Out of the blue, I was being accused of secretly splitting up a $250,000 drug deal with Rocky. Next to being a snitch, the worst thing you do is not split a big score with your bosses. I didn’t know what Rocky was involved in. I didn’t know what, if anything, he was really telling Mirra. I couldn’t risk trying to contact Rocky because I couldn’t trust his phone, and I wasn’t sure I could even trust him—I didn’t know what kind of situation he was in. There was no way I could find out anything right now except from Lefty, and I had to handle this conversation very carefully. I couldn’t afford to say the wrong thing or give a wrong answer that would further jeopardize either me or Rocky. But without knowing the circumstances I couldn’t be sure what were the right things to say. All I knew immediately was that this kind of situation with sitdowns can result in a decision that somebody has to go. I had to react with badguy strength—I couldn’t be pushed around. “Rocky’s lying, Left. I never cut any junk money with him.”

“I know he’s lying.”

“So what are you hollering at me for?”

“You’re fucking laxed!”

“He’s a liar. And Mirra’s a liar.”

“But your word don’t count.”

“Why does his word count?”

“Rocky already said it.”

“Just because he said it first?”

“This son of a bitch passed a remark. You only get a denial. This thing has snowballed. It’s a very, very dangerous thing. Now it’s beyond Sonny. It’s out of Sonny’s hands now, your case. It’s going all the way to the top. I got sent for today. Sonny didn’t tell me what he wanted to talk about. Then when I was there, he says, ‘Lefty, I want you to stay here.’ Why? He says, ‘Sally’s coming down.’ ”

Sally Farrugia, the acting boss.

“All of a sudden Mirra walks in with two guys, give a kiss and all that. Sonny don’t warn me what’s going on. Another big sitdown. They had people from Canada down to represent this mother’s claim over you, to represent this fucking scumbag because they heard big money, you understand? I warned I’m not giving you up. I die with you. If the Old Man was out, we’d have no fucking problem. Sally can’t say nothing. He feels bad, but his hands are tied. He can only listen to people, and they’re all making up stories. I went at Mirra today. I got up from the table, and I went at Mirra at the end of the bar. I called him all the cocksuckers in the world. I grabbed him. He says, ‘I never said you got the money, but Donnie and this guy cut it up.’ I says, ‘Don’t ever mention that fucking word junk money, you dirty cocksucker,’ and that was it. Sonny says, ‘Break it up.’ I went at the fucking captains. His captain—visualize the guy that was in the papers where the old man went bye-bye—he put his hand on me. I says, ‘Get your hand off me.’ He says,

‘You know who you’re talking to?’ I says, ‘Get your fucking hand off me! I don’t even know you.’ The whole joint heard it. ‘I’m no fucking mutt!’ I says.“

Mirra’s captain was Caesar Bonventre, the zip who was one of Galante’s bodyguards when he got hit, and one of those we figured was in on the hit.

“I’m in trouble. Then when I blow my top, Sonny says, ‘You’re supposed to listen.’ ‘I listen to my prick,’ I says. I had a big fight with Sonny. I stuck to my guns. I got witnesses. Consiglieri Stevie was there. Another main guy like Sonny”—Joey Massino, another powerful capo—“told me, ‘Lefty, stick to your guns, I’ll go back and tell that guy in the can.’ ”

“Was Rocky there today?”

“Are you kidding? Why would a scumbag like that be with us? Oh, I’ll win you. But it’ll go to the top.”

“I thought this was settled. You told me two weeks ago.”

“He wanted to be on our backs again. That’s why I got mad at Sonny in front of him. In front of all the bosses I said, ‘What are you, a piece of shit? This thing was settled with everybody, our family, our boss. This fuck does a thing like this again and gets away with it—why don’t you open your mouth?’ Then I went at the captains and got in trouble. I was chased off the table.”

“What’s with this guy?”

“Mirra is a low-life bastard,” Lefty says. “He’s a pimp, a fucking fag. With the bosses they called him a rat stool-pigeon bastard.”

“You believe him or you believe me?”

“How many times you was in Cecil’s?”

Cecil’s was the disco that Mirra had a piece of, where I had hung out with him years before. I didn’t know what this angle was, what answer was the safe one. I didn’t know whether it was better for me to have been in Cecil’s a little or a lot. I had to read between the lines and think quick. I hedged. “I was there like two, three times.”

“He says you was there three, four times at the door.”

“Left, I was at that door once.” He was looking for evidence of whether I had worked for Mirra, which would give Mirra an edge in his claim of me. “I never got a dime. You know what I got? Free drink.”

“While you were hanging in that joint, Cecil‘s, was Anthony Mirra a wiseguy then?”

“It was right around that time. I’m not sure.”

“I said he wasn’t a wiseguy when he got Cecil’s because I wasn’t married then. He’s only straightened out three and a half years. I was six months after him. If Mirra wasn’t a good fellow at the time you was there, his argument is no good. Sonny will check it out. Sonny’s going to the Commission, you know, find out when he was straightened out, then they’re going to revive it. I told him you met Anthony Mirra at my joint. I got you through the little guy”—underboss Nicky Marangello—“because I liked you very much. That’s on record.”

The question was whether Lefty or Mirra had introduced me into the crew. The fact was I had known Mirra first. Lefty was claiming he had introduced me to Mirra. In either event, way back then Lefty had gone to Marangello and put in an official claim on me—something Mirra had never done, as far as I knew.

“Caesar’s on his side,” Lefty goes on. “He says you were with him every night.”

“I never saw Caesar there at Cecil’s. He wouldn’t know me.”

“Donnie, you’re fooling around with a dangerous man. I want this guy’s head because he’s looking for mine. He’s telling his people, ‘I live in Lefty’s building. He lives on the eighth floor, I live on the sixth. If I got no coffee or butter or like that, some morning I’ll stop and knock on Lefty’s door.’ In front of his men he says that. I says, ‘I tell you what, Anthony Mirra, you stop at my door, I’ll shoot you right in the head, because you’re not my friend.’ I want Rocky bad. I would hurt him only because he lied. I says to Mirra, ‘You tell that motherfucker he belongs to me. I catch you in the fucking car with him, I shoot him in the fucking head. If you’re in the fucking way, you die too.’ The joint is bugged, Donnie. But I said what I had to say. I said I’m gonna put two bullets in his eyes, and I specify what caliber it’s gonna be. Nobody in Brooklyn could control me today. You’re not allowed to drink at a meeting. You know what four and a half hours is sitting down with politicians?”

“I know.”

“No, you don’t know. The fucking trouble with you.”

“Well, you never explain to me.”

“I can’t explain to you. What I’m telling you now, you ain’t supposed to know. See, you’re treated like a friend, understand? Now, did you bring Rocky in town?”

This was the most delicate and dangerous subject of all. “Yeah, he came up there, why?”

“Now, Rocky come in through you. How I know Rocky is through you?”

“That’s right. I met him down there. I met him in Lauderdale at the bar down there, I told you that, at Pier 66.”

“The guy belong to you?”

“No.”

“Donnie, we ain’t saying different. But now you came in with him, you gave him the job. Remember what you say now. You put the guy there. Somebody put him in there. The guy that put him there was on the federal boat, the guy is a federal stool pigeon. Something’s wrong with that joint.”