To collect, he just went in, opened the machines with a key, counted the money, and gave the store owner his cut—$25 or whatever it was. He would put the rest in a paper bag and out we would go. His route produced maybe $2,000 a week.

To get a new customer Mirra would walk into a place, tell the owner he was Tony and that the store needed one of his machines. Often the owner would recognize him or the name and say something like, “Oh, yeah, Tony, I was just thinking of calling you to get a machine in here.” If the guy didn’t think he was interested at first, Mirra would say, “In the next twenty-four hours, check around, ask about Tony down on Mulberry Street. Then I’ll come back and see if you’ve changed your mind.”

Invariably the owner had changed his mind when we came back.

He was trying to get his slot machines into Atlantic City. He said the family had five hundred slots in a warehouse, and he was just waiting for his lawyers to come up with a way to get access for them along the boardwalk.

Mirra says to me, “Drive me uptown.”

“What’s the problem?”

“I got to meet a guy that owes me money.”

He was collecting on one of his shylock loans.

We drive to a restaurant on First Avenue. We go in and stand at the bar. Pretty soon this guy walks in, tough-looking, about thirty. He comes over to Mirra and starts to open his mouth.

“Don‘t,” Mirra says, holding up his hand. “Don’t mention anybody’s name or I’m gonna smack you right here.”

Mob protocol is that if the guy says he talked to another wiseguy about the situation, mentions another wiseguy’s name, then Mirra would first have to talk to the other wiseguy. So he wasn’t giving this guy a chance to mention anybody’s name.

Mirra says, “Just answer the question I ask you. Where’s my fucking money?”

“Geez, Tony, you’re gonna get it, I’m just having a hard time, but I’ll have it for you, you know—”

“I heard this now a couple weeks,” Mirra says. “But it don’t happen. Let’s take a walk.”

Now I’m worried. If Mirra takes him out, this guy could end up in the alley next door. Mirra would beat him up or stab him. It was one of those situations where, as an agent, I had to intercede. But at the same time I had to maintain my role.

I say, “Hey, Tony, why don’t you let me talk to the guy, save you the aggravation. I’ll take him out for a walk.”

He nods to me and shoves the guy toward the door.

I take him outside. I figure at least I can buy some time, let Tony cool down. I say, “Look, I just saved you. I don’t want to see you get killed, but next time it ain’t gonna be that easy. When we go back in there, you say, ‘Tony, can I meet you tomorrow and give you the money?’ And you better have it for him tomorrow, because I might not be around tomorrow. And you act scared, like I gave you a couple smacks, because that’s what I’m supposed to do. You don’t act right, I’ll stab you myself, because I put my ass on the line with him.”

This tough guy is practically licking my hand because of his fear of Mirra.

We go back in, and the guy goes right up to Mirra and says, “Tony, I’ll give you the money tomorrow, meet you anywhere you want, okay? Okay?”

“The kid convinced you?” (Mirra sometimes called me “the kid.”) “Tomorrow. Right here.”

I was always on edge with Mirra. He was always in arguments with somebody. You never knew what might set him off, turn him into a cuckoo bird. He had no real allegiance to anybody. He was always in trouble with the law, which gave him a bad reputation on the street. I didn’t want to get tied up with Mirra, because you never knew when he would go back in the can. He was almost fifty years old, and he had spent more than half his life in jail.

He was valuable for introducing me to people. He introduced me to his captain, Mickey Zaffarano. Zaffarano handled porn theaters and national porn film distribution for the Bonanno family. He owned several pornography movie theaters in Times Square and around the country. His office was at Forty-eighth and Broadway—Times Square—upstairs from one of his theaters, the Pussycat. Mirra had me drive him up to Zaffarano’s office a couple of times. Zaffarano also came down to Madison Street once in a while. He was a big, good-looking guy, tall and heavyset.

Zaffarano eventually got caught up in the FBI sting operation called “Mi-Porn” out of Miami. When the agents went up to his office to arrest him, he started running away through the halls, and in the course of his run he dropped dead of a heart attack.

Lefty Ruggierro had a little storefront social club similar to dozens of others in Little Italy. Coffee, booze, card tables, TV. Downstairs was another room for more serious card games. Members only. Men only. Associates of Lefty and the Bonanno family only. It was a place to hang out.

In the back of the room was a phone and table, a place to take bets. Lefty was a bookie. Sometimes Mirra wasn’t there and I would bullshit with Lefty, chat about sports and what teams were hot to bet on. I began placing a few bets on baseball and horses, and on football when the pro exhibition season started—$50 to $100 just to help me be accepted. We started to develop a relationship. Lefty started calling me Donnie instead of Don, and that’s what everybody called me from then on.

The daily routine at Lefty’s was not much different from what it was at Jilly’s in Brooklyn, except that it was more of a real social club, not a store. Guys talked about the sports book, the numbers business, who owed what to whom, what scores were coming up. They groused about money. It didn’t matter how much anybody made or anybody had; they always groused about it. They were always talking about squeezing another nickel out of somebody.

After about two weeks Lefty asked me how I made money. By then I felt comfortable, not like I was rushing anything, so I told him I was a jewel thief and burglar.

“My son-in-law Marco is in that line,” he said. “Maybe you guys can get some things going together.”

“I usually work alone, Lefty,” I said. “But if there’s a good score and I like it, that’s always a possibility.”

For a while it was like a testing period. I just bided my time and didn’t push my nose into anything. Lefty started hitting me up for loans every now and then. He needed to pick up some clothes or some furniture, or whatever. I would lend him $300, $125. Sometimes he’d pay me back a fraction of it. I never thought he needed the money. I knew it was part of the hustle. You squeeze money out from whoever you can. Also, my lending him money was an indication that I was making money. So as not to seem like a patsy, I’d never give him all he asked for. He’d say he needed $500, I’d give him $200.

“Donnie, I need that thousand we talked about. You gonna be able to come up with that thousand for me?”

“A grand’s a lot for me right now, Lefty.”

“Yeah, but, see, I gotta pick up seventeen hundred bucks worth of clothes from this guy. What I’ll do, you give me the thousand, I’ll pay you back two hundred on that three-fifty I owe you.”

That kind of cycle went on with everybody. It didn’t necessarily mean guys were broke. It was just that everybody did everything possible to avoid using his own money.

In those days I was still moving around. I would stop down at Lefty’s at maybe ten o‘clock in the morning, hang around the club for an hour or two, have some coffee, read the papers, listen in on whatever conversations were going on, listen to some of the betting action going on over the telephone in the back. Then I’d go to Brooklyn and hang around Jilly’s for a couple of hours. Then in the evening I would hook up with Mirra, maybe meet him at Cecil’s, and hit the night spots.