“Sonny and Joey are feuding,” he says, “because Sonny’s got more power. So Joey got an unlisted telephone number now. He ain’t talking to anybody because of this feud with Sonny.”

Lefty and Boobie talked to Sonny about the offered police report. Lefty came out of the Motion Lounge, disappointed. “He doesn’t want it. He didn’t want to pay the five thousand.”

Lefty wanted to look at a new Cadillac he might buy. Nicky drove us to Queens to the dealer’s to look at it. It was burgundy. Rock-bottom price was $15,300. Lefty decided to buy it.

They talked about looking for the kid, casing the house.

“Should I take the shotgun?” Nicky asks.

Lefty laughs. “Yeah, like last time, you shot the guy that ain’t supposed to be shot.”

They all laughed. One of their own guys, Santo Giordano, had been shot accidently in the hip and left paralyzed. That was their best joke of the day.

In the beginning of my undercover role as Donnie Brasco, I had occasional fears about the dangers of being an agent. Now I also had fears about the dangers of being a badguy. As things had now developed into family warfare, I could get whacked for being either an agent or a badguy.

Some mornings when I stayed at Sonny’s I would get up and go into the bathroom and look in the mirror, and I would find myself thinking, Is today the day that I’m going to get whacked?

Lefty and I were having a lunchtime cappuccino at Caffe Capri.

“Tap Jerry Chilli’s phones,” he says. “He knows where the kid is. Tap Jerry Chilli’s phones and we’ll get the kid. I’ll put a bug in Jerry’s house. We’ll visit him. He’ll invite us, you know. Boobie goes there with a bullshit story. Puts a bug in there. And a bug outside, on a tree or something. Jerry was very close to the kid’s father. Sonny Red’s wife gave Jerry Chilli Sonny Red’s car to sell for her. So we put a bug in Chilli’s house on Staten Island.”

“I hope so,” I say.

“Now, you’re gonna get straightened out, Donnie. But please, let me tell you. First of all, you and I are gonna do a little talking while we’re away, where you come from and all that, because this is gonna come back on me.”

Sonny came in and joined us. He said that Sally Farrugia wanted to make some of the zips captains. “But that would be crazy,” Sonny says, “because those guys are looking to take over everything. That’s why those three guys were killed—they went against the zips, and the zips came over to our side. We were the ones slated to get hit, but because Sonny Red screwed the zips, they swung over to us. There’s no way we can make them captains. We’d lose all our strength.”

He said he urged Sally to take a firmer hand as acting boss until Rusty got out of jail.

“You’re gonna be in shit’s creek, Sonny,” Lefty says.

“Good. I been in shit’s creek eighteen years.”

“I advise you to be a little strong, because them fucking zips ain’t gonna back up to nobody. You give them the fucking power, if you don’t get hurt now, you get hurt three years from now. They’ll bury you. You cannot give them the power. They don’t give a fuck. They don’t care who’s boss. They got no respect. There’s no family.”

“Sally don’t want no problems with us,” Sonny says.

“Sure, I don’t blame him. Look at the position he got himself in.”

“I mean, what if the guy stays in another ten years?

You think they’re gonna let him out, especially with this RICO law? So what we gonna do now, stand on a corner? I’m starting from day one again.“

“Yeah, but don’t weaken,” Lefty says. “You weaken, you got a headache. You won’t get a headache now. You’ll get it three years from now. They’ll bury you. I’m telling you, they’ll bury you. Well, Sonny, you do what you gotta do. Your word counts with me.”

“I just can’t go along with it. Because there are some things I can’t do for certain people, and some things I did already.”

“You do what you gotta do. You gotta put fear in these guys.”

“I don’t put fear in there,” Sonny says. “I put friendship, you know? I almost didn’t win the battle.”

A bunch of us were sitting around the Motion Lounge with guns in our belts, swapping stories—Sonny, Lefty, Nicky, Jimmy Legs, and others. Sonny had ordered us to be armed at all times.

Jimmy Legs was packing a .45. Nobody used holsters. You carried your pistol in your sport-coat pocket or your belt. Jimmy Legs had a big belly, but the rest of him was skinny. He had no hips or butt. So when he’d walk around, the .45 kept falling down through his pants legs. He had this bright idea that he would sew a pocket on the inside of his pants at the small of his back and carry the gun in that pocket. So this evening he had just installed the pocket and was using it for the first time.

We were bullshitting about the world situation and how the United States should be tougher on other countries and not be pushed around. About how the liberals running our spy business should learn something from the methods of the KGB, which could do anything it wanted to in order to be effective.

Somebody brought up the different ways you could kill people in the spy business.

I told them a story about one of the methods. A KGB agent had an umbrella with a sharpened tip, and they put poison on it, and he’d walk by somebody and just prick him in the leg or arm with this umbrella.

They thought that was the greatest thing in the world. The CIA should be able to do that stuff and not be so answerable to Congress anymore, like it had been since Watergate.

We got to laughing at some of the stories, and Jimmy Legs suddenly took off for the john.

A few moments later we heard a commotion. Jimmy Legs came out of john dangling his .45 from his thumb and forefinger. “I had to shit so bad that I forgot about my gun pocket, and when I took down my pants and began, the gun fell in the bowl so I had to fish it out. Hey, if we had to go to war and I had to kill somebody, I’d just leave a little shit on it that’d get on the bullet, and all I’d have to do is nick somebody and I’d kill them with that poison just like the fucking KGB!”

The wedding reception for Boobie’s daughter was scheduled for seven P.M. at Shalimar Caterers, 2380 Hylan Boulevard, on Staten Island. We started gathering at the Motion Lounge at about five P.M.—Lefty, Nicky Santora, Boots Tomasulo, Bobby Capazzio, Sonny, Charlie the bartender, and others.

The rules were that we would all stay around Sonny at all times, not leave his side, because this would be a good time for retaliation against him. Other families were going to be represented at the wedding, too, so we didn’t know who might do what.

Some guys brought their wives or girlfriends. We were going to travel in a caravan, so we discussed how to get there and who was going with who.

We had to make sure everybody was packing. Nicky had a .45 that was too big for his waistband, so he gave that to Boots, and Nicky carried a little .32. I, of course, had my .25 automatic.

I drove with Boots and Nicky. Everybody was at the reception. Lefty and Louise, Jimmy Legs, Jerry Chilli, Mr. Fish Rabito, Dennis the cop, Nicky Marangello, Mike Sabella.

One notable absence was Joey Massino, which really ticked off Sonny and Lefty.

“That jerk-off is afraid to get caught out in the open,” Lefty says, “that’s all.”

I sat at Sonny’s table with Nicky, Charlie, and Boots. Everybody had a girlfriend except Boots and me.

It was a big, fancy reception with an open bar, a band, a prime-rib sitdown dinner. All kinds of wiseguys were there from different families, including Jerry Lang, the acting boss of the Colombo family. Boobie was proud, but quiet and controlled as always. We sat around Sonny and kept our eyes open.