I got to Lefty’s apartment at about noon. Lefty wasn’t there. “I just want to leave this package for Lefty,” I say to Louise. “He knows what it is.” I put it under the Christmas tree.

Then I drove to Brooklyn and told Lefty that I had delivered the package.

“Good,” he says. “I’ll check them out, see which ones I want to keep and which ones to send down to you in Florida.”

That evening a bunch of us were sitting around bullshitting about mob business. Lefty began expounding upon deals that he had pulled off, and successful businesses that he had invested in, including the King’s Court, where I was his man. Then he started talking about Milwaukee.

I listened and watched him carefully. He told how he had gotten involved in a vending-machine business with me and how that deal had led to a sitdown between Milwaukee and New York. He said that the New York end of the sitdown had been arranged by Tony “Ducks” Corallo, the boss of the Lucchese family.

Lefty never mentioned Tony Conte. There was no hint that Lefty or anybody else in the room knew anything about informants or undercover agents involved in the Milwaukee operations. It was as if Tony Conte never existed.

Sonny’s “Brooklyn problems” kept him from going to King’s Court for New Year’s Eve. I stayed in Brooklyn too. It was important for me to spend as much time with him as I could. I slept at his apartment. We took care of the pigeons together. We hung out at the club and the Motion Lounge, played gin. We went across the street for espresso at the Caffe Capri, a little shop with ornate white grillwork over the front windows and five or six small tables inside. Once in a while we’d go to Manhattan, to Little Italy, maybe take in a crap game on Mott Street.

It was obvious that I got more respect from the crew now because I was Sonny’s man. I was always with Sonny when I was in New York. Guys in the crew talked more freely around me.

Sometimes when we were up on the roof with the pigeons, Sonny would lean on the railing and look out over the rooftops of the neighborhood where he had lived all his life. I wondered what he was thinking about.

He didn’t mention that Tony Mirra was raising a stink over me, insisting that I belonged to him and not to Lefty and demanding a piece of King’s Court. I wasn’t supposed to know about this because this was mob business and I wasn’t a made guy. Lefty told me as a favor. Sonny knew, but he didn’t say a word.

We walked out of Peter Luger’s Steak House in Brooklyn. Sonny stopped at the door for a minute to talk to someone he knew. I went on to get the car, which we had parked on the street.

A block away, a guy walked up to me. He came straight up to me and stopped right in front of me. He looked like a normal guy. Then I saw he had a knife. He stood close, like we were going to have an intimate chat, and pressed the tip of the blade against my belly.

“Gimme your money, slow.”

I am more afraid of a knife than a gun, if the guy knows how to use the knife. He was welcome to my money.

Sonny came walking up from behind me and kept right on walking past us, evidently thinking I was talking to somebody I knew and it was none of his business. Suddenly he spun back and delivered a pow erhouse right at the base of the guy’s skull. The guy dropped like a stone and lay there.

“Come on, let’s get out of here,” Sonny says, “before you get into any more trouble.”

A week into the new year, I went back to King’s Court to push through plans for the Las Vegas Night and help set up another meeting between Sonny and Trafficante.

Lefty was irate because I was reporting things to Sonny before I told him. I had told Sonny that we lost $2,400 on the book. Any loss for us was a loss for Lefty too.

“You didn’t call me this morning,” he says over the phone. “You were supposed to call me last night. You can’t pick up a phone?”

“I missed you, then I called the club. Didn’t he tell you I called?”

“The man never told me nothing. He’s playing games with me. He knows I’m feuding with him because I don’t like what’s going on. I’m hurting, I’ll tell you. I’m feuding and fighting with everybody because I can’t get along with these people. I can’t pay my bills. ”

“I called Boots’s joint and asked for you, and you weren’t there so he put Sonny on.”

“How come he didn’t tell me a goddamn thing? Let me tell you something. You’re losing a lot of prestige because I’ll tell you why. I’ve been scheming all day about there’s something wrong. I hope you bail out next week, because we’re not gonna owe a dime because whatever we owe next week, everybody is chipping in. This year is a different ball game or I’ll send my own men down there.”

“Why you getting mad at me? What’s going on up there?”

“That don’t concern you, Donnie. You’re nobody as far as what we’re talking about, him and I. You’re on the outside. At least I give you the satisfaction of me telling you I’m arguing with him. You don’t make no phone calls, what I gotta put a stop with you. I think it’s gonna come to a head, and we’re gonna break up with him and youse all belong to me.”

“That’s all right, I don’t care.”

“I gotta know where I’m at, that’s all I’m telling you. Lot of people invest a lot of money out there. I ain’t like him. Throw a broad at him and he’s happy.”

Lefty never really went out chasing women. Sonny did a little more chasing, a fact that gnawed at Lefty.

“You know me when I go out of town with you,” Lefty says. “I don’t bother nobody, and I act the part of a man. Broads don’t bother me. How the fuck could you invite your own sweetheart that you live with, then next day want to bring a cunt in? Boobie says, ‘You bringing your wife down?’ I says, ‘Hey, Boobie, don’t ever classify my wife with Sonny Black’s girls. My wife’s got too much class. I bring my wife when you bring your wives. Judy would understand, she’s a good kid. But a tramp? The guy’s sick, he’s definitely sick.”

While he was talking, the recording system on my phone was malfunctioning. I was afraid he would pick it up, so I brought it up first. “You hear this static?”

“Forget about the static.”

“It’s hard for me to hear.”

“We’re not talking about static! Let me explain something to you. When you had the problems with Mr. Mirra, he gave you up and he threw it in my lap. You know what hurted me, a slap in the face? I was there New Year‘s, wished Sonny and everybody luck. Mirra calls him up. And he takes the phone call. But listen, I’m not a phony. As long as I’m around, you’re around. We don’t accept no girls, shit like that.”

“Why didn’t he tell you I called?”

“He didn’t tell me nothing because he thinks he’s King Farouk. The whole world is disgusted with him.”

“Hey, if we get stuck, he’s gotta come up with the money.”

“He has to come up with it. But that ain’t the idea.

He didn’t tell me a goddamn thing. I says, ‘You better stop bothering people.’ That’s all I told him, and I walked away from him. I said, ‘Nobody understands you anymore.’ I’ll straighten this whole thing out. It’s all bullshit. Let’s stop this fucking nonsense. That’s all

I can tell you. Say hello to Tony.“

I finally managed to get hold of Trafficante’s man, Husick, and set the date for the Las Vegas Night: January 17.

Rossi, Shannon, and I met with Captain Donahue in the office at King’s Court. Rossi told him that we had scheduled another Las Vegas Night and that important people would be there from both New York and Florida, so he wanted to make sure there wouldn’t be any problems. Donahue assured us he would take care of everything.