“I’ll tell you what I’m upset about. I got a call from Johnny. I wanna know the whole story, what you were doing with that guy at P. J. Clarke’s.”

“Hey, Left, all I know is, I meet this guy Larry in L.A. He tells me he’s got some stolen stock deals going. He’s coming to New York, and we plan to hook up. So we’re at P. J.‘s, and he’s got this three o’clock appointment at the Sheraton, for us to meet this guy on the stock deal. So we leave P. J.’s and go to the Sheraton. The guy doesn’t show. So I say, ‘Well, too bad.’ And I leave. That’s it. What’s the matter?”

“I’ll tell you what’s the matter, you jerk-off. That guy’s a fucking federal agent! Johnny said a guy came in while you were there, some lawyer, and he seen you guys leaving the table, and he says to Johnny, ‘I seen that guy testifying in court, he’s a fucking agent.’ That’s what he told Johnny. Johnny tells me you’re hanging around with a fucking federal agent!”

“Hey, Left, that’s hard to believe. But, anyway, I don’t care what he is, he doesn’t know anything about me. I didn’t tell him anything about us or anything else. All he knows is I might be interested in a deal. He doesn’t even know where to find me. Nothing to worry about, Left.”

“Maybe Johnny’s full of shit, Donnie. I don’t know. But stay away from this guy, Larry. Understand? Just in case. Don’t have nothing to do with him. Donnie, sometimes I think you’re not too careful.”

“Don’t worry about it, Left.”

So I couldn’t do anything more with Larry in the Los Angeles area. But he had his operation well under control. His cases eventually brought in some two hundred thieves, and the government recovered $42 million in stolen property.

If Larry hadn’t spotted that lawyer coming into P. J. Clarke‘s, my whole Mafia project might have ended right there.

Anyplace I traveled, I tried to touch base or make contact with any wiseguys that I knew of in the area—Bonanno guys or any others that I had met. That established me as a guy with connections, a guy good at freewheeling around the country, a guy with things going on. The more places I was seen, the more times I was recognized by wiseguys, the better my credentials.

Back in California, the Bureau had their eye on some restaurants and nightclubs in the San Diego and La Jolla area and wanted to know if they were mobbed up. I went to these places just to size them up first so I could talk intelligently about them.

Then I called Lefty. I told him I was hitting a few joints out there, trying to line some things up, and that it looked like I had found a couple of places where some wiseguys hung out or had a piece of.

“Why don’t you come out here, Left? Maybe we can get something going. If these joints aren’t already wiseguy joints, maybe we could do something to move in on one of them. And also, it’s nice out here—nice weather, the ocean.”

“I never been to San Diego. Is it like Miami?”

I booked us a room at the Sheraton, right on the water. I picked him up at the airport and carried his bags—catered to him the way anybody in the organization is supposed to treat their superior. I told him I had made a score recently and gave him his end.

During the day we toured San Diego, just the two of us, because neither one of us knew anybody in San Diego. Lefty was impressed. “Nice ocean,” he said. “Nice city. Clean. Not like New York. The people dress different.”

I took him to the San Diego Zoo. “This place is amazing,” Lefty said. “Think of the Bronx Zoo. Look how they really take care of this place. Donnie, San Diego is the kind of place where you can walk around and not be afraid of getting mugged.”

Everything he saw, he evaluated in terms of how it would go in New York, how much money you could make. “Can you imagine if we had this in New York, Donnie?” he’d say about some kind of store or vending operation or location. “We’d make a fortune.” Everything was a scheme or a scam.

Evenings we went to the joints the Bureau had targeted. I watched Lefty operate.

He would get into innocuous conversations with the managers or maître d’s: Nice place. How long you been in business? How’d you find dependable suppliers? Looks like you keep everything running real smooth. Anybody give you troubles with a place like this—the city or unions or anybody?

He’d size the place up, look for little things. He pointed out to me things he was seeing. Maybe there’s a guy hanging around the cash register not doing anything. See who talks to him. See if there’s a guy sitting at a certain table all the time, no meal in front of him, like he’s just waiting to talk to people. And people go over one at a time and sit down and have conversation with him and then leave. Watch how people treat him. See how the waitresses treat the guy. An ordinary citizen could look at this and not see anything. A wiseguy sees things if there are wiseguy things to see: how a person acts, carries himself, talks; what deference is paid to him.

We confirmed the Bureau’s suspicions. In one place Lefty knew a couple of the guys involved. Each of the others, he said, looked like they were either mob operations or mob-connected.

“We can’t fuck around with these places, Donnie,” Lefty said, “because they’re already mobbed up.”

To do my job better and to stay alive, I was working at picking these things up. I was adjusting my demeanor and the way I looked at things. So that I could ask the right questions and see the right things, I was learning not only how to act like a wiseguy, but also how to think like a wiseguy. When Lefty and I bounced around to different spots, I began to see the same things he did, pick up things the way he did. Like wiseguys, I was learning not to volunteer that I didn’t know things. Keep your mouth shut and absorb as fast as possible. The key is, you act like you know, so that by the time they find out you didn‘t, you do.

Lefty was the epitome of the wiseguy. He was at it twenty-four hours a day, scheming. On the street, in wiseguy situations, he was savvy and sharp and tough. That’s why he got a lot of respect from wiseguys. But you take him off his turf and you find out he’s just a small-town guy in some ways, unsophisticated about the rest of the world.

One afternoon we’re sitting in the lounge of a hotel, and there is this really nice-looking woman across the room who keeps looking at me.

“That lady can’t take her eyes off you, Donnie,” Lefty says. “Why don’t you invite her over to the table?”

I smile, she smiles. “Lefty, she’s probably a hooker.”

“Naw, Donnie, you’re nuts. She’s too nice. Good clothes. Hookers don’t dress like that.”

“Left, this is California. People dress different.”

“Not hookers. She’s probably a regular business lady. Come on, Donnie, she thinks you’re a good-looking guy, and she’d like to get to know you. Invite her over.”

The only way to stop Lefty when he got onto something was to do what he said. So I ask the waitress to invite the woman to our table. She comes over and sits down. Lefty doesn’t want to be in the way of this sweet flirtation, so right away he says, “Well, I think I’ll go up and take a little nap,” and he leaves.

I chat with the lady, and it doesn’t take five minutes to find out that she is a hooker. I go up to the room and tell Lefty. “I can’t believe it!” he says. “She didn’t have all the makeup or the short skirt or anything. How you supposed to tell?” He laughs. “Hey, Donnie, you got to watch yourself out here. You’ll lose all your New York instincts.”

Although he traveled a lot on mob business, he was used to somebody booking his flights. When he had to join me someplace, he wanted me to book his flights. I found out why one time when he had to book his own flight. He got intimidated and called me. “Donnie, at the airline they wanna know when I’m coming back.”