I was learning how it felt to be a part of this system. I was learning to act accordingly. I was becoming ever more known and trusted, was in on their plans and activities, and so had to start abiding by the rules of the mob.

It was amazing that I had been accepted at all. Everybody around me had grown up in these neighborhoods, been known forever. I was a newcomer. So far they had bought my stories and style. And I had been lucky. When you’re an FBI agent running with thieves and killers, no amount of skill is itself enough to keep you alive and effective. You’ve got to get the breaks too.

I was in at the bottom. The only people lower than me by Mafia reckoning were ordinary citizens with nine-to-five jobs and no mob connections.

Anthony Mirra was the nastiest, most intimidating guy I met in the Mafia. He went about 6’2”, 210 pounds. He was a good money-maker and a stone-cold killer. He was moody and unpredictable. You never knew what might set him off. And when he snapped, he might do anything.

Mirra was a knife man. It was common for mobsters to carry knives instead of guns, because they were often rousted by cops and didn’t want to be caught with guns on them. Being caught carrying an unregistered pistol in New York means prison. They carried folding knives with long blades. I carried one. But it was not common for everybody to use their knives the way Mirra did. I was often told, “If you ever get into an argument with him, make sure you stay an arm’s length away, because he will stick you.” Even among mafiosi, Mirra was far from normal.

He was always in trouble, either with the law or with other wiseguys. He was totally obnoxious, he insulted everybody. He was widely despised but just as widely feared. A lot of people just tried to stay out of his way.

“Mirra’s problem,” Lefty Ruggiero told me, “is that he’s always abusing somebody.”

But for me he was a step up from Jilly’s crew in importance. He accepted me, and I started hanging out with him, dividing my time between him and Jilly’s Brooklyn crew. I would go to Little Italy for a couple of hours in the morning, then head over to Brooklyn for a while, then come back to bounce around with Mirra at night. We’d hit discos like Cecil‘s, Hippopotamus, or Ibis.

Mirra never spent his own money. Everything was “on the arm”—free with him. One of the first times I was with him we were at Hippopotamus. A lot of wiseguys hanging out there came over to talk to him. We were at the bar half the night, not paying for anything.

When we got up to leave, I put $25 down on the bar.

“Take that fucking money off the bar,” Mirra growled at me in his deep voice. “Nobody pays for nothing when they’re with me.”

“Geez, Tony, just a tip for the bartender,” I said. “That’s how I operate.”

He jabbed a finger in my chest. “You operate how I tell you to operate. Pick it up.”

“Okay, Tony,” I said, and I pocketed the bills. I wanted to avoid a big argument with him, and possible consequences. But it was not easy, letting somebody like that talk to you like that.

Mirra told me that Hippopotamus was owned by Aniello Dellacroce, the underboss of the Gambino family. Mirra introduced me to Aniello’s son, Armond, who he said ran the place.

Armond had an illegal “after-hours” place at 11 West Fifty-sixth Street, with blackjack and dice tables and a roulette wheel. I went there with Mirra a few times. It was a comfortable, carpeted place, free food and booze, all kinds of girls waiting on you while you gambled. It opened at two or three in the morning and ran until maybe eight or nine.

Aniello Dellacroce died of cancer in 1985, while under indictment on RICO charges; soon after that, Armond pled guilty to federal racketeering charges, but he disappeared before sentencing and at this writing is still a fugitive.

We were at a bar in Fort Lee, New Jersey. Tony was talking to some guy on the other side of him and I was listening. I moved my elbow and knocked over my drink, spilling it on the guy on my other side. “Sorry,” I say.

“ ‘Sorry’ don’t clean my coat,” the guy says. “Why don’t you assholes go back to New York where you belong.”

“Hey, I said I’m sorry.” I get a bar rag from the bartender and wipe it up.

Now this guy gets a drink, puts it on the bar, and knocks it over on me. “Take your dumb ass back across the river,” he says.

Nothing’s going to appease this guy. I see Tony listening to this, getting that cuckoo look in his eye, his hand in his jacket pocket.

My theory is, you don’t get into an argument because you don’t know what will develop—some guy pulls a gun or goes outside and brings back twenty guys. Plus Mirra may be on the verge of pulling out his knife to stick this guy. I have to end it quick.

I say, “You wanna step outside?”

“Yeah.” He gets up off his stool, and I give him a shot right there, because I’m not going outside. Another guy jumps in, Mirra smacks him. The first guy comes at me again, I clock him with a bottle.

I say to Mirra, “Let’s get the fuck outa here.”

“Yeah, let’s go,” he says.

We scram before the cops come.

“Why didn’t you just stick the cocksucker?” Tony says. “I was gonna do it for you.”

Embarrassed? Yeah, I was. Here I am an FBI agent, a thirty-eight-year-old man, getting into a bar fight. I didn’t even want to be in that joint with Anthony Mirra. But because I was, that’s the kind of thing that can happen. And when it does, the best thing you can do is handle it quick so it doesn’t get out of control. I don’t believe in arguing.

Often on Friday and Saturday nights we hung out at Cecil’s. I learned that Cecil’s was one of the joints Mirra had muscled in on. The owners paid him a weekly cut, a salary for the privilege of having him around. Sometimes he’d tell me to watch the bartenders and manager to make sure they weren’t clipping the joint.

If he didn’t make $5,000 there on a weekend, he went cuckoo. One Friday night, out of the blue he decided he wasn’t making enough money out of the joint, so everybody would be charged five dollars at the door. The manager and I tried to talk him out of it, because you couldn’t just suddenly change the policy on the regular clientele, but Mirra wanted the money.

“Tonight everybody gets charged a fin,” he said. “Everybody.”

He told the kid at the door to collect, and sent me over there to make sure everybody paid.

Customers complained, but they paid. Then three guys came to the door with three girls. “We don’t pay no charges,” one of them said. They started to elbow their way past the kid at the door.

I recognized the guys as wiseguys, friends of Mirra’s. But I felt like busting some balls. I stepped in front of them. “Everybody that comes in tonight pays five bucks,” I said.

“We don’t pay.”

“Then you don’t come in.”

“Who the fuck are you? Who you with?”

The question meant, What mob crew was I with? I played dumb. “I’m here by myself.”

“You know who I am?”

“I don’t wanna know. But if you’re some kind of big-time operator, you ought to be able to come up with thirty bucks for you and your girlfriends.”

“I wanna see Tony Mirra!”

“You wanna see Tony, give me five bucks, you can go right in and see him.”

Now the guys are very embarrassed in front of their girlfriends, and they start a ruckus, shouting and shoving. Mirra comes over.

“These guys don’t wanna pay the five bucks, Tony,” I say.

“Not these guys, you fucking idiot,” he says.

“Tony, I’m just doing what you told me to do. You didn’t say wiseguys come in free.”

“These guys get in.”

“You guys get in,” I say to the bunch, giving them a big smile.