“I don’t think I want to,” Tom says. “Down there, there’s too many deaths. I been in battles down there. It’s ridiculous. It’s a pain in the ass. Now, if you want, I can take you down there and let you jump on the bandwagon.”

“If we got an introduction,” I say, “we can make it worth your while to introduce one of our guys in New York to somebody down there.”

“Have to find that out,” Tom says.

“I’d have to think about that real hard,” says his dad.

“What about prices on the coke? Where’s it from?”

Tom takes out the sample again. “Fifty-five, sixty. Either Colombia or here.”

“Fifty-five grand?” Rossi says.

“To sixty,” Pete says.

“What we give you, the sample,” Tom says, putting the sample on the desk for Rossi, “that’s what you’re gonna get.”

“Sounds good to me,” I say.

They left the sample with us. The next day the cocaine sample was tested at the Pinellas County Sheriff’s Office lab. It was less than fifteen percent pure.

The day after that, we got the father and son back in the office. Jo-Jo knew these guys, so we had him in there with us. He was pretty uncomfortable.

I say, “I don’t know if you think you’re fucking with some jerk-offs or what. But that sample of coke ain’t even fucking fifteen percent. It’s bullshit. It’s been stepped on nineteen fucking times.”

Pete and Tom start stammering. “Y-you think we’d pull a shot like that, Don? You think we’d do that?”

“You told us it was eighty percent,” Rossi says.

“Just overnight the thought came to me,” Tom says. “It was something I grabbed that night. That’s why I kept it in my pocket. No way I’m gonna do that intentionally. What I’d love to do—really, I’d love to do this, because if what you’re saying is true ...”

“It’s not if what we’re saying is true,” Rossi says, “it is true. Why would we tell you different? We’re hoping it’s ninety percent.”

“Then somebody’s gonna fall,” Tom says. “This guy’s never done that. I been with the guy five years, and this is the first time, believe me. I’m serious.”

“It’s not a question of the money,” Rossi says. “It’s a question of the honorability.”

“Goddamn, man.” Tom shakes his head while his father paces around, shaking his head too.

“Whoever gave it to you is putting you in a fucking box,” Rossi says.

“Donnie, don’t get us wrong,” Pete says, “that we think you’re jacking us off or something like that.”

They are getting real edgy. Pete says, “What we wanna do is drop it. Just give the sample back.”

I get up and walk over to Pete. Jo-Jo is squirming in a chair right behind me.

“Just forget it,” Pete says. “I’ll buy you a drink. Now.” He jabs his finger at Rossi. “Now!”

“What’s ‘now’?” Rossi says.

“Give it back!” He throws up his hands. “All right, don’t give us the sample. Done. I’m really getting pissed off.”

“You can get pissed off all you want,” I say. “But don’t get the fucking attitude, pal, that we’re trying to fuck you with a bullshit sample. Understand what I’m saying?”

I hear Jo-Jo’s small voice behind me: “Donnie ... Donnie ...” He’s trying to tug my sleeve. He’s afraid somebody is going to get killed. I put my finger on Pete’s chest. “How can we be fucking you when we got the sample from you? Because if I take the sample from you and I want to move it, I want good stuff, right?”

Pete backs off fast. “You ain’t got good stuff there.”

“That’s what my man says.”

“Well, no deal, no money, no nothing. Hey, we’re friends.”

“That’s right. Because he’s with me. He’s not with anybody else.”

“Of course, he’s with you all the way. Your word is your man’s word.”

“So don’t come into this fucking joint saying that we’re trying to fuck you guys.”

“Can I come in the joint and have a drink?”

Tom is still shaking his head. “In my heart, I can tell you, this is the first time.”

“Hey, this business isn’t fucking in your heart,” I say. “This business is in your pocket. In your head. Not what’s in your heart.”

“What I mean by heart is my head. First of all, ain’t nobody gonna charge you for no sample.”

Rossi laughs. “Charge us for a sample? We get fucking samples of that shit every day.”

At that I walk out. Tom and Pete whine behind me, “Donnie! Donnie! Come back, Donnie!”

We planned our second Las Vegas Night for December 13. Trafficante was going to supply a crew to run the games. When the time came, his people weren’t available, so we postponed the gambling event to January.

Rossi and I went to New York to spend the few days before Christmas with Sonny and the crew. On December 17, he had the big Christmas party at the Motion Lounge. Each captain gives a Christmas party for his crew. Charley the bartender did all the cooking—pasta and sausage and peppers and meatballs. All the guys that belonged to Sonny’s crew came. We just ate and drank and told war stories and had a good time. Rossi and I each gave Sonny $200 as our presents.

Sonny was anxious to get back to Florida to meet with “the Old Man down there to really firm things up.” He said Carmine was going to put up money for an addition on the back of King’s Court, a dance floor and a swimming pool. The main thing now, he said, was to get the Las Vegas Night set up. “Now we’re going to start making money.”

But for the next few weeks he had to stay in New York. “There’s some problems I’m having in Brooklyn.” The Miami cocaine deal had not come through yet, but he had bought a hundred pounds of marijuana out on Long Island, and Nicky Santora had picked it up in a rented U-Haul truck and taken it to Tony Boots’s garage for temporary storage.

Antonio “Boots” Tomasulo—who always wore work boots—had a place across the street from the Motion Lounge called Capri Car Service, at 421 Graham Avenue. I never saw any car-service business go on there. It was just a cluttered place where Boots carried on activities on behalf of Sonny. He was Sonny’s partner in the numbers business, did all the collecting. Sonny often used the phones in there.

Sonny said he had a carbine and several handguns stashed away and that he might give me some of them to take down to Florida in case his crew needed them. Nicky Santora said that he had two .38 pistols wrapped in cloth that he had put in a sink drain at the Motion Lounge before he went to jail. They were still there, but he hadn’t checked them. “I hope they’re not all fucked up with water,” he says. “I wrapped them pretty good in oil.”

After the first of the year Sonny said he was moving out of the Withers social club. We would be meeting at the Motion Lounge.

Rossi went back to Florida to run King’s Court, and I stayed to hang around with Sonny.

I stayed at his apartment, learned more about the pigeons, had many conversations. His estranged wife was causing him problems of some sort. He was concerned about his kids. I would spend a couple of hours a day hanging out over in Manhattan on Madison Street, at the Holiday Bar with Lefty. At night I’d go bouncing with Sonny.

Nicky Santora ran a string of go-go joints out on Long Island. One night Sonny and I had been out bouncing, and we came back to the Motion Lounge at about two A.M. Nicky and a few guys and some of the girls from his joints were partying in the back room.

“You can take your pick,” Nicky says to us. “There’s one that gives a great blow job.”

We look the girls over while they’re partying it up.

“I’ll take the one that gives good head,” Sonny says.

I have to come up with a good quick line here, because Sonny will take the girl upstairs, and I’m staying with him, so I would be expected to take a girl upstairs too. “I’m gonna have to beg off, bro. You go ahead. But I don’t know these broads, they hang around with bikers out there at the joint, and you know how dirty they are. There’s this herpes thing around, and I don’t wanna risk no herpes.”