“That right?”

“They’ll break it all up, dissolve it. All right, go to sleep. Don’t worry about it.”

18

THE HITS

There was no quick resolution to the sitdowns. I just had to stay cool and wait, for days, weeks.

Lefty came down to Holiday, and Rossi and I were driving him to Miami, where he needed to talk to some people.

“I wanna get rid of all the old men,” he says. “They can’t do us no good. They’re eighty years old. They don’t wanna be bothered. Sonny tells me to call them to come to fucking wakes. Leave these people alone. You can’t retire them. It’s no good. Because they lose their prestige. We’re stuck with them.”

Lefty had been made an acting captain by Sonny, and he was sizing things up in the family. I tried to pump him a little on personnel. “Jerry Chilli’s on the side with Caesar and them, right?”

“Both brothers are on the other side,” he says, meaning both Joe and Jerry Chilli.

“Who’s his skipper, who’s he with?”

“He’s with Sonny Red’s man, Trinny,” he says, indicating rival captains Alphonse “Sonny Red” Indelicato and Dominick “Big Trin” Trinchera. “One’s kicking back to Trinny a G-note a week. The other one is kicking back three grand. That’s why they got power, them two guys. Those brothers are making a ton of money. We ain’t making it because we gotta walk the chalk line. This is what we’re told.”

“Joey Massino still got the coffee trucks?”

“Yeah. Joe Massino’s got good men. They all love me. We grew up together and hung out together. He knows where the strength is.”

“Joey goes to visit Rusty, huh?”

“Oh, yeah, he’s gotta go see him. He doesn’t know what’s going on with Mirra. He can’t butt in. When Joe Massino goes up there in a couple of weeks, he’ll tell him.”

“Well, Sonny’s gonna do the right thing. I don’t think anybody’s gonna fuck over Sonny.”

He ranted for a while about Mirra.

I say, “Well, he’s not gonna go against you one on one, you know that.”

“Ain’t a fucking man in New York City would go up against me one on one, because I would do it cowboy-style, right on South Street, one block walking at each other. How many pistols you want? Two? Let’s walk up against each other. One of us got to fucking die, or both of us die. That’s what I would do. I wouldn’t give a fuck, and don’t forget it. I’ll stay with Sonny and show honor.”

“Well, Rusty knows that.”

“Hey, let me tell you something. We were fighting a war, the Bonnanos. Rusty’s my chauffeur. Because you know what kind of a fucking man I was, and he was the fucking underboss. And he had to listen to me while he was driving the car: ‘Rusty, cut over here ... leave my fucking window open.’ He was a good wheelman.”

But Rusty was a tough boss, Lefty went on. During a war Rusty was in Canada, and he called Lefty and ordered him to come up. He didn’t even tell Lefty where he was, just where to go.

“I had four small kids. ‘Go pack a grip,’ he says. So I go pack a grip. Get on the fucking plane. Two pistols. Go to Canada, order a room. He says, ‘I’m gonna meet three guys on that corner. Don’t take your eyes off them. If anything happens to me, go all the way. Cops on the corner, blow them away.’

“Six fucking weeks he’s got me out there. You’re not allowed to make a phone call to your family. Good thing I had an ex-wife then who understood, never asked questions what happened to me or anything like that. Six fucking weeks. Now, I taught my new wife, Louise; ‘Look, anything happens, you don’t see me come in, don’t you yell for anybody—he just didn’t come home, you don’t know nothing.’ I says, ‘You wanna cry, it’s your fucking business. Don’t ask anybody on the corner where I’m at or question my sister. Just say, ’He didn’t come home—this is what my husband told me to say and these are his orders, and that’s it.‘ ”

“Rusty knows what we got down here, right?”

“Oh, yeah. He knows everything. That’s the trouble. They all know it.”

“Donnie, listen to me carefully,” Lefty says. It was Saturday night, April 11, and I had placed my regular call. “The car. Your friend’s car. Meet me in Fort Lauderdale tomorrow.”

“Why, what’s the matter?”

“Why don’t you just listen? Because I can cancel you out right now. I want you to come in alone. I don’t know what name I’m going under. I’m gonna come in with some people. Could you get that car?”

That was Rossi’s four-door Lincoln. “I guess so, why?”

“Donnie, don’t say, ‘I guess so, why?’ Just say yes and you meet me in Lauderdale.”

“Of course I can get it.”

“I could use Spaghetti. But my friend and I want you. I’m trying to get in touch with Nick, because we cannot go in cold. I gotta go into that hotel for one day, and then we’ll take it from there. Okay?”

“All right.” Nick was the manager at the Deauville Hotel, Lefty’s friend.

“That’s all, pal. I’ll explain everything. My friend requested you. You’re coming in with us. I got work to do. If you don’t like the idea, if you back out, fine, no problem. You go on back home. But I want to put you in on this, serious. Because we spoke about something, you and I, right?”

“I know what you’re talking about.”

“I got plane tickets, ten o‘clock. Delta flight 1051, first-class, from Kennedy. We’ll be there twelve-thirty tomorrow afternoon. You start coming in six hours before time. Drive in from Tampa with your big car. You pick us up at the airport. Don’t get there two hours before time. I don’t want you seen there. You time yourself, stay away from the airport until time, you follow me?”

“Yeah.”

“We just get in the car and we’re gone. Now, you satisfied? Because I tell you, if you wanna back away from it, no problem, you go back and there’s nothing said. I told you, two guys requested you, him and I. I’m taking full responsibility. He asked me if I wanted you. Okay?”

“All right.”

Years earlier, Lefty had promised that when the time was right, he’d take me along. Now I was being taken on a hit.

From various conversations over the last couple of weeks I had pieced together just how the feuding Bonanno family factions lined up, just how ominous the friction was between them. Aligned with Rusty Rastelli were Sally Farrugia, consiglieri Steve Cannone, captains Sonny Black and Joe Massino. Against Rusty were captains Caesar Bonventre, Philip “Philly Lucky” Giaccone, Dominick “Big Trin” Trinchera, and Alphonse “Sonny Red” Indelicato and his son, Anthony Bruno Indelicato.

Sonny, as usual, had been discreet about everything. And especially since the sitdowns about me were still going on, he wasn’t telling me anything. As close as we were, he was putting the family first, going by the rules. I probably would have been told more if I had been in New York. But everybody was being careful on the telephone. Lefty had been hinting at how everything was coming to a head, and had let me know that Sonny was the key to all the power, especially now that he had an alliance with Santo Trafficante. The opposing captains feared Sonny’s expanding power.

I faced two major problems. One was that as an agent, I couldn’t actually participate in a hit—in fact, it was our duty to prevent the hit if possible—yet as a badguy I couldn’t turn down the invitation without losing credibility.

The other problem was that I wasn’t at my apartment in Holiday, Florida. I wasn’t anywhere near Florida. I was home. I hadn’t been home for over a month. Over the years I had missed most of my children’s important days. On this weekend my youngest daughter was being confirmed. Everything was quiet on the job for the moment, so I snuck home for the weekend. This was Saturday night. The confirmation was tomorrow, Sunday. So was the hit in Florida.