talking to a couple of women to his right. I was sitting on his left, at the L of the bar, and around the corner of the L were three guys talking together. One of them was drunk, and I recognized him as a half-ass wiseguy from New York.

This drunk starts hollering at me. “Hey, you! Hey, you, I know you.”

I ignore him, and he reaches over and grabs my arm. “Hey, I’m talking to you!” he says. “I know you from somewhere. Who you with?”

“I’m with him,” I say, pointing to Fitz.

Not only is he drunk, but he is also saying things he shouldn’t be saying around wiseguys, asking things he shouldn’t be asking—such as about what family I was with. I signal to the two guys with him. “Your friend is letting the booze talk,” I say. “He’s out of line, so I suggest you quiet him down.” They shrug.

I call the bartender over. “I want you to know that this guy is out of line here,” I say. “And you’re a witness to what he’s saying, if anything happens.”

The drunk keeps it up. “I know you from New York. Don’t turn away from me. Who you with?”