Sonny Black emerges from a motel coffee shop with Florida boss Santo Trafficante. The two forged a new alliance between the Bonanno and Trafficante families to share gambling and other illegal activities.

Frank Balistrieri, boss of the Milwaukee family. Agent Pistone set up an alliance between the Balistrieri and Bonanno families in 1978 to share a Milwaukee vending-machine operation.

Philip “Rusty” Rastelli ran the Bonanno family for several years from a cell at the federal penitentiary in Lewisberg, Pa.

This early-morning surveillance photo shows the Motion Lounge in Brooklyn, Sonny Black’s headquarters. His apartment was on the third floor, his pigeon coops on the roof.

Outside the Motion Lounge on May 14, 1981, the day Sonny Black gave “Donnie Brasco” the contract to “hit” a rival Mafia member. From left, Nicky Santora, Boobie Cerasani, Sonny Black, and Agent Pistone.

On July 28, 1981, two days after Agent Pistone ended his undercover role, FBI agents (left to right) Jerry Loar, James Kinne, and Doug Fencl emerge from Sonny Black’s apartment after informing him that “Donnie Brasco” was an FBI agent.

After the agents’ visit, Sonny Black went up to the roof, to his pigeon coops, where he often retreated to think in private. The revelation that the Bonanno family had been infiltrated by an FBI agent meant death sentences for those responsible for the unprecedented breach in Mafia security.

Sonny Black summoned the top members of his crew to plan strategy regarding the stunning news about “Donnie Brasco.” From left: Boobie Cerasani, Nicky Santora, Lefty Ruggiero, Sonny Black.

Lefty Ruggiero, Agent Pistone’s Mafia “partner” for five years, stands in the doorway of the Motion Lounge as the “Donnie Brasco” revelation sinks in.

There was no way I could be away from home now for five solid months.

By not turning it down immediately, I thought maybe I could milk a little more information out of them.

After Lefty and Frank talked for a few minutes they came over. Frank said, “Okay, you get together with Steve next Tuesday. He’ll give you the whole rundown.”

We left the Peppercorn at about two A.M.

Lefty explained what he and Frank had talked about. “Frank says to me, ‘You know, if Donnie takes this, you gotta be responsible for him. You know the consequences.’ I says I definitely do. He says, ‘Once I put it on record, if this guy fucks up, you’re in trouble, not him. They don’t look for him. They look for you.’ So I says, ‘You don’t have to look far. I take the full responsibility.’ I told him you’re my blood, Donnie, nobody had to worry about you.”

Frank still had to call New York to get permission from our captain, Mike Sabella, to use me, and to go on record that Lefty was taking full responsibility if anything went wrong-such as if I was a snitch, or if I absconded with money from the book.

“I shook hands with him,” Lefty says, “but that don’t count. He’s still gonna put it on record in New York. ‘Go ahead and make your phone call,’ I says.

‘I’d stake my life on the man.’ Tony, the responsibility I gave Donnie just now ... if he fucks up, I’m a dead man. New York City, they only call bosses to bosses. This boss here, he calls New York, he talks to a boss. If I get sent for, I don’t know what I’m getting sent for. They just say to come in. And I’d be getting killed for something I didn’t even know. I’ll tell you one thing. You two guys, you couldn’t have any opportunity like this nowhere. You got the world at your feet. They’re all afraid of him over here. They’re all fucking Hoosiers.“

After Lefty went to bed I got hold of Conte right away. I said, “Tony, I just can’t do this.” He understood and said, “Donnie, you do what you’ve got to do. Don’t worry about it.”

I called the case agent, Mike Potkonjak, and told him. He got in touch with Ralph Hill, the Assistant Special Agent in Charge in Milwaukee. Hill wanted to meet and talk it over.

This all had to be handled immediately. I was going to have to tell Lefty the next morning, before Balistrieri called New York, or my credibility would be shot. I couldn’t meet with DiSalvo, get all the inside details, and then turn it down—I would look very much like a cop or a snitch.

Before dawn, Conte and I met with Hill and Potkonjak in a room at another hotel outside of town.

“I’d really like for you to go through with it,” Hill says, after we’d kicked it around. “You know what you’re throwing away.”

“There comes a point where I’ve got to start thinking about my family.”

Hill says, “What would it take for you to change your mind?”

They couldn’t make my job easier or safer. Half facetiously I say, “More money.”

He thought he could get me a raise. He called Headquarters in Washington. He explained the situation and asked that I be raised one grade, to supervisor, which would mean a couple thousand dollars more in salary.

Headquarters said no. They couldn’t advance me to supervisor because I wasn’t doing supervisory work, which meant either working in a Headquarters office in Washington or having a squad of men under you in the field. Hill pleaded that they not stick to technicalities, but they held firm.

That took me off the hook. I wasn’t going to take the job, anyway. But if Headquarters didn’t care enough to bend the rules for this opportunity when I was putting my ass on the line every day, at least I didn’t have to feel guilty.

Now I had to come up with a reason that Lefty would buy. Lefty would have to come up with yet another one to give Balistrieri.

Balistrieri wouldn’t be too upset because he had just that night made the offer and hadn’t yet contacted New York, and I hadn’t gotten involved in details. Lefty could just tell him that something came up with family business—the kind of dodge these guys use all the time because you can’t question that.

One thing that I had in my favor, seen through any mob guy’s eyes, was that no cop would ever turn that job down. So I would be above suspicion in that regard. Lefty would go cuckoo no matter what I said, but I could think of only one reason he would believe: simply that I would not stay cooped up in Milwaukee for twenty straight weeks, especially when it included the damn cold winter. He would scream, but he would believe it. He wouldn’t tell Sabella anything because it would be embarrassing. I had been his partner for more than a year, I had never embarrassed him, we still had prospects in Milwaukee, he would get over it.

Lefty came down to the coffee shop for breakfast, still bubbling over about how much money we were going to make.

I told him I had thought it over and changed my mind, and why.

He went bananas. “You wanna be a fucking playboy and lay around in California all the time! You worry too much about your girlfriend! You worry about getting pinched! Everything’s a joke to you! We’re blowing two hundred fucking grand!”