First things first. I had to go on the hit. Technically, since I wasn’t a made guy, I could refuse and it wouldn’t be held against me. Realistically, though, it would undercut the credibility I had been working to establish since 1976. If I didn’t go, they would carry out the hit, anyway. I didn’t know who the target was. I figured it was one of the wiseguys in the opposition faction, probably one of the four captains, but I didn’t know who, so there was nobody the FBI could warn. And I didn’t know where or when. They might go right out on the hit, or they might hang around and case the situation, wait for a good opportunity. At least if I was along, maybe I could find out who the target was enough ahead of time so I could tip off our guys so they could snatch him off the street.

I called Case Agent Jim Kinne in Tampa. He agreed that the only thing we could do is put a surveillance team on me from the time I got to Miami. When I hook up with Lefty and his crew, if I can find out soon enough who they’re going to hit, maybe I can get to a phone. Or if I can’t find out right away, the surveillance team can tail us until the last possible minute, until I signal or something, and they can stop us on a traffic violation or some bullshit charge. They could say they recognize us as mob guys, ask us what we’re all doing down there together—apply a routine hassling that happens to these guys all the time. That way they probably wouldn’t suspect a tip-off, yet it might be enough of a disruption to cause them to call off the hit.

Kinne would hurry to set up the surveillance. I would catch the first flight to Miami. It was a very dicey situation. The surveillance team could get spotted or lose us. Everybody with Lefty would be given a gun, and I could be designated the triggerman. What if the surveillance team is out of it and we’re headed for the hit and I’m the hitter—what the hell will I do? I didn’t know of any precedents for this situation.

But long before, when I had imagined the possibility of this kind of situation, I had made a personal decision to cover it: Whatever the rules, if the target is a badguy and it’s him or me, he goes.

I called Rossi and laid out the situation. I would fly into Miami. He would drive the big car to Miami for me, then he would fly back to Tampa.

Now I had to tell my family that I would miss my daughter’s confirmation. We were going to have a houseful of relatives and friends. Relatives were flying in from all over. Not even my wife knew how deeply I was involved now in the turmoil within the Bonanno family.

First I told my wife. I said I got a phone call and I had to return to Florida immediately. I wasn’t going to give her details, because I didn’t want her to worry any more than she already did. But she had overheard me talking to Agent Kinne, and so she knew that the mob wanted me to kill somebody.

I told her that it was a very important thing I was involved in and that I had to go because somebody’s life might be at stake, and we were required to prevent a killing if we could. A lot of people were depending on me for this operation—it was the old story. Beyond that, all I could tell her was not to worry. I was never very good at talking about a thing like that at a time like that.

She was furious and scared. She yelled at me and cried. She hated the Bureau. How could I be put in this position? Who was going to be there to protect me? Why did I have to go, why not somebody else? Why not somebody who didn’t have a wife and children? She was shaking.

This was the lowest point since her accident.

My youngest daughter was now fourteen. I sat down with her and told her I couldn’t be at her confirmation because something had come up with my job and I had an obligation to do it and there was nothing I could do about it. She cried and said, “Daddy, I don’t want you to go because this is a special day for me.”

But then she said she was mad that I would leave her on a special day but that at least she had her grandfather there to stand in for her.

I had to leave for the airport right away. I really had no choice.

I flew to Miami and picked up the car from Rossi. I drove to the Fort Lauderdale Airport, arriving five minutes before the scheduled arrival of Lefty’s flight. Lefty’s flight came, people filed off. No Lefty, no nobody.

I called Sonny in Brooklyn. “What’s going on, Sonny? Nobody’s here.”

“We called it off.”

“What do you mean, called it off?”

“Look, call the other guy, he’ll explain it to you.”

“Where’s he?”

“He’s home, Donnie.”

I drove back to my apartment in Holiday. I needed the six hours to burn off my rage. My daughter’s confirmation had gone on without me, and the hit hadn’t gone on at all.

Then I called Lefty. He told me that he had gone to the airport and called back to Sonny as he was supposed to, and Sonny said it was canceled. “It was too late to call you,” he says, “because you were already on the way from Tampa.”

The hit was going to be on Philly Lucky. They called it off because he was down there by himself, and they decided they wanted to get three captains together, that it wasn’t smart to hit them one at a time.

“I’m sorry, pal,” Lefty says.

“That’s all right. What the hell, you couldn’t get in touch with me. Things like that happen.”

“I know. That’s it.”

“Well, if it would have went, it would have been good, right?”

“I can’t talk about it.”

“I’m just saying—”

“No, I can’t talk about that. If they’d have left it up to me, you know ...”

“Next time, Left, don’t ask me or say, ‘You don’t have to do it.’ We got something to do, I do it. Don’t ever feel that I’m gonna back out of something.”

“You had a choice, though.”

“What choice? We do things together. I’m not worried about no choice.”

Anthony “Mr. Fish” Rabito was a fat wiseguy, maybe 5’9”, 250 pounds, with a fleshy face, who once ran seafood restaurants. He was a bachelor and had an apartment at 411 East Fifty-Third Street in Manhattan. His apartment was popular with other wiseguys, who often used it as a place to take their girlfriends for an hour or so. He was a friend of Sonny’s. Sonny said that Rabito was a good guy to contact and stay with when you have to work the streets during, say, a war.

On April 13, two days after the aborted hit, Lefty called.

“Donnie, listen to me carefully and listen good. I’m leaving with some people. I can’t make no phone calls. If everything comes all right, you’ll be in pretty good shape in New York. Understand?”

“Yeah, all right.”

“You don’t know all right.”

“I’m just saying all right that you—”

“Because it might take two weeks. It might take a while. Now, this is the last time you’re gonna hear from me. I’m being picked up in a little while. And don’t call the other guy.”

“Okay. Don’t call nobody.”

The only person he wanted me to call was Louise. He wanted me to call her twice a day in case she had any problems; at six P.M. when she got home from work, and at eleven P.M., before she went to bed, and to send her $1,000 for bills.

“And do me a favor, try to stay as close as possible just in case when something does come off, that we know where to contact you. In other words, like, I’ll use the club. You understand?”

“Yeah.”

“Because I’m gonna work from the street.”

I alerted Case Agent Jerry Loar in New York. A surveillance team saw Lefty and Louise leave their apartment, get in his car, and drive to Rabito’s building. Lefty got out carrying a brown paper bag and went to Rabito’s apartment. Louise drove away.

I didn’t hear from Lefty until five days later, when I finally learned that I had survived the sitdowns.

“I just got back from Brooklyn,” he says. “Everything went good. We’ll be all right. We’re on top.”