“Donnie, tell Tony how much he makes a week and how much of that he’s willing to give me as his partner.”

We go outside. Whatever we say he makes in a week, Lefty’s going to take half. We don’t want to give Lefty too much or too little. Eventually when the cases are tried in court, we don’t want it to look like we were just throwing taxpayers’ money at these wiseguys. But we have to give him enough to keep him interested. The enticement is the money. You have to show that this is an attractive deal, that the club is a big potential money-maker. If we played it right, I knew Lefty would bring Sonny Black down and we’d have a good chance of getting something going with Santo Trafficante. We stay outside enjoying ourselves long enough to have discussed this.

Back at the table, I say, “Lefty, he takes five hundred a week, and he says he’ll give you two-fifty a week.”

“Okay, tell him that I’ll accept two-fifty a week, which he should mail every Wednesday so I get it by Friday, plus the two thousand, plus a grand before I leave.”

I repeat all that, the partnership is made, and the conversation becomes more normal. “You got peace of mind now,” he says to Rossi. Lefty says he will contact “the right people” to clear the way for Rossi to expand operations into Orlando and other parts of Florida. He wants to know how much the club makes on the card games.

“We just started gambling,” Rossi says. “The last game netted two hundred and forty-seven bucks.”

“No, no, that ain’t nothing, that there. What you do is, the game is a twenty-dollar limit with three raises, and that would bring eight hundred to a thousand bucks a night cut for the house. So we gotta get that going.”

Lefty also wanted the club expanded outside: an Olympic-size swimming pool, four racquet-ball courts, fifteen cabanas, a lot of landscaping.

“Get an architecture out here,” Lefty says, “to draw up the plans. Go call one up.”

“First thing in the morning,” Rossi says, because now it’s two A.M.

“Naw, get one now. Check the Yellow Pages, find a home phone. Tell him you’re Tony, owner of the King’s Court. He’ll know you. Tell him you’ll buy him a steak dinner and throw him a hundred dollars. He’ll come right over.”

I say, “Left, you think there will be any problems with Santo Trafficante, with us operating here in the Tampa area?”

“Don’t worry about it. You just concentrate on building up this business here.”

I went back with Lefty to the room at the Best Western Tahitian Motor Lodge on Route 19. He was still moaning about not getting $5,000.

“Left,” I say, “let’s not pressure the guy right from the beginning because we got a good thing going.”

“Okay. But, Donnie, you gotta make sure that if Sonny ever says anything, you tell him that’s all I got, because I don’t want him thinking that I’m holding out on him.”

“I’ll back you up.”

He dialed a number on the room phone. “Sonny? Everything here is all right. I am satisfied with the situation here.”

Lefty went back to New York. A week later, the day after Easter, Sonny sent him back down to dictate an official partnership agreement. The agreement, back-dated for a month to preclude any challenge from another family, stated that they were fifty-fifty partners, that the second partner had invested $15,000 in the club. They went to a notary. Rossi signed “E. Anthony Rossi.” Lefty signed “Thomas Sbano,” the name of his son.

Lefty called a member of his crew in Miami, Johnny Spaghetti, and asked him to drive to Holiday to look the operation over. In case both Lefty and I were in New York and Rossi got into a beef with somebody, Johnny Spaghetti could shoot up from Miami and settle things.

Johnny Spaghetti got there that afternoon. A big, rough-and-tough type, about 6’, 220 pounds, with silver hair. He used to work on the docks in New York until he hurt his back. He started getting workman’s compensation, moved to Miami, and continued to do jobs for the family. Lefty told Rossi to give Spaghetti $40 for gas expenses for the trip from Miami.

That night we went to the Derby Lane greyhound track on the outskirts of Tampa. Rossi gave Lefty his $250 weekly salary plus his $200 cut from recent card games. Lefty lost it all to the dogs.

At the motel coffee shop the next morning, Lefty said I should talk to Rossi about the rest of the original $5,000 he was supposed to get. “Tell him he’s gonna have peace of mind for the two thousand more. Tell him, Donnie, that if it wasn’t for you being involved and being my partner, I would have walked away from the deal when he couldn’t come up with the five grand. I need another two thousand to put this whole thing together up in New York, Donnie.”

That night Rossi and I discussed it and decided it was worth it. Lefty had Sonny interested—what’s another $2,000 when it’s going to lead us to putting Sonny Black together with Santo Trafficante?

13

KING’S COURT

We were establishing ourselves and King’s Court as part of the local underworld scene. Rossi was taking me around and letting people know that I was his New York guy. I had to prove myself right away to both New York and Florida people so that I could have freedom to operate.

He took me to a restaurant called Joe Pete’s River Boat. Joe Pete was an ex-New Yorker, a half-ass tough guy who bragged about his connections and his Italian food. He also ran a gambling operation.

We sat down in the restaurant and were eating when Joe Pete came over from the bar. “Tony, how you been? Good to see you.”

Rossi says, “Joe, like you to meet Donnie. He’s my new partner. He’s from New York.”

“Oh, yeah?” Joe Pete says. He went into the who-do-you-know-that-I-know game.

I had a cold, and my voice was hoarse. Rossi and I kept eating.

Joe Pete says, “Geez, Donnie, you don’t sound too good.”

“I don’t feel too good. Maybe it’s from your food.”

“What do you mean?”

“I felt good until I started eating your fucking food. Now I feel like I’m gonna die from this meal.”

He got very offended. “Why you say a thing like that?”

“I say what I gotta say. Your fucking food, I feel like I’m gonna die from it.”

He got up. “Maybe you might die from something else.”

“Naw, just the food.”

We got a reputation. Out of the local woodwork came drug deals, swag deals, connections.

Jo-Jo Fitapelli and Jimmy Acquafredda were acquainting Rossi with means of recruiting and keeping members in the Cartmen’s Association.

“You need a little muscle,” Acquafredda says. “If you scare somebody where you pound him and put a scar on his fucking head-you know, mentally—he’ll stay if you scare him the right way.”

Rossi said he didn’t think scare tactics would work with some of the area garbage collectors.

Acquafredda persisted. “And you get an outlaw truck and send it out to compete with nonmembers. And if you have a member that you don’t like, kick him out of the association, go after him, and run him out of the business.”

Lefty called from New York. He said that Sonny was very happy with how things were going with King’s Court. He loved the architectural plans for enlargement. He was so happy with the prospects that he was coming down to see it for himself on April 6.

Meeting Sonny Black was going to be a big test for me, more of a challenge than Balistrieri had been in Milwaukee. I was better-known now, considered more experienced and responsible, with fewer excuses for making mistakes. My scam got bigger and better all the time, I had more to protect, and I had to keep my confidence up to match it. Sonny was a very important captain in New York. He had a reputation for being unusually tough and savvy, even for a Mafia capo.