You have to make difficult decisions on your own and often right on the spot—which way to go and how far; what risks to take. You have to accept the embarrassment and danger of being wrong and making mistakes, because you have nobody to hide behind on the street, and you are always open to second-guessing from your superiors. In my case that meant even the top FBI bosses in Washington.

You have to be street-smart, even cocky sometimes. Every good undercover agent I have known grew up on the street, like I did, and was a good street agent before becoming an undercover agent. On the street you learn what’s what and who’s who. You learn how to read situations and handle yourself. You can’t fake the ability. It shows.

You have to be disciplined to work, be a self-starter. The law-enforcement business basically has a conservative atmosphere. Employees are used to rules and regulations. In the FBI, nobody is hired as an undercover agent. You’re brought in as a regular agent. You go to work in a tie and jacket. You sign in and you sign out.

After several years, take a regular agent and put him in an undercover capacity. Suddenly nobody tells him when to go to work. Nobody tells him what kind of clothes to wear. He dresses like the badguys. Maybe he drives a Cadillac or Mercedes. Chances are he has his own apartment, regardless of whether he’s married or not, and he comes and goes as he pleases. He has money to spend.

This life-style is provided by the FBI. It’s all Hollywood, phony. But all the guys around you have Caddies and pinkie rings and broads and cash, and it’s easy to forget that you’re not one of them. If you don’t have a strong personality and ego, a sense of pride in yourself, you’re going to be overcome by all this, consumed by the role you’re playing. The major failure among guys working undercover for any law-enforcement agency is that they fall in love with the role. They become the role. They forget who they are.

I grew up in a city, an Italian, knowing what the Mafia was. As a teenager I played cards, shot craps, played pool, went to the track, hung around social clubs. I knew that some card and crap games were run by the mob, and some social clubs were mob social clubs. I knew some guys who were mob guys. I knew that maybe the bookie wasn’t a made guy, but his boss was, the guy who ran the whole operation. I knew some of them were killers. Even as a kid I knew guys that were here today, gone tomorrow, never seen again, and I knew what had happened.

I knew how wiseguys acted. I knew the mentality. I knew things to do and not to do. Keep your mouth shut at certain times. Don’t get involved in things that don’t concern you. Walk away from conversations and situations that aren’t your business, before anybody asks you to take a hike. You handle yourself right in those situations, that’s how you get credibility on the street. They say to themselves, “Hey, this guy’s been around.”

It helped me in my undercover role, knowing this stuff going in.

Growing up in that environment, I could have gone the wiseguy route. I knew guys that did. It happened that my mother and father were straight, and I grew up with their values. I grew up as a guy who would work for a living, raise a family, obey the laws. Other guys became badguys.

I don’t moralize about that. Because of how and where I grew up, the Mafia held no big mystique for me. I didn’t go into this job as any crusade against the Mafia. I might be saying to myself, “These fuckers, they’re killing people. They’re lying and stealing. They’re badguys, and I don’t like badguys.” But I don’t have to overcome a moralistic contempt that could get in the way of my job. I’m not a social worker, I’m an FBI agent. If my field as an agent had been civil rights or terrorists, I would have gone at it the same way—done my job to the best of my ability.

If you’re a badguy, my job is to put you in the can. Simple as that.

The Mafia is not primarily an organization of murderers. First and foremost, the Mafia is made up of thieves. It is driven by greed and controlled by fear. Working undercover, I was learning how tough these guys really were, how tough they really weren‘t, and how the toughest among them feared their superiors.

It wasn’t the toughness of an individual that caused the fear so much. It was the structure. It was the system of hierarchy, rules, and penalties that can terrify the toughest wiseguy in the business. The more potent toughness is in the ability to enforce the rules.

Everything is done to make money. Some violations may be excused if you’re a good money-maker. Murder is secondary, the tool of enforcement, the threat. You can be as frail as was old Carlo Gambino—the last real Godfather, Boss of Bosses—before he died in 1976, but if by a simple yes or no, a nod or a shake of the head, or a waggle of the finger you have the power of death over anybody in your organization, there isn’t a gorilla on the street who won’t shake in his Bally shoes before you.

The five major Mafia families are based in New York: Gambino, Lucchese, Genovese, Colombo, Bonanno. Joe Bonanno took over the family in 1931. He was forced into retirement in the mid-1960s and now lives in ill health in Tucson, Arizona. The Bonanno boss when I went undercover was Carmine Galante.

The Gambino family was run by Big Paul Castellano; the Lucchese by Anthony “Tony Ducks” Corallo; the Genovese by Anthony “Fat Tony” Salerno; the Colombo by Tommy LaBella. Each boss has absolute authority over his family.

The Commission, on which sit the bosses of the families, resolves interfamily disputes or matters that transcend the interests of a single family, or allows for cooperative ventures, such as controlling the concrete industry in New York or skimming the take from the Las Vegas casinos. A transcendent matter may be whether the boss of a family should be hit. The Commission has to approve the execution of any boss by either a faction of his own family or by anybody else.

Beneath each boss in a family, each level of the chain of command requires total respect from those below. Each family has an underboss; a consiglieri (counselor), who mediates disputes and advises the boss; and a number of captains. Under each captain are the soldiers, the lowest level of made guys.

Then there are a lot of “connected” guys who are associated with the made guys but are not themselves made. In any family there may be, say, two hundred made guys and ten times as many connected guys. If you are a connected guy, in partnership with some soldier or captain, you are subject to many of the same rules as everybody else in the family. You have to give respect, you have to share your profits. But they don’t necessarily share with you. And you are not entitled to the same respect and protection given to made guys.

In spite of how much I knew about the Mafia—both from growing up and from research—I was learning a lot. It was different being on the scene, being part of it, experiencing it firsthand. As with any law-enforcement agency, we knew a lot more than we could prove in court. So what I could come up with firsthand, on the scene, was crucial.

I was already identifying a lot of guys in the Colombo and Bonanno families, and pinpointing their ranks. I was learning that more hijacks were “give-ups” than regular hijackings. Whenever you pulled a score, you had to give a cut of it to whoever you were responsible to above you in the chain of command. You had to report to your captain or boss on everything you did. Despite these rules, though, there was more swindling of one another going on in crews than we had thought.

Along with the strict chain of command and the requirement for respect for those above you, there was a strict code of discipline. The consequence for not adhering to the rules of profit sharing and respect was not getting kicked out of the Mafia, it was being whacked out.