“We don’t know. Just tell them you want an open return.”

“What’s an open return?”

“That means you’ll have the return ticket already paid for and in your hands, but you just won’t have a date on it. Then when you’re ready to go back, you just call the airline and tell them the date you want to fly. ”

“You can do that?”

Lefty stayed about a week that first trip, then he wanted me to come back to New York with him. I told him I couldn’t because I had a potential big score that I had to look into. That pacified him. That meant money for him.

What I really had to do was go to Milwaukee. The Bureau had set up an operation there to bag the Milwaukee Mafia family, but it was slow getting off the ground. They contacted me to see if I had any ideas.

The undercover agent working the case went by the name of Tony Conte. Tony was a friend, a tough street agent. The boss of the Milwaukee family—which was answerable to the Chicago mob, rather than New York—was Frank Balistrieri. We knew that Balistrieri controlled all the vending-machine business in the city. The Bureau wanted to show that it was done illegally through hidden ownerships and mob muscle. The idea was for Conte to set up his own vending-machine business and try to get his machines into various stores and bars and clubs. Then if Balistrieri tried to muscle him out of business, we could make an extortion case.

Conte had set up his fake personal background, opened a small office in Milwaukee, applied to the city for a vending license, bought a couple of machines. And he went around to the clubs and bars trying to solicit business. But he hadn’t made any inroads.

The problem was, Balistrieri had the city tied up so tight that nobody would accept any of Conte’s machines. The places that Conte went refused his machines because they already had machines that belonged to Frank Balistrieri. Nobody wanted to move Balistrieri’s machines out to put Conte’s in.

After a month or so he still hadn’t been able to install any of his machines, and nobody had approached him to warn him off. So he called me and asked if there was any possibility that I might get some of my New York contacts involved. If I could get somebody from New York interested in Conte’s vending business, then they might try to form a partnership with Balistrieri.

So I made a trip to Milwaukee. I checked into a motel and called Conte. He came over with the case agent, Mike Potkonjak. It didn’t matter if Conte was seen with me, because he was operating undercover, anyway, so nobody out there knew who he really was. And only the case agent in Milwaukee knew who I was. They filled me in on the operation—exactly what Conte had done so far.

It sounded feasible to me. I said I would try to introduce the idea to Lefty and see what happened.

I went to New York. I had given up my apartment, so on these visits now I took a room either at the Holiday Inn on Route 80 on the Jersey side of the George Washington Bridge, or at the Sheraton Centre on Seventh Avenue. It was just a place to sleep, anyway. Most of the time I was with Lefty. He was always after me to come back to New York to stay; he didn’t like me being in California. Partly it was because he missed me, partly it was because he really thought California was for lying on the beach and hustling broads and getting your brains scrambled. He was always after me to take an apartment in Knickerbocker Village, where he lived. In fact, eventually he had it all set up for me to take an apartment and just keep it for my visits.

Whenever I was coming in, he’d say, “What do you want to eat when we get home?” Because he would cook for me and his wife, Louise. He would go out and buy special veal cutlets from the best outlet. Or maybe he’d make lasagna from scratch. Or if we decided to eat out, we’d wait for Louise to get home from work, then go to a Chinese restaurant. He liked to talk to me about his kids, his grandchildren, any problems he was having with Mike Sabella or anybody else.

On this trip I planted the seed for Milwaukee.

For everything I did, every operation with Lefty, I first laid a foundation, introduced the matter in casual conversation, and dropped it. Brought it up again, dropped it. Then finally brought it up and made it stick. On Milwaukee I didn’t want to lay it all out at once, about having a friend out there who’s trying to get into the vending business and is having trouble, etc. Because I figured I was going to be cultivating Lefty for other operations down the line, and I didn’t want him to say, “Hey, how come you always got a friend in trouble someplace?”

We’re just shooting the breeze about California, and I say, “You know what, Left, I ran into a guy that I knew ten years ago in Baltimore. We pulled a few jobs together back in those days. Now he tells me he’s been semi-legit for all these years since, and now he’s about to go into business. I think he’s going into the vending-machine business.”

“Oh, yeah?” Lefty says. “Tough racket.” That’s all he says.

I didn’t even tell him where it was. I just let him swallow that first mention, let him digest it. Conte was ready to move in Milwaukee. I had started priming Lefty. In coming weeks I would mention it again in little ways. All we needed now were the right circumstances. I went back to California.

The Bureau had come up with some more places they wanted checked out. “You know, Left,” I said over the telephone, “I really like California. You ought to give it a chance. You’re always talking about how you’d like to open up a bar of your own somewhere. I’ve got a line on a couple places out here. Why don’t you come out for a little vacation; we’ll look these places over.”

So in May, Lefty came out to San Diego again. I showed him a good time. We went to the track a few times, and we looked into a couple of bars and restaurants.

Then I got a break on Milwaukee.

Lefty got a call from his daughter. His son, Tommy, had been arrested for armed robbery in Manhattan. Apparently he had tried to stick up some guy who was carrying a bunch of diamonds in the midtown diamond district. Cops chased him; he fired some shots.

The fact that Tommy had committed a robbery and shot at cops and been caught was no big deal. That’s part of the game, to get arrested and spend time in jail. A wiseguy doesn’t worry about his kid being in jail like a citizen would. What made it a big deal was that it turned out that the guy he robbed was a connected guy with another family.

Lefty was very upset. “Can you believe it?” he says to me. “That dumb shit Tommy. This guy is connected to a heavyweight. There’s gonna be a sitdown over this, Donnie. I just hope I can work something out so Tommy don’t get whacked out over this. Donnie, I need a thousand right away. Where can we come up with a grand?”

He was hitting on me for money to take to the sitdown so he could patch things over with a payoff. That didn’t mean he didn’t have the money. It was another instance of a wiseguy avoiding using his own money if at all possible-even when his son’s life was in danger. He knew I didn’t have the money either—or that I would be as reluctant as he was to part with my own.

But it was an opening for me. Typically money was the key. These guys, money is their whole life, scamming people, getting money from somebody for free. They’re never going to go to a bank for a loan.

I say, “Hey, maybe we could call that guy—remember that old friend I told you about, the one I knew in Baltimore? If he’s got money to open a vending-machine business, maybe we can get something from him. It’s worth a shot.”

“Yeah, try that,” Lefty says.

I went to my room and called Tony Conte in Milwaukee. “Tony, I think we got the opening. We might have to come up with some bread for Lefty.” I explained the situation. I never intended to give Lefty all he asked for. “Maybe we can get away with five hundred.”